The Prestige Fallacy

To combine two words that I’m fed up with hearing, I present you with the Prestige Fallacy, which goes something like this: Prestige classes are the secret to a satisfying D&D experience. Want to make your character unique? Don’t bother thinking creatively, just take a PrC! Need a set of specific abilities for some NPC foes? Well they’ll have to be at least sixth level, but there’s a PrC for that! Playing in a game above fifth level? Better take a PrC, or everyone will laugh and call you NEWB! Playing a non-magical character? Well you NEED at least two base classes plus at least five PrCs, just to pull your own weight!

The first word of the term ‘prestige class’ doesn’t even apply to most games; players take PrC levels simply as a matter of course. No prestigious organizations, just pointless prereqs that force players to plan out their stat minutiae from level 1. God forbid that all those cool special abilities should be available to single classed characters as alternate class features, feats and spells! Or even as base classes!

Some PrCs are simply means to circumvent artificial restrictions in core. Example: blackguard and holy liberator, which exist solely to bypass the paladin’s needlessly restrictive alignment requirement. That’s downright moronic. God forbid these character concepts should be available from level 1!

And then there’s the combo-concept PrCs. How many gish PrCs came out before someone in R&D finally said “Hey, why don’t we just make this a base class? We’ll call it the duskblade!”? Five? Six? Seventeen? All of those combo-concept PrCs would be better off as base classes; mystic theurge & co., arcane trickster, I’m sure there are others. Again, god forbid players and DMs have these options at level 1, ‘cause that would be insanity!

There are PrCs that exist to compensate for the suckitude of the game mechanics; Tempest and that TWF PrC from Bo9S comes immediately to mind. Why is everyone’s first impulse when encountering a problem with the basic game rules to fix it with a PrC, rather than fixing the problem itself? Great, so if I want to be a decent dual wielding warrior, I have to wait until sixth level? No thanks, I’ll play a different character concept until sixth level, then make a suicidal decision, and then play the concept that I really want to play. Gee, that’s brilliant game design right there!

There are PrCs that exist solely as magnifications of base classes; I’m looking at you, Radiant Servant of Pelor and Frenzied Berserker! There is zero reason that the benefits which these classes grant should not be feats, class abilities or else banned for being stupidly overpowered.

Finally there’s the mess of PrCs that might have a right to exist in certain games, but would also be better off as feats, class abilities and spells in most games.

Discuss.

While playing around with PrC's can be fun, I mostly agree with you.

I particularly dislike them as a bandaid fix. Who wants to have to multiclass into a bandaid.

The abundance of prestige classes is annoying at times, but I've never seen your fallacy in any of my games. Many of the most powerful/memorable characters I've seen had no prestige class at all, and many were either single classed or a (what I would consider perfectly ok and normal since it was available in 2E) dual class. My three most favorite characters ever were:
[sblock]1) A straight Rogue Changeling (and I didn't even use the racial sub levels, fool that I was ). Partly nostalgic, but he was a lot of fun and was blatantly made for everything other than combat and still was very useful to the party. My first such attempt, before that I had played mostly melee classes.
2) A Goliath Barbarian / Rogue dual class, decked out with almost a dozen variants -- martial (feat) rogue; wilderness rogue; lion AND wolf totem (DM allowed it, they didn't step on each other's requirements); Vactic Gaze; racial sub. levels for both classes; I think Lunar Rogue sub. levels... If he had reached level 17, I had planned to enter Warblade as a Rogue 8 / Barbarian 8 both to add to his combat maneuvers repertoire and to prove that having a multiclass xp penalty isn't so bad. He was both fun (like, pouncing charging leap attacking improved tripping hitting and knocking the guy back 30 ft into a wall as he was used like a bowling ball to lay low his own allies on the way fun) and my most broken character, or at least tied with my #3.
3) Mandated by campaign (modeled on Final Fantasy 1) single classed Human "Black Mage" (Int-sorcerer with a few other minor changes). I chose to refrain from blasting and focus on battlefield control (again, new territory for me). Later, this role expanded to party tactician and buffer (originally i intended to only do debuffing). The DM and players even gave me the affectionate job position of "breaking the game" for the sheer number of encounters that should have been hard (including many boss fights) into no-contests. Fortunately, the DM was amused by this, and the other players liked I left the dirty work to them and included them in my plans, so on one got angry about it.

My fourth favorite character was a Dwarf Cleric / Fighter / Church Inquisitor, but I liked him more for his personality than his mechanics.[/sblock]

Yeah, it's anectdotal evidence. But I don't have any studies or statistics to look to, so...oh well.

I would definitely favor making prestige class abilities into feats and variant options for the base classes to take, and in general making high levels in the base classes more appealing. I don't feel any imminent need to ban prestige classes, though. I did limit players in my current game to no multiclassing and only one prestige class, but that was because it's a gestalt game and they shouldn't need more multiclassing than that to get the right "fit" for their characters.

I really like the idea of prestige classes when I read it in the 3.0 DMG. I liked the idea of campaign-specific organizational themes.

But I think the idea went off the rails from there, partly for WOTC business reasons: Players bought them as power-ups. They took up more page count than a few little feats (thus bulking up the books). They stopped trying to tie them to specific campaign settings in a structured way (thus making every player part of the market). So yeah, they basically became wordy power-ups from what I could tell.

Personally, I don't think a campaign should have more than about 6 possible prestige classes. They also shouldn't sprout up willy-nilly on the fly every month of the campaign. Failing that, I'd prefer to not use them at all and just work on expanding Feat choices, as you say.

in our campaign we forbid prestige classes. we bumped assassin to a full class, and every other prestige class doesn't exist.

I half agree with the OP.

The problem is that its very hard for base classes to do everything you might possibly want them to do, and as a result, certain areas of the game turn into logical places to "patch" the game.

Almost every negative aspect you describe is a patch on the core system, so the question is why did the prestige class, initially presented as an optional system, become the primary means of patching the system? I think it comes down to the initial design philosophy.

Core classes were intended to be broad-based archetypes mostly under the purview of the players, while prestige classes were role-playing centric methods of rewarding specialization, theoretically under the control of the DM due to the campaign considerations. The underlying simulationism in the 3.x ruleset would dictate that the type of dedicated specialization represented by a prestige class (plus the notoriety required to come to the attention of the sponsoring groups) would not initially be available to a player (not sure how they came up with the correct threshold, though its 1/4th the way through the 20th level advancement table). For the first five levels or so, specialization would be achieved through multi-classing and feat acquisition, and because of the "prestige" component of prestige classes, I think this was also supposed to be the method that general (for lack of a better term) specialization would occur.

IMO, the problem was that the rate of feat acquisition ended up being too low and multi-classing could easily produce strange and inefficient results. Combine that with dead levels, power disparity between the core classes, and a player centric business model, you're going to look for patches that are going to achieve similar results to what you initially intended. The fact that prestige classe were only 5 or 10 levels long makes them easier (in theory) to design than a full 20 level class and you could fit more of them into the sourcebooks.

The question is why didn't WoTC try to fix the issue with core classes, alternative class features, or feats? Well, to be fair, WoTC did create a lot of additional bases classes, usually as part of a new sub-system (psionic classes, incarnum classes, binders, Bo9S classes). For the most part, the remainder never really achieved widespread popularity. IMO, I think a lot of that is that there was too much overlap in how certain classes operated, some were essentially glorified prestige classes, and others, well people, didn't want to mix Asian-styled classes in a Eurocentric game. In any case, the new core classes didn't eliminate the issues of dead levels (a method of balance that encourages players to look elsewhere; notice that the majority of prestige classes lacked dead levels of any sort) or power disparity between classes.

As for feats and alternate class features, well, again I think that the rate of feat acquisition was too low to take the place of a mass of class features, and there was additional disparity in the power of feats. Alternate class features came about towards the end of the 3.x product line, and they probably offered the best alternative to prestige classes. In fact, given the timing of their appearance, I can't help but think their introduction to 3.5e was due to the influence of the 4e power system. However, despite their potential, alternative class features still had to contend with dead levels and power disparity between the classes.

While there is much truth in what the OP says, I think its a touch overstated.

For example, I tend to MC into base classes rather than PrCls. The last 2 3.X PCs I've played were both a form of armored spellcaster. One was a Ftr/Rgr/SpecWiz Div/Spellsword, the other was a Sorc/Ftr with Draconic heritage feats, including (most importantly) Draconic Breath.

I'm not alone in this- most of the PCs I've seen in my groups have largely ignored PrCls. Those players who did use PrCls tended to be aiming for some kind of unusual PC, like someone who was quasi-elemental in nature (genasi were not available).

Some of the other DMs in the group- not me- do what joethelawyer's group did- ban or alter PrCls to fit their needs. Me? I'm wide open, but I reserve the right to veto a PrCl or combo if its abusive or out of character.

Tequila Sunrise said:

The first word of the term ‘prestige class’ doesn’t even apply to most games; players take PrC levels simply as a matter of course. No prestigious organizations, just pointless prereqs that force players to plan out their stat minutiae from level 1. God forbid that all those cool special abilities should be available to single classed characters as alternate class features, feats and spells! Or even as base classes!

Some PrCs are simply means to circumvent artificial restrictions in core. Example: blackguard and holy liberator, which exist solely to bypass the paladin’s needlessly restrictive alignment requirement. That’s downright moronic. God forbid these character concepts should be available from level 1!

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In designing the 'Rage Mage' Monte Cook flat-out says that he read a line in the PHB that someone couldn't cast spells while Raging and took that as a challenge. "What if I *want* to do that?" And so he made a Rage Mage PrC.

Tons of PrCs are hole-patchers. Like you said, Blackguard and Holy Liberator are just patches on the 'Holy Warriors must be LG!' arbitrary rule. There are PrCs that exist to allow Paladins and Monks to multi-class with some other class, to get around that arbitrary rule. I'm pretty sure that there is a PrC out there that allows a Monk to be Chaotic, again, just to get around a pointless arbitrary restriction that serves no mechanical game purpose at all. Rules, being invented, to get around *fluff* restrictions. That's just lame.

The vast majority of PrCs have one or two 'good' abilities, such as Shadow Pounce or Spontaneous Metamagic, and then have eight 'dead levels' that just continue the base classes progression, which begs the question, 'Why not take levels of Rogue, if half of the Assassin levels just progress Rogue abilities anyway?' Others have minor fiddly things added to 'fill up' those 'dead levels', but really serve no defining role anyway.

Most PrC abilities, IMO, should indeed be available as Feats, feat chains, higher level Rogue options and / or Alternate Class features. Additionally, non-mechanical class restrictions (paladins can't multiclass, monks can't be chaotic, barbarians and bards can't be lawful) should be ditched. If someone wants to play a lawful zealot who works himself up into a righteous fury, then let him go with his lawful Rage. If someone wants to play a Bard who is in training to be a herald to the local lord, and strongly supports the rule of law, again, more power to him, it's not even an odd concept, but a distressingly *common* one that D&D doesn't support, for some obscure reason.

There's nothing 'prestigious' about the Frenzied Berserker. It's just the Barbarian turned up to 11.

There's no excuse for the Paladin to be some common schmoe whose gods have *no standards at all* and will take someone off the street at 1st level and dump all sorts of holy power on them, no pre-screening or great accomplishments required, while the Blackguard belongs to an elite, prestigious brotherhood who had to focus, devote themselves, pass trials, earn favor and qualify to earn the favor of, apparently far more discriminating, evil gods who won't just dump their divine gifts on any yob fresh from the stables who hasn't proven himself willing to struggle and sacrifice for the role of holy champion.

There's no excuse for the Paladin to be some common schmoe whose gods have *no standards at all* and will take someone off the street at 1st level and dump all sorts of holy power on them, no pre-screening or great accomplishments required, while the Blackguard belongs to an elite, prestigious brotherhood who had to focus, devote themselves, pass trials, earn favor and qualify to earn the favor of, apparently far more discriminating, evil gods who won't just dump their divine gifts on any yob fresh from the stables who hasn't proven himself willing to struggle and sacrifice for the role of holy champion.

Click to expand...

Which is why I always liked the approach Green Ronin took with their Holy Warriors appendix in Book of the Righteous.

What surprised me is that there have been numerous discussions and Dragon Magazine articles about this since 1Ed. You'd have thought the BotR approach- or something substantially similar- would have been adopted in the first printing of 3Ed by WotC itself.