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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bganon" data-source="post: 7683403" data-attributes="member: 60886">Partly to steer this back on topic and partly because I scrolled through several pages and still didn't see all these mentioned, here are some of my thoughts on the Rune Scribe.Prerequisites: I agree that having to carefully plan character progression from Level 1 is a problem.  Here it's mitigated somewhat by ASIs and that you can grab skills via a Feat.  I also think it's mitigated somewhat because it's far easier for a DM to drop a requirement than to make up new content, so this is a pretty easy thing to houserule.  Still, slippery slope.Why not a subclass/feat?  I wouldn't like to see this as a subclass because it seems so useful to many different classes, and I rather like that it's somewhat independent of background (though see the prereq issue).  Redoing it as 1-2 feats might work fairly well, but there's still the issue of abilities being powered by spell slots, so either you give up the scaling abilities (I'd miss them) or a noncaster who took the feat would still need to multiclass into a caster anyway.  I think the "prestige class" solves the problem nicely and strikes a middle ground between the two on this.  In quite a few ways Prestige Classes (or class levels in general) can be less of an investment than a Feat in 5e (especially if you stop after a few levels).Giving up wish/blah/whatever:  As I see it, full casters would be really unlikely to go beyond first or maybe second level in Rune Scribe.  They don't need the slot progression. Runic Discovery is just freebie items, nice but (depending on treasure) not essential.  Living Rune is just a flavorful fill-in for an ASI.  Rune Mastery is a nice capstone but not worth it unless you've committed to the previous 4 levels already.  I don't see a Wizard/Warlock/Cleric/Druid/Bard taking more than two levels; the second rune might be nice but beyond that the delayed core class progression probably isn't worth it.Of course, this then raises the question of why not just have a single feat - but I think the answer is that those extra levels are useful for noncasters.  A ranged Battle Master 5/Rune Scribe 5, for example, would have the slots to get +1 brands, and would have a lot of flexibility to swap attunements around each short rest.  This sounds pretty fun!  I can imagine a lot of fun with a Fire/Stone rune barbarian, too (especially if rune use doesn't count as "casting" and can be done during rages).tldr; Prestige Classes are a compromise that occupy a somewhat weird design space, but I think they can still fill interesting niches.</blockquote>

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