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

[ThirdWizard]

H, my complaint of the Eldritch Knight was that it was utilitarian and boring. It offered no new, unique abilities at all. If it had three pages of hitory, flavor, and background attached, I'd still hate it because the mechanics bothered me.

Well, yes, I'm against "kludges" myself. By which I mean PrCs whose sole ability is to make a multiclass option viable, with no other inspiration. Spellsword is far superior to the Eldritch Knight, flavor-wise. It makes the fighter/mage possible in an inspired way.

 

[NimrodvanHall]

the biggest thing that bothers me is that the Blackguard is a prestige cless and the Paladin is not!

and that characters with prestige classes almost always end up with better saves than normal chars.

 

[ThirdWizard]

and that characters with prestige classes almost always end up with better saves than normal chars.

That depends on how you look at it. A Fighter/Barbarian/Frienzied Berserker (or any other melee PrC) or even just a Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker (or whatever melee PrC) is going to have a great Fortitude save, but lousy Reflex and Will saves. Some offer a different good save than the class(s) that go into it, but isn't this fairly rare? Since few classes give both good Fort and Will, one of those will likely suffer.