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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 2438594" data-attributes="member: 8158">I've been compiling a list of available prestige classes for my FR campaign, and I'm pretty sure that the the only book I've referred to from this year is Heroes of Battle. Before that, I think it woudl go all the way back to Libris Mortis. We've had the various race books, the environments books, and setting books for Forgotten Realms and Eberron, and I don't like the track they're heading down.Seems like all the prestige classes coming out in books these days are, conceptually, extremely narrow and inextricably tied to some specific organization. That makes them significantly less useful to a party of adventurers who are, in effect, an organization unto themselves. Are there any parties out there where one guy's a Hathran witch, one guy's a purple dragon knight, another guy's a harper agent, and maybe somebody else is a grey hand of Waterdeep? 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. To me, a PrC is not just a fancy title or a club membership. I long to see the return of utilitarian prestige classes that offer some interesting game mechanics, and fill in broad concepts that players tend to seek out. I can adapt them to fit my campaign's "fluff" as I see fit. For instance, I adapted the Nightsong Enforcer and Infiltrator from the Complete Adventurer to be the elite agents of the mercenary company my party works for. I also wanted a 5-level class to round out characters (rather than define them) so I adapted the Dread Commando from Heroes of Battle. And since mages and healer shouldn't feel left out, I adapted the Tactical Healer and War Weaver from HoB as well (I figured I didn't want players having to leaf through more than a couple of books). I know there are folks who think there are already enough prestige classes to go around and are sick of seeing new ones (which to me is like saying there's enough music to go around, or I'm sick of going into Blockbuster and seeing one movie after another--enough already with the new movies!). I'm also aware a lot of folks have applauded WotC's current fluff-centric approach to PrC's. Is there anyone else who actually likes prestige classes, and misses the days of PrC's that didn't think the "prestige" part had to come at the expense of there being an actual "class"?</blockquote>

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