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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stevelabny" data-source="post: 5866487" data-attributes="member: 9298">I really liked the concept of Prestige Classes in 3e. What confuses me is that most people seem perfectly willing to handwave the roleplaying pre-requisites but get hung up on the statistical prereqisites. I would much rather maintain the prereq of "to be Purple Sword of Pelor you must first meet the order, and prove your worth though trials of faith and combat." rather than "BAB  +6,  Combat Casting, Power Attack, Cleave" . It makes no sense that anyone with those stats can just suddenly be a Purple Sword of Pelor.  It makes much more sense that if the Purple Swords met a holy individual with a shared mindset, they would let him in to their group as long as he was competent. Also, why not do things like have multiple prereq options.  To be an Awesome Archer of Awesomeness, you need Dex 18 OR Dex 16+ Point Blank Shot OR Dex 13 + Precise Shot + BAB +6.Putting emphasis more on the roleplaying aspects and less on the stats or less on specific build-from-level-one stats makes Prestige Classes more fun and viable.  As a player, I'd much rather meet an interesting new Prestige Class faction mid-campaign and decide to join up with them, then to have to plan out my exact build from day 1.  Which is also why I don't like the idea of kit selection at creation.  And as a DM, I'd much prefer to look at a player's preferred future build, and if I think his character optimization will break party balance, be able to say "Nope, no Purple Swords in my campaign. However, there is a similar group called the Orange Blades... and then provide him with a tweaked PrC"The "problem" with optimization isn't that its "the wrongbad way to play" The problem is that it has to be a group-choice much like high-fantasy or low-fantasy, scifi or fantasy, smoking or non-smoking, homebrew or Forgotten Realms or other, etc etc.  It rarely rarely works when you have one PC fully optimized and another PC that is more of a style over substance, non-optimized build. So yeah, I much prefer the idea of PCs being able to join specialized factions that have their own set of benefits and drawbacks at any time they share mindsets.</blockquote>

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