Most of the PRCs published are all about going back to 2nd edition to make fighter/mages or some other wizard or cleric multi-class that are so common in fantasy fiction.
We already had the practiced spell caster which allows a character to gain a +4 cl up to the max of total levels. If we allow another feat to add caster progression 90% of the PRCs in the book could be eliminated.
This is not as powerful as it may sound since you would not get all of the special abilities gained by those classes but you would have a method to gain the spells. That character would also loose half of his Favored class bonuses.
Given a feat that gave caster level progression +3 a fighter/mage would be possible for a cost of 5-7 feats. If you wanted to be a druid/sorcerer it will cost you every level based feat you will ever see.
I think it is a reasonable cost since you will never see any other high end class abilities (other than spells) and you loss a huge sack of feats which can be very powerful in Pathfinder.
Focused Spellcaster
Taking this feat allows a character to select one casting class he possesses and receiving a +3 to his effective spells per day. This does not grant any additional powers granted by the class and the total can not exceed his total levels. This feat may be applied multiple times.
We already had the practiced spell caster which allows a character to gain a +4 cl up to the max of total levels. If we allow another feat to add caster progression 90% of the PRCs in the book could be eliminated.
Except that Pathfinder doesn't have Practiced Spellcaster.
This is not as powerful as it may sound ...
Even if most of the points you listed were true, this would still seems overpowered. As it stands, many of them are faulty to begin with. For example, a fighter 18/wizard 2 would be able to cast 9th-level arcane spells at the power of a 20th-level caster at the cost of ten Feats. That's every feat obtained through regular level progression, sure, but if human this allows one extra general feat that can be applied anywhere in addition to ten bonus feats from the fighter class and complete access to the fighter's class abilities. Such a character would also have full access to his bonded object ability and create such an item as a 20th-level wizard, as the ability scales based on caster level rather than class level.
PRCs aren't supposed to be stronger than base classes but provide alternate progressions, ways for the character to accomplish something that such base classes don't offer. The concept is attained by giving up abilities from both classes to develop a mesh of the two. Your recommendation would instead ramp up the power level of a character. It retains all of the non-spellcasting class' abilities while still retaining the strongest and signature ability of the spellcasting class.
The concept is attained by giving up abilities from both classes to develop a mesh of the two. Your recommendation would instead ramp up the power level of a character. It retains all of the non-spellcasting class' abilities while still retaining the strongest and signature ability of the spellcasting class.
The example here would have most of the casting with none of the other powers and abilities of a high level caster. The fact that the wizard class is one which gains very little outside of spells is a weakness of the wizard class and a function of how strong the fighters have become. Your arguments are valid only because of the concept that a wizards spells are his class and he should get nothing else.
If you want to look at the concept of a ranger/druid or a cleric/paladin the power looks more like the rest of the PRCs and less like a gestalt. Even a sorcerer/rogue would be ok.
The concept is attained by giving up abilities from both classes to develop a mesh of the two. Your recommendation would instead ramp up the power level of a character. It retains all of the non-spellcasting class' abilities while still retaining the strongest and signature ability of the spellcasting class.The example here would have most of the casting with none of the other powers and abilities of a high level caster. The fact that the wizard class is one which gains very little outside of spells is a weakness of the wizard class and a function of how strong the fighters have become. Your arguments are valid only because of the concept that a wizards spells are his class and he should get nothing else.
If you want to look at the concept of a ranger/druid or a cleric/paladin the power looks more like the rest of the PRCs and less like a gestalt. Even a sorcerer/rogue would be ok.
Whether the focus of the wizard class on spell progression is a weakness of the class or not is up for debate. Regardless, it does not make my example any less valid; I used it because you mentioned fighter/wizard in your initial example, and if such a system as you recommend were to be implemented it would be exploited in such a manner.
Unfortunately, the same problems I mentioned for the fighter/wizard would hold true for the other combinations you mention as well:
- A ranger 18/druid 2 would have access to the majority of ranger abilities and access to top-tier ranger spells as a 9th-level caster. The same ten feats mentioned in the wizard/fighter example would allow the character to use 9th-level druid spells as a 20th-level caster. Such a character may not benefit from higher-level druid abilities, but he has full access to ranger abilities up to level 18, including spells, in addition to a fully-progressed and rather defining feature from a secondary class.
- A cleric 16/paladin 4 would have access to all her class abilities except her top-tier domain ability. In addition, by utilizing only nine Feats she could be casting 9th-level cleric spells as a 20th-level caster, as well as 4th-level paladin spells at a caster level of 12, two above the normal maximum for the class.
- A sorcerer 12/rogue 8 would have access to up to his 9th-level bloodline power, and though the higher powers would be out of the character's reach most can be duplicated fairly well by spell effects. This downside is lessened even further by the fact that a fair number of these lower-level bloodline powers scale based on caster level, rather than class level, and by applying only four Feats, such a character would be able to cast 9th-level arcane spells as a 20th-level spellcaster. Additionally, such a character would have access to eight levels of rogue class abilities, including four rogue talents.
The key problem with your concept is that it sacrifices class features of only one of the two classes involved, allowing nearly full class progression in the first with the addition of a fully-developed ability unique to the second class.
You compare the power level of these combinations to that of the PRCs, but what you fail to realize is the fact that PRCs are not meant to be more powerful than the base classes. They're supposed to represent alternate paths of character advancement, unique training and discipline, focused study; they're for a character that walks a path of advancement other than that defined by the core classes. They should not represent an increase in power greater than would be seen with progression in those core class(es).
Eh.
I don't think anyone should get rid of anything.
I'll just go on disallowing things I don't like at my table.
I'm not sure about eliminating Eldritch Knight and/or Mystic Theurge in particular, but I do agree that there are plenty of prestige classes that could be replaced with a couple of feats. Shackles Pirate and Harrower, I'm looking at you...
Way overpowered. Two feats for 3 levels of spell casting is well above the strength of practically any other feat. Compare if it was only +1 caster level:
A Ftr10/Wiz10 would have Wiz18 casting by using every general feat (not including human bonus), with plenty more hp, BAB, 8 bonus feats (6ftr/2wiz), specialist powers up to 10th, etc. I'd say a more powerful than a Wiz20, but let's just only comparable.
Now triple that feat.
Edit: Hmm.. heavily ninja'd.
I'm not sure about eliminating Eldritch Knight and/or Mystic Theurge in particular, but I do agree that there are plenty of prestige classes that could be replaced with a couple of feats. Shackles Pirate and Harrower, I'm looking at you...
Harrower beats the Chronicler class hollow too. Magic Items can replace it. When magic items can turn you into a prestige class the class wasn't done well.
Several people in my area really like the harrower class for flavor. When put up beside the beta stuff it really doesn't look out of line as an alternative progression for any spell caster.
Well you do have some excellent points.
I do feel that a few well placed and "balanced" feats should be able to recreate most of the PRC ideas. This is more of an intellectual argument since class balance is a very tricky job. There are allot of PRCs that will never see the light of day and a few others that are so obviously over powered that most GMs disallow. Faucian Lyricist? True Necromancer?
I look forward to some good discussions for how PRCs are handled, created and balanced.
I kind of like all of the PrCs that blend classes together. Most of the time, they have some slightly different flavor to them that isn't just a plain mix of the two. The Arcane Trickster adds the ability to disarm traps using magical assistance (mage hand) to pull it off at a distance. There's a Cleric/Ranger PrC from one of the Forgotten Realms books that has kind of a flying theme to it. You end up growing wings near the end. There's usually some twist or unique ability that comes with it that makes it worth being a PrC.
Chalk it up as yet another thing that I can't stand about 4E. I absolutely love the idea behind PrCs. Some specializations are specific enough that you really don't want to create an entirely new base class out of it. And even though the idea of the Paragon Path sounded intriguing, it was pretty worthless when they give you only two or three options and those options barely even give you anything worth while.
Even though there's a lot of worthless PrCs out there, I wouldn't trade them in. Who knows, even though they might be worthless to me, someone else might love them.
Several people in my area really like the harrower class for flavor. When put up beside the beta stuff it really doesn't look out of line as an alternative progression for any spell caster.
The class is fine, as far as flavour and balance goes. But you could easily sum it up it with one or two feats (Blessing of the Harrow and Harrowcasting).
The class is fine, as far as flavour and balance goes. But you could easily sum it up it with one or two feats (Blessing of the Harrow and Harrowcasting).
Several people in my area really like the harrower class for flavor. When put up beside the beta stuff it really doesn't look out of line as an alternative progression for any spell caster.
I'm not so sure. Each of the Towers have a different effect on your casting. The Damage ability is meh, I can take it or leave it. However the ability at the end is also rather nice if cards come into your game on a regular basis (say a deck of many things).
If you were to cover all the towers with a feat each and allow them to use the tower abilities 1 x day per feat with the capstone ability being another feat you are looking at a feat chain of 7 feats. That's a bit much in my opinion and a good point to look at doing a PrC instead.
However I do think that the prerequisites could be tightened up some. Maybe requiring the Harrowed or Fortune Teller feat for example, maybe with some need of skill points in the Profession(fortune teller) and Knowledge(arcana) skills, possibly a few in Spellcraft too, as a means of showing how the class goes about allowing you to alter your spells.
If you were to cover all the towers with a feat each and allow them to use the tower abilities 1 x day per feat with the capstone ability being another feat you are looking at a feat chain of 7 feats.
No, I mean you can give all of the tower abilities with one feat; it's all one class ability anyways (Harrowcasting).
No, I mean you can give all of the tower abilities with one feat; it's all one class ability anyways (Harrowcasting).
If you were to cover all the towers with a feat each and allow them to use the tower abilities 1 x day per feat with the capstone ability being another feat you are looking at a feat chain of 7 feats.
That I would see as too powerful in one feat. There is a reason the abilities are spread out over multiple levels. Getting it all at once would be way too much.
The class is fine, as far as flavour and balance goes. But you could easily sum it up it with one or two feats (Blessing of the Harrow and Harrowcasting).
Several people in my area really like the harrower class for flavor. When put up beside the beta stuff it really doesn't look out of line as an alternative progression for any spell caster.
We need to work out what a Fighter/Mage, Cleric/Druid, Mage/fighter, Ranger/Cleric, Paladin/Sorcerer, Monk/cleric, and Bard/Druid look like.
The ones I have seen in my 5' stack of splat books are all over the place. Some are good some are pretty poor.
I like the Mystic theurge but don't like the idea of it only being 10 levels.
The Arcane Trickster is great but the prereqs are far higher than any equivalent class.
The true necromancer is just silly powerful.
I love the idea of the Arcane Archer but think it's special abilities other than the ammo are weak (they could realy use spell casting progression).
dulsin:
Do what you want to do, under certain builds your suggestion is fine. Under other builds it's completely broken. This is the beauty of the system, everyone gets to bolt on what they like best.
I would point out that after 10 years I'm sure this has idea occurred to many folks, including the people at Wizards of the Coast and the people at Paizo, and the feat does not exist in any supplements nor in the beta. This suggests to me that the folks who design games for a living don't think it's balanced.
FWIW while Paizo doesn't have Practiced Spellcaster there is a trait in second darkness that does the same thing but for only 2 levels, not 4.
I keep seeing examples of cross class combinations but I shudder at the thought of a 6th level character who casts as a 6th level wizard and a 6th level sorcerer (requires 4 feats so it's attainable). Screw class abilities.
We have rebased the core classes to new power levels. Making most PRC classes pretty unnecessary other than for flavor. Melee classes have gotten a big shot in the arm so now we have to reexamine what a balanced PRC looks like.
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Play balance has gone back and forth over the years. I remember when a mage tossing fireballs around was the most feared thing in AD&D. Now with caps on dice, elemental resistances, evasion and the higher hit points the only thing players fear are the save or be screwed spells.
As a player of casters I never liked those since it was so rare that they actually worked as a DM I find them unsatisfying because each round the encounter has a 10% chance to suddenly end and rob us of the climatic battle.
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