Unfortunately, I see a lot of PrCs that could have been replaced by feats or even should not have been designed. (I'll put the assassin in the latter category.)
After the release of the Complete Warrior I found myself getting fed up with prestige classes. I couldn't send in one of those cards that came with Complete Warrior since I wasn't going to spend any money on it. I'd rather spend money on Unearthed Arcana or some of the newer products (XPH, D20 Future) instead. However, the cards with those products only refer to the product the card came with, so I have no other avenue to
I have a couple of problems with PrCs:
1) A lot of PrCs can be replaced by feats. This is true even of some of the most flavorful or well-balanced PrCs.
2) A lot of PrCs offer no good reason not to take them. This is especially true of cleric, sorcerer, wizard and fighter PrCs.
Almost all cleric PrCs require you to give up turn undead, but I don't see this as a particularly useful class feature anyway. At the higher levels it doesn't do anything useful (since undead almost always have high HD for their CR).
Domains get a bit weaker, but this isn't clearly explained. A lot of people believe that a cleric 15/hierophant3 with the Destruction domain has a smite of +18 damage, but I'm pretty sure it's +15 damage. In any event, a lot of domains (eg War) grant abilities that don't scale a lot with level anyway, so a cleric heading to a PrC can just choose such domains.
Several cleric PrCs have a reduction in HD, BAB or both, but these are rare. I've found giving up caster levels works much better as a balancing technique than trying to impose penalties.
One reason players don't live giving up caster levels is their ability to resist dispel magic or cut through spell penetration suffers by doing so. I've seen some PrCs that give up spells/day at some levels but keep the actual caster level intact. I think that's a solution that fits the best of both worlds.
Sorcerers and wizards have only one class feature other than spellcasting; familiars. A lot of spellcasters don't take familiars, and they're not all that strong to begin with, so giving up on them isn't a big loss.
As a result, the only thing spellcasting PrCs can give up are caster levels, but a huge number of arcane spellcasting PrCs (most of them, in fact) don't give up any caster levels.
I've seen some try to impose penalties such as sacrificing spells for abilities (like the archmage) but I haven't found these to be a good balancing technique. Often players or NPCs can simply adapt to the costs, and other times the PrC author believes that the cost equals the benefits when the costs are usually a lot weaker than they think they are.
When it comes to fighters, many consider taking more than 11 levels of fighter a waste. By the time you're that high level, you will have finished all the feat trees you want, and the only thing you can look forward to is Greater Weapon Specialization.
I think fighters would be encouraged to stay with their base class if there were some high-level (BAB 16+) feats that require Greater Weapon Specialization to take them and grant bonuses with a specific weapon.
I communicated with some game designers to get their responses - I got something from JD Wiker
JD Wiker said:
JD Wiker
Speaking as a designer, I agree with you. There are too many prestige classes out there, and too many designers (and game companies) don't seem to understand the difference between a prestige class and a profession. I cringe whenever I see something like "the Lamplighter PrC," because it tells me that the designer just doesn't get it. Personally, I'd like to go through quite a few d20 fantasy books and just tear out about 60% of the prestige classes.
Now, speaking as a designer/Gamemaster, a big part of the problem is that far too many players out there don't understand that prestige classes are an OPTIONAL RULE, and you don't need to include every last one--even the ones from the official rulebooks. (I particularly find this problem with Star Wars, where people don't quite grasp that many of the PrCs are era-specific--though, granted, we don't make that anywhere near as clear as we should.)
With my own D&D campaign, I've suggested to the players that they avoid PrCs, because, as we're running through the Adventure Path series, the majority of PrCs just won't find anything to do with their special abilities. In a few cases where the players insisted on taking prestige classes anyway, I had to kick myself for not going through the books and making a list of which classes were "approved" and which weren't. Instead, I didn't really look at them until players mentioned they were interested in them--at which point, I didn't want to veto the classes, lest I be seen as penalizing the player.
At any rate, I just thought I'd chime in and reassure you that disliking the proliferation of prestige classes doesn't make you a WotC-basher, because I dislike it, and I'm not a WotC-basher.
... and Sean K Reynolds, but his responses were too long to post here, so I'll just give the link.
http://p082.ezboard.com/fseankreynoldsboardsfrm1.showMessageRange?topicID=1709.topic&start=1&stop=20
It seems like game designers get really tired of prestige classes as well, so I'm not sure why we keep seeing masses of them in books like the Complete Warrior.
More discussions and links to articles were made here:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=231585
