Your thoughts on the power of prestige classes

[Plane Sailing]

Prestige classes can be used by organization OR as a means of specialization. Sure some of the concepts fit well with organizations, but why would a someone who is really good with a bow ( OOBI ) HAVE to be part of an organization?

Well, maybe the name "Order of the Bow Initiate" might give the game away? Like the character has become an initiate into an organisation known as the Order of the Bow?

Cheers

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

If Prestige classes are just flavor and no power... then why are they called Prestige?

Nobody said that they have no power. The point is that they should be power-balanced with a straight single-classed character. This makes them a little more powerful than multi-classed characters as it is.

One thing that I'm seeing is escalating power levels for PrCs. As PrCs get more and more powerful, the base classes get less and less attractive. I don't like seeing that in a game. I'd rather have a game where straight Wizards/Sorcerors/Rogues are every bit as effective as PrCs. If every option is viable, then the game is more interesting. Otherwise, the game turns into a "plot your PrC path" syndrome.

 

[Sejs]

Otherwise, the game turns into a "plot your PrC path" syndrome.

Why is that necessarily a bad thing, though? It's a perfectly viable goal for a character to gain membership in the same knightly order that their father belonged to (Hospitaler).

Or to gain mastery over the same arcane flames that consumed their town, killing their family and loved ones (Fire Elemental Savant).

Or maybe the king's son wants to prove himself to be more then just a tool of his father,.. someone to parade around at gala balls, and eventually marry off to expand his influence. Maybe to that end, he trains in secret and joins a professional combat circut under a false identity.. fighting in arena after arena all over the kingdom (Gladiator).


The path a PC wants his character to take, and the one that eventually develops along the length and bredth of the campaign can vary widely. How things end up going depends on the Players, the GM, and the dice.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

IMO, PrC's are fine if and only if they are balanced both in flavor and in power.

They are a DM's tool -- there should be an in-campaign reason for the PrC's existence. If a PrC is necessary, it should only be because it isn't otherwise possible to build that concept using basic race/class/skill/feat combinations.

The player's gains from the PrC (in terms of BAB, saves, skills, spells and special abilities that are essentially free "feats", as well as roleplaying bonus) should be balanced both by the in-game roleplaying cost (you are now beholden to an organization, for example), and the sacrifice of other mechanics. A character with PrC must balance both in RP and mechanical terms against core single- and multi-classed characters.

The system as such balances the tradeoffs of single- vs. multi-classing pretty well. I don't feel that is the case with PrC's, especially with many third-party PrC's that load on a special ability or two at every level (sometimes with +1 spellcasting level), with very little cost. Forcing the player to take Toughness and Endurance, and getting 8 special ability "feats" over 10 levels in return is not balanced, IMO.

I think the core PrC's in the DMG do a pretty good job of achieving this balance. I don't think most of the PrC's in other WOTC products do. Bad Axe's PrC's generally have decent balance; I haven't seen many other third party products that I thought did.

I severely restrict access to PrC's in my campaign (set in FR, no less). Consider me Member #1 of the Anti-PrC League!

 

[Psion]

You are incorrectly assuming that taking a single level (or three) of wizard is a foolish thing to do for a fighter.

I never called it foolish, but I certainly think it dilutes the focus of the character.

It is not if you bother to actually look for synergies. A single level of Wiz can gain you use of wands/scrolls of Expeditious Retreat, Shield, True Strike, Sleep, and/or Enlarge.

Expendable items, limited durations. Further, you have to consider that when you are talking about single classes, you aren't losing the simple low level feats, you are losing the pinacle of feat chains... which are typically a bigger cost than access to low level spells.

You can still wear heavy armor, a buckler and bow held in the off hand, and use a Wand of Shield or a sword as needed.

Heavy armor does not have a good synergy with the archer's class skills you were screaming about, nor the archer's enspelled arrow ability (did you forget arcane failure?)

There is no splitting of stats to speak of; you only need a 12 Int to make this work. Heck, most PCs I have ever seen have a 12+ Int because they want the skill points.

Sure they want skill points. And they want high saves on their enspelled arrows. And they also want high strength to use those mighty bows, and high dex for obvious reasons.

As far as being one note, I can only wonder what you think about barbarians, rangers, and paladins. They must depend on their one feat per three levels to improve their options. What are they? Zero note?

No, of course not. Feats =/= "notes". But they have OTHER class abilities. And rangers and barbarbarians have 4 skill points per level, which you were screaming about, on top of class abilities... rangers even get spells... oh no.

An Arcane Archer as written can easily be just as effective in melee as any Ranger.

Not likely, considering the arcane archer will have slightly or much worse bab plus lacking species enemy bonuses and two weapon abilities.

 

[WizarDru]

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.

It's 1/2 of his caster level. The repayment is trivial, at best, since it can be paid in any combination of levels the player chooses. The ability to pluck any spell out of a hat when needed is an nice ability. Having a player with a Wiz10/MotAO8 in my game, I think I can speak with some experience at it's relative balance levels. If you don't think the ability to pull a 9th level spell out of thin air is a powerful ability, I don't know what you think one is.

That said, it is not awesomely unbalancing, and I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth. You read meaning where there was none, apparently based on a bad experience with other forum members. I said this:

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.

I do not complain about the balance/relative power of the class. If I thought it so radically unbalanced, I would have disallowed it. It is, however, something for virtually nothing, and that's my problem with it. Why wouldn't a wizard take the class? For the trivial cost of one metamagic feat you might not normally take, he gets a class that gives him a fairly powerful talent. If you were planning on being a pure wizard, at 10th level, you'd have to be a fool NOT to take the class, really. If the class required some real sacrifice on the player's part, I might feel better about it...but Knowledge(Arcana): 8 ranks? A palty monthly g.p. dues fee? Hardly the stuff of sacrifice. And if a players stays with the class, that Coop feat can come in handy when recruiting other members.

 

[Mistwell]

I find the voting patterns interesting in this poll, given that the stated purpose of prestige classes in the DMG, and comments from the creators of 3e including such people as Monte Cook, run contrary to the way the vote is going.

DMG pg. 27:

A prestige class should be at least as beneficial and powerful as a normal class, and - if the requirements are high - it might even be more powerful.

And then Monte Cooks two articles on creating Prestige Classes, which repeatedly mentions that the powers of the prestige class should be at least as powerful as the powers of the core class, and often more powerful if the requirements are right. He even concludes with:

Be harsh with requirements, then be generous with abilities.

In other words, yes, the powers should be the same as the core class. However, if the requirements are harsh, then the powers should be more powerful than the core class. While Prestige Classes are role playing tools, the powers of the new class should be balanced against the entry requirements, and that sometimes means they should be more powerful than the core class.

 

[WizarDru]

I find the voting patterns interesting in this poll, given that the stated purpose of prestige classes in the DMG, and comments from the creators of 3e including such people as Monte Cook, run contrary to the way the vote is going.

...

In other words, yes, the powers should be the same as the core class. However, if the requirements are harsh, then the powers should be more powerful than the core class. While Prestige Classes are role playing tools, the powers of the new class should be balanced against the entry requirements, and that sometimes means they should be more powerful than the core class.

You mean the same Monte who said this?:

When balancing prestige class abilities, the number one way to look at it is to ask yourself: If a character didn't take this class, where would he be and what could he do? Then compare your answer to the things your prestige class can do. I like the internal alchemist a lot, but coupled with his normal spell progression, a couple of his abilities make him so much better than a normal wizard or sorcerer, the class is probably not properly balanced.

And this?:

Interesting. And when you consider that a fighter is probably going to get a good weapon anyway, through treasure gained in adventures (and now he has a weapon that discourages him from getting that weapon), and he is giving up five bonus fighter feats, it's probably balanced. Perhaps it's just this side of underpowered -- it really depends on whether the character gets other equipment of the same value that he would normally have "invested" in his primary weapon or whether he just misses out.


For non-spellcasting classes, match up the abilities gained with the abilities lost. Does a fighter-style prestige class give abilities at least as good as a fighter would get (but not way better) if he or she just stayed with the basic class and got normal bonus feats? What about a paladin's special abilities -- do the prestige class abilities stack up against the additional laying on hands, smiting evil, and other benefits the paladin gives up?


Basically, when looking at class balance, figure that the core classes have at least these areas of power that you need to compensate for if your PCs take a prestige class and no longer get them:

Obviously, we both interperted his articles differently. It seem to me that he's saying that you should make sure that class is not too good (as he mentions when critiquing some sample PrCs), but at the same time, reward players with appropriate abilities for those they've given up. In the same 'harsh requirements' paragraph, just before that sentence he says: "Tread Carefully." Indeed.

 

[Avarice]

<snip>

Why shouldn't a fighter who devotes himself to killing humanoids one on one be as good as a Duelist, and more to the point, a Duelist _is not_ merely just better at killing humanoids one on one. Quite the contrary, the Duelist PrC seems designed to let lightly armored fighters with fineese weapons be just as good at killing dragons as any other fighter.

<snip>

Actually, I was talking about what a duelist PrC should be, rather than what the Duelist PrC from S&F was. Sorry for the confusion.

I certainly agree that you don't need PrCs, but as others have said, they do provide a nice way to introduce new abilities into the game that would not be available as feats or skills. So while a fighter who takes all the archery feats would be quite impressive with a bow, he would never be able to fire arrows that phase through walls or turn corners like an arcane archer could. In situations where such abilities would come in handy, the arcane archer is undoubtedly the better choice. The PrC provides just one more layer of added specialization beyond what the feats and skills give you. Absolutely necessary? Not really. But definitely fun.

And as far as flavor goes, if I create 'The Secret Order of Saban Thugees' and detail the organization and its NPC's, is it any less flavorable that they are all derived from basic classes like Thief and Fighter instead of a 'Saban Thugee' prestige class?

I guess I tend to look at that question from a different angle. You can certainly create interesting organizations without using PrCs. If you are going to use them, though, tying them to a specific organization can be a good way to control the 'mix and match' character building tendencies of some players.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

Why is that necessarily a bad thing, though? It's a perfectly viable goal for a character to gain membership in the same knightly order that their father belonged to (Hospitaler).

It's a bad thing in the same way having an unbalanced class, an unbalanced spell, or unbalanced weapon is a bad thing. It makes other choices in game play untenable. What that means is that you won't have any Wizards in the game, or Sorcerors in the game, just PrCs.

I've noticed, for instance, that except for the LoreMaster, most of the PrCs in the Books of Eldritch Might are balanced by having only spellcasting advancement every other level. I don't see that in most other PrCs in other splatbooks, and on deeper thinking, I observed that spellcasting advancement every level basically means that a primary spellcaster sacrifices nothing in exchange for cool abilities. When I made that realization, I banned all spellcasting advancement every level classes from the game except those that granted very weak abilities.