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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8992157" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>When Monte Cook announced and described the concept of a Prestige Class and why he wanted to include them in core 3.0, I was intrigued by the concept. It was obviously based on something important to his homebrew game, which were the fronts and factions that he liked to describe and give special powers, and which a PC could also join to access these special powers. And that sounded potentially interesting. </p><p></p><p>The example PRCs in the DMG were not all that problematic and were somewhat interesting, but they notably lacked at some level the flavor and color that Monte described as the impetus for the rules.</p><p></p><p>By the time the class splatbooks came out, I was having strong misgivings about the entire concept of PRCs because it was increasingly clear that PrCs weren't be written for the purpose they were pitched or intended to have. I started thinking about all the different things I could see the designers using PrCs for, and those purposes were just all over the place - fix problems in multi-classing, provide for character concepts the base character creation rules didn't provide for, provide for balancing character concepts that would be weak in base character creation rules, provide for things that looked something like NPC classes where balance wasn't being considered, provide for concepts similar to the old specialty priest, and meta concepts like increase the attractiveness of the book to perspective players who weren't GMs (which often involved making an existing strong concept even stronger). </p><p></p><p>And well, I immediately revolted against that. My first house rules for 3.0 essentially were just a list of which PRCs I would allow in the campaign, but the more started refining that list and the more experience I had with players choosing PRCs the less I liked them.</p><p></p><p>And so I banned all PrCs from my table and it was probably the best decision that I made running 3e. PrCs were the source of the majority of things that were wrong with 3e. </p><p></p><p>You note things like:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And you are right, it's intentional. It's a recognition that the multiclassing rules as written strongly discourage 3/4 BAB classes from multiclassing with other 3/4 BAB classes because you lose a BAB in your progression you don't regain when you do so. So to make it actually attractive to multiclass into a 3/4 BAB PRC, you had to make a special exception to the normal class for BAB. </p><p></p><p>The game actually gets much better if you remove PrCs and then start altering the base chargen rules to address all the problems that PrCs were trying to address.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8992157, member: 4937"] When Monte Cook announced and described the concept of a Prestige Class and why he wanted to include them in core 3.0, I was intrigued by the concept. It was obviously based on something important to his homebrew game, which were the fronts and factions that he liked to describe and give special powers, and which a PC could also join to access these special powers. And that sounded potentially interesting. The example PRCs in the DMG were not all that problematic and were somewhat interesting, but they notably lacked at some level the flavor and color that Monte described as the impetus for the rules. By the time the class splatbooks came out, I was having strong misgivings about the entire concept of PRCs because it was increasingly clear that PrCs weren't be written for the purpose they were pitched or intended to have. I started thinking about all the different things I could see the designers using PrCs for, and those purposes were just all over the place - fix problems in multi-classing, provide for character concepts the base character creation rules didn't provide for, provide for balancing character concepts that would be weak in base character creation rules, provide for things that looked something like NPC classes where balance wasn't being considered, provide for concepts similar to the old specialty priest, and meta concepts like increase the attractiveness of the book to perspective players who weren't GMs (which often involved making an existing strong concept even stronger). And well, I immediately revolted against that. My first house rules for 3.0 essentially were just a list of which PRCs I would allow in the campaign, but the more started refining that list and the more experience I had with players choosing PRCs the less I liked them. And so I banned all PrCs from my table and it was probably the best decision that I made running 3e. PrCs were the source of the majority of things that were wrong with 3e. You note things like: And you are right, it's intentional. It's a recognition that the multiclassing rules as written strongly discourage 3/4 BAB classes from multiclassing with other 3/4 BAB classes because you lose a BAB in your progression you don't regain when you do so. So to make it actually attractive to multiclass into a 3/4 BAB PRC, you had to make a special exception to the normal class for BAB. The game actually gets much better if you remove PrCs and then start altering the base chargen rules to address all the problems that PrCs were trying to address. [/QUOTE]
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