losing prestige class prereqs

[Raishoiken]

has there ever been a clear majority accepted answer as to whether or not all predtige classes operate under the "lose the prereqs lose the powers" rule that those complete books introduced? i havent gotten to look at them in awhile but i think i remember coming to the conclusion that that wss the case. Any thoughts?

[Fizban]

I've never heard of a major movement saying the rule wasn't there, nor have I read any threads arguing about it (though it does sound familiar enough I've probably seen it in passing).

Thoughts? Same as everything else, run it the way it works. If that means you relax it sometimes so that temporary effects don't cause sudden loss of class features, great. If that means you run it super RAW so people can retrain prerequisites for some things but maybe not other things, great. . .

[BowStreetRunner]

If you want to find out if there is a "clear majority accepted answer", ask at your gaming table, not here. Try to remember that the giantitp forum members are not a true representative cross-section of all gamers. In fact, this forum tends to have a preponderance of power gamers and rules lawyers that may or may not be present in your local game. This is a great place to come with questions about how to optimize a character build or what sort of arguments you could try in order to convince your DM to accept a certain build. This isn't the right place to ask about what the average gamer believes because you the sample is going to be skewed. For that matter, the sample of players at your local game may not be representative of the global average either, so even if you did get an accurate average it may be quite irrelevant.

The rule about losing prestige class prerequisites exists in a couple of books. If you don't have those books in your game it's not going to be easy to use them because you won't have the source if someone needs to find out the exact wording for a specific situation. If you do have the books you need to decide at your local game, before it comes up in an in-game-scenario, whether you are going to use the rule or not.

[KillianHawkeye]

The biggest problem with the prestige class disqualification rules is that they directly contradict the DMG. And according to the errata, DMG is the primary source for rules relating to prestige classes (among other things) and automatically wins against a rules contradiction from any other book.

Unlike the basic classes found in the Player's Handbook, characters must meet requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class.


Other issues with the prestige class disqualification rules is that they don't specifically mention if you can ever get your abilities back, and they don't consider what happens with prestige classes that self-disqualify. Two prominent examples are Dragon Disciple and Ur Priest. Dragon Disciples cannot be a Half-Dragon (or any kind of dragon at all), but completing the class turns them into one. Ur Priests cannot be divine spellcasters, but the class immediately gives them divine spells.

The Dragon Disciple example is especially notable as it's from the DMG, and completely reinforces that book's rules that prerequisites are only checked when entering the class and don't need to be continuously met in perpetuity.

[BowStreetRunner]

The biggest problem with the prestige class disqualification rules is that they directly contradict the DMG. And according to the errata, DMG is the primary source for rules relating to prestige classes (among other things) and automatically wins against a rules contradiction from any other book.

Other issues with the prestige class disqualification rules is that they don't specifically mention if you can ever get your abilities back, and they don't consider what happens with prestige classes that self-disqualify. Two prominent examples are Dragon Disciple and Ur Priest. Dragon Disciples cannot be a Half-Dragon (or any kind of dragon at all), but completing the class turns them into one. Ur Priests cannot be divine spellcasters, but the class immediately gives them divine spells.

The Dragon Disciple example is especially notable as it's from the DMG, and completely reinforces that book's rules that prerequisites are only checked when entering the class and don't need to be continuously met in perpetuity.

Don't forget to answer the OP's actual question, which wasn't 'what do you think are the problems with the rule' but rather 'has there ever been a clear majority accepted answer'. You haven't weighed in on whether you believe there was any sort of majority consensus - you just let the OP know which side of the argument you are on.

[KillianHawkeye]

Don't forget to answer the OP's actual question, which wasn't 'what do you think are the problems with the rule' but rather 'has there ever been a clear majority accepted answer'. You haven't weighed in on whether you believe there was any sort of majority consensus - you just let the OP know which side of the argument you are on.

You yourself said that the place to ask if there's a consensus wasn't on these forums, so I didn't see a need to answer that question directly. Someone else posted that they hadn't seen reason to not use the rules, so I gave some.

I will also note that I never said that I don't agree with losing class abilities when you lose prerequisites, just that the rules about it aren't very solid. I feel like if you want to implement such a rule, it's best to look at things on a case-by-case basis rather than applying a single paragraph as a blanket rule for every prestige class.

[Troacctid]

I just tell my players not to intentionally lose the prerequisites and then we won't have to worry about it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The sidebars in CAr and CW are -plainly- editing errors. The 3.0 DMG had the same clause that was -removed- in the transition to 3.5. Nobody passed the memo to the designers for those teams that were largely just tweaking and compiling old 3.0 classes in the first half of the complete series.

I strongly advocate for disregarding them completely.

[Telonius]

I don't think there's an overwhelming majority. My guess would be that most actual gaming groups do it case by case. Losing prerequisites is not a situation that crops up all that often. The times I can see it happening most often would be changing alignment, level loss due to drain, or something like a rebuild.* All of those have DM input anyway. They're (hopefully) going to be working with the player to show them what exactly happens to their character and what it might mean for prereqs.

* Psychic Reformation and Dark Chaos Shuffle are other ways to do it with less DM involvement, but I've never seen anybody actually try to use one of those in-game.

[Raishoiken]

I don't think there's an overwhelming majority. My guess would be that most actual gaming groups do it case by case. Losing prerequisites is not a situation that crops up all that often. The times I can see it happening most often would be changing alignment, level loss due to drain, or something like a rebuild.* All of those have DM input anyway. They're (hopefully) going to be working with the player to show them what exactly happens to their character and what it might mean for prereqs.

* Psychic Reformation and Dark Chaos Shuffle are other ways to do it with less DM involvement, but I've never seen anybody actually try to use one of those in-game.

while im well acquainted with di shuffle I've never really seen much on psychic reformation

[Venger]

has there ever been a clear majority accepted answer as to whether or not all predtige classes operate under the "lose the prereqs lose the powers" rule that those complete books introduced? i havent gotten to look at them in awhile but i think i remember coming to the conclusion that that wss the case. Any thoughts?

Fortunately, there is no RAW debate, as there is no basis in RAW for treating the editing error in cwar as RAW. As KillianHawkeye mentioned, DMG is primary source, so cwar has no authority to change its rules. Setting that aside, if you try to follow cwar's rules, the game breaks down. Aside from dragon disciple, things like ur-priest cease to function, as does any class that says "must be able to cast 2nd level spells" when you run out of 2nd level slots. Whoops! You no longer qualify for the class. That can't be the kind of game you want to run.

[Crake]

The sidebars in CAr and CW are -plainly- editing errors. The 3.0 DMG had the same clause that was -removed- in the transition to 3.5. Nobody passed the memo to the designers for those teams that were largely just tweaking and compiling old 3.0 classes in the first half of the complete series.

I strongly advocate for disregarding them completely.

I've always thought they were stupid, because a class that, for example, requires power attack, could have their abilities completely stripped because the character had their strength damaged down below 13, lost the power attack feat as a result, and then lost their entire class as an extension.

[Venger]

I've always thought they were stupid, because a class that, for example, requires power attack, could have their abilities completely stripped because the character had their strength damaged down below 13, lost the power attack feat as a result, and then lost their entire class as an extension.

pro-cwar people know how important it is to keep mundanes down.