PrC Only NPCs

[Afgncaap5]

Once upon a time, a fellow DM was discussing NPCs with me and he stated that one of his favorites methods of making a flavorful NPC was to just take a prestige class and make the NPC with nothing but prestige class levels, ignoring all the prerequisites. Lately I've been toying with this as a concept for a group I've started running with a number of low to mid op players (Currently a Monk, two Sorcerers, a Paladin, an archery Ranger, and a Fighter. Very competent players, but definitely playing more for fun than for the numbers.

Now, looking over the list of prestige classes, it strikes me that some classes would be better at this than others. A 3rd level Duelist with no other class levels, for instance, might make for a decent minion in a gang of Merry Men-style outlaws (probably sitting somewhere between a 3rd level Fighter and a 3rd level Warrior in terms of actual risk potential) but there are clearly some others where it leads to some overpowered or underpowered encounter potential as well that should probably be avoided.

So, as I look ahead to storycrafting and set pieces, do you see any pitfalls of using this as a quick and dirty method of making a few non-standard NPC adversaries?

[Venger]

Once upon a time, a fellow DM was discussing NPCs with me and he stated that one of his favorites methods of making a flavorful NPC was to just take a prestige class and make the NPC with nothing but prestige class levels, ignoring all the prerequisites. Lately I've been toying with this as a concept for a group I've started running with a number of low to mid op players (Currently a Monk, two Sorcerers, a Paladin, an archery Ranger, and a Fighter. Very competent players, but definitely playing more for fun than for the numbers.

Now, looking over the list of prestige classes, it strikes me that some classes would be better at this than others. A 3rd level Duelist with no other class levels, for instance, might make for a decent minion in a gang of Merry Men-style outlaws (probably sitting somewhere between a 3rd level Fighter and a 3rd level Warrior in terms of actual risk potential) but there are clearly some others where it leads to some overpowered or underpowered encounter potential as well that should probably be avoided.

So, as I look ahead to storycrafting and set pieces, do you see any pitfalls of using this as a quick and dirty method of making a few non-standard NPC adversaries?

since, generally speaking, prcs are designed to be entered after level 5, you may find npcs are receiving strong abilities too soon. if you keep to terrible prcs like duelist though, I dont see it being much of a balance issue, as long as you don't do something ridiculous like throw them up against a 9th level ur-priest who didn't have to pay for any base class levels.

[Inevitability]

There's two main risk factors. The first is abilities being available to NPC's before PC's could reasonably expected to defend against them (Death Attack at level 1, for example, is quite hard to protect against).

The second is NPC's completing quick progression classes way too fast: imagine an Ur Priest 9 facing a party where the cleric just got Flame Strike.

[Telok]

Doing a quick gut check on six more or less randomly selected PrCs:

Dervish: Ok, probably about as good as a martial adept.
Disciple of Dispater: The crit range increase and erinyes summoning are problematic on a 5th level character.
Ghost-faced Killer: Has low level access to a death attack that could be problematic on a mook/minion. As a boss type or a reoccurring assassin to be hunted it's ok if the PCs know about it before it's used on them.
Gray Guard: Just fine, it's a variant paladin.
Mountebank: No problems, mystic rogue/spy.
Mythic Exemplar: No problem but unsure about spellcasting advancement. Probably use one to three levels of caster as an intro before adding on the PrC, probably avoid tier 1 casters.

So probably better than generic NPC fighter types but not up to optimized stuff. I'd eyeball non-casters as about on par with martial adepts but keep an eye out for the odd power-up that's over the top. Estimate a couple of levels of caster class for the caster PrCs, probably not using full casting advancement PrCs.

[ace rooster]

I really like this, provided the DM is not going to say that a first level sublime chord is CR 1. Many of the flavour PRCs come alive, and more actually start to work. For example, a beastmaster would now have better animal companions than a druid. At level 4 they could have a dire wolf and an eagle. The bear warrior is now a terror to behold at low levels, and a cavalier cannot be allowed to charge you. A shadowdancer's shadow is now far more defining. A demonologist is summoning insanely powerful monsters for their level, but that is supposed to be their thing. A master of many forms now comes without the druid abilities, and comes online much faster. This one is a real highlight, because it is still limited by HD meaning that it's power is not excessive despite getting powerful defining abilities early. I quite like the effigy master too, simply because it balances the CR better at low levels. They can build 10HD constructs at level 6, making defeating their constructs the majority of the challenge.

The main impact is that PRCs come online before other abilities get powerful. This means that a PRC can give a defining ability that is powerful for the level and the character gets it instead of their other abilities, rather than in addition to them. This gives you shadowdancers without sneak attack, beastmasters without druid casting, and effigy masters without already having a dominating CL.

A few dysfunctions do exist. The fast casting classes particularly. Dual casting is also very powerful, depending on whether you need a level of caster at all. Abjurant champion is too. Seven fold veil was broken already. I'm not too concerned about the death attack thing, because it is simply not a very good ability at the best of times. Compare it with a coup de gras, which will typically get a higher fort save anyway. For the assassin I would regard poison use as more significant ability, because it can be used from range.

Minionmancers get more powerful, which is a potential pitfall, but shouldn't be a problem if you look at the CR of their minions too. They are better defined by their minions though, which I regard as a plus. I don't think there will be any huge surprises other than that.

The real loser out of this is probably the bard. All those late casting classes (assassin, blackguard, vigilante...) are now just better casters than bards until they cap out.

With a little tweaking this could work for PCs too. It might work very well in an E6 game, if you allowed retraining into prestige classes as further advancement. Obviously you then make the 3rd level spells thing explicit, but it could be an option for adding some diversity.

[Afgncaap5]

Okay, so general consensus seems to be "should be fine, just keep an eye out for obviously over-powered stuff." Good, good...

A few potential uses I'm considering:

-Eldritch Knight, Abjurant Champion, and/or Knight Phantom as a variants for baseline wizard boss fights where the PCs might have the action-economy advantage. More hitpoints and a few tricks to allow for interesting variations (Abjurant Champions needing less time to get some defenses up or Knight Phantoms being able to suddenly have a horse *right there*, get on it as a free action with a ride check, and start riding away if it looks like the tides have turned.)
-Use an Ollam as a force multiplier for a small company of dwarfish warriors. They sort of act like a non-musical, weaker version of a Bard, probably bringing a little more punch than an Adept would.
-A gang of Streetfighters as henchmen in a thieve's guild, as opposed to Rogues (a little too much mileage from their sneak attacks) or Fighters (not enough mileage from sneak attacks.) Might want to refluff shaking off damage as rolling with punches for one or two of them,though.
-Combat Trapsmith: sort of a non-magical artificer challenge. I'm less confident about this one, though; I can see it being way too weak or way too powerful (being able to set up five pre-made fireballs for 5d6 damage in a three-by-three area with only the equivalent of 50 gp of supplies feels like a lot for a level 5 NPC to be able to pull off. The regular old magical artificer might be more of a fair fight.)

[weckar]

Well, any spellcasting-advancing PrCs obviously have no spellcasting to begin with - so they should be entirely safe.

[Powerdork]

Well, any spellcasting-advancing PrCs obviously have no spellcasting to begin with - so they should be entirely safe.

I think the answer to that is "use the progression of the class of your choice".

[Afgncaap5]

Well, any spellcasting-advancing PrCs obviously have no spellcasting to begin with - so they should be entirely safe.

In theory, yes, though for some I think I'd assign spellcasting as being granted if I wanted to go this route, probably something akin to whatever their most likely spellcasting would have been had they reached the class through the traditional method. I might skip that for, say, a Fortune's Friend where the focus of the class is more on the class features than on providing new ways to be a caster, but for a class like Abjurant Champion I'd probably assign a Wizard's or Sorcerer's spell list since the purpose of that class revolves around modifying methods and results of spells.

So, Toriar the Layabout wouldn't get spells but would just be supernaturally lucky. Colonel Rexubar, though, would get the spells and and be really, really well defended while using them.

-Edit-


I think the answer to that is "use the progression of the class of your choice".

Swordsaged! Yeah, what Metool said.

[Tiri]

I think the answer to that is "use the progression of the class of your choice".

Wouldn't that be a little unbalanced? True, a Wizard-PrC-using character would, in general, be horrendous with no Wizard levels, but if you allow advancement of Wizard casting with no levels of Wizard or prerequisites allowed, it is a straight upgrade from Wizard, which has basically no class features apart from a familiar.

[erok0809]

Wouldn't that be a little unbalanced? True, a Wizard-PrC-using character would, in general, be horrendous with no Wizard levels, but if you allow advancement of Wizard casting with no levels of Wizard or prerequisites allowed, it is a straight upgrade from Wizard, which has basically no class features apart from a familiar.

From what I can tell, that seems like the point, actually. It seems to me like the purpose of this is to allow lower level characters to have the more specialized abilities that PrCs give them, to make for more interesting lower level encounters.

[Tiri]

From what I can tell, that seems like the point, actually. It seems to me like the purpose of this is to allow lower level characters to have the more specialized abilities that PrCs give them, to make for more interesting lower level encounters.

That may be the case, but it should require at least a single level of Wizard, for example, if you want to have that kind of casting.

[Afgncaap5]

Wouldn't that be a little unbalanced? True, a Wizard-PrC-using character would, in general, be horrendous with no Wizard levels, but if you allow advancement of Wizard casting with no levels of Wizard or prerequisites allowed, it is a straight upgrade from Wizard, which has basically no class features apart from a familiar.


From what I can tell, that seems like the point, actually. It seems to me like the purpose of this is to allow lower level characters to have the more specialized abilities that PrCs give them, to make for more interesting lower level encounters.

Yeah, it's more or less the purpose. Like, don't get me wrong: saying that this should be an acceptable way of building NPCs at all times and in all situations would be flat-out irresponsible. A 5th level Spellwarp Sniper, for instance, would basically be a wizard who could Fireball a single target and take away the ability to let a Reflex save halve the damage (and that's not counting all the status effects that normally come with reflex saves that they might impose depending on the class chosen.)

On the other hand, though, a 5th level Loredelver would count as a 4th level spellcaster (let's go Wizard), would have bardic knowledge (mostly a flavor ability, albeit a useful one, though often one that offscreen NPC research can trump anyway), a bonus to determining the spell of magic of magical auras, the ability to cast Detect Magic at will, Evasion, the ability to spontaneously cast Knock, and an immunity to fear.

If I dropped him in with a few minions, you've got a mage who casts less powerful spells, but can quickly pinpoint any magic item the PCs might have just by looking at them (if my understanding of spell components and spell-like abilities is accurate), and can walk through almost any door without it slowing them down. Meanwhile, they're immune to the party necromancer's Fear spell, the barbarian's intimidation checks, and might not even take damage if a Fireball gets lobbed their way (though the rogue's sneak attack and paladin's smiting still seem more or less on target). Include another NPC somewhere who can say something like "Illumian wizards creep me out" and suddenly you've got a a less powerful, but more memorable, antagonist for a session or two.

This is definitely something that should be used with caution, and it'd require planning out on a case by case basis. Having said that, since I've taken to building a lot of casters as humanoid monsters instead of with class levels just to justify certain abilities at certain levels lately, this method is starting to feel like it'd take a lot less work.

[Flickerdart]

This is definitely a method where a blacklist, rather than a whitelist, is appropriate. You can make some heuristics for determining if a class is appropriate, though:

You should only ignore 5 levels of prerequisites: Nobody is going to argue that Sublime Chord is appropriate as a 1st level NPC. You can only get in starting at level 10, so it's just too strong. This cuts off Divine Crusader and Apostle of Peace as well.
You should not take "X but better" classes: An ur-priest is just a cleric with a faster spell progression. A mystic theurge is just a wizard with a wider spell selection. An abjurant champion is just a wizard with bigger abs. Classes like Master of Many Forms or Beastmaster that focus on a specific part of a base class and lose the rest are fine.
You should not use anything that grants recognizably high-level effects: Your PCs will call foul as soon as they see an NPC do this. And it should be a red flag for you too - if the first level of the class says "this ability is equivalent to a 9th level spell" then maybe it shouldn't be in the hands of a level 1 guy, eh?

Apply these heuristics to a prestige class to determine if it should be used for this purpose. They're not rules - something that passes all these heuristics could still be overpowered, and something that fails just one heuristic might be okay. But multiples are right out! For example, an Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil fails all of them: it can't be entered until level 10, it's essentially "abjurer + free stuff" and its 1st level ability is equivalent to a 4th level spell.