Have you ever seen a legacy champion exploit agreed to at the table IRL?

[redking]

After seeing endless posts about legacy champion advancing prestige classes past their limit, I wonder if anyone has actually been at a table where this was permitted.

I just can't see it. Maybe it happened somewhere. If I was a player I'd be too embarrassed to ask my DM to let me legacy champion a hellfire warlock or archmage.

[icefractal]

Legacy Champion no, but I've played a character who used Bloodline levels to advance Hellfire Warlock. It was a moderately high-op game - that level of damage was necessary for Warlock to even remotely keep up.

[Thurbane]

Yeah, ruling at our table is LC (and Uncanny Trickster) cannot advance PrCs beyond their normal limit pre-epic (and we don't play epic).

[Troacctid]

Nope, never.

[noob]

After seeing endless posts about legacy champion advancing prestige classes past their limit, I wonder if anyone has actually been at a table where this was permitted.

I just can't see it. Maybe it happened somewhere. If I was a player I'd be too embarrassed to ask my DM to let me legacy champion a hellfire warlock or archmage.

There is only a small gap of optimisation where it is worth using legacy champion because there is a significant cost to using legacy champion in terms of caster level so a caster will want to avoid doing that and casters is what people turn toward when using really high optimisation.
So you get to use legacy champion when trying to optimise a non caster depending on abilities of a prc that is limited in level but that progresses in function of the level but only while the table does not optimise to a point where casters makes your character completely obsolete and at a level of optimisation where such behaviour is not frowned upon.

[Gusmo]

I've never seen it actually used, but in one group years ago someone was considering it. We talked about it as a group for a game that would end around 18th level. They weren't into the idea of a 10 level prestige class being bookended with base class levels or jumping into a new prestige class, and they asked to be able to continue master specialist, mystic theurge, or whatever pre-epic via legacy champion. Not for the purposes of any shenanigans, they actually just thought it could be a cool character hook at that point in the game. The consensus was that it was clearly illegal, because someone made a good argument that because it's a new decision at every champion level, you can never choose the 4th level of hellfire warlock or 11th level of incantatrix with champion any more than you could just pick the class itself without champion. For instance, if a wizard5/incantatrix5 pursued legacy champion, eventually they would be forced to pick wizard levels via legacy champion.

However we also agreed it may be fine to just allow it, with some restrictions. To be able to get 11th level prestige class abilities pre-epic or during epic, a prestige class needs to have things which clearly continue beyond 10th level. For instance, a wizard5/incantatrix5/champion10 does technically land an epic feat at 20th level (their epic progression is later in the same book, so this one is very clear). So maybe negotiate things like that being delayed until 21st level. What we did agree on was that any prestige class class which isn't 10 levels can't gain any sort of virtual levels beyond its max. Even for 10 level prestige classes like the chameleon or ur-priest, we agreed that you can't 'continue a table' and cast higher level spells or get higher level spell slots. Once you hit the end of the table for an ability, unless there's very clear instructions for continuing beyond the table's end, you don't get to add new rows.

There's another dysfunction with legacy champion that sometimes gets overlooked. Let's say you have gone ahead with an incantatrix or hellfire warlock build, and max out your prestige class in part with champion. If you then take a real level of that prestige class, you need to reassign one level of your champion ability to a different class to adhere to the pre-epic limit, or limitation of hellfire warlock itself.

[AvatarVecna]

I used it in a game that went from mid-levels to low-epic. I was using it on War Weaver to essentially make all my buffs affect the whole party no matter what spell level. It worked out okay-ish?

[Arcanist]

Currently allowed at my groups table by our Hellfire Warlock. The DM actually suggested it strictly because it matched her character concept.

[Gusmo]

I agree that allowing hellfire warlock specifically may be fine. As with anything else, at a real table I would probably just mention I'm not sure whether it's actually legal or that it's definitely illegal, but ask permission to do it anyway. No need to stomp out fun things that won't wreck a game. If you have that sort of problem player then you're probably in for a bit of a headache regardless. I will say I don't like it when I see people recommending things like this without offering those disclaimers. Uncapped reserves of strength, locate city bomb, and plenty of other things are fun and all that, but you shouldn't be recommending them to anyone without also disclosing their controversies - and to deny the controversial nature of such things is to be obtuse. There has never been a thread where everyone came away saying 'I see it now! Totally legal!' to any of the things I've mentioned.

[mabriss lethe]

I allow it at my table, suggested it to a player or two over the years, and even played one myself to boost an Acolyte of the Ego. (It was a strange game)

But it's definitely a case by case thing. If you're doing it to give a nudge to a neat but mechanically stunted concept? sure, go ahead. If you're doing it to squeeze every ounce of power out of an already powerful build, It's not going to fly.

[RandomPeasant]

I think if anyone ever asked to do it, I would just let them continue taking levels of the original PrC. The thing where you get dumped out of some concepts because the designers only wrote 5 or 10 levels of it is dumb, but hacking around it is also dumb.

[Doctor Despair]

I like it with Fiend of Possession, personally, as you can possess your Legacy Weapon to some effect (see my sig). With that said, it is silly as a concept, just like Reserves of Power hacking.