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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Votan" data-source="post: 3337860" data-attributes="member: 18680">"Should Prestige Classes Advance Spellcasting?"This is something that I have been thinking about for a while.  Consider:Wizards and Sorcerers are weak at low levels and strong at high levels.  Prestige classes typically involve trading weakness at low levels (investing in suboptimal skills and feats) in exchange for power later on.  Therefore, they tend to accelerate the power curve of the arcane casters.  Melee classes, on the other hand, start out strong and weaken relative to casters later on.  They are the ideal classes to benefit from this sort of strategy.  Further, different casters have different degrees of strength.  +1 caster level advances a Ranger, a Bard and a Cleric in very different degrees of strength.  This means that, without an awkward prerequisite list, caster advancing prestige classes need to be balanced against the full, nine-level casters and are, therefore, suboptimal for partial casters of all kinds.  Early on this was a patch for certain concepts (Fighter/mage, Wizard/Cleric) but, at this point, realistic options exist for these caster combinations (Duskblade Class, Arcane Disciple Feat) that make this less imperative.  I am not arguing against classes with their own caster properties (like the Vigilante from Complete Adventurer or the Divine Crusader from the Complete Divine).  This is an excellent way to go because it can be carefully and internally balanced.  Now, it is true that this would mean arcane casters and clerics would rarely take prestige classes.  But this is good for the game at two levels.  One, it means full casters would need to focus on their casting to be the best at it.  Two, it would flatten the power curve of the full casters slightly. Meanwhile, skilled and melee classes could continue to collect prestige classes which would help with the power lag that they see at higher levels.  Finally, the worst of the prestige class abuses involve massive boosts to casters (Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, Incantrix, etc . . .) and we would not have to worry about them.  The argument that further full casters would take prestige classes is spurious because that would part of the point -- prestige classes tend to accelerate power (on average, few people take a class to become weaker) and the full casters do not need to be strengthened at high  levels.It's simple, it balances the game better, it removes a series of awkward PrC balance problems and it makes intuitive sense (to be the best as casting it must be your absolute focus).  What do others think?EDIT: A mistake in phrasing was caught</blockquote>

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