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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sppeterson" data-source="post: 69749" data-attributes="member: 404">Why so many prestige classes?Two main reasons here.First, I like prestige classes (and templates) so I figure my customers will too. A nice thing about solid prestige classes is that they enhance the player's game as well as the GM's game. As a player I have a new option and hopefully one or two of the options will be ones that I've been wanting to do anyway. As a GM a prestige class gives me a fairly easy tool to distinguish one of my monsters as special or create an elite group of orcs tied around a theme. Often I don't want a brand-new monster; I want a different theme for a monster type already present in my world. An item I'd find cool would be a large monster book but one solely devoted to creature-templates; I might have a hard time explaining the genetic diviersity in my kingdom if I used all the different monsters out there right now but I could pretty easily explain (and work into my campaign) a forest with wolves who've been possessed by a variety of different demons, each of which adds a different template to the base wolf.Second, one way to help make one weapon feel distinct from another is to focus on the way the weapon is used. If the specialist with the sword fights differently from the specialist with the axe the two characters feel different even though they might ultimately have pretty similar hit points, damages, AC's, attack bonuses and saving throws. I think D&D already does that nicely with the subtle difference between the battleaxe and longsword. Essentially the MoA book just expands on those distinctions. Also, the combination maneuver system gave me enough points of variation that I felt I could go ahead and flesh out distinctive classes for a bunch of different weapons. In retrospect these classes should also blend well with other specialist classes already out there; I don't think that would be a problem for game-balance.</blockquote>

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