Prestige Classes for Bards or Sorcerers?

[Wolfspirit]

Hey, anyone know some good prestige classes for bards or sorcerors, or good sources for them, for a character I'm going to run tonight? The DMG and splatbooks are both kinda lacking. I'm personally looking for someone that might be able to garner information by non-mundane means, because my play group is constantly dealing with bad intel or figuring out what the heck is going on. It should be noted that by "good" I'm meaning interesting or cool, since anything overpowered probably will be vetoed by my DM.

I'd been planning on playing a cleric (knowledge and magic domains) -> Loremaster, but have been banned from playing clerics, as out of the past 5 characters, 4 have been the healer. Heck, even a rogue with Use Magic Device and wand of Cure Light was our healer once

 

[Telperion]

Hm...I don't really think that the players need a prestige class for this. More like the Leadership feat. If they all take it and then just start gathering followers then they should have a nice amount of fairly reliable people, who are willing to serve their cause, after a while.

These guys don't have to be anything more special than 1st level commoners. Once they are recruited, and they have received some instructions, they can be released into the surrounding civilization. They will work away like happy little bees, but every now and then a few of them will hear interesting things. Then they will go to the characters and whisper what they have heard into the characters' ears and receive a small bonus for being busy little bees .

If the characters don't travel a whole lot, then networking could really be their thing. I think there was some prestige class called Diplomancer, but I doubt it is essential to creating a network of informants, rumor collectors and spies.

And even if the group travels around a lot they could still build up a network, that is simply a little more thinly spread out. Word travels quite fast, when something of interest has happened. And when that does there are always people who hear...and one, or more, of those people could be a friend of the characters.

 

[Thanee]

As if bardic knowledge and bard skills weren't good enough!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Psion]

Sorcerers... get quint sorcerer.

Bards... can't help you there too much. Too many bard PrCs have all too obvious implementations like "diva" or "virtuoso". Now that's a different spin on the bard. Not.

You might try path of magic. Though it does some of the above, it's got some nice variant rules for bards.

 

[Felix]

The remarkabe thing about the Bard is that it can qualify for almost every single PrC without multiclassing, except for the PrCs with Sneak Attack and Divine spellcasting requirements. That is most of them.

Unfortunately for the Bard, taking a PrC means the hampering of Bardic Knowledge checks. If you want some way of gathering information, talk to your DM about what Gather Information does. Also ask what Bard Know checks do. If he is determined to give the party misinformation, no spell you can come up with will help you out: all info has to come through him.

Consider taking these feats:
Ability Focus: Bardic Knowledge
Skill Focus: Gather Information

Make sure you have max ranks in Sense Motive so you can try to detect either uncertainty in your information sources or a deliberate attempt to mislead you. Good luck tonight.

ps, what level will you be playing at?

 

[monkofmirth]

Try the 'Eldritch Master'

You might want to look at the 'Eldritch Master' for sorcerer prestige class. Monte Cook made it for a dragon magazine awhile ago and it's pretty "cool".

As for the bard you might want to check out the alternate bard in the complete book of eldritch might, or wait for the player's guide to FR, it might have something for yah.

Hope that helps,

Monk of Mirth

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

How about the Spymaster? Or the arcane trickster?

 

[jerichothebard]

You might want to look at the 'Eldritch Master' for sorcerer prestige class. Monte Cook made it for a dragon magazine awhile ago and it's pretty "cool".

As for the bard you might want to check out the alternate bard in the complete book of eldritch might, or wait for the player's guide to FR, it might have something for yah.

Hope that helps,

Monk of Mirth

Diplomancer and Eldritch Master and the alternate bard are all in the Book of Eldritch Might, vII, Songs and Souls of Power.

Also, Song Mage and Knight are in there, which are two other bardic PrC's.

It's a pretty decent supplement, esp. for the price. You don't need to buy the complete book to get those specific classes, although I bet the extra material is worth it.

But the option is there either way.


Jericho the bard.

 

[monkofmirth]

You might want to look at the 'Eldritch Master' for sorcerer prestige class. Monte Cook made it for a dragon magazine awhile ago and it's pretty "cool". It's in dragon 280.

As someone else mentioned a bard can qualify for almost any prestige class, including the previously mentioned eldritch master. Check out the complete book of eldritch might for a slightly different look at the bard class, you might think it's interesting enough to not need a prestige class.

Hope that helps,
Monkofmirth

 

[Psion]

The bard in my current game is shooting for "explosives specialist."

Unlike wizard, the class actually seems balanced for Bard.