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Zaq
2009-05-25, 01:29 PM
Huh. This is a reasonably simple and common mechanic that I had never stopped to consider.

Okay, so we all know, when you take a PrC that advances casting, you gain your spells known, spells per day, and that's it. You don't get any other class features of the original spellcasting class. That's simple enough to understand. So far so good. Also, many of the big casting classes (Sorc, Wiz, Cleric) don't have any real non-spellcasting class features anyway, so that's easy.

Here's the problem, though. Let's say you have a casting class that does get class features. You PrC out of it for a while... and then you return. Which class features do you get, and when? It seems like you would gain the lower-level class features, but I can't actually find where it says that.

Let's put this in a concrete example. Let's say you have a Dread Necromancer, level 5. You inexplicably have an elf fetish (weirdo), so you take three levels in Ruathar, all of which advance spellcasting. You now cast spells as an 8th level Dread Nec, and you have Dread Nec class features up to the fear aura. So far so good. Now let's say you take another level of Dread Nec. You cast spells as a 9th level DN, that part's easy, but what other class features do you get? Do you "skip" the 6th, 7th, and 8th level features, then gain the 9th level one, or do you now gain the 6th level feature?

This seems like a simple question. It seems obvious to me that you would have the class features of a 6th level DN and the spellcasting of a 9th level one, but I can't actually find any text stating why this would be so. It feels intuitive, but I can't find the actual support for it. Does anyone know where it explicitly spells out how this happens?

monty
2009-05-25, 01:34 PM
It seems obvious to me that you would have the class features of a 6th level DN and the spellcasting of a 9th level one

This. All class features are entirely dependent on your level in the class that grants them, unless something else explicitly advances them. They're class features, after all.

Eldariel
2009-05-25, 01:37 PM
You just took the 6th level of Dread Necromancer. Your caster level is immaterial in that sense. You get the abilities a 6th level Dread Necro gets, but as your casting has been advanced for 3 levels outside Dread Necro, it's now equivalent to a 9th level Dread Necro.

Zaq
2009-05-25, 01:40 PM
Right, right. That's how I've always played, and it seems obvious to me that this is the way it is. I just think it's really weird that D&D, which tries to have a rule for damn near everything (whether it needs it or not), doesn't explicitly spell this out anywhere.

I suppose I should have made the question more clear in the OP. While this is the way we all play, and it's intuitive that this is how it works, where does it actually explicitly SAY that this is how it works? Surely there must be a rule SOMEWHERE.

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2009-05-25, 01:58 PM
PHB, page 58-60. When you gain a level in a class, you gain the class features for that level. If you go Dread Necromancer 5/ Ruathar 3, your next Dread Necromancer level isn't the 9th DN level, it's the 6th, so you get the class features granted at the 6th class level. You can't skip levels of a class, regardless of what other class features have been advanced. Just because it doesn't say you can't skip class levels doesn't mean you can. That's like saying that a character can still take actions while dead, because it doesn't explicitly say he cannot. Otherwise everyone would take the first, fifth, tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth Wizard levels, then go into a prestige class afterward, or everyone would skip all of the odd Fighter levels except the first.

Berserk Monk
2009-05-25, 02:45 PM
You think that's confusing, check out a class in Complete Warrior called Nature's Warrior for the druid types. Every level you effectively gain a druid level in terms of Wild Shape, and every other level you gain a spellcasting level. Think of how confusing that is if you return to druid by the time the class is over.

FMArthur
2009-05-25, 10:41 PM
The weird part of it is that your spellcasting continues to advance separately from your class level after it is advanced by a PrC, even when taking levels in it, and I can't think of any place this is actually stated. The table for Dread Necro says that at your 6th level, you get six 1st, five 2nd, and three 3rd level spells - it doesn't say that if you advanced this casting elsewhere that you should continue the abnormal advancement and get the spells you would have gotten at 9th level.

monty
2009-05-25, 11:48 PM
The weird part of it is that your spellcasting continues to advance separately from your class level after it is advanced by a PrC, even when taking levels in it, and I can't think of any place this is actually stated. The table for Dread Necro says that at your 6th level, you get six 1st, five 2nd, and three 3rd level spells - it doesn't say that if you advanced this casting elsewhere that you should continue the abnormal advancement and get the spells you would have gotten at 9th level.

If I remember right, all prestige classes say something like "This essentially means that she adds the level of <prestige class> to the level of whatever other spellcasting class the character has, then determines spells per day and spells known accordingly." So that should still apply even if you take more base class levels.

Narmoth
2009-05-26, 02:08 AM
the problem gets even worse when you take an ordinary class after a prc:
cleric lvl 1, then get a lot of caster lvl advancement, then back to a 2nd lvl of cleric.
Do I continue to advance in caster lvl, or do I only get twice the cleric spells for 2nd lvl?

FMArthur
2009-05-26, 02:34 AM
If I remember right, all prestige classes say something like "This essentially means that she adds the level of <prestige class> to the level of whatever other spellcasting class the character has, then determines spells per day and spells known accordingly." So that should still apply even if you take more base class levels.

Interesting.. in the DMG, the Arcane Trickster, Archmage, and Eldritch Knight are missing the text that specifies this. Only the last four spellcasting entries (Loremaster, Mystic Theurge, Red Wizard, and Thaumaturgis) have text specifying it.

... and further investigation into other books reveals that other PrCs are missing it, too. :smallconfused:

Well, nobody's going to blame them for leaving out obvious information like that.

derfenrirwolv
2009-05-26, 08:03 AM
Well, nobody's going to blame them for leaving out obvious information like that.

There's a lot of nobodies out there..

Gaiyamato
2009-05-26, 08:05 AM
You just took the 6th level of Dread Necromancer. Your caster level is immaterial in that sense. You get the abilities a 6th level Dread Necro gets, but as your casting has been advanced for 3 levels outside Dread Necro, it's now equivalent to a 9th level Dread Necro.

This.

If you say have an archivist 5, then take Divine Oracle 3, then take one more Archvist you would have the abilities of a level 6 archivist and cast spells as a level 9 archvist. Exactly the same as your example above. :)

Eldariel
2009-05-26, 08:10 AM
There's a lot of nobodies out there..

And I'm the king of nowhere (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0226.html).

monty
2009-05-26, 12:02 PM
Interesting.. in the DMG, the Arcane Trickster, Archmage, and Eldritch Knight are missing the text that specifies this. Only the last four spellcasting entries (Loremaster, Mystic Theurge, Red Wizard, and Thaumaturgis) have text specifying it.

... and further investigation into other books reveals that other PrCs are missing it, too. :smallconfused:

Well, nobody's going to blame them for leaving out obvious information like that.

Huh. I just looked at a couple of classes to confirm if I remembered it right, and must have only seen ones that had it.