[3.P] Houserule Opinions: PrC requirement relaxing

[Craft (Cheese)]

- All skill point requirements are gone and replaced with "Character Level N-3th", where N is the PrC's highest skill rank requirement. For example, Contemplative has a requirement of "Character level 10th" instead of "Knowledge (Religion) 13 ranks."

- All feat requirements are gone.

- Alignment requirements are gone, because, well, alignment requirements are stupid.


I realize that this improves the power of several PrCs (especially caster-oriented PrCs) whose main downside is that you have to take worthless feats to get in. For example IotSV is now an automatic choice for almost every caster without the feat requirements. However I see this as more of a benefit than a problem: The feat taxes did nothing to balance out the problematic PrCs in the first place. Meanwhile, there are many sub-par PrCs that are made much better with this laxing of requirements.

Here are my questions: In your opinion, are there any PrCs that are made problematic by these rules? (That is, they weren't problematic before.) Are there any PrCs that exist where getting rid of these requirements would cause them to break? Should I get rid of save bonus requirements as well?

[Fax Celestis]

Why don't you just remove prerequisites entirely and give a baseline level for entry based on the class (and probably the intended entry level based on the example prerequisites)?

[Craft (Cheese)]

Why don't you just remove prerequisites entirely and give a baseline level for entry based on the class (and probably the intended entry level based on the example prerequisites)?

Well, the problem with this is when a class advances features the character is already supposed to have when the class is entered. Like, say you try to enter Contemplative with Fighter 10. What happens? The obvious answer is I just work it out with the player on a case-by-case basis, but I can sortof already do that. I'd like to have a hard-and-fast rule that I can put in my houserules document and apply in 99% of cases with minimal work. (Then feel free to break it when the exceptions come up.)

[Fax Celestis]

The quick and dirty solution there is to define whether nor not lacking a feature means 0 or Ø.

The former means Fighter 10/Contemplative 1 has (0+1=1) 1st level cleric spellcasting.

The latter means Fighter 10/Contemplative 1 has (Ø+1=Ø) no cleric spellcasting.

[Fouredged Sword]

I think that just giving a PRC an entry level works fairly well. Players should just be aware that they may not get the features that work based on abilities they are supposed to have if they don't have them.