Were PrC's done all wrong?

[TiQuinn]

Re: Re: A Note for Celebrim

Considering some of your other opinions on printed PrC's, I am glad they are not being printed to meet your standards.

FD

And considering yours, I'm glad I'm not playing in your game.

 

[kreynolds]

Re: Re: Were PrC's done all wrong?

Mage of the Arcane Order, Hospitaler, Order of the Bow Initiate really stood out as being whacked.

What about them was whacked?

Most of the spellcaster prestige classes from Tome and Blood where they grant a +1 to spellcaster level was simply too powerful given the additional abilities.

How so? In what respect?

 

[Aaron L]

Re: Re: Were PrC's done all wrong?

Then there are simply some PrC's that are completely dull and uninspired....The Bladesinger and the Virtuoso come to mind.

If you think the Bladesinger is uninspired or boring, might I suggest that you didn't download the correction for it. As presented in the book it was devoid of all of the special abilities the class gains.

 

[TiQuinn]

Re: PrCs

kreynolds -

Mage of the Arcane Order: The primary feature of the class is the Spellpool, which allows sorcerers and wizards to cast any spell that they do not know (of a level they can cast) without any hindrance or limitation. It minmaxes the sorcerer class, as limitation of spells known is a key point of the class, and eliminates a wizard's need to actually learn a spell. Don't know it? Doesn't matter...he can cast it anyways. There a spellpool debt which is supposed to be a limitation but since the pool allows you to build up a surplus so that you never incur that debt, it doesn't really come into play.

Order of the Bow: Gain increased will saves for no apparent reason. Close quarters shot.....very potent. I flinch at any ability that effectively takes away a hindrance of a given weapon. In this case, a bow fired from a threatened square. The ability to take a free shot against any foe who incurs an AoO against any member of your party? Absurdly overpowered. In addition, the class gains sneak attack damage bonuses to boot. Is there any reason an archer WOULDN'T take this PrC?

Hospitaler: Heh, heh. This one makes me laugh whenever I read it. It gets most of the abilities of a Paladin - Lay on hands, Remove Disease, and Turn Undead. It can multiclass freely with Paladins. It gets additional feats every other level starting at 3rd. Plus, they have access to the same spells as a Cleric, including the two domain choices. And to top it off, you get a +1 level of spellcasting for the existing class. It minimizes any hindrance for the paladin or cleric while accentuating all of their strengths.

When I looked at the other spellcasting type PrC's, I noticed that in each case where the class gained a level of spellcasting ability, they also receive very potent class abilities as well, the total of which far outmatched taking the normal classes (wizard, cleric, etc.) To me, it's a tipoff that the classes are overpowered. They give up nothing yet gain a lot.

 

[TiQuinn]

Re: Re: Re: Were PrC's done all wrong?

If you think the Bladesinger is uninspired or boring, might I suggest that you didn't download the correction for it. As presented in the book it was devoid of all of the special abilities the class gains.

Excellent! I'll check it out. That one shocked me more than anything since it was so plain vanilla. Was it supposed to be included in the book and left out?

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Tomb and Blood enhancement

I don't think they ever gave a public reason why, but at the times the WOTC message boards were almost taken over by people having heart attacks over the bladesinger PrC printed.

FD

 

[Krug]

Tomb and Blood enhancement

I don't think they ever gave a public reason why, but at the times the WOTC message boards were almost taken over by people having heart attacks over the bladesinger PrC printed.

FD

It's one of the fave classes of the fanboys...

They're having a race-based PrC challenge over at the wizards.com boards, if anyone's interested.

 

[kreynolds]

Re: Re: PrCs

It minmaxes the sorcerer class, as limitation of spells known is a key point of the class, and eliminates a wizard's need to actually learn a spell.

It's not a big deal though. The spellpool balances that out. To cast a spell you have to spend a spell. What's the big deal?

There a spellpool debt which is supposed to be a limitation but since the pool allows you to build up a surplus so that you never incur that debt, it doesn't really come into play.

If you, the DM, allow your player to spend 5 days or 5 years dumping spells into the pool before he goes adventuring, it's your own fault, leaving you little room, if any at all, to complain. He shouldn't be hanging out that long. He's an adventurer after all.

Order of the Bow: Gain increased will saves for no apparent reason.

Will saves? Not a big deal. If you need to justify it just look at as the result of a very focused mind, which is required to pull off the impressive ranged abilities that the PrC grants.

I don't have a problem with the saves. They don't have that much of an impact.

Close quarters shot.....very potent. I flinch at any ability that effectively takes away a hindrance of a given weapon. In this case, a bow fired from a threatened square.

That is a pretty potent ability. If anything, it would be the backbreaker of the PrC, but I don't think it is.

The ability to take a free shot against any foe who incurs an AoO against any member of your party? Absurdly overpowered.

One free attack per round? It doesn't happen very often. If your NPCs and Monsters are provoking 12 AoO's per round, you need to work on your strategy.

In addition, the class gains sneak attack damage bonuses to boot.

The Order of the Bow Initiate is a balance between the Rogue and Fighter, but specialized with ranged attacks. It has the BAB progression of the fighter, but no feats. That's a big nasty hit right there. The lack of feats and the granted abilities to ranged weapons isn't that big of a deal for me.

It isn't the Superman PrC, after all. It's workable as is.

Is there any reason an archer WOULDN'T take this PrC?

Yeah. The Arcane Archer or the Deepwood Sniper.

Hospitaler: Heh, heh. This one makes me laugh whenever I read it. It gets most of the abilities of a Paladin - Lay on hands, Remove Disease, and Turn Undead. It can multiclass freely with Paladins. It gets additional feats every other level starting at 3rd. Plus, they have access to the same spells as a Cleric, including the two domain choices. And to top it off, you get a +1 level of spellcasting for the existing class. It minimizes any hindrance for the paladin or cleric while accentuating all of their strengths.

Here, I gotta agree with you. I think +1 spellcasting level every other level would have been more appropriate.

To me, it's a tipoff that the classes are overpowered. They give up nothing yet gain a lot.

Not really. Take a look ath the Archmage. In order to make use of their best PrC abilities, you have to permanently burn spell slots. So, it isn't a tipoff in every case at all. It's unique to each PrC.

 

[Tonguez]

Still, if you don't have a lot of them, DMs have to create them themselves. That's a lot of work, especially for DMs that are (like me) a bit hesitant to go mucking around heavily with the mechanics.

But this again is another MAJOR limitation of the PrC system - its suppose to be a tool for DMs to customise their campaigns but as you said many DMs are reluctant to do so.

WOTC should created (and publish) a system of easy PrC creation that doesn't require a whole 'new' class to be created, and the eaisest system would be a FEAT based system (*eg if your character is a member of The Order of Knights-Templar (Good alignment only, BAb +4) you get to choose one of the following Feats each Templar level: A,B,C, X,Y,Z)

Then we would have lots of new feats and 'organisations' being created (and other accepted or rejected by DMs) instead of wonky PrCs

 

[kreynolds]

WOTC should created (and publish) a system of easy PrC creation that doesn't require a whole 'new' class to be created

There's a set of PrC design rules out there somewhere in PDF. It's on my box at home too, just not here at work. It's pretty slick and easy to use to. I think it's called "The PrC Design Workshop" or something like that.

Then we would have lots of new feats and 'organisations' being created (and other accepted or rejected by DMs) instead of wonky PrCs

Personally, I'll take "wonky PrCs" over the crappy homebrew feats that I see posted oh so much, any day of the week. Hell, even half of the feats in printed materials are pretty rediculous. Anybody seen the Quentesential books? I rest my case.

On a side note, the Quentesential books totally rule for solo games.