Weakest PrCs

[Kurashu]

True Necromancer.

You get way behind on caster levels. It's Mystic Theurge. Except it sucks. You need a crap domain. You really shouldn't take this PrC.

 

[Rystil Arden]

horizon walker seems pretty lame... which is too bad because flavorwise it would be great for my cleric of Fharlanghn.

Horizon Walker is actually pretty cool. Dimension Door every 1d4 rounds is pretty awesome if you make it to level 6.

 

[Hammerhead]

Combat Trapsmith.

 

[pawsplay]

The absolute winner will always be the Metamind. It's a psion that delays power access for ... the ability to have less power points. Even under ideal circumstances, using their entire minute of free manifesting, they cannot equal the power output of a straightup psion, and that's without taking feats that boost pp. Also, their ability to use a psicrystal as an additional battery is sucktastic, since a power can only use one source of pp, which means it could only launch low level, unaugmented powers and hence is rather lame as a power reserve.

That Tactical Soldier (MH) foregoes fighter feats for what are essentially strange fighter feats, and is generally less powerful than, say, the Ronin or Knight Protector.

The Kensai. It's a non-casting fighter PrC with medium BAB progression. And it has only two buffs; a discount on enhancing a weapon, and a Str boost (which is nice, but barely covers the BAB loss and is nothing compared to a Cleric with the Strength Domain).

I forget the name, but there's a wild magic/chaos sorcerer PrC out there somewhere... with a formidable Knowledge (the planes) requirement. Doh!

 

[Drowbane]

Perhaps not "weak" mechanically, I've long considered the 3.X Assassin PrC to be a weak way to go about the Archetype. Assassins need magic to do thier job? WTF?

IMC, I give Rogues deathattack as a mid-high level Rogue Special Ability. Yay me!

<snip>

My vote for weak PrC is: 3.5e Alienist. It's a summoner PrC which reduces the utility, flexibility and strength of your summoned critters. You take massive RP penalties, and in trade, you gain Toughness. Twice.

Cheers, -- N

Nifft, have you done a rewrite for the Alienist yet? I think you could save this sorry PrC from itself.

 

[shilsen]

Nifft, have you done a rewrite for the Alienist yet? I think you could save this sorry PrC from itself.

I'm not Nifft, but I've got an alienist in my campaign, which is a significantly high-powered one, and the following changes have made it very viable:

* Alienists get to summon the non-templated creatures on the Summon Monster lists too.

* Alienists get Improved Toughness instead of Toughness.

 

[James McMurray]

The absolute winner will always be the Metamind. It's a psion that delays power access for ... the ability to have less power points. Even under ideal circumstances, using their entire minute of free manifesting, they cannot equal the power output of a straightup psion, and that's without taking feats that boost pp. Also, their ability to use a psicrystal as an additional battery is sucktastic, since a power can only use one source of pp, which means it could only launch low level, unaugmented powers and hence is rather lame as a power reserve.

Metamainds can be scary as hell at epic levels.

 

[Piratecat]

Metamainds can be scary as hell at epic levels.

Ah, but psions can be scary as hell at epic levels -- and if you run the numbers, I believe a metamind is always mechanically inferior to a psion. The class has some design issues.

 

[Thanee]

Arcane Archer from the more common ones. It gets some nifty abilities which would combine well with spellcasting, but gets no spellcasting. And its main ability is easily rivaled by a single 3rd-level spell.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Mistwell]

The Kensai. It's a non-casting fighter PrC with medium BAB progression. And it has only two buffs; a discount on enhancing a weapon, and a Str boost (which is nice, but barely covers the BAB loss and is nothing compared to a Cleric with the Strength Domain).

I disagree on Kensai. Built right, the Kensai can deal out wicked high amounts of damage.

In fact, this prestige class even got it's own power gamers article for being OVER powered:

http://www.paladinworks.com/features/articles/kensai.html