Man, I miss the days of good, solid, utilitarian Prestige Classes

[Turjan]

Filled-up? No way. There are so many different ways to approach a broad concept...heck, just wander over to the "house rules" section and you'll find plenty of unofficial prestige classes that a DM put together to fill a hole that the official books weren't filling.

Are you sure? There have been hundreds of prestige classes published until now. I'm not sure whether there are really any basic needs left. This leaves narrow approaches. I like prestige classes that are tied to organizations. I have no problems with adapting those to my needs.

 

[Felon]

For instance, if someone's looking for a PrC with an archery theme, how many options are really out there? You've got the elf-only Arcane Archer, the Order of the Bow Initiate, and then what? You maybe have to go back to the Deepwood Sniper in Masters of the Wild. The OotBI is an OK class in and of itself but it hardly covers every archer concept out there; there are long-range sneak-attack sniipers, there are rapid-fire experts, there are close-combat skirmish archers, there are trick-shot experts. Lots of different ways to fill up 5-to-10 levels with the idea of building an archer extraordinaire.

Likewise, even with with prestige classes that are heavily-represented, there are still untapped venues--the havoc mage, the eldritch knight, the spellsword, the bladesinger, the Suel Arcanach [sic] are all variants on the warrior-mage concept--but that hardly means the well is dry.

 

[Turjan]

The OotBI is an OK class in and of itself but it hardly covers every archer concept out there; there are long-range sneak-attack sniipers, there are rapid-fire experts, there are close-combat skirmish archers, there are trick-shot experts.

I guess that those all exist. You just have to know where to look. The long-range sneak-attack snipers that additionally ignore concealment are basically the Peerless Archers from 'Silver Marches'; this is just an example, as I'm reading something in the book at the moment. If you have special wishes, just exchange a feat or an ability from an existing class *shrug*. I really don't see that many original concepts untouched.

 

[Thanee]

Some specific, narrow PrC are fine, but in general I also vastly prefer more generic and adaptable ones.

Bye
Thanee

 

[JoeGKushner]

Not really.

Between Mongoose's Ultimate Prestige Class collections (1 for 3.0 and 2 for 3.5), in addition to hordes of other PrCs, there have got to be over one thousand non-official PrCs.

I don't see the huge need to focus on generic PrCs anymore. Especially since there aren't that many niches left to fill if you start counting alternative core classes.

 

[Li Shenron]

Why do the players take prestige classes? Is it because they are looking for something to add to their PC's story, background, motivation, etc? Or is it because they see the PrCls nifty abilities and want a power boost? Or does the PrCl open up some new strategic option?

For the concept itself, they are not required to enter a PrCl. Gamers too often assume that if you belong to the Arcane Order the you have to take a level in the associated PrCl, otherwise you're only "about to enter" the group. IOW, that all associates have levels in the PrCl and viceversa, which is quite BS.

For power and option I am rather demanding that the game provides them to the base classes, without the need for a PrCl. Feats are much more simple and clean to use: if you just want to be a better archer with a specific trick, you should be able to get it as a feat provided you meet some prerequisites. The original mistake the designers made with feats was to give too few of them.

If you build a PrCl around that ability you're complicating the matter a lot. Now you have a whole class, which requires you to balance it about other features (BAB, HD, skills, spellcasting levels...) which have nothing to do with your archer special ability. Furthermore, the requirements designed will fix a minimum char level to qualify which is discriminating for some base classes, and a similar thing happens if the PrCl doesn't provide full BAB or full spellcasting.
The result is that if your archer PrCl satisfies the party fighter-type, it will be probably uncomfortable for the rogue-type and terribly penalyzing for the caster-type. Then you have to make other new PrCl for those as well...

At least if the PrCl shows a clear progression of the features (and not a mere collection of them) then it makes more sense to make it a class. But in general I wish the gaming options weren't so much tied to prestige classes at all. I am quite sure that it would be possible and even easy to break down all prestige classes into feats.

The annoying part is, they're not terribly adaptable. Their class abilities often consist of organization-specific perks and privileges and little membership tokens rather than actual abilities. Seems to me, this is a lousy approach; even if all my players were in the Moonstars, I wouldn't want them to feel like every single person needs bard levels so that they can then in turn take Moonstar Agent levels just so that they can consider themselves "real" members and not just affiliates. Especially since once they take the class, they find that what they get isn't anything unique or special, just boring little bonuses that make for a wholly unnecesarry PrC.

Very good point you make with your example. I think this problem still has to do with how PrCl work, but at least for those who like PrCls there are examples with the Harpers about how to do this: make more PrCl associated with a single organization.

 

[Psion]

Anyone else hear the *WHOOSH!* of a huge pendulum swinging?

Well, I was just about to comment that it's more traditional to complain something to the effect of "prestige classes should be prestigious!"

 

[Thanee]

Right now, often players think like this, when they are pondering about their character's future...

What prestige class will I pick up...

It's not a question 'if', it's just the question 'which one', as if it was mandatory to pick one up or an extreme disadvantage if you wouldn't (and in some cases, that's actually true). :\

Bye
Thanee

 

[Psion]

Right now, often players think like this, when they are pondering about their character's future...

What prestige class will I pick up...

It's not a question 'if', it's just the question 'which one', as if it was mandatory to pick one up or an extreme disadvantage if you wouldn't (and in some cases, that's actually true). :\

I'm not exactly seeing this as an epidemic. Either in proportion or impact.

I had a player who sings this song. He sits there and crows about how his character is a single classed fighter and nobody plays a straight up fighter any more.

To which I pointed out that, since 3e hit the streets, this is the first campaign I have had with more than one PrC character in the party.

 

[SWBaxter]

Seems like all the prestige classes coming out in books these days are, conceptually, extremely narrow and inextricably tied to some specific organization.

Those are actually the only type of prestige classes that I have when I run a campaign. I don't really like the generic prestige class model, where PCs take 'em just to get cool abilities - I'd rather make the cool abilities feats than force a player to jump through the prereq hoops just because prestige class X is a must-have for every Wizard/Fighter/whatever. Of course, the latter type are far easier to sell to a wide audience, so I expect we'll continue to see them in supplements. YMWV.