Your thoughts on the power of prestige classes

[WizarDru]

AFAIC, any prestige class that invalidates a core class as a choice is flawed. Prestige Classes are, to me, exclusive memberships or experts of a particular skill or field that are better or different from the norm at a particular task. A class such as 'Mage of the Arcane Order', for example, is fundamentally flawed. All of the requirements are pretty much things the wizard would have taken normally, except for one metamagic feat, which is a small price to pay for getting Sorceror abilities on top of your normal ones.

A better class would be something like the Gate Crasher, from MotP. A good concept, solid mechanics, unique abilities that are useful without being overpowered, reasonable requirements and focused on a specialist subset of a core class.

Often, the PrC should look weak from one perspective, and strong from another. The Arcane Archer, for example, is such a class. It requires a sacrifice from the chosen entry character, and rewards him or her with some unique abilities, and a subset focus versus a normal archer/core fighter. The core fighter will be better at dealing out the damage and hitting, but the arcane archer gets magic arrows for free, and can deliver some nifty spells at range via arrow.

Classes like the Archmage from FR underscore everything that can be wrong with a PrC. How about a free metamagic feat that doesn't change a spell's level slot for a loss of one spell normal spell slot? Sure. Not.

 

[Celebrim]

I've been so disappointed with the implementation of PrC's that I ban them from any serious campaign that I am running. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the PrC's is the single biggest design flaw in 3rd ed. I also think it funny that new PrC's are probably the single most common rules extension offered in supplemental material. To me, the whole concept is somewhat juvenile, and is designed primarily it seems to appeal to juvenile tastes. The vast majority of the existing PrC's are shallow and munchkinish. They are the worst sort of example of defining your character based on what he can do, not who he is.

Either the class is unique enough that it should be a balanced core class on its own, or else it is similar enough to an existing class to be treated as a balanced variant of that class. But the idea that there should be hundreds of these unique classes each of which is more powerful than core classes, and which is introduced without play testing to ensure that they are balanced against each other is a huge departure from 3rd ed.'s strong design philosophy. I thought we were getting away from kits and specialty priests and all the other things which were good in theory, but in practice stunk to high heaven in 2nd edition?

I agree with the poster that said that the vast majority of PrC's powers could and should be turned into feat chains. If you do this, you immediately realize that the vast majority of all PrC's can be quite simply described. Take an existing core class and give it extra bonus feats. Viola, a new PrC.

In fact we could probably go further. The PrC's that people actually take (regularly) fall into two classes. Either they are fighters that get a bonus feat every level instead of every other level, or else they are spell casters with full spell progression that get bonus feats every other level (or every level!) instead of every fifth level or not at all.

The real point of a PrC seems to be allowing a character of X level to have more feats than they would otherwise be entitled too. In some cases, this is only inelegant, since the feats are relatively poor ones - and such PrC's tend to be ignored anyway. In cases where those extra feats are consistantly useful, then they move from being a mere aesthetic blemish to being full fledged breaks in the design.

The real arguement against the notion that a class like 'Order of the Bow Initiate' should be allowed to be better with a bow because it is giving up generality, is that most fighters aren't themselves generalists. Most fighters try to excel at doing one thing very well, and any extra ability that they may acquire in something else is just icing on the cake. I wholly reject the notion that a fighter10/order of the bow initiate10 should be better with a bow than a fighter20 who has been concentrating on nothing but skill with the bow.

Order of the Bow Initiate, Archmage, Templar, Frenzied Beserker, Master of Chains, and the like are just prime examples of entirely what is wrong with PrC's.

While the goal of making weak concepts into strong ones sounds nice, it is questionable that every weak concept needs to be made into a strong concept. And its certainly questionable that already strong concepts need to be made into stronger ones. Since when is 'archer' a weak concept? Ok, maybe the days are gone when I can play a character with full sneak attack progression, and full magic user spell progression, and full thief skill progression who is only one level lower than a straight thief or magic user, but is that entirely a bad thing?

More over, in many cases, that a concept was 'weak' should have been addressed at an earlier design stage. It seems virtually every splat book has a 'summoner' prestige class of some sort to make up for the percieved weakness of the 'Monster Summoning' spells I persume. But, if they are truly weak, why not change the spells instead of cludging on a fix at a latter point?

Alot of 'weak' concepts can be fixed by simply adding just a few feats that support the concept. There is no need for this whole mess that is PrC's.

And don't get me started on what happens when a PrC meant to support a 'weak' concept starts intefacing with a feat or series of feats designed to do the same thing.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Often, the PrC should look weak from one perspective, and strong from another. The Arcane Archer, for example, is such a class. It requires a sacrifice from the chosen entry character, and rewards him or her with some unique abilities, and a subset focus versus a normal archer/core fighter. The core fighter will be better at dealing out the damage and hitting, but the arcane archer gets magic arrows for free, and can deliver some nifty spells at range via arrow.

I would use the Arcane Archer as a good example of what not to do with PrCs. The raw combat abilities are roughly on the mark. So far so good. But the Arcane Archer gains both more skill points and more good class skills than either the fighter or the wizard. That is hopelessly stupid from a game balance POV. And I haven't even mentioned the saving throw progression yet...

 

[WizarDru]

I would use the Arcane Archer as a good example of what not to do with PrCs. The raw combat abilities are roughly on the mark. So far so good. But the Arcane Archer gains both more skill points and more good class skills than either the fighter or the wizard. That is hopelessly stupid from a game balance POV. And I haven't even mentioned the saving throw progression yet...

I agree about the saves, and I changed the version in my campaign accordingly.

However I don't think the addition of Hide, Intuit Direction, Listen, Move Silently, Use Rope and Wilderness lore for an Elven archer, who already has bonuses to three of those skills, is that unbalanced. Especially when you consider that three of those skills are WIS-based, which will almost certainly be the lowest stat the AA has.

You also have to consider, at what cost? An Arcane Archer has to take a few levels of a spellcasting class to make it worth his while. If he doesn't take wizard, then he takes a multiclass penalty. If he does, he still needs a few levels to make any real use of the spellcasting ability, or else Imbue Arrow is useless. A fighter will be ahead on feats and hit points, and a wizard will be far ahead on spellcasting ability, DCs, metamagic feats, and his familiar will be more powerful. The Imbue Arrow ability is not worth much unless you have good area spells to use on it. At 1st level, that's equal to Alarm and Obscurring Mist. To get Fog Cloud, Glitterdust, Darkness, Scare and Web, you need second level spells....that mean a 3rd level caster.

An Arcane Archer's stats have to be split across two disciplines, and will still be weaker at either than a pure classed character. It looks pretty balanced to me, with the exception of having two strong saves, which IS over-powered.

Now, if you want an archer PrC that's unbalanced and broken, I'd point you to the OOBI or the King of Unbalance, the Deepwood Sniper. That you ban ALL PrCs from your games merely reinforces that you don't even like the concept, let alone the implementation.

I don't want feat chains. I think they're fine, and we can always use more....but feat chains end up giving you just as much homogeneity as PrCs do. How many fighters take Weapon Specialization? Oh, that's right: ALL OF THEM. If a figher is going to be an archer, which archery feats does he take? ALL OF THEM. If a Half-orc barbarian wields a big weapon like a greatsword, what feats will he generally take? Power-Attack and Cleave.

I like the concept of Prestige Classes. Additional base classes are no easier to create the PrCs. Feat chains don't scratch that itch, either. The issue here is more of people creating proper, balanced PrCs and then integrating them gracefully into the campaign. They are options, and I like having options. My players know that some PrCs aren't allowed, and others are subject to change or revoking. The Arcane Archer in my game had to find another AA to train her to use her abilities. So did the Shadowdancer and the Hunter of the Dead. It became part of their individual quests.

Complaining that so much new material has PrCs seems silly to me. Of course they do: but there is far more in new spells, monsters and magic items than there are in prestige classes, comparativley speaking. The difference is that a new monster only sticks around for an encounter, a new item may get used up quickly and a new spell is easy to oulaw....but a new class stays with the character and is always there. That's more of the DM's responsibility to deal with.

 

[Psion]

Classes like the Archmage from FR underscore everything that can be wrong with a PrC. How about a free metamagic feat that doesn't change a spell's level slot for a loss of one spell normal spell slot? Sure. Not.

That's not the real abusive arcana, IMO. It's the one that lets you accumulate +6 to spell DC and penetration ON TOP OF what is allowed for feats (incidentally, an NPC in the latest dragon went straight for the throat on that one. Why am I not surprised? )

And yet people still try to sell this one as not abusive...

 

[Psion]

I would use the Arcane Archer as a good example of what not to do with PrCs. The raw combat abilities are roughly on the mark. So far so good. But the Arcane Archer gains both more skill points and more good class skills than either the fighter or the wizard. That is hopelessly stupid from a game balance POV. And I haven't even mentioned the saving throw progression yet...

Nope, don't agree. You must take a spellcasting class ergo must stunt your combat ability, and to really take advantage of one of your central class abilities, you need to take more class abilities. And they lack the flexibility of continuing progression as a fighter and are much more of a one-note. Arcane archer is, AFAIC, a well constructed prestige class.

 

[tarchon]

most of the PrCs seem to come in one of three flavors:

-Membership in some organization: Fist of Hextor, Mage of the Arcane Order, Knight of the Middle Circle, or..

-Specilization in one aspect something you can already do: Order of the Bow Initiate, Mindbender, Tempest, or..

-Hybridizing some of Class X abilities with Class Y abilies more smoothly then you would get by just taking 50/50 in each class: True Necromancer, Arcane Trickster, Warpriest.

I like that analysis. There might be one other, an archetype PrC, like the Dread Pirate or Outlaw of the Crimson Road, which attempts to emulate a more specific type of character than the base classes.

I also voted on the "more powerful" side. They are <b>prestige</b> classes after all.

If a class is of equal power with the base classes, it should be set up as an alternative base class (ABC), not a PrC.

I can certainly understand that someone would decide not to use PrCs in general, but insisting that PrCs be on the same footing with the base classes kind of defeats the whole idea of having a separate genus of advanced classes. Where the WotC presentation of PrCs has failed somewhat, IMO, is in implementing, as far as I can tell, all new classes as PrCs when they may have more aptly used ABCs. Instead of giving us like 10 PrCs in each Foo & Bar supplement, an offering of 5 carefully balanced ABCs and 5 somewhat enhanced PrCs would have gone much further toward establishing this as a useful system. It also would have made the supplements much more useful for games in which PrCs were excluded.

In the DMG we have three genera of classes:

NPC Classes (a little less powerful) - Commoner, Adept
Base Classes (standard power level) - Fighter, Bard, Witch
Prestige Classes (a little more powerful) - Assassin, Shadowdancer

I agree that PrCs shouldn't be much more powerful than base classes, but they should have a little extra umph to them. If we look back to the model on which PrC classes were presumably based, Warhammer FRP, we see the same distinction between the Basic Careers (base classes) and the Advanced Careers (PrCs). In the DMG it explicitly says "A character with a prestige class is more specialized yet perhaps slightly better than one without one," which would seem to agree with the idea that a PrC should generally be a touch better than a base class. Also note that the DMG discusses examples of new and altered base classes (like the Witch) right before the PrCs, so they clearly had this idea of a three-tiered system of classes in mind, NPC, Base, and Prestige.

Of our 4 PrC types, probably the Membership and Specialist types are best suited to be PrCs. The Hybrid and Archetype PrCs in a lot of cases would have been better positioned as ABCs, although in some cases a PrC version would be reasonable.

 

[Avarice]

I like that analysis. There might be one other, an archetype PrC, like the Dread Pirate or Outlaw of the Crimson Road, which attempts to emulate a more specific type of character than the base classes.

I also voted on the "more powerful" side. They are <b>prestige</b> classes after all.

If a class is of equal power with the base classes, it should be set up as an alternative base class (ABC), not a PrC.

I can certainly understand that someone would decide not to use PrCs in general, but insisting that PrCs be on the same footing with the base classes kind of defeats the whole idea of having a separate genus of advanced classes. Where the WotC presentation of PrCs has failed somewhat, IMO, is in implementing, as far as I can tell, all new classes as PrCs when they may have more aptly used ABCs. Instead of giving us like 10 PrCs in each Foo & Bar supplement, an offering of 5 carefully balanced ABCs and 5 somewhat enhanced PrCs would have gone much further toward establishing this as a useful system. It also would have made the supplements much more useful for games in which PrCs were excluded.

In the DMG we have three genera of classes:

NPC Classes (a little less powerful) - Commoner, Adept
Base Classes (standard power level) - Fighter, Bard, Witch
Prestige Classes (a little more powerful) - Assassin, Shadowdancer

I agree that PrCs shouldn't be much more powerful than base classes, but they should have a little extra umph to them. If we look back to the model on which PrC classes were presumably based, Warhammer FRP, we see the same distinction between the Basic Careers (base classes) and the Advanced Careers (PrCs). In the DMG it explicitly says "A character with a prestige class is more specialized yet perhaps slightly better than one without one," which would seem to agree with the idea that a PrC should generally be a touch better than a base class. Also note that the DMG discusses examples of new and altered base classes (like the Witch) right before the PrCs, so they clearly had this idea of a three-tiered system of classes in mind, NPC, Base, and Prestige.

Of our 4 PrC types, probably the Membership and Specialist types are best suited to be PrCs. The Hybrid and Archetype PrCs in a lot of cases would have been better positioned as ABCs, although in some cases a PrC version would be reasonable.

I voted for "more powerful" myself, in that I believe PrCs should be much better than the base classes in a certain, narrowly defined pursuit. A duelist PrC should be much better at fighting humanoids one on one than a single classed fighter for instance, though the duelist might not be nearly so proficient at killing dragons. To my mind, task specialization (along with adding flavor to your campaign world) are what PrCs are for. Those who insist that they should be strictly balanced with the base classes are kind of taking the prestige out of the prestige classes, IMHO.

Just my 2 cp.

 

[Nifft]

"Advanced Classes"

Is it d20 Modern which began the lingo of Basic Classes vs. Advanced Classes? I like that distinction better than Normal Class vs. Prestige Class.

Advanced Class merely has prerequisites to entry -- there's no connotation that it's inherently more prestigeous than other classes.

-- Nifft

 

[Storm Raven]

AFAIC, any prestige class that invalidates a core class as a choice is flawed. Prestige Classes are, to me, exclusive memberships or experts of a particular skill or field that are better or different from the norm at a particular task. A class such as 'Mage of the Arcane Order', for example, is fundamentally flawed. All of the requirements are pretty much things the wizard would have taken normally, except for one metamagic feat, which is a small price to pay for getting Sorceror abilities on top of your normal ones.

An extremely limited form of "Sorcerer" abilities. A M0tAO can only call a limited number of spells per day from the spellpool (if I remember correctly, a total number of levels of spells equal to 1/3 to 1/2 of his spellcasting level). In other words, a 6th level caster (say Wizard 5/MotAO1) could call something like 1 1st and 1 2nd level spell from the spellpool. An 18th level caster could call a total of nine levels of spells from the spellpool per day. Plus it has to be repaid.

The spellpool is nice, but lots of people (like you) seriously overstate its power when they talk about the MotAO and Guild Wizard of Waterdeep classes.