Help on Allowing splatbook PrCs

[questionmark]

My gaming group has most of the "splat book" S&F, S&S, T&B, MotW ect.
I want to allow the freedom to customize their characters by using prc's from these books. but i have heard some are way broken.
can anyone give me some prcs to watch out for, or better yet give me some examples of prc's that have worked out.

PS I am running a FR game

 

[Endur]

Most of the Splat book PRCs are more powerful than the DMG prcs. Likewise, the FRCS PRCs (use the 3.5 version of FRCS PRCs from the 3.5 DMG).

Almost all of the MOTW PRCs are broken. Verdant Lord, Frenzied Berserker, etc.

In Defenders of the Faith, Templar, Hospitalar, and the Chaotic Good Holy Warrior (Celestial Liberator or something like that) are broken. Also Divine Oracle is broken if you allow a non-divine caster to take it.

T&B: True Necromancer is broken if you allow it to stack with Mystic Theurge, otherwise its a balanced PRC.

My general recommendation on PRCs is never let a PC take more than one PRC.

My gaming group has most of the "splat book" S&F, S&S, T&B, MotW ect.
I want to allow the freedom to customize their characters by using prc's from these books. but i have heard some are way broken.
can anyone give me some prcs to watch out for, or better yet give me some examples of prc's that have worked out.

PS I am running a FR game

 

[Psiblade]

I have not had any issues with holy liberators. Charisma & Wisdom are hard stats for a warrior to buff up in a 28 point buy game. The separate spell list also curbs thier power very nicely. Templars are stronger for the bang because they only have to buff one stat Wisdom & get weapon specialization and mettle. I have a rule that requires 3 levels in a PrC before joining another. That rule helps out a lot. I would never let a frenzied berserker, hospitaller, or a verdant lord in. I would not like a arcane caster take either Divine Oracle or Sacred Excorist either.

-Psiblade

 

[Vaen]

Spelldancer from MoF is abusive, due to it's elimination of metamagic negatives (see Jeremy's wonderful Arrowain example in the SMACK characters thread, under the Rogue's Gallery forum).

Hmm... I was going to start listing some of the other PrCs that I would watch for, but I thought of a broader way to approach things, that may work out for you and your group. If you just warn the players to stray away from creating characters that abuse the rules, then you should find yourself GM'ing a group of players that don't have broken characters. Of course, YMMV in the end.

(I'm a proponent of warning a player at the get-go rather than limiting them in the end.)

 

[the Jester]

Make sure you have the errata for Sword & Fist, that's for sure.

If you're going to play a 3.5 game, you'll prolly find that you need to tweak a lot of stuff in the splatbooks a lot. Regardless, off the top of my head, these are a few I'd watch out for:

S&F- With the errata, they're pretty much all okay, but a couple of them are poor for pcs (the red avenger has to come from the right tribe and the ghostwalker almost has to be a loner).

DotF- Hospitaler and templar, at least, are broken (imho). I think that the divine oracle is ok- there's a 17th (? maybe 18th) level diviner/divine oracle cohort in my game, and though he's powerful, he's certainly no more powerful than the others of around his level in the group. He's great at finding stuff out, but the switch to 3.5 is gonna require a lot of tweaking for the oracle since a lot of it revolved around the scry skill (prereqs and some of the class bennies).

S&S- Actually, I find all the prcs in Song & Silence to be pretty uninspiring, with the sole exception of the thief-acrobat. The others pretty well leave me cold. They aren't well-suited to adventure in a party, or else they have ridiculous prereqs (find a cursed item and be forced to take your next ten levels in this sucky prestige class, mwahahaha)

MotW- My favorite of the splatbooks, I think it's mostly ok- but again, in need of a lot of tweaking. I'm wary of the frenzied berzerker and the forsaker, and I think the exotic weapon master is slightly broken and entirely stupid (he basically becomes super fantastic at all exotic weapons- wtf? Five levels to get focus & specialization with all exotic weapons, and the prereqs are the ability to rage, BAB +6 and any three exotic weapon profs... first off, what does being a barbarian have to do with using lots of exotic weapons, and second of all, any 6th-level barb can qualify just by spending his feats on great weapons... [/rant]).

Hope that helps!

 

[Li Shenron]

To paraphrase a song from Frank Zappa: "Broken PrCls are for a$$holes"

Sorry, I'll try to be useful...

What kind of gamers do you have? Do you have powermongers?

1- yes, my players like to min/max and exploit wording of the rules to get tactical benefit and outshine the other characters.

In this case, either forget about splatbooks entirely, or gather your players' requests for specific PrCl and evaluate the chosen ones carefully, one by one. There are several which are definitely better than the DMG's PrCl and core classes, with relatively moderate requisites.

2- no, my players like to have new abilities to try different tactics, but won't seek for stacking goodies to make an overruling PC.

In this case, there's no broken PrCl really. Still you may want to consider some difficulties for playing the class in your campaign. Many classes from MotW or T&B are definitely weird: the Forsaker for example revolves around the concept of hating magic, and destroying magic items, so you should really ponder how that would affect your group if other PCs are constantly counting on magic? A lot of classes also implement the idea of transforming into something quite nasty (Dragon Disciple, Oozemaster, Elemental Savant, Fang of Lolth); beside the fact that changing your type poses some difficulties to the DM to evaluate spell effects for example, this has a serious impact over roleplaying, and how the DM should handle the reaction of the world to the out-of-place PC.

In general, if you are afraid that your players are really looking for something to exploit, PrCl are possibly the #1 candidate for abuse, especially if you allow to take more than 1 and especially if you care nothing for roleplaying the PrCl (that is, if you let someone e.g. be an Assassin/Blackguard/Mage of the Arcane Order without ever playing anything related to the guild/deity/order...). FRCS PrCl are probably the most exploitable I have seen so far...

 

[Li Shenron]

I forgot to say an important thing...

It seems to me that some PrCls in the splatbooks were written with haste cast on the author, and they have often error (hopefully minor) or more frequently they have some abilities that don't work well.

You may want to check for this the PrCls your player want to play. For ex, PrCls like the Master of Shroud or the printed version of the Bladesinger have junk here and there.

 

[Thanee]

About the Hospitaler. This seems like a very powerful PrC, unless you emphasize the single disadvantage it has (the code). As others have said already, it's not the most clever way to balance very powerful classes with roleplaying restrictions, this is one example of such a class.

A Hospitaler should have a LOT less magical toys compared to other characters, giving away their findings freely, to ensure balance.

Just ask your players what they are interested in and then check the individual classes or ask about them here.

Bye
Thanee