PrCs - which ones are (a bit) over the edge?

[pawsplay]

The majority of clerics fall into the good and healer routes. Yes, there is lots of cheese and nice abilities for playing other gods but they are generally neutral or evil and most campaigns in my 30 years of gaming revolve around good. The few evil games were are very interesting but are few and far between. For good campaigns, if you campare a cleric to a radiant servent, hands down the radiant servent is superior.

First of all, while most clerics are good and healers, that doesn't take into account their secondary roles. For instance, the melee cleric, the cleric archer, the blaster, whatever. Second, not all good clerics worship Pelor or a deity like him. Third, many, if not most, clerics of Pelor will not want to take the RSoP prestige class. At least, I wouldn't, nor players in my campaigns who've been offered the opportunity to play a radiant servant of Apollo. The all but mandatory Healing domain, the skill rank investment (and clerics are low skill point), the requirement to take Extra turning, the reduced hit die, all are significant. The only real oddity to the RSoP is the martial weapon proficiencies; it's not much of a freebie, since it's doubtful you're going to become a RSoP archer, especially late in your career, and really only puts you on almost even footing with someone with the War domain in terms of melee. Plus, it means absolutely nothing to a RSoP with a level or two of Fighter or Ranger.

RSoP also has severe rounding problems; if you don't take eight full levels of cleric, you take a BAB hit, and it's likely your Reflex save will lag, with only a modest compensation in Fort and Will which are already high. That means that the temptation to actually use those martial weapon proficiencies is pretty low.

 

[pawsplay]

Remember with Duelist that the Int bonus to AC cannot exceed your current Duelist level.

Oh, sure. But a Fig 1/Wiz 6/EK 2/Duelist 1 has better than half casting. Fig 1/Wiz 6/EK 10/Duelist 3 gives you casting at 15, +17 BAB, good hit points, up to +3 Int bonus to AC on top of magical bracers (or greater mage armor), and +2 to initiative. And that's all core.

 

[Engilbrand]

I think that a lot of "fixes" that posters make to classes and prestige classes are just like when politicians "fix" things. They aren't really being fixed. They're being changed.
Politician: "I want to fix the education system by having more standardized tests so that we can improve accountability." That's a "fix". It doesn't actually do anything positive (and is probably doing more harm). It's just "different", and a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that "different" must automatically mean better. It doesn't.
Poster: "I fixed the Radiant Servant of Pelor by...." or "Here's my new and improved Swashbuckler. I fixed it by..." Those are "fixes". Note the quotations. It doesn't actually fix anything. It's a change, to be sure. A question, though. What if, in my game, the Radiant Servant of Pelor fits perfectly? What if the Planar Sheppard doesn't have a negative impact? What if- and I know this is crazy- I actually allowed something in play to see what I thought? Instead of just reading it and looking for all of the game breaking elements, I remembered that this is a game and I trust my players not to end a game by purposely doing something ridiculous? It seems like this doesn't happen in many games that I read about. People just "fix" something, or they allow it in play and the player or events unbalance things. I don't think that anything currently in a book from WoTC is actually broken unless you or your players purposely do something retarded to it.
Now, does this mean that I have never posted alternates? Of course not! I've posted alternate classes and alternate features before. I even called one thing a Fighter "fix". My first line was about how I didn't think that the Fighter was worthless. I gave it some scaling abilities a la Tome of Battle and Magic of Incarnum and called it a day. It was something that I aknowledged could be fleshed out and had the possibility to add some variety to the Fighter. BUT, I did not say that I fixed it. Notice the lack of quotations.
Are there some things that I wouldn't want in a game? Sure. There was a player who was thinking about playing a Frenzied Berserker. We talked him out of it. I like the class and have thought about playing one before. For a campaign, though? Not without some specific things planned out first. Is it broken? No. But it has a better possibility of killing party members than a misplaced Fireball or Wail of the Banshee does. If people stopped looking to break classes and prestige classes and instead started to look at them in terms of fun, there should be a lot fewer threads about how "broken" something is.

 

[Felix]

For good campaigns, if you campare a cleric to a radiant servent, hands down the radiant servent is superior at healing.

And all players of clerics want to be band-aids?

Healing is a defensive ability; defensive abilities are made more powerful in PrCs and base classes because they can't be used to hurt opponents. If the RSoP abilities maximized, empowered, and maxipowered the Sun domain spells, you'd have grounds to say something's fishy. But as it is, all the Radiant Servant does very well is allow the other characters in the party to keep going longer. How is this a bad thing?

 

[Remathilis]

I think that a lot of "fixes" that posters make to classes and prestige classes are just like when politicians "fix" things. They aren't really being fixed. They're being changed.

ah, but they are being changed for the better of the game or campaign being run in order to keep a certain tone, feel, or challenge viable. My changes were mostly slight tweaks in certain powers.

* Removal of the Martial Weapon Prof. It doesn't fit the theme (weaker fighter, better healer) and Pelor's favored weapon is simple anyway (mace).
* halving the radius of the PEB puts it in league with the Sacred Purifier's version in Libris Mortis.
* Reducing the number of greater turns lessens over-reliance on a very potentially powerful ability and makes normal turning still viable.

Otherwise, the vast majority of its powers are fine by me...

 

[Feldspar]

Oh, sure. But a Fig 1/Wiz 6/EK 2/Duelist 1 has better than half casting. Fig 1/Wiz 6/EK 10/Duelist 3 gives you casting at 15, +17 BAB, good hit points, up to +3 Int bonus to AC on top of magical bracers (or greater mage armor), and +2 to initiative. And that's all core.

Hit points are almost, but not quite a d6 average for that build. Definately the better caster, but that was never in doubt. However, magical mithril chain shirts give, or perhaps I should say prevent, far more bang for the buck than bracers of armor. I still think that the Bladesinger I posted makes an interesting Swashbuckler/Duelist type who augments that with spells rather than a spellcaster who can do some melee. Of course, it could be argued that any finesse melee build (not relying on sneak attack damage) is going to be weak slash a waste of time.

I guess really all I'm saying is that in response to "Bladesingers can be better done better with EK and duelist" is "here's a Bladesinger that I totally want to play"

 

[Jhaelen]

I agree with Felix's assessment of the RsoP. I was actually happy as a bunny when one of my player's announced he wanted to go along this line.

I greatly dislike the frenzied berserker and any PrCs connected to polymorph/wild shape. Luckily I've been able to convince my druid player to use the PHBII alternate class feature

For me the overpowered ones are any PrCs that allow you to get access to 9th level spells before level 17. That's just plain nuts! That would be the blighter, divine crusader, and the ur-priest.
It's not really a problem though, since it's only a single spell for the divine crusader (and not all 9th level domain spells are that great) and the other two are clearly npc-only choices for most campaigns.

Funny, how almost all PrCs I consider problematic are from Complete Divine...

 

[wildstarsreach]

There's one other disadvantage to a Radiant Servant: d6 hit dice. Don't discount that as a heavy disincentive, especially since most clerics will be wearing periapts of wisdom instead of amulets of healing. I'm not saying it makes the class totally balanced as relates to the typical good turn-undead cleric, but it does dial the class back a large amount, by reducing his staying power and making him focus some of that awesome healign on himself.

By the Way, what are people's takes on using the Domain Spontaneity (Healing) Feat in conjunction with the Maximized/Empowered Healing the Radiant Servant gets? Shouldn't those two work together to give the Radiant Servant more healing than just what he's got in his domain slots?

He cannot, this only applies to the domain memorized spells. Our radiant servent was abusing this until we had a clarification from customer service.

 

[Doug McCrae]

What you said about the Radiant Servant may be true about getting everything they get with feats but you get it all without having to. You essentially out Cleric the Cleric. It is all pluses and no minuses.

There is a minus. RSoP only gets d6 for hit dice.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Well, let's compare a straight fighter with an EK. I used PHB and DMG rules only, except for Arcane Strike.

EK isn't the problem. The problem is that at high levels a core only fighter is weak in comparison to any caster class. Cleric, druid and wizard/sorcerer all leave him in the dust.