Prestige Classes - A Crutch?

[ciaran00]

If someone made that sort of comment to me I would point out to them that a true gamer would never use any books printed by other people - after all, theylre just a crutch for those without imagination.

You're right, since there are no degrees of dependence on roleplaying material. As soon as I open a book, I am the exact same DM as someone whose campaign world and a printed book are one and the same. Similarly, people who play with only core classes and people who allow PrCs are the same... they playing with... classes! Excellent point.

ciaran

 

[Psion]

Maybe I should go back to the other thread for this discussion, but out of curiousity, what is a good enough justification to you? Most of my justification is based on flavor, really. But I do think there are a very few glaring holes in terms of universal archetypes in the D&D core rules.

I would say that most of my justification are based on flavor, campaign appropriateness, fundamental broadness of the archetype, and (in some cases) lack of significant overlap with existing classes. I find this a lot easier to justify spellcasters under these criteria than non-spellcasters.

As an example, I find the duellist a perfectly acceptable solution to the swashbuckler archetype, unless I was in a campaign specifically designed such that is was a central core archetype instead of just a spin. Like my south seas campaign, where armor is explicitly discouraged.