Does anyone like class skills?

[Felon]

Perhaps, but the prc clearly favours some classes over others. What rogue, wizard or bard takes cleave and improved sunder?

A rogue that wants to be a blackguard, naturally.

Pure fighter classes entering said prc clearly get a lot more benefit than a spellcasting or roguish class. If the designers had intended for the prc to be open-ended, they should have come up with a varying list of abilities to cater to different career paths.

In theory, my character can take any prc he wants. In practice, there are only so many he can take without screwing with his advancement.

The class has a melee focus, but nothing else really hamstrings the skulking cutthroat concept. It has appropriate calss skills and offers sneak attack dice. Not sure where the disconnect is for you guys.

 

[FentonGib]

I see Runestar's point. Though you may get exceptions, I agree that in my experience rogues tend to go for more stealthy/finesse feats but to get cleave, sunder and power attack you need to be strong, and thus usually fighter concepts - which tend to lack stealth abilities. It really feels to me that for a blackguard they want a fighting concept character to have to multiclass a few levels in rogue to get there.
In my case the disconection is, imo, a lack of obvious focus. Most PRC have a clearly defined intent (e.g. fighter prestige class), but Blackguard seems meshed in-between two. I'd personally just prefer assassin for rogues and blackguard for fighters/paladins.

One thing I liked about the Ravenloft campaign setting is that fallen paladins automatically qualify for Blackguard if they are on the path of corruption (which is prolly what caused them to fall anyhow), making it very easy (and common) for fallen paladins to become blackguards.