The Prestige Fallacy

[billd91]

Chalk me up for a big meh.
Like a lot of debates about the inevitable effects of 3e's rules, a whole lot boils down to the attitude of the players at the table.

 

[Delta]

I think the word "paladin" has too much history associated with it and I cringe at the thought of a chaotic good paladin. I have no problem, however, with a chaotic good holy warrior with similar abilities. But paladins should remain lawful good, even if the justicar or somesuch is mechanically identical save alignment.

Same here.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Very good way to put it. There are deities of different alignments, so it follows they could grant powers to followers of appropriate alignment.

But the paladin's code is part of the concept of the paladin. You take away the image of a character who obeys certain strictures and believes in them--a characteristic of lawful good--you aren't talking about a paladin anymore.

I'm not talking about doing away with a code- every Holy Warrior needs one.

The details of the code, however, would vary from deity to deity or philosophy to philosophy.

 

[Lanefan]

When I first saw 3e I thought PrCs held some promise...there'd be one or two somewhat-obvious ones for each base class to branch into e.g. Assassin out of Rogue, and that'd be it; nice and simple.

Then the flood hit. Everybody and their little dog started putting out new PrC ideas, in the process ruining the entire concept. Now, I never want to see another one.

Lane-"no prestige here"-fan

 

[Darrin Drader]

It should be noted that Monte Cook posted a blog where he said that he came up with the idea so that DMs could introduce unique groups into their world and they could be mechanically different. He goes on to say that he thought prestige classes ended up being way overdone and he wasn't sure that was a good thing.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

It should be noted that Monte Cook posted a blog where he said that he came up with the idea so that DMs could introduce unique groups into their world and they could be mechanically different. He goes on to say that he thought prestige classes ended up being way overdone and he wasn't sure that was a good thing.

This would be found at montecook.com, yes? I'd like to read it.

TS

 

[Darrin Drader]

This would be found at montecook.com, yes? I'd like to read it.

TS

I'll have to find it again. That column is several years old.

 

[Grazzt]

I really like the idea of prestige classes when I read it in the 3.0 DMG. I liked the idea of campaign-specific organizational themes.

But I think the idea went off the rails from there, partly for WOTC business reasons: Players bought them as power-ups. They took up more page count than a few little feats (thus bulking up the books). They stopped trying to tie them to specific campaign settings in a structured way (thus making every player part of the market). So yeah, they basically became wordy power-ups from what I could tell.

Yep. Agreed. The original intent/concept behind PrC was cool. But WotC ran away with them and they eventually got away from their original concept.

 

[blargney the second]

Count me as another "way too damn many PrCs" vote.

My primary annoyance is that the sheer number of them escalates the opportunity cost of every decision massively. While some of that can be fun, this much almost cripples the decision-making process. You already have to deal with opportunity cost bog-down with the huge number of feats, and the combination with PrCs is ridiculous. I've learned to completely tune out PrCs when making my characters.
-blarg

 

[pawsplay]

My primary annoyance is that the sheer number of them escalates the opportunity cost of every decision massively.

There isn't that much opportunity cost, that I can see. Apart from certain decadent builds, most reasonably built characters are on the same plane, and that is really all that matters, especially if you are the only player fulfilling a specific role. If you really want to squeeze the most out of every level, there are threads on Wizard's CO board for just about everything. I personally have never considered it worth worrying too much about.