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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9618097" data-attributes="member: 6790260">PrCs were a wonderful idea executed almost maximally poorly.You know how 5e allows you to take levels of Sorcerer and then Warlock and then Bard or whatever, if you meet the requirements? Well, in 3e there weren't requirements for mixing regular classes--but there were "Prestige Classes" that did have requirements. Often lots of them--skill ranks (you had to spend skill "points" to improve your skills), class features, physiological features, knowing certain kinds of spells, having certain feats, all sorts of things.The idea with Prestige Classes was that they were not strictly better than regular classes, and instead were more specialized, or allowed you to mix together things that normally wouldn't mix, or unlocked options that normally weren't available at the cost of losing some other option. The Eldritch Knight, in 3rd edition, was a Prestige Class: by taking a couple levels of Fighter and a few more of Wizard, you could start taking levels of EK that would continue improving your basic combat ability and count as Wizard levels too, but with no other features because "a Fighter without feats" and "a full Wizard minus one level" was intended to be a pretty complete package.Further, again the idea of Prestige Classes was that you should organically grow into them, and many should be associated with an actual institution or organization, which could thus create both hooks and leverage. Membership would connect the character to the world, build relationships with NPCs, and possibly create divided loyalties or other similar RP opportunities.Unfortunately, in practice...everything that could go wrong, did. The "organic growth" thing went out the window almost instantaneously, because in order to have requirements with any teeth, they needed to cost multiple levels' worth of resources...which meant instead of "growing" into them, you almost always needed to meticulously plan 5, 10, even all 20 levels just to be absolutely sure you'd qualify. Most prestige classes could be cleanly categorized as either MUCH worse than their component parts (the vast majority of so-called "dual-progression" PrC, for example, like the Mystic Theurge, which blended arcane and divine spellcasting but ended up being kinda bad at both)...or much, MUCH better than their component parts, such as the Planar Shepherd, one of the few PrCs in the entire game that was actually better than pure Druid, which was EXTREMELY broken in 3rd edition.I love, genuinely truly love, the concept of PrCs. But I understand why folks today are intensely, viscerally opposed to even the notion of them. They were one of the most obvious and emblematic demonstrations of many of 3rd edition's weakest, worst, most broken, most badly-designed elements.</blockquote>

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