Why can't PRC's do the opposite? Maybe that's why they touch a nerve.

[Hussar]

Compared to what? Compared to point buy? Compared to what? Relative to any other game system I've ever played - including Amber for crying out loud - a class system most certainly does encourage the opposite of specialization.

Classes encourage generalization? Buh?

Take a wizard. Arguably one of the most powerful classes in the game. Give him Martial Weapon Proficiency Longsword and then take your next three feats in Armor Proficiency. Give him a longsword and full plate. How effective is he? Short answer, he's not. He's tried to step out of his niche (caster) and into another (tank) and he sucks hard at both.

Even if you give him levels in fighter, he still will suck if you try to put him in armor. The ACP just kill his abilities. You can end run around that by taking the Still Spell feat, but, now all his spells are one level higher. Or, you could drastically limit his spell selection to only take non-somatic spells. However, he still has very bad hp's compared to a fighter and a poor attack bonus. So, he's a crap wizard and a crap fighter.

If you want to make an effective tank, adding levels of rogue is not the way to go. If you want to make a smooth talking con artist, fighter is pretty much out the window. The list goes on and on and on. Splitting your role makes you less effective.

In skill based systems like GURPS, I can make a decent face man with combat skills and medic skills. Depending on the starting point buy, I could add even more. Later on, as we gain experience, I can continue to broaden my repertoire without losing out on power since most challenges are fairly static. There is very little scaling with levels.

Because of the scaling in D&D, generic characters get left behind very, very badly.

 

[painandgreed]

My personal problem with PrCs is that they often imply that the members of the PrC are members of some large organization of people with this PrC, which flies in the face of the "High-level characters are rare" meme which most game worlds (Forgotten Realms excepted, obviously) employ. Why is my PC the only guy who can save the day when a standard chapter house of the Knights of the Mystic Codpiece has 25 higher level characters according to the 12 pages of fluff on the order in the Book of Iron Spam?

My personal problem with PrCs is that DMs allow them without implying that they are members of a larger organization. Classes are a matter of training and they should be gettign their training from somebody.

I think the OP is just making an April Fool's post. Too generla and you just have a base class. There are plenty of mixed PrCs. Some gish, even a cleric/wizard combo. The only thing that is probably really missing is a d6 HD/lots of skill points/decent BAB/some divine spells/some wizard spells, and to make it balanced it probably wouldn't give you enough of anything to be playable.

Having storylines where the the PC is the ony guy who can save the day is usually just bad storytelling. A per RAW (Table 5-2 and associated text), there are most likely lots of higher level characters than yourself, and I think the only game world to have a "High level characters are rare is Eberron and that is one of the things that makes it different than other settings. Certainly, even in that game, there are plenty of more powerful NPCs, or the players wouldn't have any challenges to defeat to make higher levels. And if the world is only full of this multitude of more powerful evil guys (at least 13.3 per as many levels as the characters can expect to climb), why haven't they already taken over the wrold? Besides, the entire "You have to save the day" is a very trite trope. By telling me, the player, that my character has to save the day, you have effectivly told me that not only do I not have a choice as to what I am to do, but also that my actions probably don't even matter because success is most likely pre-ordained. So, if you're looking for verisimilitude for being the only guy who can save the day, the problem is not why the other guys aren't taking care of it but why you are the only one who can do it.

I can think of much worse design issues than PrCs in 3E. Spending XP to make items or cast spells comes to mind. Default campaign setting which effectivly doesn't exist besides the description of a few dieties is another.

 

[FireLance]

Once again, I reiterate that the single biggest design failure of 3rd edition is the existance of PrC's.

We should probably discuss this in a separate thread, but I'd argue that the existence of PrCs actually helped prevent over-specialization. If the concept of PrCs had not been introduced, what we would have seen instead would be a plethora of specialized base classes to fill the perceived gaps in the core classes.

At least in order to get into a PrC, you have to take a few levels in a base class first. Imagine how specialized the character would be if he could have effectively got into a PrC from 1st level!

 

[Angel Tarragon]

If the concept of PrCs had not been introduced, what we would have seen instead would be a plethora of specialized base classes to fill the perceived gaps in the core classes.

Not necessarily. My guess is that there would have been more 'replacement' levels.

 

[Agent Oracle]

I'm a bit confused: What exactly do you want?

Base attack advancement? Skill points? Spell advancement? Skills available?

If you answered "full, 8, full" and "all", Well, that just sounds like a munchkin talking.

What exactly do you want from a "generalist"? The ability to do everything? What's wrong with the bard then?

 

[Storyteller01]

That doesn't address the problem though. The problem is that they overspecialize. Why can't they do the opposite for the same level of power?

jh

Thing is, PrC's are generally designed because someone wants to expand on a given niche. Mage/thief, fighter/mage, etc. As described by dragon magazine, a character taking levels in a 10 level prc is defining his career (as opposed to 'side stepping' with a 5 level PrC). This doesn't account for dipping, but that's not something I've had to deal with yet.

 

[FireLance]

Not necessarily. My guess is that there would have been more 'replacement' levels.

Possibly. The idea of alternate class features was mentioned as early as the 3.0e DMG, although it would be some time before we saw examples of them in WotC material (substitution levels first, then alternate class features).

Some further thoughts on what I wrote earlier. The real innovation of PrCs was not the alternate class features or even alternate classes. The concept of creating your own classes was with us since the early days of D&D. The real innovation of PrCs was the idea of prerequisites that prevented people from taking levels in the class until they fulfilled certain requirements. Without the prerequisites, it would be even easier to make specialized characters.

 

[delericho]

I've been thinking about PrC's and I think I may have found part of the problem why so many people are so unhappy with them.

Other than the fact that there are so many in poor execution...I'm thinking the crux of the problem is that they "overspecialize" a character.

That's not my problem with PrCs.

I have a problem that a lot of the existing PrCs are too powerful. A lot of others read like "Class X with a bit more class feature Y". Still others exist purely to fix the multi-class spellcaster bug.

But my major problem is that a lot of the PrCs are just bland. In particular, this afflicts most of the classes in the "Complete..." books. (Although, the new PrC format in the newer books goes a long way to fixing that.) The PrCs in Eberron are considerably better, as are many of the PrCs in the Forgotten Realms books. But the best implementation of PrCs I've seen from WotC comes from the Star Wars RPG (with the exception of the Jedi PrCs).

In fact, I'm almost convinced that PrCs have no business existing outside of a campaign setting (though that would seem to place an unreasonable burden on homebrew DMs).

You have to overspecialize to get there and then you are cornered into even more overspecialization when you get there.

I would prefer to see PrC prerequisites be made a bit more flexible, to allow more paths into the classes in most cases. This is similar to some of the feats which have prerequisites such as "Elf or Int 17". Alternatively, reduce the number of feats required, skills required, or BAB/spellcasting required but, as you said, add a "Minimum Character Level 7" entry.

 

[FireLance]

Yet more thoughts. They seem to be coming in piecemeal today.

Where PrCs might provide an edge with respect to specialization, compared to the base classes, is in cases where the PrC provides a significant ability relatively early. Take the assassin, for example. If the assassin's death attack was structured as an alternate class ability available to even-level rogues of at least 6th level (replacing all even-level rogue class features), then any character who wanted to get death attack would have to take five levels of rogue first. Under the current rules, a pure-classed bard, monk or ranger could also qualify for death attack after five levels.

I suppose this could be seen as an advantage (not all assassins need to have rogue levels, it is relatively easier for characters of character level X to get ability Y) or as a disadvantage (more potential for specialization/optimiziation and you can still get ability Y at character level X).

 

[Quartz]

Why can't PrC's do the opposite of overspecialization? Wouldn't that solve a huge chunk of the problem?

How about simply multiclassing to another base class?