PJ-Mason said:
i'd have to re-examine that book since its been awhile, but i remember looking at some of those feats and thinking they were TOO powerful for feat. So i don't know that i agree that a fighter taking these would be substandard. Some of those were chain-feat type abilities that ended up quite potent!!
Did you happen to read the section at the beginning of the book about designing maneuvers? Some pretty extensive and matter-of-fact mathematical analysis went into desinging those maneuvers to keep them from being too powerful. That's pretty hard to ignore, IMO, unless you can make a case why his numbers don't pan out.
I don't see multi-classing as a restriction. You expanding your range of abilities in exhange for pure power.
To borrow a quip from the past, more ways to suck does not make for a more desirable character.
You dismiss one of the fundamental tenets of game balance: players tend to not take substandard choices, even if it fits their concept. Making a character concept undesireable by making it substandard is not a tolerable venue for allowing the choice. You may as well not allow the choice at all.
Of course I feel like I am just rephrasing what I have already said, but I don't know how else to get across what I really consider to be a pretty simple and apparent principle of game design.
Classes and game mechanics should exist to allow players to create their own archetypes,
You are playing the wrong game then. Try Hero. D&D will never do this properly and remain D&D. (And IMO, games that do let you craft whatever you want come with the additional overhead of GM micromanagement and can never REALLY deal with all the potential abuses and balance issues, and requires the GM to herd players into ad hoc archetypes as the game won't do it for them.)
not exist to dictate them.
What about them "dictates"? You aren't FORCED to take a prestige class, nor take it for more levels that satisfy your concept. You chose one only because it appeals to you.
I still maintain that they are perfect example of the worst kind of prestige classes. No back story and they don't do anything but give you something you could already be getting without the class.
No (or light) backstory just makes it that much more portable and flexible. It seems to me you want to have your cake and eat it too (you want unfettered freedom of choice AND you want rigid faith to a rigid backstory). And from where I am standing, that makes it look very much like your arguments are being manufactured to justify your hate, instead of there being an authentic source to it, or that you are misidentifying the real source.
Like the Axe Master, they all give fighter bab, fighter saves, then 5 regular feats and 5 maneuver feats. No siginifcant mechanical reason for theses prestige classes to exist
Once again, yes there is: they give you neat moves with an axe. The background is obviously someone who has trained with an axe for some reason. I think most players and GM who can take it from there.
and certaintly no background or campaign reason either.
Nobody in your campaign setting uses axes enough to develop special moves with it?
Unless your campaign setting is Axe World or something. Even then, this prestige class wouldn't likely get that job done. In hindsight, these maneuvers would work great in a style form, like in the Complete Warrior. Feat Chains are still the best option, though.
Feat chains would be too costly. Unlike the must have fighter feats (weapon specialization, improved critical, etc.), different maneuvers cannot be performed in the same round, meaning they do not accumulate. If you spend lots of fighter feats picking up maneuvers, your character will be substandard compared to a single class fighter specializing in an axe, taking improved crit with an axe, etc.
