Hierophant, am I missing something?

[ruleslawyer]

The thing I didn't get when I read through the DMG PrCs is that Hierophant is almost identical to Archmage, yet the Archmage PrC gets the caster level increases while this class does not.

It's because the archmage has to burn spell slots for high arcana, while the hierophant gets his class abilities without needing to burn slots. Also, the archmage does have to burn a feat (Skill Focus) to get in.

Still, I think you could actually run the archmage like the hierophant and make the high arcana cost spell progression rather than spell slots. YMMV...

 

[youspoonybard]

Still, the Heirophant still screams *TAKE ME!!!* at epic levels, especially for clerics.

You're not getting more spells per day anyway, and you can take a quick dip in it for SLA and Divine Reach, losing only 2/3 of an epic bonus feat...I don't think it's really worth it for Druids, as they don't have access to Harm anymore, so I dunno if it's worth it to be able to cast Heal at a small distance...

Still, Druids still want to remain Druids until about 40th level, where they have all of the Epic Wild Feats they want...then they can go about multiclassing. IMO, anyway.

 

[Corwin]

It's because the archmage has to burn spell slots for high arcana, while the hierophant gets his class abilities without needing to burn slots. Also, the archmage does have to burn a feat (Skill Focus) to get in.

Still, I think you could actually run the archmage like the hierophant and make the high arcana cost spell progression rather than spell slots. YMMV...

I wasn't refering to the differences so much as the why. The classes are very similar. So similar as to have some of the same special abilities. But why not just be consistant?

That was the jist of my comments. Yeah, I understood the mechanical differences and such. I just thought it odd that the two classes would be so similar in concept but not in design.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I wasn't refering to the differences so much as the why. The classes are very similar. So similar as to have some of the same special abilities. But why not just be consistant?

That was the jist of my comments. Yeah, I understood the mechanical differences and such. I just thought it odd that the two classes would be so similar in concept but not in design.

The ostensible reason: To make it clear that the highest levels of arcane and divine progression (which is what the archmage and hierophant stand for, in non-epic gaming anyway) are different, and to make the classes more interesting than if they were just arcane/divine variants of each other.

The actual reason, according to Sean Reynolds: Rich Baker apparently felt that the archmage, being an archmage, shouldn't lose spell progression. The hierophant is a powerful divine servant, the archmage a powerful spellcaster, so the hierophant gets his gifts for free while the archmage retains the ability to progress in spellcasting. So the archmage was changed for the printing of the FRCS.