"Functional Equivalent" to Prestige Classes

[Scholar & Brutalman]

My feeling is that if they still need patch PrCs they should go back to the drawing board on their multiclassing rules. I hope never to need one in 4ed.

 

[Khaalis]

Just to add a late comment here. To support the idea that "Prestige Classes" are gone, and that the "Concept" of such is now built into character choices...

Source: Blog
-- "Plus I had a nice, meaty design assignment to work on. Suffice it to say that I'm working on a significant customization choice your character makes midway through his or her career--and it's a choice that'll evolve over, say, ten levels or so. More on those when I get 'em written."

 

[Mokona]

Mechanically, players joined prestige classes to get access to new and different class abilities, and the talent tree system allows you to vary class abilities without leaving the core class. It makes prestige classes redundant.

I always thought multiclassing was fun (perhaps that's why I played Dual Class humans and Fighter/Thief a lot). Prestige Classes were needed in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition so that multiclassing wouldn't suck.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I always thought multiclassing was fun (perhaps that's why I played Dual Class humans and Fighter/Thief a lot). Prestige Classes were needed in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition so that multiclassing wouldn't suck.

Those prestige classes were all introduced in 3.5

In 3.0 prestige classes were originally introduced in order to represent organisations, racial 'stereotype/groups' and other fun stuff like that.

FWIW I'd love to see 'talent tree prestige abilities' for want of a better term. It seems like a great way to give someone a particular focus within an existing class without introducing barrel-loads of new classes or whatnot.

 

[hong]

My feeling is that if they still need patch PrCs they should go back to the drawing board on their multiclassing rules. I hope never to need one in 4ed.

Yep. That is one of the big things that you'd expect a new edition to fix.

 

[SkidAce]

You may recall that they said that when you take a "prestige class" in 4E you continue to advance in your class. For example, if you take the "frenzied berserker" prestige class you'll still advance in your barbarian class.

/grin

Maybe we should call them "kits"