Colin McComb's disowning of PHBR8 The Complete Book of Elves?

[Tzarevitch]

Oh please. some PrCs are bad, but nothing on the majority of kits. PrCs are what kits should have been.

"Majority" of the kits my foot. Most of the kits gave you a small advantage in return for a small disadvantage. A small number of the kits (bladesinger being the oft cited one) gave significant bonuses in return for small disadvantages.

In my opinion, they were a decent attempt (as decent as the 2e rules allowed anyway) at allowing player customization of their characters. They aren't as elegant as 3e PrCs but then again, 2e rules weren't as elegant as 3e rules either. The kits were as good as the system would allow and most of them were no more unbalanced than most of the PrCs and the PrCs have their own issues of bad design.

Tzarevitch

 

[SSquirrel]

I believe he talked about it either on his website or in something on Andy Collins or Sean Reynolds site once...I remember reading it myself but don't remember where.

Hagen

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Nope.

PrCs require you to spend your ability pool (i.e., levels) for abilities. It doesn't deficit spend like kits do, which inherently entrain often meaningless disads on the assumption that it balances with the advantage, and then tacks on bonus [class features] on the side that blow away any notion that the advantage and disadvantage balance.

Not to mention, if you see a PrC you like, you don't have to restart a new game to get into it.

The stuff in red applies equally to PrCs. Disads could be feat requirements, or some special penalty, or what not.

There is no class whose sole benefit is +1 BAB/level. Fighters get bonus feats, barbarians get rage, rangers get a whole bunch of (non-TWF) wilderness abilities, and so forth. Now, if there's a PrC that gives you +1 BAB/level and all this kind of stuff, then it's going too far.

Just look at the frenzied berserker.

 

[Spatula]

The stuff in red applies equally to PrCs. Disads could be feat requirements, or some special penalty, or what not.

The key difference is that kit benefits added on top of your class benefits, while PrC benefits are taken in place of class benefits.

Also, the bit you put in red about bonus proficiencies only makes sense WRT kits.

 

[Arnwyn]

The key difference is that kit benefits added on top of your class benefits, while PrC benefits are taken in place of class benefits.

Not if you count the overabundance of "+1 caster level" for all 10 level PrCs...

 

[Gez]

Not if you count the overabundance of "+1 base attack bonus" for all 10 level PrCs...


Anyway, the difference between kits and prestige classes is simple, since kits were rather sort of class templates. You had them since the beginning, and had only one. PrCs are acquired, and you can get several (even if it can be silly).

 

[Dyir]

Any discussion of the Complete Book of Elves fills me with both wistfulness and guilty sorrow. I got myself into AD&D2e: there was no one to teach me. I discovered its existence shortly after reading the Lord of the Rings, and collected the Monster Manual, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Player's Handbook (in that order) as soon as I could. I had never actually PLAYED this game yet, but I loved the possibilities it offered. Sadly, the Complete Book of Elves was one of the next books I purchased. I never realized its brokenness until many years later when I found ENWorld and had been playing D&D3e for a while. Imagine my shame when I reread some of those rules and realized how horrible they where and knew that I had innocently allowed favored PCs to use them indiscriminately. I had loved the bladesinger not for its rules (I barely understood what rules were at that point) but for the idea of a pseudo-paladin for elves. Oh well, I'm older and wiser now, I suppose...and work hard to prevent stuff that broken from filtering into my game now .

 

[seankreynolds]

Colin didn't disown the CBoE, he apologized for it. It was his first design project.

 

[Spatula]

Not if you count the overabundance of "+1 caster level" for all 10 level PrCs...

I wouldn't say there's an overabundance. But even with such classes, it depends on what benefits are given (other than caster level), what disadvantages (if any) the class brings with it, and to a lesser extent, what the requirements are. A wizard taking a 10 level PrC is giving up 2 bonus feats. Sorcerers, unfortunately, don't give up much of anything, which is a bit of a design flaw with the class.

 

[Psion]

The stuff in red applies equally to PrCs. Disads could be feat requirements, or some special penalty, or what not.

I don't think so. I saw some that did that in the first year or so of D&D 3e, with authors (mostly third party) fresh from the kit mentality that said things like "since my class has a disadvantage (like some attitude problem) I can make it REALLY powerful." But tacking on disads presuming it will net you advantages is NOT part of the basic design criteria of PrC's. It is for kits.

I don't see feat requirements as the same thing. That's still tapping from your resource pool, not "deficit spending" by tacking on attitude problems to "pay the price." If you spend your resource on a suboptimal choice, then you are depleting your resource pool, thus earning compensation. Yes, there have been prerequisites which were not supoptimal (3.0 archmage, for example), but again, that's a problem with the design of that specific PrC, not the PrC concept in general.

So, in short, I disagree with the common perception that they are the same as kits. To someone who doesn't really consider what is going on, that may seem to be the case, but once you really consider what is going on, they are different animals. Yes, you can build bad PrCs. (I used to rail about all the spellcaster classes that lost you nothing all the time.) But at least in the case of PrCs, this brokeness isn't built into the concept.