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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6041399" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 297: July 2002part 5/10Rival the GODS: And now for more prestige classes that didn't make the cut in the final book. Exactly why, other than just space in general, I guess we'll see. Sometimes there's hidden gems, and it was merely a matter of taste, class demographics, or office politics. Other times, it's pretty obvious why they were cut. Which'll it be here? Arcane Lords are have full spellcasting progression, plus at least one extra ability enhancing their spells every level as well. They're strictly better than sticking with Sorcerer or Wizard in every respect apart from skills and familiar advancement, so the only drawback to switching to them and staying is the possibility of running out of places to put your skill points when your int gets too superhuman. And if you're a sorcerer, you won't even have to worry about that. Life can be pretty grand as an epic spellcaster. Masters of the Order of the Bow are designed to follow on from a specific prestige class in one of their splatbooks, although you can get in other ways, it'll just take a little longer. They aren't that great, because their ranged sneak attack power, which is the main part of their build, is still only usable at 30 foot, so they won't really be epic snipers to rival the blasty powers of spellcasters. Even +20 to hit pales before stuff which works automatically. Perfected Ones take monk's focus on upgrading their body, and build on it further. They get a whole bunch of automatically activating countermeasures that mean imprisoning them or mind controlling them is unlikely to work. A lot of their powers don't grow indefinitely, so once you get to 10th level, sticking with this one doesn't seem so smart, but if you don't want to spend ages maintaining your basic contingency suites just to stay alive in a game of epic paranoia, there are worse options. Stalwart Wardens are basically the Epic upgrade for Dwarven Defenders, ridiculously tough, and near impossible to move via force or magical persuasion once they've decide to guard someone or something. Once again, they're survivable at epic levels, but proactively changing the world will remain tricky. Be the rock, not the storm. Unholy Ravagers are an epic blackguard variant that are so eeevil and corrupt that they radiate an aura that spoils food, makes babies cry, and generally makes all right-thinking people deeply unhappy whenever they're near without even trying. You can kill them and take their stuff and feel absolutely zero guilt about it, for they cause trouble every second they exist and revel in it. Just watch out they don't have evil intelligent magic items that'll take you over and lead you down to the dark side in turn. World Guardians are another variant on druidic hierophants, eschewing the extradimensional travel and elemental summoning for more nature connected innate powers, which a high level druid could replicate anyway. Once again, it's not so much an increase in magnitude as gradually adding on more of the same kind of resources. I'm completely unimpressed with this article, both in terms of power and flavour. It just doesn't do anything for me at all.</blockquote>

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