Character Class Progression Variant

[Darg]

Has anyone ran or been a part of game run with the rules that base class progression continues after picking up a PRC? What I mean is that casters get Prestige casting progression for pretty much their one and only feature. I was thinking of expanding that to other base classes.

For example you have dwarf Fighter as your base class and decide to pick up deep warden. You would still get your fighter bonus feats at the appropriate character level instead of class level.

This would also apply to casters too where wizard would still get their bonus metamagics.

The limit would be that casting can only progress on casting progression levels and only one class can have their features progressed per level. The exception would be theurge type classes with dual progression. For an example of this you have spellsword with fighter/wizard multiclass levels. On arcane progression levels you can choose to progress your fighter levels or your wizard class features. On non-arcane progression levels you could still choose to progress your wizard features or your fighter features. If you chose fighter on the arcane progression level you wouldn't progress your spellcasting and if you chose wizard on the non-arcane progressing level you would also not progress your spellcasting.

To prevent unhealthy stacking, features that normally stack like sneak attack no longer would.

Because of this progression, players would be locked into the prestige class of their choice until completion.

Anyone have experience with this type of thing or have any thoughts about it?

[Doctor Despair]

As a quick take, early access to prestige classes becomes a lot more vital to hopefully fit in two or three before reaching 20.

How would the system interact with advanced casting prcs like Sublime Chord or Ur Priest?

[lylsyly]

When I DM with my SRD - rules every PRC requires a certain number of class levels in one or two classes. The PRC adds something AND advances ALL the class features of the classes needed to get into the PRC.

We are low to mid OP. and I have a few home brewed PRCs and have modified most of the SRD PRCs. I add to ECL of the party when they start PRCing when figuring encounters. It works for us.

[Darg]

As a quick take, early access to prestige classes becomes a lot more vital to hopefully fit in two or three before reaching 20.

How would the system interact with advanced casting prcs like Sublime Chord or Ur Priest?

Early access has always been up to DM fiat regardless and it wouldn't be any different here. Because of the base class progression, I wouldn't see it as much of a necessity. Can you possibly elaborate your thoughts on that?

Sublime Chord without early entry requires 10 levels minimum before you can access it. But it does bring up the issue of how class features that used to stack would work. My thoughts are that the class feature with the weaker progression (half levels for sublime chord bardic music) would take overwrite the base class' feature to keep the spirit of the PrC.

Edit: Ur Priest has never really been a problem in my groups. Not many classes have the class skills to get it at the minimum level of 6 and even then it requires at least a single level dip in a second class to get. The earliest average access would be level 8 without multiclassing. Not to mention you end up with subpar caster levels of 10 to 15. And you are evil.


When I DM with my SRD - rules every PRC requires a certain number of class levels in one or two classes. The PRC adds something AND advances ALL the class features of the classes needed to get into the PRC.

We are low to mid OP. and I have a few home brewed PRCs and have modified most of the SRD PRCs. I add to ECL of the party when they start PRCing when figuring encounters. It works for us.

Have you run into any issues with this? How do you calculate the ECL for the party? Have you noticed it being more fun for players overall?

[lylsyly]

Have you run into any issues with this? How do you calculate the ECL for the party? Have you noticed it being more fun for players overall?

We have fun with it. Three of us have been playing together since my birthday in '76 when I got OD&D as a present. The baby of the group has been with us since '98. We do a lot of things differently. 6 people in the group taking turns DM'ing. When I run a game with my house-ruled SRD minus I add a couple of ECL to the group as a whole when they start PRCing. Just makes encounters a bit more challenging. Which is okay because the PCs are a bit more powerful.

[sreservoir]

Fastest standard ur-priest entry is at 6th (usually achievable with a one-level dip for saves or skills), which gives it a sweet spot at levels 12-16 where it has a spell level over straight cleric, with 9ths at 14. Normally this is less impressive in practice that on paper, but if you keep progressing your base class then you're still something like a warlock or incarnate or binder who's maybe down one level in exchange for being half a cleric, and that's a pretty solid deal.

Divine Crusader has a similar deal; actual 8th-level entry from a full BAB entry gets you 9ths from a single domain at 17 (+ the sanctified spell list, since you are a prepared caster), which is normally a bit too limited to build an entire character, but you can drop it on top of a martial base that has other things to do and get something reasonably effective.

The druid is now free to take PrCs—and not just those caster PrCs which they normally don't take because their features don't make up for not progressing the rest of their class features, but also some of the funky broken stuff that would normally leave you with a one-trick pony, but now you are still two bears, even if your casting takes a hit. But even if you'd otherwise rather just be going straight druid, you can basically slide right into, say, holt warden.

It seems like an neat idea, but not a particularly impactful one. I think the accelerated casters benefit disproportionately (more rather than less) from the fact that they can be backed by the full power of a base class, which isn't necessarily what you'd want, but fundamentally Core spells blow everything else out of the water going tall and the general design of mix and match spell lists means casters go far wider than any build whose available actions about 1:1 with labeled class features and not open-ended. With a few notable exceptions, class features generally aren't very significant—either for casters or non-casters—and the ones that are, you can mostly already build around. There's a reason the gold standard for caster PrCs is less "has build-defining features" and more "provides minor perks while minimally interfering with the being a caster part".

[Darg]

Fastest standard ur-priest entry is at 6th (usually achievable with a one-level dip for saves or skills), which gives it a sweet spot at levels 12-16 where it has a spell level over straight cleric, with 9ths at 14. Normally this is less impressive in practice that on paper, but if you keep progressing your base class then you're still something like a warlock or incarnate or binder who's maybe down one level in exchange for being half a cleric, and that's a pretty solid deal.

I meant for any kind of casting type progression: invocations, shadowcasting, incarnum, psionic, binding, and maneuvers. So that warlock ur-priest is only going to be a 4th level invocationist and you can't qualify for eldritch disciple (doesn't progress PrC features anyway, base class only). So really you have a PrC that is too strong and the DM is no where to be found. Minimum caster level enforcement would be a minor solution as the spells per day entry mentions caster level.


Divine Crusader has a similar deal; actual 8th-level entry from a full BAB entry gets you 9ths from a single domain at 17 (+ the sanctified spell list, since you are a prepared caster), which is normally a bit too limited to build an entire character, but you can drop it on top of a martial base that has other things to do and get something reasonably effective.

"Reasonably effective" was the goal. I said in my OP that giving martials some love was the point of this while mainly keeping casters relatively limited.


The druid is now free to take PrCs—and not just those caster PrCs which they normally don't take because their features don't make up for not progressing the rest of their class features, but also some of the funky broken stuff that would normally leave you with a one-trick pony, but now you are still two bears, even if your casting takes a hit. But even if you'd otherwise rather just be going straight druid, you can basically slide right into, say, holt warden.

That is true, but it wouldn't be a leap in power unlike that divine crusader on a fighter. At best it adds a little more versatility to an already extremely versatile class as far as I can tell.


It seems like an neat idea, but not a particularly impactful one. I think the accelerated casters benefit disproportionately (more rather than less) from the fact that they can be backed by the full power of a base class, which isn't necessarily what you'd want, but fundamentally Core spells blow everything else out of the water going tall and the general design of mix and match spell lists means casters go far wider than any build whose available actions about 1:1 with labeled class features and not open-ended. With a few notable exceptions, class features generally aren't very significant—either for casters or non-casters—and the ones that are, you can mostly already build around. There's a reason the gold standard for caster PrCs is less "has build-defining features" and more "provides minor perks while minimally interfering with the being a caster part".

The thing is that casting is already as powerful as it is ever going to be. So the point is to empower the fighter/paladin/rogue to be able to do more. Give them a large spike in versatility and flexibility without sacrificing their core aspects. If it isn't actually impactful, then that just goes to show how strong casters are in comparison. I like the flavor of feature progression and I have a few houserules myself that modify special attacks and skills to provide better progression and effectiveness of skilled martials.


We have fun with it. Three of us have been playing together since my birthday in '76 when I got OD&D as a present. The baby of the group has been with us since '98. We do a lot of things differently. 6 people in the group taking turns DM'ing. When I run a game with my house-ruled SRD minus I add a couple of ECL to the group as a whole when they start PRCing. Just makes encounters a bit more challenging. Which is okay because the PCs are a bit more powerful.

Thanks for the background. I can see it being more rewarding with more challenging encounters. Do you find yourself playing the creatures more aggressively and with more tactical awareness while doing this or playing them less aggressively and letting the CR play itself out? How do you account for xp and loot?

[sreservoir]

I meant for any kind of casting type progression: invocations, shadowcasting, incarnum, psionic, binding, and maneuvers. So that warlock ur-priest is only going to be a 4th level invocationist and you can't qualify for eldritch disciple (doesn't progress PrC features anyway, base class only). So really you have a PrC that is too strong and the DM is no where to be found. Minimum caster level enforcement would be a minor solution as the spells per day entry mentions caster level.

ok but cunning surge still exists, there's no principled cut that separates class features that facilitate making effective use of the strong actions you get from your PrC from ... the others.

Cut out all the "casting type" progression and you're left with, what, sneak attack, wild shape, fighter bonus feats, sneak attack, and a bunch of ribbons? Do you really want to be keeping wild shape (and familiar progression!) and kicking out maneuvers and incarnum?

Rather than make decisions as to whether each class feature is casting, it might be easier to just make a tier list (like, take a well-discussed one and make adjustments for the optimization level you expect from your players) and apply some variation on the "partial gestalt" option from JaronK's writeup.


The thing is that casting is already as powerful as it is ever going to be. So the point is to empower the fighter/paladin/rogue to be able to do more. Give them a large spike in versatility and flexibility without sacrificing their core aspects. If it isn't actually impactful, then that just goes to show how strong casters are in comparison. I like the flavor of feature progression and I have a few houserules myself that modify special attacks and skills to provide better progression and effectiveness of skilled martials.

I think you're looking at it backward. Adding fighter features to a divine crusader build is a rather small bump in versatility compared to the divine crusader build with ten fewer levels in fighter. (Less versatile, in fact, than a divine crusader build with dips in play.) Without this variant in play, the divine crusader build was still possible—it would've been down five fighter bonus feats, but frankly I think you were hitting diminishing returns after your fifth anyway.

You're still not really to get fighter/paladin/rogue builds. If the players are picking prestige classes that are empowering their fighter/paladin/rogue base to do more, well, they'd probably have that power even without the base class progression. (Well, the rogue gets a few more interesting options out of maintaining sneak attack progression, at least, though.) Power from particular class levels in this game swings widely enough that merely doubling the versatility of the weak end is still quite weak. If you want them to keep their "core aspects", those need to scale up, not out.

[lylsyly]

Thanks for the background. I can see it being more rewarding with more challenging encounters. Do you find yourself playing the creatures more aggressively and with more tactical awareness while doing this or playing them less aggressively and letting the CR play itself out? How do you account for xp and loot?

I run the encounters aggressively unless the group starts getting in trouble then I back off somewhat. As far as xp goes it is whatever the encounters should give at the parties total ecl. Treasure is whatever the monsters stat block says and gear on any classed enemies appropriate to their level.

Here is an example of one of my house ruled PRCs: Horizon Walker can be entered by any character with 8 levels, is 12 levels long. Will include the class features of any ONE class you had before entering (including casting) at every level. There are no planes in this world so what you get is Terrain Mastery (+2 Bonus) and Greater Terrain Mastery (+4 Bonus)