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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5187495" data-attributes="member: 4937">It is over a certain range of levels (prerequisite classes stronger than spellcasting class up to the point it is taken, and then continues stronger again until 5th and 6th level spells start becoming available).  Keep in mind, that in this era alot of spells like Ray of Weakness and Alter Self hadn't been broken like in 3.5.  Clerics didn't start really rocking until 9th level.  Wizards were still pretty fragile until stoneskin, polymorph and the stronger save or dies started becoming available.Besides which, that's not the point.  There are also equivalent PrC's even from the same era that have full spellcasting progression and provide powers on top of those of a stock wizard.  At least with those PrC's, even though they had the same flaws, you could get lame excuses about how you were giving up something (however minor).  You couldn't say that of MoC.  But even to the extent that there is imbalance with the stock version of those three classes, it doesn't follow that Master of Chains is any part of a 'cure'.  I mean, you might as well go, "Aha! But are apples not blue?  No?  Ok then."  The problems with the Druid (which didn't really come to a head until 3.5), the Cleric, and the Wizards don't have any real bearing on MoC.  The problem here is that its bad design in isolation, and problems with full spellcasters don't mitigate the problem.  It requires some relatively simple fixes to bring sanity to the spell-caster/non-caster balance issues, but I don't need to go into them here to note how bad for 3.X the unconstrained PrC model was in the long run.  You need only go to an optimization board and look at the vast range of power levels that 3.X could be played at between the sort of non-mastery stock suggested characters in the 3.0 DMG and what you could do with the full array of late 3.X powers.It's one thing to go, "Hmmm... Haste is problimatic and some of these high level spells need to be rethought for balance."  It's quite another thing to say, "Gee, at high levels, wizards are much more powerful than fighters.  Let's fix that by creating PrCs that are strictly better than fighter and playing catchup while simultaneously offering new arrays of spells for spellcasters AND providing them lots of new PrCs with full spellcasting progression.  Yeah, that will work out really well!"</blockquote>

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