How do you envision your favorite prestige class being implemented?


Conversions


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

We know the idea is that prestige classes will be archetypes with requirements that can be met at roughly 6th level. While I'm not sure how that's going to interact with prior multiclass dedications, I think the potential is there for prestige classes to mesh much better with a wider variety of character builds.

Shadowdancer, for example, had combat reflexes, dodge, mobility, stealth 5, and perform (dance) 2, as requirements. It primarily gave progression in roguey stuff, as well as a variety of shadow magic things.

Should it require rogue dedication? Simply trained in stealth and some sort of performance? Should it have mostly shadow stuff in its feat list, or should it also include rogue themed feats? Should the shadow stuff be focus power based?

In general, how many levels of feats should prestige classes have? Enough to take all of prestige feats from 6 to 16, to mimic their 10 levels in PF1? Just a handful of really good feats you could take at any level mixed in with your base class stuff?


5 people marked this as a favorite.

I think requirements should, for the most part, be trained in skills, or capable of casting spells from ____ list, or expert in _____, never a specific feat or dedication.

Their feats should be a list of feats they can choose from whenever, with a capstone feat with a pre-req of X number of feats from this prestige archetype.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

I can only comment on your general question.

I don't think it would be good if prestige archetypes would cover every class feat slot from 6 to 16 - not necessarily. It should have enough option to do that if you want but not have a clear progression that spans 10 feats.

The multiclass archetypes are a good example here: They have multiple feats for the same level (e.g. Basic Devotion, Healing Touch and Resilency for Champion all at lvl 4) and you can chose one or take all options by spending higher feat slots

Slim prestige archetypes should be 3-4 feats that leave room to take base class features Complex ones should copy the structure of MC archetypes with multiple options per level and not every high level feat requiring a low level one.

As for requirements: I think proficiency requirements in weapons, armor, saves or skills are fine and also access to casting traditions. Those are general enough to fit many classes. I would only like to see specific abilities as requirements when it is absolutely necessary.

EDIT: Garretmander's idea about capstones sounds good, too. :)


2 people marked this as a favorite.

AM not greedy, I want something simple:

My favorite prestige archetype would be Hellknight. All I ask is that it doesn't suck horribly like in 1st edition. People should actually be excited for the feats in it rather than "Makes my Fighter worse" when it would be a thematic choice.

Silver Crusade

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

What are Prestige Classes? Sorry, I've managed to forget that they exist.


If I was to do the Steel Falcon prestige class I’d probably make the prerequisites good aligned, trained in diplomacy, level 2, A senior Eagle Knight must invite the character into the organization.

I’d probably make most of the abilities low level focus powers.


Arcane Archer is a cool concept that usualla fell flat in PF1, but with the new attack scaling and archetypes they would be easy to implement

Dedication would grant bow prophiciency
Further feats would grant:
Imbue Arrow: (using bow reach for spells)
Enhance Arrows/bow: uses focus to imbue the bow/arrow with different enchantments
Improved bow prophiciency
Seeker Arrow and Phase Arrow as Focus abilities

Liberty's Edge

Pretty much all of my favorite prestige classes are class/class combo PrCs, which multiclass dedications will likely render unnecessary if not outright obsolete.

The only real exception I can think of would be student of war. It would actually be a lot better as an archetype than it was as a PrC to begin with, because it doesn't have to be limited to martial classes, and could in general just be an archetype for characters who want to be able to leverage their knowledge of their enemies into combat benefits. I would probably require Expert in at least one of Arcana, Culture, Nature, Occult, and Religion, along with Trained in two of the others. It would be a fairly Skill Feat heavy archetype, a few Class Feat level combat boosts (probably Stances, if we wanted to keep the flavor the same) and several Skill Feats building off of successful Recall Knowledge rolls and/or ways to make Recall Knowledge faster or more valuable.


I honestly believe that Archetypes that come from prestige classes don't need many feats (4-6 would be a good number)and the acess to them should just be trained/expert in some type of skill and know someone from the organization.

Using the Shadowdancer per example the dedication feat gives Hide in plain sight while the other feats can be all the "shadow" stuff as focus spells.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Shadowdancer is a little tricky cause Dimentional Steps was a focus spell and we don’t have the full rules on focus pools. If it’s possible to get a focus pool of 6 i’m Fine with it. The DR/- can be translated into Resistance like for Barbarian and Grey Maiden. Summon Shadow can be auto heightened summon monster or similar. Hide in Plain Sight as a skill feat. Etc.

I agree with Garretmander for the most part with the exception of a capstone. Multiclassing or Archetypes in general are good just being a dipping pool, and not feeling pressured to ‘go all the way’. 6-8 feats would be a good rule of thumb to go by since you can go in, grab 2-3 feats you want or that fit, and dip out.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Tbh I'm not sure, my personal favorites two PrCs were the Inheritor's Crusader and Dragon Disciple.

Dragon Disciple you could probably just do some combination of Rogue/Dragon Bloodline Sorc, and while thematically you could do Champion/Cleric (or reverse) for Inheritor's Crusader the abilities themselves were super unique and unlikely to see translation to the new system :(

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Seisho wrote:

Arcane Archer is a cool concept that usualla fell flat in PF1, but with the new attack scaling and archetypes they would be easy to implement

Dedication would grant bow prophiciency
Further feats would grant:
Imbue Arrow: (using bow reach for spells)
Enhance Arrows/bow: uses focus to imbue the bow/arrow with different enchantments
Improved bow prophiciency
Seeker Arrow and Phase Arrow as Focus abilities

the point about a 'prestige' class is that in PF1 one must be of a certain level, and in PF2, while that level limit may not be required, hoops must still be jumped through.

Thus in this case, your build for the class looks good, though I disagree with you about the Dedication feat and entry. The requirements to take the 'prestige archetype Arcane Archer' or whatever it will be called are more likely to be Trained in a bow (or crossbow) and Trained in a magic tradition, (even if just at cantrip level). It makes sense on a narrative level - if you want to be an Arcane Archer, you must already know how to cast a spell and draw a bow, but also it creates that level gate, for most people being able to do both ok will be about 6th level anyway.

There might be some early entries in the instance of Arcane Archer - Bards, Elves, Clerics of Erastil -but they are thematic anyway insofar as Pf1 is concerned. Similarly something like Mystic Theurge can be level gated simply by requiring Trained in two different traditions, Arcane and Divine the most obvious.


A prestige archetype that has ~8 feats to choose from, could have one of them be a 'capstone' that requires the PC to already have ~4 other feats from that archetype.

[This assumes one class feat/2 levels] Thus potentially obtaining the capstone 10 levels from taking the first dedication (including the level in which they took the first one).


6 people marked this as a favorite.

I believe it was mentioned that some archetypes like pirate might give skill feat options. If so maybe dragon disciple could come back and give some high level ancestry feat options.


Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
Shadowdancer is a little tricky cause Dimentional Steps was a focus spell and we don’t have the full rules on focus pools. If it’s possible to get a focus pool of 6 i’m Fine with it. The DR/- can be translated into Resistance like for Barbarian and Grey Maiden. Summon Shadow can be auto heightened summon monster or similar. Hide in Plain Sight as a skill feat. Etc.

Summon Shadow is probably closer to some kind of pet, since it’s permanent and is based on your total level and not just a spell.

They would definitely have to get a focus pool, not just for steps but also for shadow conjuration and evocation. In fact I’d say the dedication feat for it would have to give you a pool and you start with Hide in Plain Sight and Dimensional Step as a focus power.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Bardarok wrote:
I believe it was mentioned that some archetypes like pirate might give skill feat options. If so maybe dragon disciple could come back and give some high level ancestry feat options.

That’s brilliant.

You could then release it with the Dragon Ancestry Archetype.

Heck you could just redo the class as “Ancestry Paragon” and then the class effectively can be the “Dragon Disciple” but for any Ancestry.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Midnightoker wrote:
Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
Shadowdancer is a little tricky cause Dimentional Steps was a focus spell and we don’t have the full rules on focus pools. If it’s possible to get a focus pool of 6 i’m Fine with it. The DR/- can be translated into Resistance like for Barbarian and Grey Maiden. Summon Shadow can be auto heightened summon monster or similar. Hide in Plain Sight as a skill feat. Etc.

Summon Shadow is probably closer to some kind of pet, since it’s permanent and is based on your total level and not just a spell.

They would definitely have to get a focus pool, not just for steps but also for shadow conjuration and evocation. In fact I’d say the dedication feat for it would have to give you a pool and you start with Hide in Plain Sight and Dimensional Step as a focus power.

Hide in plain sight can work w/o focus. There’s a thievery skill that lets you steal the magic writing and allows you to place it on another blank paper (wizards and scroll shop owners beware) so a skill feat that allows hiding in dim light or near shadows seems fine. As for the Dimention Steps/Shadow Walk. . . That could actually get farther and farther based on number of feats; like range of 20ft per Shadowdancer feat.

Summon Shadow would be interesting with new companion rules, and Shadow Evocation would be perfect as a Focus Spell.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I’m of rather simple mind, I want the Duelist, yes yes, the Fighter’s free hand stances are essentially this, but I want a dedicated “I WILL POKE YOU TO DEATH!” thing, and Canny Dodge (or whatever) was the coolest designed simple class feature I’ve ever seen. Plus it might give a non-rogue a Dex > Dmg path, or maybe even Int > Damage if they play with the “fight smart, not hard” gimmick Duelists have.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Gorbacz wrote:
What are Prestige Classes? Sorry, I've managed to forget that they exist.

Yeah... Favorite Prestige Class seems like some kind of trick question. :P

I think a better question would be, what Prestige Class do you think could now be made viable options in the new game. A large amount of them seem like multiclass feats, plus maybe a unique feat or two, does the job.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I really like the idea of mystic theurges, but it looks like that will mostly just be done by playing a caster multiclassing into another caster.

For the most part, it should work, but one tiny issue for me is that you can't get both of the spell lists to be roughly equal. You'll always be way more competent in your primary class, whereas in PF1 you could do something like wizard 5/cleric 5/theurge 10. It wasn't a great build, but keeping the two lists about even was doable.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I haven't played pathfinder 1, but here are some of my hopes and dreams:

I really love the concept of arcane archer and think that enhance arrow is great, imbue arrow is beyond great, phase arrow+seeker arrow would be great focus abilities, and if save-or-die is being incorporated in the new save system then arrow of death could be a nice capstone. And you might be able to make Hail of Arrows more broadly accessible, if not it is also a good arcane archer ability. There is just something wonderful about shooting an arrow and it explodes into a fireball.

I am morbidly interested in the bloatmage. I like that they really embody power at any cost and could have a fun push-your-luck mechanic.

Living Monolith, Red Mantis Assassin, and Tattooed Mystic are the others that I am particularly looking forward too.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I like prestige classes as straight up archetypes in this edition.

Student of War could have some Lore requirements to access a special combat/identification action, and the rest of the features would build upon it.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Well my favorite PrC was always Winter Witch (well, and Dragon Disciple, but we've already discussed that).

I feel like this would be a more or less easy implementation as well. I believe that it was implied that we'd eventually get Archetypes that are unique to specific classes, that would slightly adjust the base class features that those classes would get, and the Winter Witch would be a great option for this as an alternative for the regular Witch.

The real question would be, would the Winter Witch PrC archetype also be attached to a regular witch path that would also be a Winter Witch, sort of like how in PF1, you had the Winter Witch Archetype and the Winter Witch Prestige Class. And you could only pick the WW PrC if you were already the WW Archetype...which was weird, but I still really loved it.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

While I have no comment on how they should be implemented and they aren't my favorite I would like to see the Evangelist, Sentinel and the 3rd one added with the Deity book we are getting next year.

It is an interesting bit of design space for setting specific materials that encourage RP.

As for other prestige classes arcane archer is a favorite. Although if Magus makes it to 2e having Arcane archer and Eldritch knight be paths for it could also make sense.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Second Edition / Conversions / How do you envision your favorite prestige class being implemented? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Conversions