What Bugs Me About Prestige Classes

[MerricB]

This is why I loved the 'miracle' feats from the S&SS classbook Player's Guide to Clerics & Druids. They give the cleric other options to use his turning ability to get stuff like - flaming weapon for a few rounds (+1d6 damage), buff up their curing spells, gives morale boosts etc (plus evil ones for those negative energy channellers). The cleric in my game uses the flaming weapon one to good use on many occasions.

Those sort of options are also in Complete Warrior and Complete Divine, incidentally (and other books).

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

The PrCs I want to have will be something that can't be gained, essentially, through simple multiclassing, and so the PrCs that seem to be more like Ftr/Wiz-plus, are less appealing to me than something more specific.

Heh - I see prestige classes like the Eldritch Knight as providing something that can't be gained through simple multiclassing - an effective Fighter/Wizard!

Cheers!

 

[Pants]

Those sort of options are also in Complete Warrior and Complete Divine, incidentally (and other books).

Cheers!

And they were also in Defenders of the Faith.

Heh - I see prestige classes like the Eldritch Knight as providing something that can't be gained through simple multiclassing - an effective Fighter/Wizard!

Cheers!

I'd prefer the Spellsword in that regard.

 

[MerricB]

I'd prefer the Spellsword in that regard.

There's a Ranger 2/Wizard 5/Eldritch Knight 4/Spellsword 1 in my group - very effective character indeed!

Cheers!

 

[Psychic Warrior]

And they were also in Defenders of the Faith.

To a minor degree yes (there were 5 in fact called 'divine' feats) but the S&SS book fleshed them out a lot more. And really what would rather have Divine Vigor or Cloak of Righteousness?

 

[Joker]

The difference between Turn Undead and Greater Turn Undead (which the radiant servant has more uses of?): Very little. 10 rounds of taking undead out of a combat (normal turn undead) is very, very close to just destroying them.

Cheers!

It's visually and auditory a lot more pleasing to have undead go *POP* all around you. And I would never get tired of it even if I can do it seven times + cha modifier/ day.


And IMNSHO the Eldritch Knight and Mystic Theurge are the.most.boring.PRC's.EVER.

 

[Pants]

And IMNSHO the Eldritch Knight and Mystic Theurge are the.most.boring.PRC's.EVER.

So very true.

 

[Storm Raven]

There's been five years of specifics.

But you don't give any examples. So we can only assume that you don't actually have any specific examples. Just generalizations that run counter to the experience of most other posters here.

 

[Synchronicity]

I'm got to chime in about Mystic Theurge and Eldritch Knight being boring. I don't give a flying fig about their power levels - overpowered, underpowered, balanced just right; it doesn't matter. I do care that they do nothing new at all. They have no unique abilities, no new powers; they just combine good BAB and spellasting or two lots of spellcasting, and that's it. Where's the individuality, the class abilities that you can't get in core classes? IMHO, prestige classes should be able to do things the core classes can't, not just do more of what the core classes can already do. Loremaster? Very cool. Gets Loremaster secrets, something you can't get anywhere but Loremaster. Assassin? Death Attack, an ability which appears in no core class. The same for Archmage and many other classes. (I'm ill at the moment, so forgive my hand-waving 'and many others' here. They're there, I'm just a bit too sick to dredge them up.) Any prestige class which does something new has a hook, something special about it. I love Spellsword, for example. It's characterful and interesting. Mystic Theurge, Eldritch Knight, Cerebremancer et al? Boring, insipid and tiresome, highlighting the worst aspects of prestige classes. If you're going to make a prestige class, for gods sakes do it properly, don't just bodge together two bits of core class mechanics and pretend you've done something cool.

Synch.

 

[ThirdWizard]

But you don't give any examples. So we can only assume that you don't actually have any specific examples. Just generalizations that run counter to the experience of most other posters here.

Isn't the Hulking Hurler the poster-boy of overpowered PrCs?

Really, though, I've had players point out when reading through some of the old splatbooks that a PrC is overpowered. I remember Ninja of the Crecent Moon off the top of my head as an example. I can't think of any glaringly overpowered 3.5 PrCs, but I havn't been buying books like I used to. Overall, though, it seems to me like most PrCs are underpowered instead of the perceved proliferation of overpowered ones.