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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2286672" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok, fine.  It would be nice if you actually addressed some of the points I made when differing, but you are free to differ without doing so.Yeah, that's what I said. I don't either, but that's not exactly what I said.  I said that every prestige classes class abilities could be made into a feat.  In fact, the simple way to do this would be simply look at what the prestige classes prerequisites are and instead of making them the prerequisite of a class, make them the prerequisite of a feat.  If we did this, then in theory you could gain all the class abilities of a PrC just by taking feats.If you do that though, what you discover is that the whole point of PrC's that they give you more feats, skills, and other advantages than any base class is otherwise eligible for, and so the real 'purpose' behind a PrC from a mechanical perspective is simply to give characters something for nothing.  My look at prestige classes is that any prestige class that actually demands you give up something that the base classes give you is simply never taken.  Instead, PrC's are taken if they force you to give up things that you were going to give up anyway, and in return they give you back double.  They are like Magic the Gathering cards with false or broken symmetry, where the thing you give up is not something you mind giving up anyway - like discarding a card with madness to a wild mongrel.  Then they should be base classes.MMORPG? More defines you?  You mean, after you get to a certain level its time to take a class which offers you greater power and abilities.  We are talking MMORPG's here.  For the most part they aren't exactly about characterization.And what is that anyway?Good grief, you think players have trouble doing this?  I've never heard a player say he didn't want to level up.  Have you ever been a player and said, "Oh, ho hum, I've got to level up again."What wierd game are you in in which players don't have a reason for gaining experience?  No, they overly specify characters.  Instead of letting the player decide what the character is like, they decide for the player what his character is going to be like.  You've got it backwards.  PrC's don't let the player fit his character to a concept.  PrC's give the player a concept to fit his character too.  And speaking of which...I read that and I knew immediately that we are so far apart on this that we are just never going to agree.  I would never require my players to choose a particular class.  And if every character is going to be forced into a PrC, how in the world are they prestigious anyway?  How in the world is that making character creation more flexible?  You aren't letting PrC's fill niches.  You're pigeonholing characters into the niches.Only because they were created that way.  There are none that can't be feats.Give me a PrC and I'll do it.Maybe not, but I get the feeling that players do.  Also, I don't need PrC's to create role playing content.  I've got more role playing content in my head than I'll ever use, much less get written down.And here is exactly one of the places I have problem with PrC's.  I don't want flavor tied to the classes.  I want the class system to be as invisible in my game universe as possible.  I want the classes to be as generic and flexible as possible.  I'll let the flavor and the player's RP define the flavor, not the mechanics.  And heck, who says that the flavor is going to fit with my ideas anyway?Again, here is where we completely depart.  I'm more than a set of statistics and skills.  My essential being is more than what I'm good at.  But what you do means so much more than your abilities.  It's literally what you have done - the choices you've made in your life, the events that have happened to you, the beliefs that you hold, the people you care about.  You might could argue that I am to a large extent the product of what I have done, but that's entirely different as defining me as my abilities.Or you could just figure out ten or so broad base classes and a long list of feats, and then you wouldn't need the 'Noble' PrC.  Instead, you could start out as a 1st level Noble.LOL. Really, you are going to have to limit this argument of utility to circumstances when it really applies.  This isn't one of them.  I'm pretty sure that even if Weapon Specialization and the other options in Unearthed Arcana were horrible for the balance of the game, that they got used by most groups anyway and were really really popular.  That doesn't mean that Weapon Specialization as it was presented in UA represented good design.Yeah, but what makes you think that PrC's aren't that veil?</blockquote>

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