Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6363238" data-attributes="member: 1465">I agree completely on points A-B-C.For point D, there can be practical problems using feats. Not always of course, it depends on what character concept you are trying to implement.In core 3e prestige classes there aren't many good examples, because so many of them actually fall in the A-B-C groups. Perhaps the only exception is the Shadowdancer. It is still somewhat Rogue-oriented, but it could have also applied to Monks, Rangers, Wizards, Sorcerers and more if you want. There was a hint about being tied to membership in "The Shadowdancers" group. So at least the way I see is, this is a character concept that is fairly unique and we don't want limited to one class.Now it all depends on what do you want to design mechanically for this class. Of course this is up to you... so if you're fine with 3-4 abilities that can be stuffed into a feat chain, that's ok. (Notice: Arcane Archer was made a single feat, but practically reduced to just one special ability.)Sometimes however, you may have a lot of ideas for such class, so the feat chain will get quite long, and since you typically get a feat every ~4 levels (except Fighters), you'll be pushing characters very high up in levels if you want to see the latest features of that concept come into play. Once again, sometimes this will be ok, some other times not.The prestige class mechanic gives you the opportunity to grant features in a series of consecutive levels. So I can totally se cases where I might want someone joining an elite group "Knights of the XYZ" for which I have many mechanical ideas, and get that character accrue those abilities quickly (rather than every 4 levels) so that we'll use them all in play (without having to go too high in levels, which not everybody likes).Boons give you total design freedom, but they kind of force you to give them to every PC, since they are on top of everything else. Doesn't work fair if Bob the Fighter joins the Knights of XYZ, nobody else joins anybody (because by the story, they don't), and Bob gets boons all the time while the others get nothing (as you say, just like magic items).---Bottom line: we're talking about homebrew work, so we choose whatever mechanical solution that works best for us! I just wanted to say that IMO the idea of prestige classes must not be discarded a-priori (especially because they don't need a lot of the irritating baggage of 3e prestige classes... we don't need to bother about BAB, ST, skill points and spellcasting progressions for instance!).In my case, converting 3e/d20 Rokugan material for 5e, I've already encountered 3e prestige classes that seem perfect to be converted into 5e subclasses, others that are more easily turned into feats, and others that would work better as a series of class levels starting after 1st i.e. prestige classes.</blockquote>

Verification