spontaneous mystic theurge?

[Khaalis]

monboesen = Prestige classes should never be more powerful than core classes. When they are, its bad design (and yes several official ones fall into this category). What they should be is more focused and possibly better at some things at the cost of being worse at other things.

the Jester = This thread really points something out to me, though- the weak point in the sorcerer, design-wise, is that it loses nothing by taking a prc with full spellcasting advancement. I've become convinced that sorcerers should get bonus metamagic feats every five levels or so, to help balance prcs.

The problem with these statements, are that PrC’s from their inception are meant to be more powerful than the Core Classes. Every PrC in the DMG which are the “official” examples of what PrC’s should be are more powerful than the core classes. With that said – what does more powerful mean?

By more powerful. I mean that these classes are all specialists in something and in that specialty they gain a great amount of power or unique abilities that no core class gains. An Archmage will always be more powerful than a Wizard. A Heirophant always more powerful than a Druid, etc. Any specialist class will always be more powerful than a generalist. Also, when looking at the higher levels in most classes, almost every class can easily afford to lose its higher level “class abilities” as most classes get very weak at the higher end compared to any PrC it could take. It is the way of the PrC.

It is possible that this is basically a matter of taste (all balance, after all, is a matter of taste) and so I readily admit that, in your game, something like your spontaneous theurge- from which the right character can clearly come out far ahead- might be okay. It wouldn't be in my game, though.

Coming out clearly ahead, is also a matter of personal view. From a pure power perspective, most power gamers, like those that post on the Character Optimization WotC boards would argue to the last person that the Battle Theurge was still less powerful than any PC with a full 20 caster level even with its increased BAB and HD. In the overall scheme of the power balance of the game, the balance does not fall on the BAB and HD of this class. The mere +13 BAB the Battle Theurge gets at 20th level (Sor5 +3, FaS5 +3, BTh10 +7; 2 less than the 20th Cleric’s +15) does not come close to the offset of losing 8th and 9th level spells from both classes, nor does it balance the loss of 5 effective caster levels in both classes (each max out at 15th caster level) – all of which become crucial at the higher levels. The Battle Theurge’s BAB is not high enough to truly be effective against the AC it will face against creatures of its encounter level, nor will its Spell Penetration be enough to bypass the SR of most creatures of its encounter level.

The Battle Theurge will be more flexible, and more utilitarian, but not more powerful in the end.

JMHO - Hope it makes sense. Hard to write and work at the same time.