Have you added a Prestige Class to a Monster (anything with Racial HD) without a regular class? What was it like?

[Reksew_Trebla]

So as the title says, I'm thinking of looking through the Prestige Classes and seeing if any of them would work nicely with monsters, without adding any normal class levels first.

This works because a lot of the Prestige Classes only have something like a minimum skill rank requirement to take the class, and due to having Racial HD, monsters can sometimes meet these prerequisites without taking regular class levels first.

However, I wanted to hear stories of this first, to see if maybe others have already done this, and how it went for them.

[Here4daFreeSwag]

Sounds like it wouldn't be all that different from giving a monster some levels in a character class in theory- although in this case, it'd be more of a focused character class of prestige, so to speak. ;)

[Belafon]

Sort of. I have only done this for single-encounter NPC enemies, not for a recurring character. And when you are doing that it is much easier to just give them one or two abilities than the whole class.

For example I gave a Nabasu an ability that was essentially the Eldritch Knight's Spell Critical. Didn't give it any class levels or anything, just that one ability. It probably made it CR+1, could have been +2 or more if it had a high-crit threat weapon and/or Improved Critical. (I didn't actually write down a CR. It was intended to be a very challenging fight, and was appropriate for that party.)

That's what I'd recommend for NPCs. Actually adding prestige class levels to an enemy monster is a temptation to attempt to "game the system" (see recent thread about CRs of monsters with class levels). Way more work than it is worth if you are just trying to come up with a fair fight for your players. If you are thinking of letting a player have a character with prestige levels... I'm leery of the power possibilities but any campaign that allows monster PCs is already playing in a high-power, high-GM adjudication environment anyway. Go for it and adjust as necessary.

[Dragonchess Player]

Occasionally.

Sometimes you have to adjust the "standard" creature skills and feats to meet the requirements, however.

Adding levels of esoteric knight to one of the esoteric dragons ("An esoteric dragon knows and casts psychic spells as a psychic... of the level indicated in its specific description"), for example, provides a way to adjust the CR in a more granular way than age categories or templates. Or a kyton with levels in pain taster (replace Alertness, Blind-fight, Improved Initiative with Diehard, Endurance, Great Fortitude; and skill ranks in Craft (Blacksmithing) with Heal)...

[Java Man]

There was an aludemon with a couple assassin levels in a module I inserted into my Shattered Star campaign (can't recall the name right now), was a fun adversary. If I were statting things from scratch I'd consider adding Loremaster to a dragon or llilend.