Powerful casting PrCs with ridiculous skill prereqs? [3.5]

[gomipile]

Can people list some strong casting prestige classes that have skill requirements difficult to meet for (most of, at least) the casting classes which would benefit the prestige class?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Fleshwarper in Lords of Madness. It requires "Summon familiar class feature" so it's for arcane spellcasters, but it requires Heal 8 ranks and the feat Graft Flesh which requires Heal 10 ranks. Luckily Graft Flesh is an item creation feat, so you could go something like Wizard 4/ Master Specialist 1/ Divine Oracle 1/ Wizard 1/ Fleshwarper, using your Wizard 5 feat to get that. You'd need to buy max cross-class ranks in Heal at levels 1-5, spend all your Divine Oracle points on it, and put enough cross-class points in at Wizard 5 to get 10 ranks. On top of that you'll need Kn: Arcana 8 ranks and Kn: Religion 8 ranks for the build, and of course Concentration and Spellcraft are necessary.

Seeker of the Misty Isle in Complete Divine requires Survival 8 ranks, and it grants the Travel domain at the first level so you won't want to use that to get it as a class skill. Ruathar in Races of the Wild is typically used to gain that as a class skill to qualify.

It's actually not very difficult for any given character to meet the skill prerequisites of a given prestige class. It just takes a little bit of multiclassing or maybe a feat or domain, and you can typically do it without losing any spellcasting.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Fleshwarper in Lords of Madness. It requires "Summon familiar class feature" so it's for arcane spellcasters, but it requires Heal 8 ranks and the feat Graft Flesh which requires Heal 10 ranks. Luckily Graft Flesh is an item creation feat, so you could go something like Wizard 4/ Master Specialist 1/ Divine Oracle 1/ Wizard 1/ Fleshwarper, using your Wizard 5 feat to get that. You'd need to buy max cross-class ranks in Heal at levels 1-5, spend all your Divine Oracle points on it, and put enough cross-class points in at Wizard 5 to get 10 ranks. On top of that you'll need Kn: Arcana 8 ranks and Kn: Religion 8 ranks for the build, and of course Concentration and Spellcraft are necessary.

Seeker of the Misty Isle in Complete Divine requires Survival 8 ranks, and it grants the Travel domain at the first level so you won't want to use that to get it as a class skill. Ruathar in Races of the Wild is typically used to gain that as a class skill to qualify.

It's actually not very difficult for any given character to meet the skill prerequisites of a given prestige class. It just takes a little bit of multiclassing or maybe a feat or domain, and you can typically do it without losing any spellcasting.

The worst part about Fleshwarper is how, despite having Graft Flesh as a required feat, the class itself has Heal as a required skill explicitly of only 5 ranks.:smallmad:

[Epsilon Rose]

The worst part about Fleshwarper is how, despite having Graft Flesh as a required feat, the class itself has Heal as a required skill explicitly of only 5 ranks.:smallmad:

Perhaps they were trying to counter the off off chance that you got it as a class feature or racial thing from something else?...
Does anything else give graft flesh while ignoring prereqs?

[Curmudgeon]

Contemplative (Complete Divine) advances divine spellcasting and grants a bunch of extra stuff, including bonus domains. It requires Knowledge (religion) 13 ranks.

[sreservoir]

(this can make it somewhat annoying to find that favored souls don't get Knowledge (religion).)

[Runestar]

Just about every spellcasting prc with ranks in knowledge other than arcana, since sorcs don't have them as a class skill.

Also, heirophant has knowledge: religion 15 ranks, which is not a class skill for a druid. :smallfrown:

[Thurbane]

Fiend Blooded (HoH) - 9/10 casting, some nice abilities (extra spells, stat boosts, template for your familiar). Has a fairly high Knowledge (the planes) req...which is odd, because all the fluff of the class specifically states that it is designed for sorcerers. Without dips, feats or sub-levels, there’s no way a sorcerer can meet the reqs in time to take all of the class levels. It is strongly suspected that the author had assumed K(tP) was a class skill for sorcerers, obviously without checking the books - the sample character does not meet the reqs (surprise, surprise). It's a shame - it's a great PrC, both crunch and fluff wise.

[Akal Saris]

Perhaps they were trying to counter the off off chance that you got it as a class feature or racial thing from something else?...
Does anything else give graft flesh while ignoring prereqs?

No, they definitely screwed up and forgot the ranks required for Craft (Graft). The 'entering the class' section states that adepts can do so at level 6, which is impossible given the heal ranks required.

Sublime Chord has a ridiculous 45 skill points required, and some of them (13R in listen, 6R in Profession (Astrology) have marginal uses at best.

[Claudius Maximus]

Listen is a decent skill, and I think it might actually make sense since IIRC the class is about finding the sublime music of the universe.