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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 62890" data-attributes="member: 2205">Well, that's pretty common sense.  Prestige classes only are useful if you want to play the concept that the designer came up with.  And I still don't understand why you have a problem with ideas existing in a vacuum, or being used "right."  That seems to contradict another point you make in your argument later on (see below).I disagreed with what I thought you meant, even though it wasn't very clear that that is indeed what you meant.  I believe I said as much in my own post, although you might have snipped that part in your reply.Yes, of course they do.  Prestige classes give you one way of utilizing a new ability -- by multiclassing into the prestige class.  And here's the apparent inconsistency in your argument as I understand it.  You don't want abilities seperated from prestige classes because you are worried that they will be too easily abused and the balance of the game will be upset.  Yet you advocate just changing prestige classes to fit your concept and pooh-pooh those who say that they're reluctant to really dive into the rules and change them because of balance issues.  And then in the third paragraph quoted above you seem to be saying that taking abilities out of published prestige classes and writing your own take on it is no more different then taking elements out of a published module and adding it to your own adventure.  I certainly don't agree with that, a class-less D&D needs to have guidelines on how to implement class abilities; what prereqs will make it balanced etc.  If you are concerned about balance, then you really shouldn't mess with the prestige classes much at all, because you run the very real risk of jeopardizing the balance.  If you're not, and you think the classes should be easily tinkered with, then I don't understand what your problem with class-less D&D is, as that is the next logical step from that situation.Invoking the ability to tinker with and write your own classes isn't really fair to the argument; of course I can always do that.  The point is, I would like a system that allowed me to do so without having to figure all of that out on my own; I would like a system that encouraged me to tinker rather than spelling out how everything should be done.  Granted, part of the reason I want this isn't that the game itself doesn't allow you to tinker, but that the player base in general doesn't take too kindly to it.  Therefore, if there were rules published in a future supplement that allowed this type of customization and gave solid guidelines on how to do it "properly" I'd be happy, and I'd have a good chance of getting my players, or my DM (depending on what the case may be) to adopt the changes.Ah, you didn't snip it after all, there it is right there.  As I said, I disagreed with what I thought you were saying, even if I wan't sure that was what you were saying.  Now, that I understand you, I agree, the prestige classes have value.  I never said they didn't.  However, the same abilities could be presented in a way -- given a class-less system -- that they had even more value.  Or rather, that they didn't have a ton of inherent waste in concepts married to the concept I like, making the prestige class need to be totally revamped for someone who likes the idea but not the implementation.  Classes have a bad ratio of fat to value unless you want to play the exact concept the designer was thinking of.Alright, that's been your experience.  I've never played a point-based game that produced any combinations that are more illogical than those which are presented in the PHB in the form of classes.  If that has been your experience, I can see much of your reluctance to a class-less variant of D&D.  However, my experience is that the classes are just as illogical in their skill-bundling, unless you play the exact concept the class was designed for without any variation whatsoever in concept.  I also submit that "illogical" is very subjective.  My own list of skills, feats and whatever, if I were a character, would probably be very illogical.  That doesn't make me a badly designed character.EDIT: I may be a badly designed character, but not because my set of skills is "illogical."  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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