How often are prestige classes allowed & used?

[Dog Moon]

All the time and at the moment, VERY loose, though in my next campaign, there will be some restrictions, either joining a group to gain the benefits of a PrC or you need to be taught by someone better than you. Only a few PrCs where I believe could be taken naturally without training can a player just enter them without an extra prereq.

However, I've decided that in same cases it shouldn't be super easy to go into a PrC just because you want to and by adding that extra prereq, it should add more chances for roleplaying occurances and contacts, which is always good.

People in my group LOVE PrCs, probably because for the most part, we see little incentive to continue with a base class to level 20. Level 20 Wizard which gains 1 feat every 5 levels or a few skill points and 2 feats to be able to gain neat bonuses multiple levels and MAYBE lose 1 or 2 levels of spell progression. Gee, which is better? Rarely does a person every go straight up in a Base Class. Just not as fun.

Like Piratecat, the characters are only sometimes referred to by their PrC, though in part I believe that is because we refer to them by their base class before they are high enough level to go into a PrC, so it just sticks. Heck, the Paladin in my group is referred to a Paladin even though she just gained 7th level, only had 3 levels in Paladin and because she turned Evil, I don't even gain any benefit from Paladin anymore! But she started as level two as 'the Paladin', and it stuck.

 

[Psion]

What's often? I usually see about a 50% rate of PrC characters (recent characters in the campaign have included a fighter, a druid/tender of worlds, a rogue/wizard/spellfilch, a laerdom mage/sky captain, a spellthief, a wu jen, a ranger, and a fighter/wizard/eldritch knight/spellsword.

In my current campaign, as it features lots of world/plane hopping, players could theoretically come from many worlds. This means that there are few campaign based restrictions, though planar or seafaring PrCs are especially appropriate. In my regular campaign, I am a bit stricter with requiring that a character would be a member of clases that exist in the game. But more generally, play suitability is a bigger concern than campaign considerations at the present time.

 

[Question]

In my experience....not often enough.

Most campaigns are too low level to make much effective use of PRCs......and there are a awful lot of horrible PRCs out there, that are either too impratical for your average campaign either in concepts or mechanics, or they are underpowered.

Knight of the chalice for example.....even in a pure demon slaying campaign you would be better off just taking fist of raziel.

I want to see a book done that fixes underpowered PRCs, instantly giving tons more options to play with without going to the trouble of designing full fledged, new PRCs.

 

[Glyfair]

Knight of the chalice for example.....even in a pure demon slaying campaign you would be better off just taking fist of raziel.

I want to see a book done that fixes underpowered PRCs, instantly giving tons more options to play with without going to the trouble of designing full fledged, new PRCs.

IMO, it's best handled by the DM. I think most non-major power issues can be handled even without touching the actual prestige class.

Take your example of the Knight of the Chalice vs. the Fist of Raziel. What if the Knights of the Chalice have a very active organization in you campaign? The group often gives significant support to the Knights. You might regularly be able to get some support, perhaps a key magic item to deal with key situation, etc.

The conventional wisdom has been to disallow "fluff" restrictions and advantages for balance purposes. I disagree with this somewhat. I think it's completely appropriate for a DM to do this for the campaign. He knows how often he's going to be giving the advantage and enforcing the restriction on the class, so he can judge what's appropriate.

 

[the Jester]

Loose restrictions, tons of custom prestige classes and a lot of pc prcs.

I'd say that 75% of the pcs have a prestige class (or two).

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Medium restrictions and rarely used.

 

[paradox42]

Loose restrictions, and tons of custom PrCs in my house rules- and every game run in this world has featured at least a couple of PCs who had levels in at least one prestige class, or were aiming for one.

But- overall, my players tend to stick with base classes slightly more often than they go for PrCs- probably because I also added house rules to give base classes some minor power-ups. As an example, Wizards gain bonus feats every 4 levels instead of 5 in my game, and Fighters are allowed to take Craft Magic Arms & Armor and Craft Psionic Arms & Armor as feats- even bonus Fighter feats- once they hit 12th level. Players in my game do have more incentive to stick with their base classes as they level up, and it shows.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Medium - more third party than WotC, by a large amount, tailored to fit the setting.

Often, more frequently for NPCs than PCs.

The Auld Grump

 

[Talic]

Our group uses them frequently, and can usually work with the DM to get a particular PRC into the game, even from 3rd party sources. Often, they serve as an excellent basis for a new character idea. "Oh man! I wanna play a Tempest!" is often the start of many new characters for our group.

Probably about 75% of our characters plan toward or end up with a PRC. Sometimes they change their mind and don't take what they planned. Sometimes they hadn't planned for one at all and find something that just fits great. Its definately more common with fighter types than casters.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

As a GM: No restrictions by source, no restrictions on number or level, few restrictions on flavor (provided the player is willing to adjust the flavor if needed), occasional restrictions of individual classes or class combos based on balance. About 60% of the PCs have one or more.

As a player (in the last d20 campaign I was a player in): Only one restricted source (the GM considered Goodman's Beyond Monks broken), no restrictions on number or level for PCs (but only one base class and one PrC for cohorts), few restrictions on flavor, occasional restrictions on individual classes or class combos based on balance. About 70% of the PCs had one or more.