Why Prestige Classes?

[Turanil]

For me, a bunch of PrCl are essentially there to add to the world's flavor, meaning I must come with some appropriate fluff for the players to read, and of course at some point in the adventures bring some PrCl npcs to meet and interract with. But that said, my players usually don't care for PrCl. Two of them did consider which PrCl possibly take, then abandoned the idea as they were not especially attracted by it.

By flimsy i mean like the Assassin. Take out the Death attack (by making it a rogue special ability perhaps) and it falls in on itself and isn't really any more than another name for rogue levels. Any prestige class where you can take out 1 class ability and it falls apart wasn't worth the effort in the first place. Most prestige classes are better off as a feat or maybe a feat chain. Compared to feats and templates, prestige classes are just much more messier way to specialize characters.

I had never thought about that... Good comments! I will try to remember it for my next campaign's PrCl.

 

[Snoweel]

I would, instead of laughing at them, attempt to take the opportunity to get them interested in their character's place in the game world. Call it an artefact from my WoD days, but I like it when the players have some input into the way the story goes. If they want to meet up with group X and become a Y of The Order of X, why not? Why not set things up in such a way so that this particular story has the characters run into some Xs and work together for an adventure. Then the PC can prove himself to them and join their ranks. It gives the player an in-game goal to attempt, and gets them involved in the game world.

When a player wants to get a PrC, you're handed a story hook on a silver platter. They're doing the work for you. Keep in mind that campaign building can be a communal affair, and doesn't have to rest entirely on the DM's shoulders. Sometimes players have good ideas too. And sometimes they want a certain kind of story with a certain kind of goal in their adventures.

Great post.

So basically what you're saying is "3.5 dwarves"?

I maintain that dwarves never should've stopped being a Core class.

Snow "along with elves and halflings, right diaglo?" eel

 

[PJ-Mason]

I would, instead of laughing at them, attempt to take the opportunity to get them interested in their character's place in the game world. Call it an artefact from my WoD days, but I like it when the players have some input into the way the story goes. If they want to meet up with group X and become a Y of The Order of X, why not? Why not set things up in such a way so that this particular story has the characters run into some Xs and work together for an adventure. Then the PC can prove himself to them and join their ranks. It gives the player an in-game goal to attempt, and gets them involved in the game world.

When a player wants to get a PrC, you're handed a story hook on a silver platter. They're doing the work for you. Keep in mind that campaign building can be a communal affair, and doesn't have to rest entirely on the DM's shoulders. Sometimes players have good ideas too. And sometimes they want a certain kind of story with a certain kind of goal in their adventures.

Naturally. I'm no rookie DM, thank you!
My point is that they give no thought as to how their 1ST level characters, who has been planned literally through 20th level as a fighter/sorcerer/spellsword/alienist/runed beserker fits into Dragonlance campaign, before its even started. One prestige class is automatic, two is fairly common and 3 is semi-regular with at least one of the players (or at least he tries). Thats bad enough when they start out at higher levels and try to cram all these cool game mechanics into their characters. Its laughable when they do it at 1st level.
I think its wonderful when a player has some IDEAS about what they want to do with their character and has some plans for them. I live for proactive players who want to be out there doing their thing and know where they want to go. I'm the guy who doesn't buy generic adventures because i plan my adventures around characters backgrounds and how they interact with the setting. Having your characters life and future all planned out before you even play, however, is nonsense. Why not actually play and see what happens? There is a point when it becomes just a little too rediculous to even try to meld together all the players PLANNED encounters, specific npc's they want to meet, exactly what feat oppotunities they want and at what levels, all because of their prestige classes they want that almost always DON'T fit together. Thats not communal, my friend.

Now consider that a lot of the prestige classes are crap (for one reason or the other) to begin with!

As i said before its also a big problem due to my particular bunch of players who have largely turned into a group of mechanics-obsessed war gamers who aren't particularly interested in whether their characters fit. Thats not everyone's experience i know.

After 20 years of gaming and how ever many years of playing 3E since a little bit before it offically came out, i think i can spot a trouble maker when i see it. Prestige classes are troublemakers.


EDIT: eesh. i need an editor for my posts! :\

 

[Snoweel]

Yep.

IMO, PrC = DM tool.

 

[PJ-Mason]

Yep.

IMO, PrC = DM tool.

A crappy one at that!!
They do sell, though. Don't they.

 

[DragonLancer]

My point is that they give no thought as to how their 1ST level characters, who has been planned literally through 20th level as a fighter/sorcerer/spellsword/alienist/runed beserker fits into Dragonlance campaign, before its even started.

Ah, now I have had this as well from one of my players as well. At one point when he was working out his entire progression I was against the idea. After all, how can you dictate the direction that a campaign may go? During the course of the story, the direction may go in such a way as to make make their PrC option obsolete or at the very best highly unlikely. I find the idea of building your character as you go, reacting to events that happen to your character, the way to go.
But then, it was pointed out to me that most PrC's have game requirements that are almost impossible to meet if you play that way, and thats right. Having players dictate when they will meet their trainer NPC is bad though. As DM you should find the right time to bring such a character in, even if it means the player has to wait a level past what he wanted to do so. Fit it in where the game allows.

I still think that PrC's should be representing something special about the setting you play in, rather than being specilisations of existing classes, and that not every book should hold a half dozen of them.

 

[Dimwhit]

First off, this isn't a dig at PrC's or those who play them. Its just a asking a question that often comes to mind when I read D&D forums.

What happened to characters with 20 levels of core classes? Why is it that the majority of players always seem to go for them?

By their very name, Prestige, they should be rare, shouldn't they?

Assuming we get far enough, my Druid and Wizard will both hit 20th level with just their one core class. And my old rogue is 19th level of just Rogue (missed the session that would have brought him to 20th level).

I rarely play prestige classes. I think the core classes are generally more powerful than prestige classes (there are exceptions, of course).

Edit: Plus, most prestige classes just have dumb requirements.

 

[reanjr]

Ack. You know, when 3E was just around the corner and everything was new and you only got tidbits of info, i thought the prestige class idea was the greatest thing.

Now i hate the damn things. I know that my players personally are WAY too wrapped up in prestige classes. One of them doesn't even care whether its fits the campaign or not, he just wants new abilities. He looks so sad when i laugh at his characters. I used to have a great gaming group who came up with interesting characters. Now i have players that come at me with their 1st level characters all plotted out through to 20th level with x levels in this, and x levels in that. They even have helped me out by listing at levels i am required to introduce x npc group so they can get this and that. All i can say is "Hey, do you actually NEED a DM anymore? You seem to have the campaign all wrapped up. Let me know how it goes!"

It doesn't help that 90% of prestige classes are either broken (too powerful or just messy), only good for npc's (or solo pc's that are no good for the rest of the group), or just flimsy. By flimsy i mean like the Assassin. Take out the Death attack (by making it a rogue special ability perhaps) and it falls in on itself and isn't really any more than another name for rogue levels. Any prestige class where you can take out 1 class ability and it falls apart wasn't worth the effort in the first place. Most prestige classes are better off as a feat or maybe a feat chain. Compared to feats and templates, prestige classes are just much more messier way to specialize characters.

Aaahhhh. That felt real good to vent. Thank you.

Hear hear!! Those things are a bane to suspension-of-disbelief campaigns in my opinion. They are an entire subsystem of the rules revolving around metagaming. It should have stuck with the original concept of a DM tool. If the DM wants to allow a player to play one, he can introduce the concept. Even better would be prestige classes that had secret prerequisites and a summary table of prereqs for the DM. If a player meets the prereqs (accidentally), then the DM can offer up the class. Otherwise, the player should keep his nose out of DM business (as prestige classes were intended to be).

 

[mhacdebhandia]

If you have players who don't care about the flavour of your campaign, the mechanical balance of their characters, the logic of their character's history as a person living and adventuring in the world, and who abuse prestige classes to fit their personal power-concept of an "awesome char!!!!one" . . .

. . . the problem you have is nothing whatsoever to do with prestige classes.

As I have said here and elsewhere ad nauseam, prestige classes are nothing more than a tool. They are a game-rules construct that can be employed in a number of different ways.

* You can use them to represent the teachings of a particular game-world organisation, like an Order of Assassins headquartered in a remote mountaintop complex. All characters who enter the assassin prestige class would have to be accepted into the order, which may or may not have requirements other than those necessary to actually learn the skills of an assassin - such as the "must kill someone for no reason other than to join the assassins" requirement, or more.

* You can use them to represent particular traditions taught by individuals or loose groups that don't qualify as an organisation. Maybe all contemplatives are trained one at a time in a close relationship with a master, in an unbroken lineage of practitioners stretching back to the first holy figure ever to discover the techniques - or receive them in a vision.

* You can use them to represent skills that a character can learn on her own from lore and secrets she may have uncovered herself. Perhaps a wizard finds a volume of forgotten magics in a long-abandoned tower and discovers the insanity of the Far Realms through independent study, eventually taking on the alienist prestige class as her researches grip her more and more obsessively.

* You can also use prestige classes to mechanically model things which don't even remotely require anyone in the gameworld to recognise that the character is no longer progressing in the same class as before (even to the tiny extent that characters in the gameworld recognise such things in the first place). Prestige classes used to patch inadequacies in multiclassing - like the eldritch knight - are an example of this function, but so too are classes which represent a concentration upon one part of something the character already does, such as the frenzied berserker, who's done nothing more complex than learn how to lose herself even more completely in the depths of her rage.

I don't have a lot of respect for people who allow the idiocy of others to prejudice their opinions towards something barely related to said idiocy. Bad players are bad players, bad design is bad design, but that's it.

 

[reanjr]

I don't have a lot of respect for people who allow the idiocy of others to prejudice their opinions towards something barely related to said idiocy. Bad players are bad players, bad design is bad design, but that's it.

Slay Unholy [General]
You have the ability to slay infidels that your patron deity finds unholy
Prerequisites: Piety to a deity
Benefit: As a free action, you may may slay any one creature (constructs, undead, and anything without a Constitution score are immune).
Special: The deity granting this power does not like it to be abused. This should be taken into account by the player.

Well then, by your statement, that should be a perfectly valid feat for the game, right?

It's really a fine feat, has lots of flavor, could be used for a whole bunch of story hooks and probably should only be taken after a great quest for a deity. A good player would not abuse it. A good player might only use it in the most dire of circumstances or to protect the innocent. But unfortunately, there are only approximately 12 good players in the world, and none of them happen to be in my group and I doubt any are in yours, either. So stop trying to be so pompous.