Were PrC's done all wrong?

[I'm A Banana]

Right....good idea, really bad splurge.

Many PrC's can be used to give focus to a character, or give them abilities that are too potent to be allowable as feats. Many can break or bend some rules, and some are just cool ideas.

But a good chunk of them have bad execution...BAD, BAD execution. And there's far too many. I'd have prefered a good 5-6 PrC's per splatbook....not entire friggin' chapters dedicated to the things that take up the bulk of the book.

They're cool, but they also have a bit of an image problem...and the fact that they're hard for an individual DM to whip up, even when they were supposed to be a campaign specialization tool, is a bit wonky.

They're not supposed to be better than the normal class. They're supposed to represent a particular side or abilities that transcend the powers of feats. They're not just Uber-classes.

 

[Ganelon]

As a GM, I conceptually like PrCs. Do them "properly" and tie them into Guilds or factions for your campaign and they're nice flavour. I'm not sure I could use any of the pre-published PrCs though.

The fact that PrCs provide focus is okay, but as a player, the problem is that they require focus to the exclusion of flavour from level 1. If I know the campaign is likely to run to the point where characters reach level 10, say, then if I want to take a PrC to higher than level 1, I'm normally going to have to dedicate all my feats and many of my skill points to meeting the PrC reqs. Yes, Prestige Calsses are focussed, but I don't want my Master of the Secret Arts to be identical (skill and feat wise) to every other Master of the Secret Arts. I want to feel that my character is unique -- spend a feat on a Skill Focus that makes sense in my background but is not relevant to my PrC. But I can't do that without playing in a generally higher level campaign.

 

[Belen]

A Note for Celebrim

As a d20 staff writer, I have to disagree with Celebrim. I will admit that most people and publishers use PrCs wrong, however, when done right a PrC can be a complete asset to the game. GMs should realize that every PrC should be tied to an organization in their game world. Never let your players just choose a class according to cool abilities. A PrC should draw a character into the world rather than make her a munchie.

The other admitted problem with PrCs are that publishers, including WOTC do not understand them. A PrC should be balanced with the class that it represents. For instance, a fighter PrC should replace the normal feats a fighter earns with special abilities, add more skills points, then less abilities, better saves, then less abilities, lower HD, then more abilities.

PrCs are not the trouble, GMs who do not monitor their players nor incorporate PrCs into the game world are the trouble. A PrC can make a bland fighter into a much more specialized or intriguing character. For instance, a PrC that opens up new skills for a fighter could be very useful. After all, if the fighter wants to sacrifice some feats for skills such a hide or move silently rather than be forced to cross-class, then I say go for it. A PrC should never make uber characters, yet they can be great roleplaying focuses.

Dave

 

[zilch]

The prestige classes in Third Party products can be explained. A percentage of every d20 product must be designated as Open Game Content.

 

[Quickbeam]

I agree with BelenUmaria -- PrC's can be a wonderful asset to a campaign. Sadly, they are often poorly conceptualized and/or made use of within games.

I don't see characters who follow the path of a PrC being any more or less powerful than a character of the same level, who stuck with the straight class level progression. They are just different. Hopefully they are different in a balanced, meaningful, and manner which adds flavor and uniqueness to the game.

The problem with PrC's IMO is that many of the ones we see printed in various products are silly, banal, absurd, overpowered, or repititive. If there was a means of filtering these out, much of the player/DM grumbling would go away.

 

[Hand of Evil]

PrCs are a DM tool to help build their world myth. There should be reasons for having them in a game. They provide skills and feats that define a more realistic balanced game.

The biggest problem with them is lazy DMs, that have allowed them to become a player option without thinking of their world myth.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I agree with Hand o' Evil.

It is a shame that WotC really presented prestige classes in the player-oriented supplements. THeir position in the DMG was clearly aimed at DM's. The introductory paragraphs that Monte Cook writes about the purpose and aim of prestige classes is excellent. I've taken it to heart and mostly created my own prestige classes for my campaign world, and I'm very pleased with them. Far too many have been created in a context-free manner, and aimed more at players than DM's. The wrong emphasis IMO, and not what was originally intended.

Cheers

 

[kenjib]

I think that there is a place for publishing generic PRCs though. Take the Librum Equitis. The PRCs are presented without an accompanying campaign setting context, and because of this they are great for homebrew worlds where the DM can add that specific context and have the rules part already taken care of for him. That's part of what d20 is all about - little bits here and there that you can plug in to your game.

I think part of the problem is that WotC started off by setting a bad example in the splatbooks. Those PRCs are supposed to be tied to a game world (Greyhawk) but they are also supposed to be generic (since they are intended as general supplements). This ambiguous definition early on opened the floodgates for yet more ambiguous PRCs. They should have either followed the generic/customizable or the specific route instead of straddling the mid ground.

...not to mention the fact that many of them were silly or excessively niche anyway.

I think that better quality control in the icky splatbooks would have set the bar higher and other publishers would have followed suit.

 

[Krug]

I think there should be more 5 level PrC's rather than 10 level PrCs. You get to maintain the character's core class without overpowering it or making it too niche. I do like PrCs, but I think the standard has been uneven. Those in Masters of the Wild were exceptional because they were so different, while the ones in Song and Silence were pretty much substandard. The PrCs in the latter didn't really excite or produce anything that couldn't be done using the regular rules.

 

[VoodooGroves]

My problem w/ PrC

Fall into a few categories.

The first of which is that after the DMG, the prestige classes went downhill (IMO) in terms of balance and usefulness.

This is in no way I hate them all. Some I really like.

First, most of them should be CLEARY written to apply to only a SINGLE campaign world.

Second, there needs to be a limiting factor that applies. There are too many PrCs with a big level-one bonus (unfortunately, like Hide in Plain Site) and the PrC becomes just a tool to get what you need and not something anyone is going to stick with unless they really just like the concept.

Third, when someone looks at a PrC, if they can't in most cases describe why they should NOT take the class, the class needs to be reinvestigated. Until the later books came out, is there ANY reason a sorcer or wizard wouldn't always take the Loremaster PrC? Any REAL reason?

That said, the second issue above is what bugs me the most in practice. When characters are created, the player has an end-goal (I wanna be an Inquisitor or whatever). Without PrCs, the question of "to multiclass or not" can be boiled down to "do I want to be a great fighter but just a fighter or some sort of mix". By 3rd level you can tell how these break down...typically you know at that point whether or not the character will stay mostly "pure" or be a mutt, simply because it is more effective.

For instance, if I mercenarily look at a character with an end goal of being a Warmaster some things are apparent. First, you need some skills. Thats ok though, a high INT fighter can still do it at 8th. However, anyone with a brain realizes that that 7th level fighter buys you 2+INT skill points and a +1 BAB. Soooooo many other classes would get you more, so why would you stay fighter? Ranger (skills), Paladin (skills and saves) are the two most obvious choices but I think (don't have books in front of me) that Barbarian is a possibility (if you're NG or N) as well as a number of different things stuck away in the other PrCs. Once you make that leap though, Fighter 4 is really all you need, because missing Fighter 5-6 only looses you one feat. So, instead, Fighter 4 and then (since you now have no allegiance to Fighter as a class), 3 levels of something else (either single other class or split them up). What's worse is if you can (around 6 or so) take a few level 1 PrCs before Waraster just to get the skills and abilities.

This is the kind of thing I don't like about PrCs in general. Without a strong DM or other set of imposed rules, min-maxing is the way.

Of course, you can say that about most things, like people who want to use FR feats in every game. You hear alot of crap about FR feats being cheaty, but really, if you're playing FR and everyone else is too the field is level. It becomes an issue when you get into a "use everything" situation and hopefully that can be avoided with judicious use of the parking lot rule.