Do prestige classes curb creativity?

[Felon]

Nice try. Real cute. Now look up a post or two.

 

[Celebrim]

So, let's talk about your solution, this feats thing. Essentially take all the special abilities of a prestige, strip them and make them feats. The negatives are obvious, we throw away the flavor of the prestige and the way it can more define a class. (because that's not important according to your argument?).

Not only is it not a bug, its a feature. By stipping the flavor out of the ability we not only make the ability more flexible, in that its not tied to a flavor which may be specific to a particular setting but not apply to your campaign, but we also give back to the player what they lost - the right provide thier own flavor to thier own characters. Both the DM and the PC win. The DM gets to decide what this ability represents in the context of his own setting, and the player gets to decide what this ability represents in the context of his own character. It's like the device from the PH in which the Monk has 'rice paper walk', and the rogue has 'foot padding'.

We also throw away additional skills that prestige's can provide to define the class as well.

Are there any new skills defined by a prestige class that are not available outside of that class? If there are, and those skills aren't covered by some other skill, it would be a good argument for making that skill more general.

If you mean only greater skill selection, then I would argue that that is yet another example of wanting something for nothing. So, you want to have improved skill selection, improved skills per level, improved saving throws, a new bonus feat equivalent ability every level (or nearly) so and you don't want to give up anything that's actually important to you (like say full fighter attack progression or full wizard spell progression). Why exactly would I allow that from the standpoint of either game balance or internal game logic?

I'd say its pretty easy to get past the first obstacle, which is balancing the feats, we'd just put in a bunch of level requirements and make sure that some feats are prereqs for other feats.

Well, balancing the feats is going to prove no more difficult than balancing the PrC's in the first place. As you probably can tell, I don't think that they did a very good job of that as it is. But there is more to it than that. You know why people are always complaining that there aren't enough feats appropriate for high level characters? Well, now we don't have that problem.

We still have the problem of having 500 to 1000 feats to chose from during character creation.

First, we've already got hundreds of feats to choose from, so this is no different from the current situation. Second, we are only going to add 100's of new feats to the campaign if in fact there are scores of PrC's with unique class abilities that we wish to convert over to our campaign anyway.

Instead of opening a prestige reading a paragraph and moving on, you want us to read and make rules for 100s of feats.

As opposed to reading and making rules for 100's of PrC's, yes I do. If this work had been done from the beginning, instead of sending lots of people down this false path, we wouldn't be needing to undo it now. And frankly, I doubt that most players read the paragraph first. Most players probably scan down the list of class abilities first, and then go back and read the intro if the class abilities interest them.

Then you want game developers to be the ones to make sure these feats all work well together. HOnestly this sounds like chaos to me.

No less chaos, and to my mind less chaos than the hundreds of PrC's in existance.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Prc are similar to all the outrageous races in that it they can become a crutch for poor roleplaying.

E.g. "Look at me! I'm a lawful/chaotic half ogre pixie fighter5/Templar3/Dragon right foot1 - I'm original!"

Um no, you suck.

If a player can't make a cool character concept out of a human & a core class, adding prc is merely dressing up the waste.

 

[Crothian]

If a player can't make a cool character concept out of a human & a core class, adding prc is merely dressing up the waste.

What about the people who can but choose to use them? Just because some people are in your opinion bad role players doesn't have any bearing on prestige classes.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

For those who opt to eschew common sense completely in favor of RAW...[/URL]:

No need to be snide. Seems like ignoring the xp penalty is a good rule to me. I mean, you already have to pay with feats, skills, and possibly rp requirements to get into the class. No need to take an experience penalty as well.

But yeah, I use common sense and ignore the RAW as well. I always thought the XP penalty for multiclassing was kinda silly, so I ditched it

 

[DonTadow]

By the RAW, prestige classes cause the 20% xp penalty just like normal multiclassing. So if you are going to say houseruling out the penalty for normal multiclassing doesn't count for this argument, you can't houserule out the prestige class penalty either.

Quasqueton

I"d look up that rule. According to errata, prestige classes do not incur multiclassing penalities

 

[DonTadow]

Right, PrC's should impose th 20% XP penalty, despite the obvious fact that they will quite often cause most character builds to inevitably suck up the penalty. No possibility it was just an omission, right?

For those who opt to eschew common sense completely in favor of RAW, it would be prudent to familiarize yourselves with all published errata and rules clarifications on a regular basis. Here's a passage from the Official v3.5 D&D FAQ:

The reason prestige's don't incur multiclass penalties is because prestige's further define a base class, not take it in a COMPLETELY different direction.

For instance, I am a fighter, a dwarf no doubt. I have made defending people my priority so far in the campaign. I have the feats and skills for the rereqs of the PRC. I take the PRC. I have not changed my mission but now i have skills that pertain to what i want to do.

I am not, deciding to learn wizardry and I've been a fighter all my life. I'm not a big favor of multiclassing according to base classes because that really goes against common sense. Rogue/maybe bard is the only base class that makes sense to multiclass in once the adventure starts. It makes no sense for afighter to all of a sudden become a better wizard that most of the people in the world.

 

[DonTadow]

Not only is it not a bug, its a feature. By stipping the flavor out of the ability we not only make the ability more flexible, in that its not tied to a flavor which may be specific to a particular setting but not apply to your campaign, but we also give back to the player what they lost - the right provide thier own flavor to thier own characters. Both the DM and the PC win. The DM gets to decide what this ability represents in the context of his own setting, and the player gets to decide what this ability represents in the context of his own character. It's like the device from the PH in which the Monk has 'rice paper walk', and the rogue has 'foot padding'.



Are there any new skills defined by a prestige class that are not available outside of that class? If there are, and those skills aren't covered by some other skill, it would be a good argument for making that skill more general.

If you mean only greater skill selection, then I would argue that that is yet another example of wanting something for nothing. So, you want to have improved skill selection, improved skills per level, improved saving throws, a new bonus feat equivalent ability every level (or nearly) so and you don't want to give up anything that's actually important to you (like say full fighter attack progression or full wizard spell progression). Why exactly would I allow that from the standpoint of either game balance or internal game logic?



Well, balancing the feats is going to prove no more difficult than balancing the PrC's in the first place. As you probably can tell, I don't think that they did a very good job of that as it is. But there is more to it than that. You know why people are always complaining that there aren't enough feats appropriate for high level characters? Well, now we don't have that problem.



First, we've already got hundreds of feats to choose from, so this is no different from the current situation. Second, we are only going to add 100's of new feats to the campaign if in fact there are scores of PrC's with unique class abilities that we wish to convert over to our campaign anyway.



As opposed to reading and making rules for 100's of PrC's, yes I do. If this work had been done from the beginning, instead of sending lots of people down this false path, we wouldn't be needing to undo it now. And frankly, I doubt that most players read the paragraph first. Most players probably scan down the list of class abilities first, and then go back and read the intro if the class abilities interest them.



No less chaos, and to my mind less chaos than the hundreds of PrC's in existance.

So techincally, why have base classes. Let's make a bunch of feats and as character's grow they get feats. Reduce the phb to a couple hundred pages of feats and call it a day?

A company already did this and produced a book called Buy the Numbers. It's not a bad system but too complicated for a person who wants to pick up a phb and start playing.

 

[Felon]

The reason prestige's don't incur multiclass penalties is because prestige's further define a base class, not take it in a COMPLETELY different direction.

The reason they don't take the penalty is much more basic. It's because the penalty would make prestige classes lame.

There isn't much reasoning behind the XP penalty and favored classes on the whole, other than to ensure that humans are inherently more versatile than other races.

I'm not a big favor of multiclassing according to base classes because that really goes against common sense. Rogue/maybe bard is the only base class that makes sense to multiclass in once the adventure starts. It makes no sense for afighter to all of a sudden become a better wizard that most of the people in the world.

Much about the leveling mechanic defies logic. Once you start picking things apart on the basis of making sense, things start to fall apart. IMO folks should worry less about the game being sensible than they do about it being flexible and fun.

 

[Quasqueton]

So techincally, why have base classes. Let's make a bunch of feats and as character's grow they get feats. Reduce the phb to a couple hundred pages of feats and call it a day?

A company already did this and produced a book called Buy the Numbers. It's not a bad system but too complicated for a person who wants to pick up a phb and start playing.

Your last sentence answers your first.

Quasqueton