fixing half casting prc's

[Hurnn]

I'm sure this has been asked before, and I know most/all of them are terrible. Would making them 9/10 make them worth while.

On a vaguely related note Knight of the raven from expedition to castle Ravenloft:

Req: +4 bab good align and cast 1st lvl divine spells. Gives :full bab good fort/will 9/10 casting advances turn undead at -2 levels, gain sun domain smite undead and a couple other goodies.
What are your thoughts? Is it good enough to give up 1 level of cleric casting.?

[ComaVision]

I'm sure this has been asked before, and I know most/all of them are terrible. Would making them 9/10 make them worth while.
Most of the time, yes. At least they're not a huge detriment at that point.


On a vaguely related note Knight of the raven from expedition to castle Ravenloft:

Req: +4 bab good align and cast 1st lvl divine spells. Gives :full bab good fort/will 9/10 casting advances turn undead at -2 levels, gain sun domain smite undead and a couple other goodies.
What are your thoughts? Is it good enough to give up 1 level of cleric casting.?

It's a popular choice. Full BaB, almost full casting, and some cool abilities. Better for some Cleric builds than others but not a bad choice.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I generally don't consider such classes as spellcaster oriented PrC's. Many, though not all, of these classes have features that are kinda spiffy if you're adding them to a non-caster chassis with a touch of spellcasting, like a ranger, paladin, hexblade or fighter 4/sorc 1 or something like that.

Take a poster-child for this problem: green star adept. It looks pretty "blah" for a straight wizard entry. It's quite nice if you're coming in from hexblade or fighter/sorcerer, given all its melee oriented abilities. Level 10 sucks but that's just a straight-up design error. Those occasionally pop up.

As for making them all +9/10 caster advancement, that's an option but I don't see it as necessary. That large portions of the game's options swing in well under the maximum level of optimization possible is not a bug, it's a feature that allows the game to be played at a wide range of degrees of power and complexity.

[Ger. Bessa]

It should be done case by case. The aforementionned Green Star Adept gives a huge boost in CL if made 9/10 that is only beaten by Circle Magic users (and their logistic).Quite dangerous for Holy Word Bombers and co.

Prestige paladins would be very good, making even War Priest look lame. If everybody plays caster otoh, then you have a good option for the dude who doesn't want to be a wizard, a cloistered cleric or a bear.

Be also prudent on what can be put on an ur-priest chassis.

Tl;dr : do not make it a rule for people to abuse, allow it case by case like any prc should be.

[ManicOppressive]

It's not even half-casting by default, but I give Arcane Archers 9/10. It should say something that I STILL consider them mediocre.

But yeah, definitely needs to be case by case. Take the Swiftblade for example. It's already considered an incredible Gish choice at least for dipping. Give it 9/10 casting and it pretty much blows every other Gish option out of the water.

Also, the Rainbow Servant is a great case study in the balance difference. With half-casting, it's a pretty good PrC situationally. With full casting, it's responsible for what I would consider the single most overpowered build type short of straight-up cheesing rules.

[frogglesmash]

There's also the issue that while giving these classes 9/10 casting does give them a power boost, it's not doing anything to improve the special abilities the class gives which are often pretty terrible despite the fact that they should be what draw players to the class in the first place.

[Thurbane]

The eternal struggle - full casters break the game; losing casting levels is a cardinal sin.

:smallamused:

1/2 casting PrCs are only a "problem" if you're on a team full of tier 1s and 2s.

A Wizard with 15 caster levels won't have much problem feeling useful alongside a Ranger 20.

[weckar]

I see how half-casting PrCs could be designed or intended with half-casting entry in mind (or multiclassed entry), but on for example a Paladin that makes the already slow spell progression the paladin gets even slower. Same for a Ranger. If nothing else, those classes need full-casting as a PrC class ability more for their casting to stay viable.

[Cosi]

All casting PrCs should just be full casting. If "Wizard v Mindbender" is a fair trade-off, some people will be straight Wizards and those characters are very same-y. You should just accept that the Wizard will be a Wizard/Mindbender, Wizard/Acolyte of the Skin, or Wizard/Blood Magus and get some minor power out of that deal. Because that makes characters unique. The changes required to bring the Ranger to the level of the Wizard at all are massively larger than the ones required to bring him from there to the level of the Wizard/Bonded Summoner or Wizard/Pale Master.

[Thurbane]

If all casting PrCs were full progressions, classes like Cleric and Sorcerer would have nothing to lose form PrCing.

Each to their own, I guess, but I personally believe PrCing should always entail a "cost".

If you you want to make every casting PrC full progression, I'd suggest an increased feat ot cross-class skill tax.

[Cosi]

If all casting PrCs were full progressions, classes like Cleric and Sorcerer would have nothing to lose form PrCing.

Yes. That's good. It means that instead of a bunch of indistinguishable Cleric 20s and Sorcerer 20s, you have Cleric 5/Black Flame Zealot 10/Ollam 5s and Sorcerer 5/Green Star Adept 10/Effigy Master 5s that have cool and interesting abilities based on what the player wants to do. If it costs caster levels to make those characters, casters don't get weaker, they just get less interesting. There are perhaps half a dozen PrCs that would be truly worth it at 9/10, and none that would be worth losing 9th level spells.


Each to their own, I guess, but I personally believe PrCing should always entail a "cost".

They do. The cost is that you don't take some other PrC. Every level of Mindbender or Master Transmorgifist you take comes at the direct cost of not taking a level of Elemental Savant or Green Star Adept. IMHO, that cost is better than the cost of "worse at casting", because it makes PrCs strictly better than base classes.

As it stands, Wizard 20 isn't just better at non-Enchantment magic than Wizard 10/Mindbender 10, he's better at Enchantment magic. If you want to be a mind mage, taking levels of Mindbender should be unambiguously better than all your alternatives for being good at being a mind mage, not "about comparable". Otherwise, you are being punished for making the character you want, which is bad for the game.

[AnachroNinja]

It pains me but I agree with Cosi to a degree. I think PRCs should be able specialization or gaining some new or unique ability. I'm fine with it making you slightly weaker in general, but you should be stronger in your niche. His example of mindbender is a great one. Compare what a wizard gets out of mindbender to a psion with thrallherd. That's a problem in my opinion.

[Zanos]

If all casting PrCs were full progressions, classes like Cleric and Sorcerer would have nothing to lose form PrCing.

Each to their own, I guess, but I personally believe PrCing should always entail a "cost".

If you you want to make every casting PrC full progression, I'd suggest an increased feat ot cross-class skill tax.

They already have nothing to lose from a PrC because full casting prestige classes do exist. Giving other PrCs more casting just makes them better options. I also agree with Cosi, at least about character uniqueness. Part of what I like about 3.5 is that there's a lot of different ways to build a guy with 20 levels of wizard spellcasting.

On the other hand, a lot of those 1/2 casting classes are gish focused, and I find it a bit on the nose when builds turn out with 19 BAB and 19 wizard casting, or something similar. I know Wizards don't need BAB, or really anything other than spells to be good at melee, but I'd like to at least pretend you lose some arcane ability in exchange for martial competence.

[ManicOppressive]

Except the Divine Power spell exists so you don't have to trade off anyway. Part of the reason I'll allow for some intense cheese with Gish builds is that a Divine Metamagic Cleric can casually throw a Persistent Divine Power on himself and roll with full BAB/full casting at the cost of one class feature and a single 3rd level spell. Druids can do the same with any other metamagic workaround, and they have the bonus of being able to literally turn into a bear.