D&D 5E (2014) Legends & Lore bits about prestige classes in 5e (and NEW playtest packet!)

[Sammael]

And with this, Next has jumped the shark. Prestige classes were one aspect of 3.x that should have stayed buried under several tons of concrete. Whatever the intended implementation, prestige classes will get out of control soon after release.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

For all their flaws, I preferred prestige classes to paragon paths and epic destinies. The latter two were so fundamentally boring, nothing more than 3-4 additional powers, with none generic enough to allow you to just continue being a fighter or a wizard. When I saw some of the concepts, and how they were reduced to mechanical trivia, it really did not impress me. For instance, there was an Eladrin epic destiny, if I recall, whose highest level power was to come back from the dead by, in fact, coming from a future alternative reality, or somesuch. The rules were so concerned with making this a balanced power with other similar powers that there was no consideration of how this sort of power is an *entire* storyline in itself, reduced to a combat trick.

You can make prestige classes work. You should remove all but the most basic mechanical requirements, focusing on story-based requirements instead. Benefits of PrCs should also be less specific to individual classes, focusing instead on general usable features, indeed that needn't be mechanical at all, that complement rather than enhance a character. Allow only one prestige class per character. I would also remove them from the multiclass-level system - grant benefits on the basis of character level, not on the basis of how many levels you invest in the PrC, so that you can't optimise how many levels to take, nor when to start taking the PrC.

So for instance, to become an assassin you need to kill a specific target (or series of target) given to you by the guild. They don't care how you do it, but it must not be known who did it, or why, so any stealth or illusory abilities you have acquired as a character of whatever class will assist in qualification but not be necessary. Then, benefits granted will be based on character level, and some choice might be useful. The guild might offer you additional training in stealth (within the skill system), recipes for making special poisons (within the skill or item systems), the right to copy special spells specific to assassination (within the magic system) or, should there be a god (or other being) who likes assassination, the opportunity to petition for similar powers. If you are ever caught, the guild not only disavows you but makes you a free target for other members (what fun!).

Each prestige class would require considerably more effort than previously, more than just a 10-level chart and some rules, but I think it might be worth it. People profess a love of 2E kits: I propose we make prestige classes more like kits, only you may not get them immediately from 1st level.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

3e's Prestige Classes, as originally conceived, seemed like a decent notion, but actually made no sense at all. They were supposed to be elite organisations in the campaign world for PCs to join. Problem is that you had to be 7th level or so before you could even consider joining such a group (and, indeed, only a tiny percentage of 7th level PCs could meet the entry requirements). The NPC demographics made it very clear that characters of the requisite levels were vanishingly rare. And yet, the setting was supposed to contain not just one entire organisation of such characters, but any number of them?

My issue was that they were originally set up to be organizational-based but became instead "super-classes."

But I take a different viewpoint on the requirements than you. Taking levels in the prestige class was not representative of joining the organization. You could join the organization through story means at any point. You could be a prestige candidate or you could be a member that brings other talents useful to the group to the table.

Similar to my view on churches in D&D. An ordained holy figure in a church was not necessarily a Cleric IMCs any more than a Cleric must be an ordained holy figure. One is a leader of the flock, the other a channeler of the god's power. The guy at the pulpit could be a 1st-level commoner, and often was in small village churches IMCs.

 

[TerraDave]

I'm not a big fano of this comment on Prestige Classes:

The interesting thing about this approach is that it casts prestige classes as a DM tool that helps bring a world to life by giving starting characters goals in the campaign.​

I prefer Prestige Classes (or Paragon Paths) as player tools to bring the gameworld to life and invest their PCs in it.

If there is going to be prestige classes I don't want to spend too much game time questing for them.
1 or 2 sessions per character to gain a prestige class? That's boring and a waste of time for valuable story advancement...

Also, having to plan a campaign from level 1 to give your players their prestige classes is no change from each player having to plan their character's feats from level 1

(Yeah, I use prestige classes as power-ups for my character, and as extra customization options But the main objective is still the development of the campaign story we're telling)

I agree: what is proposed is too much. Maybe if the number of players is small, and the DM is short of ideas...but in most cases I am not seeing this approach in most games, and shouldn't.

I have seen a PrC link a player to an interesting group in the world, and another PrC and 4E paragon path act as a "split class" and allow the player realize an interesting concept that wouldn't work otherwise...but I have also seen multiple PrCs and paths that just didn't really add much to the game.

Of course, you don't need the PrC for the organisation...that can be very campaign specific (maybe most players belong to a guild or order, maybe they all join the same organization, maybe there are two rival factions, or maybe none of the above). In terms of opening up options for a minority of players (since the main classes should cover the majority), they could be usefull.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I'm not a big fano of this comment on Prestige Classes:

The interesting thing about this approach is that it casts prestige classes as a DM tool that helps bring a world to life by giving starting characters goals in the campaign.​

I prefer Prestige Classes (or Paragon Paths) as player tools to bring the gameworld to life and invest their PCs in it.

And if players only care about PCs/PPs from the point of view of power-ups, that is not going to change by putting the GM in charge of handing them out. It will just mean that some players will jump through the GMs story-hoops in order to get the power up.

I entirely disagree with you. Prestige classes in third edition were a fantastic idea until they started showing up in player focused books. They shouldn't be part of a player's build plan (a concept I can barely fathom by itself), but instead represent opportunities that can be placed before characters as they progress through their career.

When I DM, through the course of play, I often provide something character defining for each character. Perhaps its an artifact, or a powerful NPC contact. Organizational involvement or the special training of a prestige class fits this perfectly. It's up to the player to decide if they take what I've offered.

The point is, this kind of thing is unforeseen. It can't be planned for during character creation. And it leads to more dynamic and interesting characters and thus a better game.

 

[dkyle]

Ugh... Prestige Classes were just terrible design. They took 3E's already broken multiclass rules, and just blew them up further.

And I hate baking story-based prerequisites into the rules. Giving the DM story hooks is great, but they should be ideas, nothing more. The rules should only limit access to mechanics when necessary for maintaining balance.

Paragon Paths are much better. They should do those instead.

You can make prestige classes work. You should remove all but the most basic mechanical requirements, focusing on story-based requirements instead. Benefits of PrCs should also be less specific to individual classes, focusing instead on general usable features, indeed that needn't be mechanical at all, that complement rather than enhance a character. Allow only one prestige class per character. I would also remove them from the multiclass-level system - grant benefits on the basis of character level, not on the basis of how many levels you invest in the PrC, so that you can't optimise how many levels to take, nor when to start taking the PrC.

This isn't bad, but mostly because your PrC ends up being a lot more like Paragon Paths then PrC. Yeah, you can take it before a given level, but the important thing is that it's parallel to, not instead of, taking your class levels.

And if it's mostly-fluff benefits for mostly-fluff requirements, I'm fine with that too. It's when crunchy combat mechanics are gated by baked-in fluff that it gets problematic.

 

[am181d]

If a prestige class is meant to represent an organization, then I either need (a) super generic prestige classes, so I can fit them to my own campaign, or (b) the tools to easily create balanced prestige classes from scratch. I don't have much faith that I will get either of these. As such, prestige classes are pretty much useless to me.

I *much* prefer a system of swapable class abilities as in late 3.5 or Pathfinder (or, more or less, in 2e's kits).

I want the designers thinking about options for the base classes, not coming up with tons of weirdly specific half-classes, most of which most players will never use.

 

[blalien]

And with this, Next has jumped the shark. Prestige classes were one aspect of 3.x that should have stayed buried under several tons of concrete. Whatever the intended implementation, prestige classes will get out of control soon after release.

Give Wizards a little credit. They know what went wrong with prestige classes in 3rd edition, and they're making a genuine attempt to fix their mistakes. If whatever ideas they have are truly horrible, they'll be shut down in the public playtest. At least wait until we know anything about the mechanics before passing judgment.

That said, one thing I will not be doing is running a session for one player's sake. I tried that once, and four out of five players were asleep by the end. I'll probably just have the players describe their side quests during down time.

 

[Gargoyle]

I am not a fan of 3e prestige classes, but I do feel there is hope behind the comment in the article "They were a popular feature of 3E, and 4E essentially duplicated them with the concept of the paragon path." Obviously paragon paths did not duplicate prestige classes mechanically and Mike Mearls knows that, but they did fill that same design space and perhaps that's what he is referring to.

What I'm hoping is we get something mechanically a bit more like paragon paths but accessible at a lower level and perhaps a cross between the two.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Paragon Paths were hardly the perfection that many claim they were as well. Most of them were easily forgettable choices that you more or less had to take.

Yeah I know most prestige classes were a waste of time too.

Now going through the prestige classes that were mentioned in the survey, I clearly preferred ones such as the Daggerspell Mage which had a unique flavour despite being generally non-campaign specific and not powerful, over the Mystic Theurge which was clearly designed to "fix" multiclassing. And there's many out of that list which could be represented by specialties and backgrounds now, despite the fact that I always feel it's a cop-out when many say "use specialties and backgrounds for X", but there's certainly a few out of that list I feel is unique that I'd like to see again.