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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 2599743" data-attributes="member: 14159">This I will agree with.  There are many superfluous Prestige Classes that seem to exist mostly to give a raw Power Up to an existing class (Frenzied Berserker), or give benefits which can largely be emulated through feats (Assassin Death Attack and Poison Use).The Eldritch Knight/Arcane Trickster/Mystic Theurge classes are a workaround cludge to make multiclassed spellcasters viable, especially like they were in AD&D, not something you can easily do with just feats alone.  Some PrC's like Focluchan Lyricist and True Necromancer also play with the spellcaster multiclassing and might be overpowered as feats.However, sometimes a Prestige Class exists to depict something that really does represent a whole new direction in character development besides learning one new ability, something that is as big a change to your character as multiclassing is.  That's what a new class should represent.Thus, I believe that you could eliminate a sizable majority of prestige classes and still have a perfectly good game, however Prestige Classes still fulfill a useful role in the game as a way of depicting highly detailed and specialized training that is far more in-depth than a simple feat, a way of showing that a character is progressing in an entirely new and specialized direction, or as a rules way of creating character concepts that cannot be easily created with the core classes.  Prestige Classes should not be used solely for "Power Up" of being better than the base class you had before in every meaningful way (which sadly a few have fallen into the trap of)."Power Up" PrC's might be salvagable as BBEG classes, for DM's who have a good eye for scaling and won't abuse the power, but in normal campaign use they really should not be there.</blockquote>

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