The Power of Versatility (or lack thereof)

[Mjollnir075]

Playgrounders,

I have been tossing an idea back and forth recently. Could it be a viable option to have a theurge-esqe PrC, but have it progress 3 different classes effectively?

To give a little backstory to this idea..

I have been working on a homebrew "Players Guide" if you will, utilizing some ideas from both here and the WoTC boards, but with a personal spin on in with changes based on preference of my friends and people I game with. Well, the other day there was a thread on here about Theurging different classes, and it got me thinking..

Could you theurge 3 classes effectively? The name of the game here definately wouldn't be powergaming or optimizing, but trading out that serious game-breaking power at endgame for powerful abilities that draw from 3 distinct classes.

My question for you, fellow Playgrounders, if you could Theurge 3 classes into a 10 level PrC, and give them class features that were both flavorful and powerful enough to at least keep them viable late game, what would you do?


Some ideas I already had were things like..
- Druid/Barbarian/Totemist: Focus on wildshape
- Cleric/Bard/Barbarian: Inspiring zealotry into followers, granting them power

[limejuicepowder]

Hmm...my first thought is "no," and here's why:

From an in-game perspective, the classes already have a great deal of overlap. For example, a half-orc who lives in the hills, fighting for his survival is a possible barbarian, ranger, fighter, or scout. Throw in ACF's, like wilderness rogue, and there's even more possibilities. Also consider that a level 10 wizard has a base attack of +5. As long as he didn't completely dump str, compared to a commoner (which is the recommend class of the average conscript soldier), he's a phenomenal swordsman, able to cut down swaths of men with ease.

My point is that combining the advancement of 3 classes seems way too much of a meta-game idea. "Fighter" and "caster" are very distinct and there are classes to advance both, same with the two broad types of casting (divine and arcane). But breaking it down further than that seems artificial -

"We are the knights of the screaming wind, who seek to advance our arcane mastery, rage-full brand of combat, and incredible stealth." (barb wizard rogue)

Seems a little off to me. Also, it has the potential to be very imbalanced.

[Mjollnir075]

Hmm...my first thought is "no," and here's why:

From an in-game perspective, the classes already have a great deal of overlap. For example, a half-orc who lives in the hills, fighting for his survival is a possible barbarian, ranger, fighter, or scout. Throw in ACF's, like wilderness rogue, and there's even more possibilities. Also consider that a level 10 wizard has a base attack of +5. As long as he didn't completely dump str, compared to a commoner (which is the recommend class of the average conscript soldier), he's a phenomenal swordsman, able to cut down swaths of men with ease.

My point is that combining the advancement of 3 classes seems way too much of a meta-game idea. "Fighter" and "caster" are very distinct and there are classes to advance both, same with the two broad types of casting (divine and arcane). But breaking it down further than that seems artificial -

"We are the knights of the screaming wind, who seek to advance our arcane mastery, rage-full brand of combat, and incredible stealth." (barb wizard rogue)

Seems a little off to me. Also, it has the potential to be very imbalanced.

While I agree with you on some of the class combinations being silly, I was trying to shoot for something more in line with the examples I posted.

For example, with the Druid/Barb/Totemist (and this is mostly a thought exercise at the moment), perhaps have the spellcasting only advance it up to 6th level spells, but wildshape would be the prime focus here. Raging while in wildshape could be more powerful, and possible investing essentia from the totemist to either add more natural attacks or increase damage from existing ones.

A barb/wiz/rogue would just be a raging bard, without sneak attack, which wasn't really my goal. finding classes that could trade away the raw power of some of the base classes while focusing on a "shtick" was more or less the focus.

As far as balance.. well, it could go either way I suppose.

Edit: Also, I should say that I am using a blend of 3.5 and PF, and not all of the classes are the same. Fighters are pretty much Warblades, Paladins gain Crusader maneuvers and some of the class features, but trading away some, and Monks are unarmed Swordsages, but I'm working on adding different class features.

Also, most melee classes are getting a class feature that lets them Full Attack as a standard action, just at different levels.

[Amphetryon]

The big thing that holds back a tri-theurge in my mind is the D&D action economy. Given a limited number of actions per combat round, it's unlikely that you'll have many situations where you can reasonably draw on all three Classes at the same time, leaving at least one of them unused in a combat.

If the counter-argument is that the additional Class availability adds to longevity because you have more choices to draw from over the course of a day, I've seen precious few adventuring parties where such an excess of resources was needed, or even beneficial to the flow of the game.

[Mjollnir075]

That's why I didn't want to stick to the traditional theurge idea at all, in fact.

Using my earlier example of the Druid/Barbarian/Totemist (can you tell I like this idea?), think being able to, in one full round action, to wildshape into a raging bear with and extra set of.. I don't know, clawed arms that are meldshaped to your new form.

I can't stress this enough, but this is just a rough idea I came up with. In practice, I will be looking more closely at the balance of it.

Say that, every other level in the PrC, you were able to wildshape into a specific animal (like a brown bear or tiger, ect..). Then say you added the Rage into the mix, and every other level it gets a little better, possibly adding additional things like Rend while raging in your specific form, regardless of the wildshape form having it or not, and the totemist essentia can be spent, in certain staggering increments, to possibly increase range of natural attacks or increase damage dice.

These specific PrCs would only be advancing certain aspects of the base classes, so you wouldn't have as much of a problem with a bunch of abilities that you couldn't use during the day.

Well, if this really isn't a viable idea, I may just cut the whole thing together. I would like to believe that there may be a chance, though.

[grarrrg]

Fochlucan Lyrist (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20050107a&page=2) says "Hi"

[Hunter Killer]

Shouldn't this be in Homebrew?

Anyway, I have given this some thought myself, although with dual-theurges rather than tri-theurge. My idea was basically to have the player pick a 'focus' at the beginning of the day, then allow them to do things based on that focus.

So, take Mystic Theurge for instance. You have arcane and divine spells, but this class is normally 3 levels behind a standard caster and is getting spells a lot slower. We need to fix this, but not make the class overpowered.

Enter foci: The Mystic Theurge picks either an Arcane or Divine focus for the day. This increases the Caster Level of the chosen focus by +2, while decreasing the Caster Level of the unpicked one by -2. In addition, the player's focus could give up two spells of their highest level spell to gain a slot of the next highest level, as many times as the math would allow. The unpicked focus would lose it's highest level slots. Sprinkle in some other things, like the ability of Arcane to dump spells for dispel checks and beating SR and give Divine the ability to dump spells for To-Hit/Damage like the feat Arcane Strike.

This forces the Theurge to more-or-less be one of its sides for the day with added versatility of a partial other side. You give up the insane abilities of other prestige classes to gain versatility, and aren't as gimped as RAW Theurge.

I think the same concept could be applied to a tri-theurge, given enough work and thought.

[Feralventas]

Fochlocan Lyricist progresses one arcane, one divine, and bardic music uses per day, so you could go Bard 1, wizard 3, druid1, rogue 2, focus on buffing and utility spells and crafting wondrous items off your wizard CL to be decent at some skills and help the party, then use FL to boost wizard and Druid casting, and take bardic music feats to boost casting of the other too.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

This is definitely doable and there are many uses for it (I could probably make one for by three classes you care to name).

The trick is picking the prerequisites carefully, so player's aren't screwed over for 7-8 levels prior to taking the class.

Happy to discuss more if you had more information about your concepts to share!