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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2251766" data-attributes="member: 26473">I was reading the thread on creating a codex of prestige classes and one of the posters mentioned that there are something like six hundred prestige classes in WotC's books and Dragon alone, not including all the third-party stuff out there.After the pressure subsided and I could remove my hands from the sides of my head without fear of imminent explosion, I started wondering if there was a better way to capture the 'prestige' element of prestige classes.When I first encountered prestige classes, I thought they were madbadfun - now being a Knight of the White Horse, an Archruid of the Blackthorn Coven, or a Guildthief of Almansil could actually mean more than a shield device, a secret grove, or a fence in the City of a Thousand Domes. However, the cachet has worn away with the proliferation of PrCs along with the sense of entitlement that some (many?) players have with respect to prestige classes.Now I'm not a GM who has a hard time saying no to players - "No, elves don't exist in the game-world," "No, you buy a spiked chain," "No, you can't take levels in ur-priest," &c. I don't plan on using more than a handful of prestige classes in my next campaign, if I use threepointfive at all that is. (C&C is looking better and better all the time.) However, I still want to make membership in an exclusive group meaningful to players and their characters somehow.Then the idea of using something along the lines of Modern starting occupations came to mind. Each character in d20 Modern selects a starting occupation, and each SO confers a small bonus: the character may select a couple of skills as permanent class skills, gains a bonus feat or a small Wealth bump. If the character already has the skill as a class skill, an extra +1 competence bonus is added.I'm wondering if this would be too unbalancing to bring into threepointfive D&D in lieu of prestige classes. Say for example a player running a rogue wants to join the aforementioned Thieves Guild of Almansil - after passing the initiation and being accepted by the other thieves, the rogue may on leveling up select three skills from a short list as permanent class skills or take a bonus feat from another list, as a benefit of being a member of the Guild.This allows me to offer some mechanical advantage for participation in a game-world organization without going the whole full-blown prestige class route. It's much easier to add than creating a whole class progression and special abilities, and it's more cost effective, as I have no intention of completing my Complete... series in the future, preferring to run a core game instead.Whaddya think?</blockquote>

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