Bringing Back the Prestige

[Umbran]

Re: Just a question...

...which might touch upon one of the root problems in the concept of prestige classes...how do you measure the prestige of a character in D&D/your campaign?

I'm not sure that is a "root problem" of prestige classes. Just because they are named "presitige", does not mean they were ever intended to measure or reflect public opinion. They are intended to allow DMs to introduce people with special roles in his game world, and have those roles backed up by appropriate abilities. Despite the name, there's no real necessity that these roles be particularly well known to the populace at large.

In fact, the 3E DMG has a couple that are certainly not "prestigious" in the common sense - assassins and blackguards don't have a lot of prestige with the common folk...

You may feel PrC are misnamed. You may feel that the game ought to have rules for handling public opinion. But that's not a major fault in the concept prestige classes.

 

[Tonguez]

Personally I'd like to see Prestige Classes scraped and replaced with Feat Chains and perhaps Prestige Feats that mimic class abilities, perhaps even level specific Feats like Leadership. Alongside these would be guidelines for how to swapout various feats in the chain for other feats with similar prereqs or similar level - thus allowing unique but sensible and balanced combinations

Then for instance I could create a PrC which says something like "Your character is approached by a member of the Dark Brotherhood, if she passes the Test of Shadows (Hide/Move Silently) she maybe accepted for membership and gain access to the 'Assasin Feats chain'. The Dark Brotherhood is a secret organisation working throughout the Empire. Originally they served to protect the commoners from abusive Nobles, but since then have become more involved in black market operations like Smuggling and Assasination"

 

[UrathDM]

The problem isn't in how many PrCs are "out there". "Out there" they do nothing at all. The problem only arises when a DM puts insufficient thought into bringing them "in here" - meaning into a particular game.

The role-play restrictions on entrance into a class are also problematic for the writer. The restrictions are supposed to be campaign-specific. So, if you're writing a PrC with the intent of it only beign used in a particular setting, you can write them up easily enough. However, ifyou intend the PrC to be easily portable into another game world, you've got a problem. The DM is likely going to have to chuck whatever you wrote, and rewrite it anyway. Putting in specific, flavorful details there may actually inadvertantly cause DM to pass over your PrC, because you're including preconcieved notions that don't fit their world.

What we could use, in the DMG, Dragon, or the like, is a good article on properly working PrCs into your game world.

Maybe the 3.5 DMG has such a section?

Well said. I believe the DMG 3.5 is supposed to have just such a section. From what I have read, Prestige Classes caught on more heavily than the designers at Wizards expected. Many 3rd party publishers found them an easy way to meet the Open Gaming Content requirement, and used them to fill that. To address that, the section on Prestige Classes in the DMG is being expanded.

PrCs fill 3 roles - representing organizations in a campaign world, filling roles that are mechanics based, and helping a character specialize in some way. The new inclusions, in the 3.5 DMG, of the Red Wizard and Archmage are billed as examples of PrCs that are world-specific.

The problem, in many cases, is that some DMs fall prey to "if it is published it must be good" and"if it is in ANY book from WotC I must allow it". Neither of those is true, and neither is very smart. Wizards has made its share of balance mistakes in the past, and will in the future; and Wizards would be the first to tell you that a lot of stuff from Forgotten Realms is just wrong for Greyhawk.

For muy homebrew world, I review monsters, feats, core classes, PrCs, skills, and more for Wizards and other places. Then *I* choose whether each has any place in my world. I do not allow Halflings in my world; they have no place in the vision. I only allow Monks from the "Far East" of my world; they have no place in the "West". I created my own Elemental Specialist arcane spellcasters because the Elemental Savant of Tome & Blood was not right for my world. I allow the Arcane Archer because it does fit the vision. I don't have Gnolls in the "Western Europe" area of my world... they are native to a different region. And so on.

 

[UrathDM]

They're Optional

Personally I'd like to see Prestige Classes scraped and replaced with Feat Chains and perhaps Prestige Feats that mimic class abilities, perhaps even level specific Feats like Leadership. Alongside these would be guidelines for how to swapout various feats in the chain for other feats with similar prereqs or similar level - thus allowing unique but sensible and balanced combinations

Then for instance I could create a PrC which says something like "Your character is approached by a member of the Dark Brotherhood, if she passes the Test of Shadows (Hide/Move Silently) she maybe accepted for membership and gain access to the 'Assasin Feats chain'. The Dark Brotherhood is a secret organisation working throughout the Empire. Originally they served to protect the commoners from abusive Nobles, but since then have become more involved in black market operations like Smuggling and Assasination"

Sounds like a fine idea. PrCs are optional ... no one has to use them. So go ahead and do it.

 

[UrathDM]

I disagree

Dungeons and Dragons really needs the same distinction that exists in d20 Modern - the destinction between advanced classes and prestige classes.

In the d20 Modern system, advanced classes are like prestige classes, but serve to specialize a character, rather than symbolize membership in a special order or guild. In other words, what most published "prestige" classes actually are.

Once you establish that destinction, you can create classes that specialize (advanced classes) and classes that symbolize role-playing acheivements (prestige classes.)

d20 Modern uses a very different take on the base classes than D&D does. d20 Modern Advanced Classes are closer to the D&D Core Classes than anything else.

Perhaps PrCs in D&D could benefit from being split, but it is not quite right to base it on d20 Modern, which is a very different thing in terms of how it handles the classes players start with.