respontomovie2006 said:
What do folks out in the community have to say about the impact of prestige classes upon individual creativity?
Well my individual voice which is lost in the din of the community says that it's a great idea as initially conceived, did not receive ANY proper official followup from WotC until the publication of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting hardcover by which time it was too late to exert any further influence on their ACTUAL use versus their intended use. It also, however, goes in hand with the now well-established WotC penchant for enabling player empowerment without even mentioning the mere concept of DM's wanting, even needing to exert limitations.
They can still be used as originally envisioned - they just generally aren't and it shows in the discussion of characters as "builds" far outweighing discussion of characters as "concepts". Just MHO.
Forgive me if this argument has already been made, and for my rambling.
It's a point worth repeating if you ask me so no worries.
If it has, then am I correct in assuming that marketing pressures are the chief drivers behind the continued creation of even more specific prestige classes?
That, however, is not my impression. 3rd Edition was intentionally geared to directly counter the unnecessarily prohibitive structures of the rules. If people wanted to play Dwarven Paladins or hobgoblins with clerical spellcasting abilities then the rules should provide an ENABLING structure for that, however unusual those choices might be, rather than the rules specifically working to prohibit it because it IS an uncommon choice for which specific, sometimes extensive rules would otherwise have to be made under older editions.
However, in the void of further examples of their intended use as tools for the _
DM_ to use in improving their campaigns overall, they became tools for the _
player_ to use as an improved variation on the 2nd Edition concept of "kits". In short - a powergaming tool more than a campaign design tool. Not that there's anything inherently wrong or inferior with powergaming, but it really did destroy the capacity for them to be properly promoted again for their original intent rather than their subsequent practical application and that really IS unfortunate.
So, it's not market
pressure at work but
marketing itself. PrC's can be included as crunchy rules bits in published works without need to really properly work their usefulness into a CAMPAIGN. They need to merely whet the appetites of the increasingly common players who are simply looking for mechanical advantages with perhaps some vague roleplaying justification, rather than roleplaying uses that includes mechanical support.
"But we've already done this in the last umpteen books, boss."
THIS never stopped ANYBODY.
