Awful Prestige Class Competition!

[Invader]

I asked about the most awful PrC's in another thread here http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=290519&page=5 but its hard to get a good gauge of which classes people really think are the the worst and which ones people just don't like so we're starting again.

I need everyone to list their top 3 choices for the most awful, most useless, least flavorful, etc. non-epic prestige classes. You can make your decision on any basis you want. You think its to weak, its to strong, there's no flavor to it, what have you.

Please enter your submissions in a simple
1.
2.
3.
format so he information is easy to organize and extrapolate. Please refrain from arguing for or against other peoples choices as it makes it impossible to keep track of who likes what from post to post. Think of this as a 1 time voting opportunity and once your vote is cast its final.

I'll start with my 3 choices;

1. Reforged
2. Shining Blade of Heironeous
3. Risen Martyr

[Invader]

{table=head] Prestige Class | # of Votes
Reforged | 1
Shining Blade of Heironeous | 13
Risen Martyr | 3
Shadowdancer | 1
Sword of Righteousness | 2
Yakuza | 1
Maho-Bujin | 1
Prophet of Erathaol | 1
True necromancer | 6
Apostle of Peace | 1
Yathrinshee | 1
Drow Judicator | 1
Knight Protector | 2
Initiate of Pistis Sophia | 1
Cryokineticist | 1
Cipher Adept | 2
Lifedrinker | 2
Dwarven Defender | 1
Reaping Mauler | 5
Dervish | 3
Rimfire Witch | 1
Elemental Savant | 1
Ollam | 1
Order of the Bow Initiate | 1
Exemplar | 1
Green Star Adept | 1
Heirophant | 1
Arcane Archer | 1
Jordain Vizier | 1
Defiant | 1
Acolyte of the Skin | 1
Thunder Guide | 1
Planar Shepherd | 1
Alienist | 1




[/table]

[Novawurmson]

I'll throw in a vote for the Shadowdancer.

Not sure what my other two will be.

[ArcturusV]

1) Sword of Righteousness: Horrible Feat Tax requiring one of the worst "functional" feats out there, and one other Exalted Feat, in order to gain 3 exalted feats over 3 levels. The only class who really has enough semi-decent Exalted Feats to pick for it is the Paladin. And as a Paladin you want, More Levels of Paladins (Or things that stack Paladin abilities), you don't want 3 levels sans spellcasting, smite power, mount powers, etc.

2) Yakuza: Basically the only thing you get that a Rogue would not, is a limited form of Bardic Knowledge, and the Leadership feat. Plus it actually requires I take the otherwise Uggg-tastic Dodge feat to access.

3) Maho-Bujin: Honestly, I want to like this class. And some of it's abilities aren't really all that terrible. Unfortunately A) You're probably going to die trying to obtain it, as you effectively become an NPC when you hit the 10 Taint that it requires. And have to hope your party members (Or one of the millions of soldiers and samurai between you and your destination) don't just smite you away. B) It's a 10 level progression with 6 dead levels in it. Add in that some of it's abilities are subpar (Damage Reduction 10/magic doesn't mean much at what is going to be at least level 11, best case scenario). Plus side, its level 1 is pretty neat. Avoiding Con penalties for Taint, half wisdom penalty. Become an Outsider (Shadowlands) with all the various things that means, and you get extra attacks for +3 BAB instead of +5.

[Venger]

Will post my 2 and 3 in a sec, really wanted to be the first to talk about this awful (and obscure) class

1) Prophet of Erathaol

Many reasons.

Like all the classes in boed, its fluff is teeth-grindingly bad.

The art is bad.

-Is that woman a dwarf, or does the artist just not understand proportion?
-Is turning your armor into bunuelos a secret class feature that got deleted
-What's up with this blond-haired blue-eyed woman having an ankh on her loincloth?
-Furthermore, what's with the loincloth?
-Why is a goody two-shoes class in a suit of armor that looks like it's made out of bones? (don't believe me? contrast with libris mortis's pale master and tell me he and she don't shop at the same boutique)

Qualifying is harder than obdurium:

-3 goody two-shoes feat taxes
- SF (divination) (yes, really)
- cast 4th lvl spls
-be LG
-skill junk

Once you get in, you have one class feature.

-and it sucks. Ecstasy lets you get possessed by angels, turn into an NPC for 1 round (while helpless) and be the DM's mouthpiece to deliver exposition on throwing the ring into mount doom or whatever.
-crunchwise, it means that it gives you a handful of crappy SLAs usable 1/ecstasy (which you get only 1/day/class lvl. Considering that you can't enter this class until level 8 (being xx7/then this)
-they're even more underwhelming than they would be if you were getting them on time (which you kinda already do, since this pretty much requires you being a full caster to start with)
-also, if there's any demons or ghosts or whatever, they can immediately hijack your stupid mind and possess you. you take a penalty on the save. Also, this makes your ecstasy not work.
-plus the class is 9/10 casting. Because ecstasy is clearly too powerful to give to you with full casting.

All in all:

-every time I see this class, all I can think of is Linda Blair inviting you to let a certain religious figure do something inappropriate to you
- this class is not only worse than just playing your base class straight in that it doesn't give you anything extra (it doesn't) it's worse because it actively hurts you.
-you have one awful class feature that essentially means you're "asking for it" when demons come in and take control of your body against your will (which has all sorts of unfortunate implications that are all over the place in boed, part of why I hate it so much)
-the class seems to think this is a necessary balancing factor to your lame SLAs.

2: True necromancer/ yathrinshee

I feel it would be disingenuous to give these separate entries, because they're pretty much the same class. Mystic theurge, but worse. you're ridiculously behind in both of your classes, and even if you hop in a fondue pot and qualify as a normal caster with southern magician, you have nothing to show for it. lame class(es) that confuse crappy SLAs for class features, have no discernable flavor, and also, more than just not make you lose things your base class would've given you for free, actively hinder you in your chosen specialty.

3: apostle of peace:

you probably know all the default reasons by now:

-horrendously OP
-very rapey with your mind control touch to stop people from getting uppity
-having to be the party nanny

but my qualms with it are slightly different.

-if you roll apostle of peace, you can't really even be said to be playing D&D anymore. I don't mean this as "you're not playing 'kill the monsters; take their stuff' the game, you are deviating from gygax's old ways" grognardishness. I mean that a number of fundamental mechanical issues (what happens to your WBL? how does the party accrue experience?)
-the "your party can't hurt humanoids/monstrous humanoids, but no one cares about the rest" is awful for reasons I don't need to elaborate on
-the penalties accrued for not going along with your handicap are crippling to non-optimized party members who need to roll dice

this class is the frenzied berserker of roleplay, only there are no marbles to throw at him.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Adding this thread to my list of subscriptions.

I'll toss another vote on for the Shining Blade of Heinousness. Did you see what I did there?

[Venger]

Adding this thread to my list of subscriptions.

I'll toss another vote on for the Shining Blade of Heinousness. Did you see what I did there?

pictured: what was going through the head of the person who designed shining blade of hieronymus (http://www.codart.nl/images/DEHamburgBucerius2008TemptationOfStAnthony.gif)

[Invader]

2: True necromancer/ yathrinshee

I feel it would be disingenuous to give these separate entries, because they're pretty much the same class.



I just gave them separate entries to keep it simple :smallbiggrin:

[Piggy Knowles]

Adding this thread to my list of subscriptions.

I'll toss another vote on for the Shining Blade of Heinousness. Did you see what I did there?

I am terrified by the fact that you're keeping an eye on this thread, Kuulheysoon...

[Amphetryon]

SBoH

Drow Judicator

Knight Protector

[Piggy Knowles]

I'll also chime in for Shining Blade of Heironeous, and add...

2. Initiate of Pistis Sophia. Incredibly difficult to qualify for, requiring a feat that has a level 10 class feature as a prerequisite, meaning that it is actually impossible to complete pre-epic without either Vow of Poverty or Dragon Mag material. And after all of that, what do you get? Eh, some of your monkish features progress, and you get a crappy unarmed smite attack.

3. Cryokineticist. From Frostburn, this little doozy requires a second level power and a lawful alignment, but doesn't progress psionics at all. Its cool freezing attacks have language that prevent them from being used in fun ways like the pyrokineticist's fiery whips and bolts, and are capped at incredibly poor damage. Its crappy "walk through the air" ability requires power points spent every round to maintain, but it doesn't gain any PP itself. Bone Chill is only once/day, and the effective caster level of its SLAs are so low that they aren't really worthwhile, either. And just in case you thought you might try to make a fun skillmonkey build out of it, sorry, you can't. 2 SP/level and the world's crappiest skill list.

But hey, you can freeze up to a pint of water per class level at will! So perhaps the party can rent you out as a portable refrigerator/freezer unit. It's about the most useful thing you'll end up doing.

[Samalpetey]

1. Cipher Adept. Nothing useful you couldn't get somewhere else, and crappy prerequisites
2.Lifedrinker. Designed for casters, doesn't advance casting
3. Shining blade of Heironeous. Woo, I get a magic weapon for part of the day!

[NeoPhoenix0]

1. Shining Blade of Heironeous

2. True Necromancer

3. Sword of Righteousness: Making a class out of bonus feats, how original. Seriously its just three levels of bonus exalted feats. I was thinking of going with Wonderworker because of how it borks casters but it actually gives bonus spells per day while this is just feats.

[dysprosium]

I am terrified by the fact that you're keeping an eye on this thread, Kuulheysoon...

I agree. I hope this doesn't mean that Shining Blade is next for IC.

For my picks (just three?):

1. Shining Blade of Heironeous -- nothing new to add to what everyone else has said.
2. Risen Martyr -- when the class is over, you DIE! (I know there are arguments against this line of reasoning but that's how it is at my table.)
3. Dwarven Defender -- "I will defend this spot right here! Now come over here so I can hit you -- wait where are you going?"

[Invader]

Looks like we have a pretty clear front runner at this point.

[Roguenewb]

I actually kind of like yathrinshee if you cheat like a champ to get it. Dread Necromancer 4/Cleric 1 with Alternate Source Spell and versatile spellcaster. Divine up your animate dead and cast spectral hand normally. The other alternative is Cleric with Southern Magician and Precocious Apprentice. The only reason to bother is the 5th level ability. Anything that dies gets to be my zombie for free? You can get that ability at level 10, with 7th level casting. Versatile spellcaster helps make up for it you take the 6th level cause its free, and never look back.

My three most useless classes:
1.) Reaping mauler. Like 3/4 of the monsters in the MM can't be grappled effectively, especially when stuck at medium. Grappling is so situational, and can't ever work against a fair amount of foes.

2.) Dervish. Because it is the king of traps. Dervish is almost always an incredibly bad idea and it looks so cool! So many new players have worked towards it only to end up with the worst characters ever. Weak flailers who can't get the damage to stick.

3.) Knight Protector/Purple Dragon Knight/Cavalier/Thayan Knight or any of the other generic knightish PrCs that traps you into a single niche thats underpowered and grants a handful of stupid 1/day mediocre abilities. Especially in CWar there are soooooo many of them.

[ArqArturo]

1.- Elemental Savant.- The fact that you specialize in a single energy type makes you pretty much ineffective against a huge array of critters in the MMs.

2.- Shining Blade of Heironeus.- Fails at being a jedi. Better get a sword and continue your path.

3.- Rimefire witch.- Abilities are too weak and too specific against a divine adversary.

[Prime32]

Ollam from Complete Adventurer. It has highly-specific requirements (Lawful Good dwarf with 10 ranks in two Knowledge skills), doesn't have much of a niche, and the abilities you get are terrible (Gaining bardic knowledge as a 1st-level character at lv8 is worth giving up a caster level? Seriously?).

[NeoPhoenix0]

@invaderk2: You have sword of righteousness listed twice with one vote each. It should be listed once with two votes.

[Humble Master]

I'll give a vote for Shining Fail of Heironeus. You lose 5 levels of casting but it's all good! You get a sword that occasionally glows!

[elonin]

I'll second Dervish. This fools gold requires gestalt to make it work.

Exemplar. I like this one but the only way to use this appears to be jumplomancer.

Order of the bow initiate.

[Karnith]

I'll vote for:

1) Shining Blade of Heironeous
2) True Necromancer
3) Dervish

[Vaz]

Nah, you can be an arseplomancer too. Or my favourite, Lucid Dreamer mancer. You can amaze people into loving you (through nanonbots, say) into throwing themselves in front of a raging dragon on your ability to realize that you may or may not dreaming.

[BWR]

3) Maho-Bujin: Honestly, I want to like this class. And some of it's abilities aren't really all that terrible. Unfortunately A) You're probably going to die trying to obtain it, as you effectively become an NPC when you hit the 10 Taint that it requires. And have to hope your party members (Or one of the millions of soldiers and samurai between you and your destination) don't just smite you away. B) It's a 10 level progression with 6 dead levels in it. Add in that some of it's abilities are subpar (Damage Reduction 10/magic doesn't mean much at what is going to be at least level 11, best case scenario). Plus side, its level 1 is pretty neat. Avoiding Con penalties for Taint, half wisdom penalty. Become an Outsider (Shadowlands) with all the various things that means, and you get extra attacks for +3 BAB instead of +5.

Yeah, the designers really messed up that one. The original Maho-bujin School from L5R is seriously nasty. Way overpowered compared to Schools available to players (intentionally so). I threw a couple at my players once. You should have seen the look of disbelief -> horror on my girlfriend's face when I asked for Honor ranks. :smallbiggrin:

It's one of those I violently houseruled for the d20 Rokugan games we play.

[CockroachTeaParty]

I'll vote for this one class from Complete Psionic… I don't recall the name. Stormblade?

It's a class designed for Divine Minds/Ardents… that gives you a shocking weapon, I think. It also has the most generic, boring, uninspiring fluff I've ever read.

Runner ups for me include Survivor from Savage Species, and Green Star Adept.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

1. Green Star Adept
2. Arcane Archer
3. Heirophant

[Vaz]

Yeah, the designers really messed up that one. The original Maho-bujin School from L5R is seriously nasty. Way overpowered compared to Schools available to players (intentionally so). I threw a couple at my players once. You should have seen the look of disbelief -> horror on my girlfriend's face when I asked for Honor ranks. :smallbiggrin:

It's one of those I violently houseruled for the d20 Rokugan games we play.

I love springing honor ranks on my players as a DM in my Rokugan games. My honorable Shosuro Courtier with his Tejina bodyguard have decent Honor. The aggressive Lion general, Crane Daidoji and Uichi Battle Maiden, meanwhile...

[Invader]

@invaderk2: You have sword of righteousness listed twice with one vote each. It should be listed once with two votes.

Thank you, fixed :smallsmile:

[GoatBoy]

1. Jordain Vizier (Shining South) - According to the Forgotten Realms novels, these guys are amazing. Bred, born, and trained to kill mages. Like, "Sure, you may have turned your skin to stone, but not THE BOTTOMS OF YOUR FEET!" Like, deflecting magic missiles with daggers amazing. And then, as if someone was going out of their way to demonstrate the failings of the 3rd edition rules when it comes to magic, we get this steaming pile of fail. An anti-caster class with two bad saves? Forbidden from using all spells and spell-like abilities, even from items? It's not the worst class out there, but you'll be disappointed if you walk in with assumptions on what it's supposed to be.

2. Defiant (Planar Handbook) - Noticing a theme with these "anti-caster" classes? Now these guys gave the gods a big middle finger, but what did they gain? Okay, it's nearly impossible to hit them with a divine spell... at least one that allows a save and is affected by spell resistance. Pity that for every class which gave huge boost to saves and SR, there was another designer adding another spell which disregarded both of these. Probably the biggest gripe with this class is that they claim to have foresworn all divine worship and don't gain any casting ability... but still only use the medium attack bonus progression. What do they do all day? Stick a picture of the gods on the wall and focus their hate onto it?

3. Acolyte of the Skin (Complete Arcane) - We get it. It was early in 3.5. You didn't have the benefit of years' of forum discussion stressing how great casting was, and how any prestige class that reduces your caster level by more than one might as well not bother. But none of that excuses this travesty. It's obviously meant for warlocks (since the iconic warlock is the actual art for it), but why would you aim it at warlocks... and then fill the class with daily-use abilities? Warlocks are for players who want to blast stuff but can't be arsed to keep track of how many castings of lesser ray of funk they have left. And this was one of the very first prestige classes published for 3.5! Yeah, within a few pages we got to enjoy the god-tier goodness of Initiative of the Sevenfold Veil and Mage of the Arcane Order, but for a while there, we were inconsolable. And it was all the fault of the Acolyte of the Skin.

[Mishkov]

1. Cipher Adept. Nothing useful you couldn't get somewhere else, and crappy prerequisites
2.Lifedrinker. Designed for casters, doesn't advance casting
3. Shining blade of Heironeous. Woo, I get a magic weapon for part of the day!

1) Cipher Adept. My god, this class makes monk look like a monster.

2) Lifedrinker. The prereqs and fact it doesn't advance casting makes this useless.

3) Shining blade...as everyone else believes too.

Note on elemental savant. There are things like searing spell feat which makes this class functional even if blaster wizards aren't optimal. Also I just can't see prc that advance casting be on the same list as any of the above.

[SaintRidley]

True Necromancer
Risen Martyr
Shining Blade

Order is unimportant.

Honorable Mention to Reaping Mauler.

[Inferno]

1 - Thunder Guide (explorers handbook p.64)
2 - True Necromancer
3 - Reaping Mauler

Shocked by the lack of thunder guide on a list of lousy PRC's...Its a bard that wants to be a fighter that thinks its a rogue that's sorta scholarly and doesn't get enough of anything to do any of what it sets out to do.
Great flavor though, that's something.

[ArqArturo]

Its a bard that wants to be a fighter that thinks its a rogue that's sorta scholarly and doesn't get enough of anything to do any of what it sets out to do.

Isn't that the Fochlucan Lyrist?.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Isn't that the Fochlucan Lyrist?.

No, that's the hippie rogue who thinks he's a bard.:smalltongue:

[ranagrande]

Shining Blade
Epic Mystic Theurge
Planar Shepherd

[Scow2]

Planar Shepherd
You're joking, right?

[NeoPhoenix0]

...I need everyone to list their top 3 choices for the most awful, most useless, least flavorful, etc. prestige classes. You can make your decision on any basis you want. You think its to weak, its to strong, there's no flavor to it, what have you....

format so he information is easy to organize and extrapolate. Please refrain from arguing for or against other peoples choices as it makes it impossible to keep track of who likes what from post to post. Think of this as a 1 time voting opportunity and once your vote is cast its final. ...


You're joking, right?

please read op.

[Invader]

Shining Blade
Epic Mystic Theurge
Planar Shepherd

I'm going to limit it to on epic PrC's but I added your other 2. Updated the OP to reflect this.

[Invader]

Also please refrain from debating choices in this thread. You can follow the link in the OP to debate the merits of everyone's choices, thank you :smallwink:

[pyromanser244]

1. true necromancer
2. reaping mauler
3. alienist

[kharmakazy]

Reaping mauler is the worst, because the picture makes me want to play one so bad... but since the class features just don't work I can't bring myself to do it.

[Humble Master]

Reaping Mauler gets another one of my votes actually.

Hey guys, lets make a grappling class. But, lets psych the player out by making it make you worse at grappling!

[SaintRidley]

You're joking, right?

Planar Shepherd is awful, just in the opposite direction from things like True Necromancer and Shining Fail.