Big book of prestige classes?

[LizardMage]

So first, I want to point out that I love the fact that Pathfinder actually encourages staying with a class for all the way to 20.

I find myself missing a fair amount of prestige classes. I was curious if there will be more prestige class making on the horizon or more trait options for base classes? Either actually works, just as long as the prestiges don't become overabundent like in 3.5.

[Lyingbastard]

LizardMage wrote:

So first, I want to point out that I love the fact that Pathfinder actually encourages staying with a class for all the way to 20.

I find myself missing a fair amount of prestige classes. I was curious if there will be more prestige class making on the horizon or more trait options for base classes? Either actually works, just as long as the prestiges don't become overabundent like in 3.5.

Well, the recently reviewed "Strategists and Tacticians" book by Ryan Costello Jr features a number of very cool Prestige Classes, so you might want to check that out.

[Gorbacz]

Archetypes > Prestige Classes.

[LizardMage]

Gorbacz wrote:

Archetypes > Prestige Classes.

And I do agree with you, I just think it's one of those weird feelings from the prior game. Some prestige classes in the old one rocked. Some...where just broken and annoying. Also, I think I'm impressed that Paizo actually made the Dragon Disciple worth taking as a spellcaster and still staying a spellcaster.

[Sylvanite]

LizardMage wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Archetypes > Prestige Classes.

And I do agree with you, I just think it's one of those weird feelings from the prior game. Some prestige classes in the old one rocked. Some...where just broken and annoying. Also, I think I'm impressed that Paizo actually made the Dragon Disciple worth taking as a spellcaster and still staying a spellcaster.

Totally agree.

Archetypes are awesome, but they're not really new...it's just a set of replacement abilities (which were around in 3.5) under a specific name. They are a huge step towards balanced building of focused characters, but Prestige Classes are still an important part of the system, especially for super-focused characters or hybrid style characters. I think all of these things are needed to get to the point where you can really build almost any concept of a character within the actual ruleset.

I'm super excited to see the new archetypes and hopefully PrCs from Ultimate Magic. I'm really hoping for a Warrior Mage archetype for the Wizard class (I know the Magus exists, but I don't like it!)

[The Shaman]

Gorbacz wrote:

Archetypes > Prestige Classes.

Archetypes =/= Prestige Classes, from where I stand. One provides minor tweak of a larger archetype (such as cleric, druid, etc), the other provides for a much deeper changes. I like archetypes, but sometimes I want to do something a little too different from the main class.

I'm not sure "archetypes" is quite the right word, though. The base classes themselves are archetypes, fairly generic and easily recognizeable types.

[Sleep-Walker]

Because of the list of pre-reqs I really like Prestige Classes.

I like the idea of getting the pre-reqs one by one, until finally between 6-10th level you can finally take the toy you've been dreaming of.

Prestige classes are cool. But a lot of the cool is actually fluff. If they presented a bunch of title templates, like archmage, high clerist, spy-master, dragon rider, etc that you could only take when you had met their list of pre-reqs, I would be happy. They could each have a small bonus sort of feat equivalent and maybe a +2 to a skill.

Because you can take an archetype from first level it doesn't replace prestige classes for me. I like to have something to work towards.