Are prestige classes still viable?

[Celtavian]

re

We very much tried to make prestige classes not into power-ups for base classes but "flavor choices" for base classes. I'm still not sure we accomplished this, and I'd love to hear more feedback... but the basic goal was that we were hoping that folks would pick up a prestige class for either roleplaying reasons (becasue they want to be an assassin or a loremaster) or because they wanted to do a complex multiclass (like arcane archer or eldritch knight). HOPEFULLY this'll also result in folks not doing the prestige class dip as much, because if you're taking a prestige class for roleplaying reasons or to support a multiclass, you'll WANT to stick it out to the prestige class's end.

Anyway... I'm looking forward to seeing how this shakes out!

You're giving up around 13 or 14 hit points or skill points to gain a class that is not better than a base class. Not sure why you didn't allow a player to take a Prc as a favored class, thus reducing the the hit point or skill point loss to 9 given that Prcs are not more powerful than base classes. That would have made the balance of Prc versus Base class perfect. I'm finding that as an Arcane Trickster I'm falling noticeably behind the wizard in hit points.

If you plan to play a Prc, that is going to be the majority of your class levels in general. It should be your favored class since it is the class with the most levels. It's very easy for players to hold off choosing a favored class until they gain the Prc since most players plan their advancement.

That's my only complaint. We may house rule that you can choose Prcs as favored class. It doesn't seem to disrupt balance at all and it puts the Prcs on par with the base classes.

 

[Celtavian]

re

Honestly... I agree 100%. There wasn't enough room, alas, to fit a better mix of classes in there, and we were kind of stuck with what was in the SRD as far as choices go, further compounded by the fact that we had other plans for the blackguard, of course.

The Advanced Player's Guide, due out next Gen Con, will absolutely be addressing this fact though.

(And while I agree there's not a LOT of choices for clerics or druids... the mystic theurge and, more to the point, the loremaster DO work for them. And a barbarian/sorcerer eldritch knight might be pretty nifty... Monks ARE kinda hosed though.)

Are you going to bring back the archmage and hierophant or use feats to emulate their abilities?

 

[Jhaelen]

If you're going to continue the "I am the ultimate source of all PrCs, ahahahaha!" thing, might I recommend you ask your players in advance what kind of character they want to build, and HELP guide them to their PrC? As it sounds, right now, you're letting them just wander aimlessly through their feats and skills, and then when they ask for help on a PrC, you just go "Hah hah too bad you screwed yourself!"

Wow, way to misrepresent what I wrote.

You may have missed the part about them not being interested in reading all those supplements - it's not as if I wouldn't offer to borrow them the books. I guess, they are what is mostly referred to as 'casual players'.

Quite recently one of them declined taking level in the Radiant Servant of Pelor prestige class even though he wanted to play 'a cleric that was good at healing and fighting against undead'. He said he thought it was too complicated (?!) and he'd rather go for a straight cleric of Pelor...

Since it means more work for me to look for fitting prestige classes you can bet I'd prefer it if they did it themselves!

I'm also quite lenient regarding the prerequisites and have introduced retraining precisely because of stuff like this. Since psionics are an important part of my campaign there's also psionic reformation readily available.

Anyway, it's true of course that for some characters prestige classes simply won't do much. E.g. I couldn't think of a prestige class for the party's psion that offered more than simply continuing to take psion levels. Druids are another example.

And that's what made me start this thread, since it seems that in Pathfinder it's even more beneficial than in 3e to just continue taking levels in your base (and favoured) class.

 

[MerrikCale]

And while I agree there's not a LOT of choices for clerics or druids... the mystic theurge and, more to the point, the loremaster DO work for them. And a barbarian/sorcerer eldritch knight might be pretty nifty... Monks ARE kinda hosed though.

I would think (and we are seeing this in the AP articles on specific churches) that clerics should have the most choices for PrCs. Deity specific PrCs seem the most obvious. I, for one, am a fan of each church having at least one

 

[Celtavian]

I would think (and we are seeing this in the AP articles on specific churches) that clerics should have the most choices for PrCs. Deity specific PrCs seem the most obvious. I, for one, am a fan of each church having at least one

I second this. 2nd edition Faiths and Avatars one of the best supplements ever written. Finally fully fleshed religions, gods, and priests. Really brought religion and priesthood to live in D&D.

Love to see Pathfinder move away from the genericism of 3E and 4E when it comes to priests and make priests unique again. I was disappointed that 3E genericized the priest and ruined the unique flavor 2E had built when it came to spells and the sheer number of priests.

 

[Celebrim]

Few things did as much damage to the 3e D&D brand as Prestige Classes. Pathfinder does well to downplay them.

 

[Glade Riven]

My apologies for not being clear: in my opinion class dipping is fine.
I hail from the crowd of people who prefer to build characters around certain ideas, concepts, stories - dipping (not necessarily minmaxing) is about assembling building blocks of your character.

Of course, this comes from a guy who played an immortal wimp in GURPS and a paladin of similar alignment to Vlad Tepes in AD&D, so YMMV.

Regards,
Ruemere

I don't mind either class dipping or multi-classing, but there is a point where it gets pretty darn silly. I think the max I'd ever allow is 4 classes/PrCs total. Seriously - take a basic class out of Unearthed Arcana if you want to pick and choose your abilities to suit your background - or talk to the DM about hot-swapping a few features (it's in 3.5's DMG). Besides, class abilities are suppose to be representational of a combination of what your character spend your free time developing when your not at the game table and what they pick up while adventuring.

In the long-running campaign my group has, I've been playing an Elf Paladin, with a few features swapped out (Spells, lay on hands, and few other minor items for the Crusader's martial progression). He's taken a few levels of Exorcist of the Silver Flame, but recently has taken Eternal Blade levels because of where the campaign has gone. He hates heavy armor, has 10 Con, and has a tendency to roll crappy more often then not on the HD (In contrast, our Dwarf Barbarian with a dip into Fighter for a few feats is far more "broken", even though he's following pure 3.5 PHB rules - the character is just so darn lucky with his stat and HP roll)

Still, when I saw Pathfinder's paladin, it turned out the changes Pathfinder made was closer to the origenal idea of the character. If I was rebuilding the character from scratch in Pathfinder, I doubt I would take either prestige class or the hot-swappage for martial manuevers.

I would like to see some decent Anti-undead prestige classes from Paizo - most of WotC's anti-undead prestige classes I've always found lacking or stupid.

 

[Will]

Did no one buy PH2? It's 'core 3.5' (though I'm not sure it's OGL) that one can change class features over time.

So if you don't qualify for a PrC you've decided, now, that you like? Ok, it'll take a little time, but you can move your feats and skills around, as part of the actual system. (Rather than Rule Zeroing it)


Me, I found my interest in PrCs dropped when I decided, as DM, that if players wanted different class abilities... they could just ask me for them and I'd re-engineer the class.

Want to be a ranger with Smite Evil? Sure, I'll drop favored enemy, that looks about right.

UA and 'variant class' options in many books really help provide pointers for how to tailor a class more closely to what a player wants.

 

[the Jester]

Did no one buy PH2? It's 'core 3.5' (though I'm not sure it's OGL) that one can change class features over time.

Nitpick: Only in 4e are all the books considered "core". In 3e, the PH, MM and DMG are the only core books- not the PH2 et. al.

On the subject of prestige classes, I think the Pathfinder approach of making them more flavor choices and less power ups is great. Another thing that would help improve them would be to drastically reduce the qualification hassle- this is something that I think 4e got very right with paragon paths. When the requirements are a class and level and THAT'S IT, it is a wonderful way to open them up to a variety of characters, especially since "class" is easy to get with 4e's multiclassing feats. A few have class feature requirements too, or race, etc., but none that I have seen have a paragraph of prereqs.

IMHO, the ideal list of prereqs for something like "Loremaster" would read (in 3e parlance- I haven't read the PF ruleset, so I might be slightly off base here) something like this: "Spellcaster, 6th level, at least two knowledge skills at maximum rank." Boom, that's it. Assassin? "Evil, must kill an innocent to get in, 6th level." Knight of the chalice? "Good, 6th level, must have slain a fiend." And so on.

Just MHO.

 

[TheNovaLord]

prestige should be for flavour or if a 'power-up' in a narrow band

heres hoping my wizard/fighter gets to hit eldritch knight next year

But as other have said, there is so much goodness sticking to one class PrC is no longer an obvious choice, .