Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Psion said:What, you ignored my entire post the last time this came up?
I would put it no more malicious than "forgot."
Sorry Wulf, I strongly disagree with you. A basic tenet of prestige class design is that you can make the class abilities as powerful as a class ability of a single class character of that level. So, if you are designing a prestige class that has 5th level abilities as a prerequisite, then you can give it a class ability at first level that would normally be reserved for a 6th level ability in a single class.
I'll agree with you here on the merits, but I think we have a divergence here on what PrCs should deliver.
Generally speaking I feel like the first level of a PrC should give you no more or less than the first level of any core class. In other words, in terms of balance, Assassin 1 = Rogue 1, not Rogue 10.
And while I can see the allure of your method, and could even be persuaded to adopt it, I don't think that the majority of PrCs follow that model. They usually start from the bottom again and start stacking, in terms of BAB and saves, spellcasting, etc. It's a cumulative gain, not a big "jump" to where the designer "thinks" the adopting character's power level should be when he picks up the class.
I think obviously you're talking in terms of the rough power of class abilities, not just the raw numbers that define a class, but even here I think PrCs generally start low and build up.
Regardless of which way you slice it, I bet you can choose any 1st level "Prestige Ability X" and match it up against a character, sneaking his way in two levels lower, with "Prestige Ability X" minus one feat (cause he spent it on Skill Focus).
Wulf