Prestige Class or Pain in the (Cl)ass?

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

It seems to me like too many PrCs want you to take clumps of near-useless feats like Endurance, Run, Skill Focus, Sunder, Toughness, etc. or a bunch of ranks in a cross-class skill you'll never use (like Tumble 5+ for a heavy armor wearing PrC).

IMO, nobody is going to deprive themselves of all the good feats and skills they need to survive just to get into a PrC; they'd be more powerful without it! Wish the designers would realize that making it so hard to get in is not conducive to seeing those PrCs being used with any frequency, and only leads to player frustration at having to waste tons of skill points and feat slots on things they don't want or need. Sure, a little sacrifice is okay, but this is too much for too little reward in many cases!

Giving all these (in some cases absurd) prereq's means that everybody would have to know exactly what PrC they want to get into at level 1, which is really asking too much, as you don't even really know your character's personality/desires yet, let alone what they wanna do when they grow (level) up.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Eh. IMHO, PrC's should represent a bit about what the player is going to become in ideal, and the prereqs should make sense....

I dunno...any examples of any big violators?

 

[Vhane]

I feel your pain

Most Pres. Classes have only one or two good aspects so if you get ripped off more than once taking them it kinda blows.

I wish they had feat trees for most of those powers or some kinda swap out system for class powers you dont care about (example spell casting for your ranger, DR for your Barb)

I ALWAYS end up multiclassing in this system, I miss Skills and Powers, yes it was abuseable, but customizing your class was very nice and customizing your race even nicer.

Have they ever said why Ranger, Barbarian, Paladin and the other sub-classes are Core and not Prestige?

 

[Crothian]

I'd like to hear of some that you feel don't make sense. Here's a list of ones I think do make sense.

DMG
Dwarven defender: Dodge, Endurance, Toughness
Lore Master: Skill Focus any Knowledge

S&S
Royal Explorer: Endurance
Spymaster: Skill Focus Bluff

T&B
Blood Magus: Toughness
Pale Master: Skill Focus: Knowledge Religion
Wayfarer: Skill Focus: Knowledge Geography

DotF
Divine Oracle: Skill Focus: Scry
Templar: Endurance

S&F
Ghostwalker: Toughness, Endurance

All those make sense to me. Didn't go through MotW.

 

[Draxus the Tainted]

IMO most PrC's suck up the wazoo big time. Only few are worth taking, like Kaptain_Kantrip said, they usually have alot of requirements that don't make sense or are worthless. Most times I don't use a PrC if can help it, when I do, I know what I'm going for from the start, or take it for flavor when I play a game that's heavy on Roleplaying.

 

[rounser]

Handling everything with the prestige class approach doesn't make sense, IMO - there are some "templates" you should be able to take from first level. Other things are handled well by prestige classes - no-one's an Archmage from 1st level for instance. The higher level prereqs for prestige classes effectively hold some character concepts for ransom until you meet them.

It's a pity that the former was at least partially justified away completely in favour of the latter for completely metagaming reasons - Ryan Dancey mentioned in the past that part of the reasoning behind replacing kits completely with prestige classes was that prestige classes reward players for staying in the game rather than encouraging them to restart to try a new template.

I think the game already has enough "carrots" for players as it is. Perhaps templates should be taken off the list and where appropriate they should be able to be taken from 1st level, since they cover a lot of PC identity from a player's perspective, and aren't merely some reward for min/maxing the right way.

 

[RogueJK]

Kaptain -

I think the problem here is how you are looking at it. You are looking at this from a completely power-gaming point of view. Most of those feats that you mentioned have more roleplaying significance than power-gaming potential. D&D is, after all, a roleplaying game.

I think that, in general, Prestige Class requirements make sense. If your character is tougher than normal, such a Dwarven Defender, you might take the Toughness feat. Yes, the 3 HPs might be a waste, but it makes sense for the character. If your character is an excellent singer, you might take Skill Focus (Perform: Sing). Again, the +2 (or +3) won't help that much in the long run, but it helps to define the character.

Feats such as Endurance and Run help to flesh out a character. It makes perfect sense for a Prestige Class that is supposed to be extremely aware of their surrounding to require Alertness, or for a swashbuckler-type Prestige Class to require Skill Focus (Tumble).

As for the PrC that sparked this, the Spur Lord, the Tumble requirement makes total sense. Cyric is the God of Strife, Murder, Lies, Deception, Intrigue, and Illusion. Many of his worshippers are Rogues and Assassins. Even Cyric himself was a Rogue. I envision Spur Lords as lightly-armored, quick warriors who fade in and out of battle. They even have Bluff, Sense Motive, Move Silently, and Tumble as class skills. This is certainly a quasi-Rogue PrC. And I'm not sure where you got the "heavy armor" aspect of that class. Is says in the description that most Spur Lords are Fighters, Rangers, or Rogues, or some combination of those. Two of those three don't use heavy armor. On top of that, they don't even get any additional armor proficiencies.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

I miss Skills & Powers too! That was absolutely the best way to custom-craft any class you wanted. The CCE wasn't nearly as good, as it didn't specifically break down the value of each ability or class feature into point values. Still useful, though.

Anyway, here are a couple PrCs that do not provide good value for the cost of entry:

Blackguard (what if you don't want to be sneaky but an "honorable" LE type? you don't need or want Hide or Sunder)
This class stinks unless you're a fallen paladin. It's really useless for an evil fighter to take; they should morph into evil cleric for better benefits.

Spur Lord of Cyric (5+ ranks of Tumble required for a class that most likely uses Heavy Armor... making Tumble useless)
This class has a lot of cool abilities, but it has severe entry requirements (Quick Draw, Lightning Reflexes, Great Fortitude, Leadership on top of Tumble 5+ ranks). That's too much waste of feats and skill points.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

The painting of the Spur Lord seemed to imply he wore heavy armor. I had a vision of Knights Templar rather than sneaky types... I don't use Cyric IMC and was planning on adopting it to a Bane type deity instead. That was probably where I went wrong (that & the fact that I didn't have the book to check--just a mental picture of a skull-faced black knight from the Lords of Darkness illustration).

 

[Warchild]

Spur Lord of Cyric (5+ ranks of Tumble required for a class that most likely uses Heavy Armor... making Tumble useless)
This class has a lot of cool abilities, but it has severe entry requirements (Quick Draw, Lightning Reflexes, Great Fortitude, Leadership on top of Tumble 5+ ranks). That's too much waste of feats and skill points.

How are these feats and skill points a waste??