Benefits of Legacy Champion and Uncanny Trickster

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Legacy champion and uncanny trickster are unique in that they advance all of the class features of another class that aren't part of that class's chassis (BAB, HD, skills, and saving throws, basically) while gaining their own class benefits, though legacy champion is 8/10 advancement and uncanny trickster is 2/3 advancement, so you're not getting those benefits quite as quickly as if you took the original class.

I figured out another benefit from using legacy champion or uncanny trickster to advance a second class that I've never seen discussed before: neither PrC has any restrictions that prevent you from taking another level, so if you've got a class you can no longer advance for whatever reason, such as a lawful barbarian, say, you can use them to bypass that restriction.

What else can be done with these, aside from the obvious? I've seen the following elsewhere, but I'll bring them up

You can use them to continue advancing beyond a class's normal progression, for instance, such as going war weaver 5/legacy champion 10, and thus being the equivalent of a war weaver 13. Or advancing mystic theurge 10 into mystic theurge 18 pre-epic.

You can use them to advance a racial class which normally wouldn't gain HD every level. Savage ghost progression 1/legacy champion 5 means you can have proper HD (rather than no HD and a level adjustment) and still gain the ghost template's benefits.

You can use them to advance a class with an inferior chassis, since you don't get those benefits anyway. War hulk doesn't gain BAB, instead gaining +2 Strength every level to compensate. But a war hulk 1/legacy champion suddenly gains that same +2 Strength every level while still benefitting from Medium BAB. The chameleon PrC's saving throws are the worst possible -- they're all slow progression, without a single good save. Chameleon/uncanny trickster at least gains a good Reflex save and 8 skill points/lvl, if nothing else.

An illithid savant (because of course illithid savants need more powerful tricks) can eat a legacy champion 10 and gain +8 effective character levels' worth of abilities without needing to level up at all, and apply those phantom levels to illithid savant, if they want. Which of course gives them the room to eat another legacy champion and repeat the process. This is the way to abuse their "eat a class ability," rather than eating another illithid savant (which just trades one instance to eat a class ability for another instance of the same ability, which is a lot of trouble for no actual gain).

Anything else I'm overlooking, or that we can come up with?

[Segev]

It doesn't work with monster progressions because those MUST be taken all the way before you can take any other classes. And they have no features that advance beyond their final level in any way.

Other than that, though, you've pretty much got it. They're useful for getting more oomph out of short-progression classes, or for really abusing dual-advancement caster PrCs, too. At least ones which specifically state that they grant +1/+1 to two classes for every level you take.

For example, a Cerebromancer could use Uncanny Trickster to eke out two more levels of wizard/psion than otherwise.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It doesn't work with monster progressions because those MUST be taken all the way before you can take any other classes. And they have no features that advance beyond their final level in any way.You might want to recheck the ghost progression. It explicitly says you don't need to take all the levels before switching to something else, as does the werewolf progression. Other progressions, sure, but not those two.

[AvatarVecna]

It's worth mentioning that you can't actually get Mystic Theurge to 18 pre-epic with Legacy Champion...not because it doesn't affect Mystic Theurge, but because you could only get Mystic Theurge 18 using Legacy Champion if you took Mystic Theurge 10/Legacy Champion 10, which you're unlikely to reach pre-epic, especially since you have to work in a couple base classes, even with early entry. Still, you can get pretty high with it, especially if you manage to achieve early entry.

Small point, sure, but worth mentioning.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It's worth mentioning that you can't actually get Mystic Theurge to 18 pre-epic with Legacy Champion...not because it doesn't affect Mystic Theurge, but because you could only get Mystic Theurge 18 using Legacy Champion if you took Mystic Theurge 10/Legacy Champion 10, which you're unlikely to reach pre-epic, especially since you have to work in a couple base classes, even with early entry. Still, you can get pretty high with it, especially if you manage to achieve early entry.

Small point, sure, but worth mentioning.A wizard 1/something else 2 could take the Precocious Apprentice and Southern Magician feats and qualify for mystic theurge all by itself. Take those two levels in cleric or something, and you could end up with wizard 1/cleric 2/mystic theurge 10/legacy champion 7, which is close enough. Though you are correct, as you can't take mystic theurge prior to level 4.

You could even take a bloodline level and qualify for MT by level 3. Wizard 1/cleric 1/bloodline level 1/mystic theurge 10/bloodline level #2/legacy champion 8. Or take mystic theurge 8/legacy champion 10, since you get more that way.

[daremetoidareyo]

DCs that cue off class level get a boost. Assassin's death attack, for example.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You can take feats and other options that require a certain number of levels. Say, dip into cleric 1/uncanny trickster 3 to count as cleric 3 for Initiate of Mystra. It takes more levels than dipping cleric 3, but if you really want skill points and skill tricks, it's not the worst way to go.

[ATHATH]

Boosting Mind Mage (the one from Dragon Magazine, not Cerebremancer) gets you double-speed ML and CL progression.

[Ruethgar]

Boost Bloodline levels to boost several things at once.

[Flickerdart]

It doesn't work with monster progressions because those MUST be taken all the way before you can take any other classes. And they have no features that advance beyond their final level in any way.
The ones in Savage Species and the ones in the Savage Progressions articles have different rules. Savage Species ones must be taken all the way, but Savage Progressions ones can be abandoned at any time.

[Segev]

You might want to recheck the ghost progression. It explicitly says you don't need to take all the levels before switching to something else, as does the werewolf progression. Other progressions, sure, but not those two.


The ones in Savage Species and the ones in the Savage Progressions articles have different rules. Savage Species ones must be taken all the way, but Savage Progressions ones can be abandoned at any time.

I stand corrected! My mistake.

[Darrin]

For Martial Adepts, Uncanny Trickster/Legacy Champion can be used to increase your initiator levels in odd ways. For example, the first level counts as +0.5 IL, but subsequent levels that advance a Martial Adept class/PrC class features count as +1.5 ILs.

Now, what happens if you take 1 major bloodline level, and then use UT/LC to get the next two bloodline levels...

[Segev]

For Martial Adepts, Uncanny Trickster/Legacy Champion can be used to increase your initiator levels in odd ways. For example, the first level counts as +0.5 IL, but subsequent levels that advance a Martial Adept class/PrC class features count as +1.5 ILs.
I'm not so sure about this. The rules for IL advancement base themselves on whether the class grants martial initiator benefits or not. The Uncanny Trickster, if you use it to advance (say) Swordsage, is granting initiator levels. So it gives +1 IL per level (where it advances Swordsage). It doesn't count twice. (or even one and a half times, as the case may be) Just once.

[Darrin]

I'm not so sure about this. The rules for IL advancement base themselves on whether the class grants martial initiator benefits or not. The Uncanny Trickster, if you use it to advance (say) Swordsage, is granting initiator levels. So it gives +1 IL per level (where it advances Swordsage). It doesn't count twice. (or even one and a half times, as the case may be) Just once.

It's not counting twice. Having a level of a non-initiator class (such as Uncanny Trickster or Legacy Champion) counts as +0.5 IL by RAW. The sketchy part is what happens when you gain the class features of a higher level Swordsage. My reasoning is it should follow the same mechanics as gaining another level of spellcasting. If I use UT/LC to increase my Wizard level and I also gain +1 caster level with that, then I don't see why I wouldn't get +1 initiator level by advancing Swordsage. It's not really the Swordsage's fault that the magic rules don't have something about non-spellcasting levels providing +0.5 caster levels.

[Segev]

My take on it is that, by advancing Swordsage with Uncanny Trickster, you're making Uncanny Trickster an initiator class, so it gets +1 IL. But it's pulling that from Swordsage; you're not counting the Swordsage's granting of +1 IL twice for one level. You're counting it once, by virtue of it making UT an initiator class for that level.

[Twurps]

You can take feats and other options that require a certain number of levels. Say, dip into cleric 1/uncanny trickster 3 to count as cleric 3 for Initiate of Mystra. It takes more levels than dipping cleric 3, but if you really want skill points and skill tricks, it's not the worst way to go.

This doesn't work.
Initiate of mystra requires Cleric lvl3, not "something that has all* the class features of cleric 3"

*or to be precise, 'all exept Hit dice increase, skill points, BAB, saves', but thats irrelevant to the point.

[ComaVision]

Just curious, is there anything specifically saying that the '+1 level of existing class features' can be applied to prestige classes? All the examples seem to refer to base classes. Is it just assumed PrCs are all good because it doesn't specify?

[Segev]

Just curious, is there anything specifically saying that the '+1 level of existing class features' can be applied to prestige classes? All the examples seem to refer to base classes. Is it just assumed PrCs are all good because it doesn't specify?

PrCs are classes. To restrict it to base classes would require stating "base classes" in the rules provided.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

This doesn't work.
Initiate of mystra requires Cleric lvl3, not "something that has all* the class features of cleric 3"

*or to be precise, 'all exept Hit dice increase, skill points, BAB, saves', but thats irrelevant to the point.Uncanny trickster says:


Class Features: At each level after 1st, you gain class features (including spellcasting ability) and an increase in effective level as if you had also gained a level in a class to which you belonged before adding the prestige class level. You do not, however, gain the benefit of your previous class’s Hit Dice, attack progression, skill points, or saving throws. If you had more than one class before becoming an uncanny trickster, you must decide to which class to add each level for the purpose of determining class features.If you have a level in cleric and take two levels of uncanny trickster, your effective cleric level for all purposes is 2. It flat out says that it counts as being a level in the class, and thus it should work.