Why all casting and manifesting PrCs should fully progress casting/manifesting

[Endarire]

(I split this post from Half-casting prestige classes: are they ever worth it? (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?646023-Half-casting-prestige-classes-are-they-ever-worth-it) due to this being a long post and had some points others seemingly agreed with.)

A notable problem with losing casting via PrCs and calling it balanced is similar to requiring spells have expensive EXP/G costs and calling it balanced: People tend not to pay the costs.

For PrCs, if my choices are "more of this full casting base class" or "multiclassing into a PrC that doesn't fully progress my casting," I'm very likely to just not pay the cost in terms of casting (or making it up via Pathfinder's Favored Prestige Class + Prestigious Spellcaster/Eclectic Learning/Esoteric Learning). As has already been stated, a caster's worth primarily comes from his spells, and the game is seemingly balanced around the notion of level X characters being able to produce Y effects. It's for good reason that neutralize poison comes online for parties well before they face the most severe poisons in the game, and it's also for good reason that using a 3.5 CR3 Cockatrice against a low level party may result in a TPK due to low Fortitude saves from the party when they can't reasonably be expected to prevent or counter petrification.

Similarly, having someone pay the full cost to cast wish is rare when that some Wizard could also likely use planar binding and pay or mind control a genie to get a bunch of 'free' wishes, or use shapechange to turn into a Zodar for a free wish at least once per year. (I put free in quotes because the GM is also free to (mis)interpret these wishes.)

To clarify, exceptions exist depending on context. War Weaver (Heroes of Battle) may be very worthwhile if you want to focus on buffing your party quickly despite the lost casting at War Weaver1. Thrallherd is likely worthwhile since Thrallherd1 and 10 each lose a manifesting level but gain an extra character at each of these levels. However, to agree with what was already stated, class features need to be wonderful and disproportionately powerful to make up for the loss of even one caster level!

For certain classes, it isn't just caster level that makes multiclassing a generally bad idea. As a Druid, I like my casting, Wild Shape, and animal companion. This means that to me losing even a single level of progression for any of these must be very worthwhile, and for example, I'm unlikely to lose more than a level or 2 of animal companion and Wild Shape progression to dip into Holt Warden and Contemplative (Spell Domain) just because these other class features as so useful to me. This 2 level dip is still contextually worthwhile because it grants me access to more spells per day and the ability to occasionally cast arcane spells from a spellbook. This also means that Planar Shepherd, even if the plane I chose was weak, is still a viable PrC for my Druidic mentality because it fully progresses casting, Wild Shape, and animal companions.

Again, the question of, "Is losing caster levels balanced?" is typically a poorly considered question because casters shouldn't normally be losing caster levels at all, just like people shouldn't normally be streaking (running around naked) in public because of the associated penalties. PrCs became a way for full casters to gain class features in addition to full casting for a variety of reasons, and I just like the notion of being able to do useful and fun stuff as a caster that doesn't require spell slots. D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e are seemingly not balanced around the notion of "power now vs. power later." They are instead balanced around the notion of "power now and power later." My player experience has taught me that campaigns have normally stopped at level 6 or within 4 character levels of starting, whichever comes first, and that trying to prepare for a character who levels even 7 times in a campaign is likely a multi-month or a year+ endeavor, whereas a character who levels 19 times is likely a multi-year endeavor. Note also that a weaker character also leads to a weaker party, and is a similar reason why the as-written Vow of Poverty feat is just a bad idea because it generally weakens a character, and, by extension, the party as well.

Master Transmogrifist is an awkward example with less-than-full casting because shapechange exists in its current form and somewhat but not totally replaces 10 levels of classes with a single spell that those who can cast shapechange are encouraged to do.

Note that unlike BAB or accuracy, there's no easy way to make up lost casting in 3.5. Pathfinder has some abilities to make up for lost casting (Favored Prestige Class/Eclectic Learning/Esoteric Learning) and those are considered essential for the builds that lose casting and where these abilities are allowed. If you're a martial who's a BAB or 2 (or maybe even more) behind, you can get a higher accuracy via many means like a higher STR/DEX, then make up for lost BAB-based attacks with polymorph, haste, Whirling Frenzy, and other means of getting more attacks.

If we consider that BAB is a main feature of martial classes seemingly like how 3.x's design team did, we can tell that BAB normally comes with a variety of class features. For casters, BAB may still matter, but it's the casting progression that matters more, and a variety of base classes and PrCs still grant class features in addition to casting progression.

Let's consider this hypothetical scenario where all caster and manifester PrCs lose a caster/manifester level at class level 1, but try to make up for it with awesome capstones. (By 3.5's rules as written, Incantatrix is already a full casting PrC but let's assume it's a 9/10 casting PrC that fits this scenario.) Remembering that characters tend to gain a level every 3 to 5 sessions or 3 to 5 real world weeks, let's average that to a month and say that Ix the Incantatrix enters Incantatrix ASAP (level 6 since he's a Wizard) and his fellow party Wizard (nicknamed Wiz) goes full Wizard. (Having played Incantatrix at low, mid, and high levels, it's likely the best Sor/Wiz PrC because it progresses casting and offers at least 1 class feature every level, and even for levels where its class features are weak, there's something better coming soon.)

Ix is initially excited to take this legendary PrC due to its class features, but also feels the immediate hurt of being a month of casting behind Wiz, even moreso if the Incantatrix still loses access to another school of magic. The extra metamagic feat is a sort of consolation prize. Meanwhile, Wiz gets more spells known, more spell slots, and a slightly higher caster level. At level 7, Ix is able to spontaneously apply metamagics he knows to other creatures without increasing the spell slot level if he makes a high enough Spellcraft check. Wiz instead gets a higher level of spells which includes improved invisibility, polymorph, and celerity, among others. Wiz is also better able to use the metamagic feats he has due to higher spell level access. Level 8 has the pair be able to cast level 4 spells and Ix can also apply metamagics he knows to spells he casts via Spellcraft checks. Incantatrix3 grants the best ability in the class until level 7 or 10, and debatably the best in the class due to Persistent Spell shenanigans, and it's available in an E8 game. This back and forth over who can cast what spell level continues until the game ends, Wiz loses a caster level, or Ix somehow makes up his lost caster level. Having class features but being 1 casting level behind, Ix is at least implicitly encouraged to act as a support character for the party because he has fewer spells than Wiz. If we instead compare characters who lose more casting levels compared to full casters, the impact becomes bigger.

Consider another case where Ix and Wiz can choose to respec their characters or swap their characters at a notably higher level - let's just say level 15 for the sake of argument. Does this make the sacrifice of a casting level more appealing? Compared to having to be a month behind in casting, yes. Overall, maybe. There's also the matter of 'How fair does this seem?" if Ix chooses to wade through many levels of a PrC and be a casting level behind whereas Wiz just respecs into the same PrC and loses the casting level due to a table or line of text but never feels the bother of being a casting level (or month) behind. A likely similar feeling occurs if Ix is able to prevent or quickly mitigate the casting level loss due to Eclectic Learning, Favored Prestige Class + Prestigious Spellcaster so that Ix has all the class features and casting of Wiz plus the Incantatrix, though he may be down 2 feats due to Favored Prestige Class + Prestigious Spellcaster.

What purely mathematical balancing doesn't seemingly consider is that each spell is effectively a fun button, with higher level spells generally offering far more fun. (For purposes of this subjective metric, I propose that each spell's fun score is equal to its spell level squared with level 0 spells having a fun score of 0.5.) Part of the fun score is the novelty in reaching this spell level, part is learning how to use it in play/from experience, part of it is pure power or potential, and the rest is left to opinion. Thus, being able to cast 2 level 3 spells per day gives a theoretical fun score of 18, or 9 per spell slot, in addition to lower-level spell slots. (At will cantrips will help this matter a bit, but these spells are generally so weak as to be disregarded come character level 5+. Detect magic and sneak attackers are notable exceptions.) This mathematical balancing style also doesn't account for the fact that Ix effectively becomes Wiz's apprentice for the rest of the game, studying what he could be had he remained single-classed since his loss of casting put him a month behind.

Also note that Incantatrix is at least close to an ideal case: Many other PrCs that progress casting - partially or fully - simply lack the class features to even be worth considering losing a casting level over. Malconvoker requires losing a casting level at Malconvoker1, meaning this PrC is for dedicated summoners and creature callers only. Would I normally lose a casting level for this? Never. Sure, summoning an extra creature at Malconvoker5 by passing a Bluff check is useful, but at that point I may just be able to summon a higher level creature. What about War Weaver for extra buffing abilities? The answer is a solid maybe, but only if I were playing a buffer and we were playing at a level where the payoff - the higher level abilities - were worthwhile. In short, losing casting means suffering now - and for the rest of your character's life unless mitigated - for a payoff that may never come due to the game being cancelled.

There's also the matter of meeting a PrC's prerequisites, often requiring some combination of feats, spells, skills, and casting ability. Thus, entering into a PrC - even one with full casting and spiffy class features - has some cost, even if this cost is minor in effect.

Remember, if a player wanted to play an archer or a martial type, he would have specced for that instead of using that backup (cross)bow or ranged weapon due to having few spell options. A player who plays a caster primarily wants to cast a lot of high-impact spells with great frequency. Similarly, a player who plays an archer wants to shoot many shots with great impact and high frequency; and a player who plays a Rogue assumedly wants to frequently and with high impact deal lots of sneak attack damage & use a variety of skills (like sneaking and trapping). Diluting that vision mechanically at all is generally most noticeable for casters whose characters' identities are largely defined by their spells known, spells prepared, caster level/spell penetration, and save DCs. This is likely even more pronounced in Pathfinder 1e where certain races (Human, Half-Elf, and other Human-descended races) get bonus spells known for spontaneous classes (Sor, Bard, Oracle, Inquisitor, and maybe more) by simply staying single classed. Since getting extra spells known is so very important, even though full casting and partial casting PrCs exist in Pathfinder 1e, it's hard to for PrCs to mechanically compete with the allure of more spells known just so a player can do the main things he came to the game to do AKA a higher fun score.

There is a practical limit to the number of spells known and spell slots per day, but in my experience, that's normally been in double digit levels where GMs rarely run games. You may never cast spells 4 levels below your highest level spell available to you, but you still have them should you decide they're worthwhile, and perhaps you're feeling nostalgic for the days when magic missile was the best you could do and haste was months away. Then again, the higher level of spell you can cast, the more likely you are to need these higher level spells on a typical basis and not need the lower level ones.

In short, I'm very in favor of making all PrCs that progress casting or manifesting at all instead fully progress them by default. (The same thing goes with certain other class features like Wild Shape, animal companions, familiars, and Turn Undead. This is not at all an exhaustive list.) This way, people can have more viable options with more classes and likely have more fun instead of just being base class characters or the same PrCs that are proven effective, possibly with the occasional dip into something that doesn't fully progress casting such as Wyrm Wizard or War Weaver. To me at least, getting full casting with a side of useful extras makes a class worth continuing, and why Druid and Artificer - and certain other rare classes - are just so viable as single class builds compared to even tier 1 classes like Wizard and Cleric. Perhaps very rare cases like Thrallherd would be worth losing manifester/caster levels over, but then again the PrCs that grant Circle Magic (Halruaan Elder, Hathran, and Red Wizard) - one of the most powerful abilities in the game - also grant full casting among other features, and, by the way, Hathran by default requires Leadership which synergizes well with Circle Magic.

[RandomPeasant]

I mean, yeah? But also we just had this discussion in that thread and I'm pretty sure exactly no one changed their minds.

The issue is that spellcasters a very powerful, and many people are averse to anything that looks like it would make spellcasters more powerful, even if it's unlikely to in practice.

You also get people who view partial progression PrCs as some sort of balancing mechanism, which doesn't make any sense at all, because PrCs are optional and if someone is trying to make a powerful character and a PrC would make their character worse they can just not take that PrC.

What it comes down to, fundamentally, is whether you consider a Wizard/Green Star Adept as a build that sucks (and therefore deserves to be buffed) or a Wizard in need of nerfing (and therefore completely acceptable). I line up on the front half of that, but I have yet to devise or encounter an argument that persuades people on the back half.

[Akal Saris]

What if casting PrCs were like psionics, and every single PrC (ok, there is 1 psionic full caster Prc, ignore that one) lost a single CL at 1st level, and POSSIBLY one at L5/10 if it has a badass capstone like THrallherd or Swiftblade?

That way, there is a baseline 'PrCs let you specialize in X at a common cost of 1 CL' expectation, so there isn't this boring demarcation between full casting PrCs and all the rest.

[Saintheart]

I really think the issue of losing caster levels comes down to 'is what you gain from losing a caster level worth it?'

Almost always the answer is no, mainly because there are few things that a PrC gives you which make up for the fact it hobbles the caster's progression and therefore their optionality when dealing with the same threats. Personally I find the difference between fourth and fifth level spells, even in Core, is quite illustrative: there just seems to be a quantum leap in power between them. Someone whose main point of contribution is spells, who is foregoing fifth level spells, and will have to meet a CR 9 or CR 10 threat with 'only' fourth level spells in hand had either better be inventive or good with fourth level spells, or damn well getting something that makes the sacrifice worth it. And as we know, a majority of the time it's just nerfing yourself for a semi-to-occasionally- useful feature.

[Gruftzwerg]

I would like to know what mundane (prestige) classes would get as compensation here? Or is this just, "omg my T1 caster wants this cool prc ability and doesn't want to pay the power tax that would come with it"?

So what would you give mundanes?
Full BAB? 8+Int Skillpoints (together with better class skills)? Bonus Feats every two lvl?

Why should I play a non-full BAB char? I demand that all combat classes get full BAB!
Why should I play a class with minimal skill points? I demand that everything has more skillpoints!
Why shouldn't every class has Bonus Feats if even the useless Fighter gets em?

That's where this will end. As said, if you are making a PC for a "T1-T2 full caster party", I would even agree on a houserule for that specific campaign. But requiring this on a general base is just overkill.
This is pure elitism with the underlying suggestion that everybody should play T1/T2 full casters or their character sucks. Sorry, if this sounds harsh, but same goes for the demanded changes here.

[RandomPeasant]

What if casting PrCs were like psionics, and every single PrC (ok, there is 1 psionic full caster Prc, ignore that one) lost a single CL at 1st level, and POSSIBLY one at L5/10 if it has a badass capstone like THrallherd or Swiftblade?

That way, there is a baseline 'PrCs let you specialize in X at a common cost of 1 CL' expectation, so there isn't this boring demarcation between full casting PrCs and all the rest.

Why should it be a difficult decision for a Sorcerer whether or not to have class features? The game is better if people are encouraged, or at least not discouraged, to be Pact-Bound Adepts or Alienists or Seekers of the Misty Isle. The only reason to try to make them worse is because of some concern about balance between casters and non-casters, but that's a separate problem from balance between Wizards who are Wyrm Wizards and Wizards who are not. If you think Wizards are overpowered compared to Fighters, the place to tune that is the Wizard class, not random PrCs Wizards are under no obligation to take.


I really think the issue of losing caster levels comes down to 'is what you gain from losing a caster level worth it?'

The better question is what "worth it" means. Because that's far from constant. What a lost level of casting costs you is different at odd levels (where it denies you a new level of spells) than at even ones (where it just costs you some spells per day). It is different at different levels, as the relative difference between spell levels isn't constant (compare color spray v glitterdust and summon monster III v lesser planar ally). For a lost level of casting to be worth it, the PrC has to give you things that make up the gap at every level, including a capstone that makes up the gap when you get it and continues to make up the gap after you are no longer taking the PrC. And that assumes people are locked into a single PrC, which is very much not the premise of a system that promises Open Multiclassing.


I would like to know what mundane (prestige) classes would get as compensation here?

Why do they need to get compensated? Are they really bad for some reason? Because if they are, that sounds like a separate problem which would have a separate solution. I understand you think Wizards are overpowered. But you have never explained how giving Wizards the option to choose abilities that make them worse is supposed to fix that. They can just not take those abilities and be exactly as good as they are already, which is way better than a Wizard/Acolyte of the Skin who gets full casting but doesn't do anything abusive is.

[Gruftzwerg]

Why do they need to get compensated? Are they really bad for some reason? Because if they are, that sounds like a separate problem which would have a separate solution. I understand you think Wizards are overpowered. But you have never explained how giving Wizards the option to choose abilities that make them worse is supposed to fix that. They can just not take those abilities and be exactly as good as they are already, which is way better than a Wizard/Acolyte of the Skin who gets full casting but doesn't do anything abusive is.

There is already a power gap between mundanes and casters. And if you wanna give the casters some "Quality of Life" buffs to make it easier for them to build their characters without losing on power, I could demand the same Quality of Life buff for any other class in the game.

And this is the point where the demands as presented above will rise. A simple "cause > reaction" situation. If you make this change, more requests of the same "type" will follow. A simple logical foreshadowing for which I don't even need to look into my crystal ball ;)

[Saintheart]

The better question is what "worth it" means. Because that's far from constant. What a lost level of casting costs you is different at odd levels (where it denies you a new level of spells) than at even ones (where it just costs you some spells per day). It is different at different levels, as the relative difference between spell levels isn't constant (compare color spray v glitterdust and summon monster III v lesser planar ally). For a lost level of casting to be worth it, the PrC has to give you things that make up the gap at every level, including a capstone that makes up the gap when you get it and continues to make up the gap after you are no longer taking the PrC. And that assumes people are locked into a single PrC, which is very much not the premise of a system that promises Open Multiclassing.

Absolutely, I agree. My focus is mainly on fourth versus fifth because there is a quantum leap in that transition. It's going from Dimension Door to Teleport, Restoration versus Raise Dead. There likely isn't the same payoff elsewhere as you're saying.

[Beni-Kujaku]

So if losing a caster level is worth almost nothing except the strongest of class features, sorcerers are insufferably underpowered and should never be played? Bards even more so? Mystic rangers lose some spells per day and most of the druid's class list for worthless class features, who needs those? Never play a mystic ranger. Regular rangers lose some of their progression for even more worthless class features. Throw them in the trash! Why play any of them when the mighty druid exists? Why play druid when the mighty druid/planar shepherd exists? Why play druid/planar shepherd when the mighty druid/10:1 cheese planar shepherd exists? Because not everybody wants to be able to do anything. D&D is unbalanced, that's a fact. It is a choice to make a flavourful character while losing some power. Of course there can be parties of only T1 full casters, but those are vanishingly rare. In normal play, there will be mundanes, there will be half-casters, there will be alternate magic systems, and there will be full casters. Power is not a goal to build towards. Fun is a goal to build towards. And having more powerful spells does not equal more fun if these spell just erase everything that isn't pure combat (and sometimes, even that). There is fun in character interaction. There is fun in trying to figure out how to solve a problem you don't have a spell for. There is fun in trying to understand how another character of the party does something. And above all, there is fun in having a character that does something else in combat than "move, cast, move, cast, move, cast on the defensive". When I play, I don't want "a mage", I want "a desert mage that controls sand", or "an illusion mage that cannot do anything else", or "a mage of Nerull who goes in close combat with their pet undead". And paying a caster level is a small price to pay for a distinctive character. If it allows me to level the spotlight among the party, then that's even better. Yes, some prestige classes are boring on top of weak, and these will probably never see play, but most prestige classes are there to build a memorable character instead of "just another GOD wizard". It is a choice to be able to go weaker, and it is your choice to be able to be extremely strong. But in a party, none of it really matters.

[Biggus]

A notable problem with losing casting via PrCs and calling it balanced is similar to requiring spells have expensive EXP/G costs and calling it balanced: People tend not to pay the costs.

For PrCs, if my choices are "more of this full casting base class" or "multiclassing into a PrC that doesn't fully progress my casting," I'm very likely to just not pay the cost in terms of casting (or making it up via Pathfinder's Favored Prestige Class + Prestigious Spellcaster/Eclectic Learning/Esoteric Learning). [...]

Similarly, having someone pay the full cost to cast wish is rare when that some Wizard could also likely use planar binding and pay or mind control a genie to get a bunch of 'free' wishes, or use shapechange to turn into a Zodar for a free wish at least once per year. (I put free in quotes because the GM is also free to (mis)interpret these wishes.)


What I'm seeing here is: in a game where the players are skilled optimizers whose primary concern is their power level, people don't pay the costs.

If that's the kind of game you typically play in, this is a logical change to make for your games. Personally, I've never played in a game like that; as I said in the other thread, in my experience the typical thought process is "this looks cool, how can I make it work well?" not "is this the strongest option available?".

[RandomPeasant]

Let's talk about some specific casting PrCs to get a feel for what it is that people are being asked to give up spellcasting for, so we can see if this is as reasonable a trade as people are suggesting.

First up, the Seeker of the Misty Isle, a PrC for divine-casting Elves who are looking for the misty isle.

At 1st level, you get a domain (specifically the Travel domain). It's not completely clear what this is worth, but the closest point of comparison is Arcane Disciple. It's better in some ways (you get the granted power, you don't need to boost another stat), but potentially worse in other ways (you might have to spend resources to learn the spells). Overall, it seems right to price this as worth roughly a feat.

At 2nd and 3rd level, you get nothing. This means you are losing class features compared to any class that could get in, though some (like Druids, who lose wild shape and animal companion progression) more than others (like Clerics who lose marginal improvements to turning).

At 4th level, you get a marginal improvement to some skills. Probably better than what a Cleric would get, but worse than a Druid's deal. Up to this point, you have lost no caster levels, so presumably we can all agree that this is an acceptable deal for casters to recieve.

At 5th level, you lose your first level of casting. In exchange, you get some additional abilities that make you marginally better at using skills. I guess the whole package makes you sort of okay as a scout, but starting from Cleric seems like a weird way to try to build a scout, and starting from Druid you'd be better off scouting in Wild Shape.

At 6th level, you gain the ability to use find the path once per day. This is an absolute joke, because find the path is a 6th level spell for Clerics and Druids, so if you hadn't given up a level of casting for the privilege of learning it, you could just cast it yourself, only more times per day and at a higher caster level. It's not until 17th level (for a Druid) or 18th level (for a Cleric) that this provides you more total 6th level spells per day.

At 7th level, you gain the Magic domain. Again, I judge this to be worth roughly a feat, particularly if you follow the interpretation that prepared divine spellcasters can only prepare one domain spell per level total (instead of one per domain).

At 8th level, you get nothing.

At 9th level, you get arcane sight. Not even "permanently active arcane sight" or "greater arcane sight", just the ability to cast a 3rd level Sorcerer/Wizard spell three times per day. Hard to see that as particularly compelling remuneration for the casting you lost.

At 10th level, you lose your second level of casting and in exchange you get the ability to use discern location. That's good, right? discern location is a powerful spell. Except, no, you get the ability to use it once per week and it is again a spell of a level you'd just have if you hadn't taken this PrC.

Overall, this PrC seems like a real hard sell to justify taking, even if you love the flavor. You get more Seeking for whatever Misty Isles you happen to want to find by simply being a single-classed Cleric and using your additional spell slots to cast divinations.

Now let's talk about a more powerful PrC: the Mindbender. I'm not going to bother with a level-by-level analysis here, because my argument is a more abstract one about how raising objective capabilities can provide a guide to a more consistent overall power level in practice.

The basic deal the Mindbender offers is a number of SLAs that are like various spells of the enchantment school. These are objectively useful and would be a clear upgrade if the class was full progression, but much like the Seeker they are not nearly enough to make up for the lost spellcasting even if all you want to do is cast Enchantment spells. You get three castings of suggestion (the duration is weird, but the difference is not a strict upgrade and probably doesn't matter), four castings of charm monster (sort of -- you can have four active, but they're permanent), and one casting of dominate monster. Of these, only the last comes online before a normal spellcaster would have access to the equivalent spell, and the usages trickle in so that you are never really ahead of what a standard spellcaster could be doing (again, outside the dominate), even one who only casts the equivalent spells.

But let's consider that standard Enchanter. He's relying on charm monster and/or dominate person for most of the game, which have a day/level duration. That means at 10th level a Beguiler with a high enough Intelligence for a bonus 4th and 5th level spell will have 10 total castings per day, meaning they have enough spell slots for 100 castings active simultaneously. If you assume 50% utilization to provide cover for minions making saves, and knock an additional 10% off to give room for combat castings, that's 40 minions -- ten times as many as the Mindbender will ever have. Obviously, that's incredibly overpowered, makes adjudicating combat a nightmare, and probably exceeds the number of level-appropriate minions you can even find. But how do you determine how many minions it is appropriate to have? You could have some kind of complicated gentleman's agreement that you'd have to hash out with new players, or you could just buff Mindbender to full casting and say the player gets that many minions and has to leave any more at home. Sure seems simpler to me.


There is already a power gap between mundanes and casters.

Then we should already be doing things to fix it. When someone goes to get their car checked out to see if the engine has trouble, you don't show up there to yell at them about their diet. Solve problems in the context in which they arise, not by twiddling unrelated things. Someone who is choosing to be a straight Wizard, a Wizard/Master Specialist, or a Wizard/Blood Mage is not considering the tradeoff with Fighter and the options they are choosing should not be evaluated in that context. If you want Wizards to be worse, make them worse. "Wizards have Bard casting, but casting PrCs are full progression" is better than the status quo from a design perspective, and does a better job of solving the problem you have identified. You are not nerfing Wizards when you make Green Star Adept bad. You are nerfing Green Star Adepts, and they don't deserve it.


So if losing a caster level is worth almost nothing except the strongest of class features, sorcerers are insufferably underpowered and should never be played?

I agree that spontaneous spellcasters should get new spell levels at odd character levels, yes.


Bards even more so?

Bards, notionally, get accelerated access to certain spells to justify their worse spellcasting progression. Also, for Bards that do specialize in casting (rather than any of the other myriad things Bards are allowed to do), Sublime Chord is right there to ensure that they do get 9th level spells like a regular spellcaster.


Mystic rangers lose some spells per day and most of the druid's class list for worthless class features, who needs those? Never play a mystic ranger.

I would not argue that lost spell slots are a problem. Perhaps OP would, but I would disagree with him on that point. Archmage is a perfectly fine PrC, and if you really feel that there needs to be a cost for PrCs, that's the way to approach it. Mystic Ranger is a bad class because it lives at one power level for the first half of the game, then crashes down to another over the second half.


Regular rangers lose some of their progression for even more worthless class features. Throw them in the trash!

I absolutely agree that Ranger is underpowered and should be significantly better than it is. But, as I said to the other guy, that's a separate problem from casting PrCs, and we don't need to fix it to fix them, or to not fix them because we haven't fixed it.


Because not everybody wants to be able to do anything.

I actually suspect that most people do, in fact, want to be able to do things. But this line of argument is wholly unresponsive to what OP is saying. He is not arguing that casting PrCs should be buffed to be on par with the best casting PrCs, simply that they should not make you worse at casting than not taking them. Your argument is just "I would like to accept a slightly wider power band than you", which is of course completely meaningless in the context of the question at hand, as there's no casting PrC that would change the power band the game operates in if you made it full casting.


Power is not a goal to build towards. Fun is a goal to build towards.

This is just the Stormwind Fallacy.


"this looks cool, how can I make it work well?" not "is this the strongest option available?".

And what I said in the other thread is that this is an even better argument for making things full-casting. Someone who is ruthlessly optimizing could potentially be convinced to give up some amount of casting for appropriately powerful options. If you're not playing with people like that, you're just arbitrarily perpetuating inequality between people who like Mage of the Arcane Order and people who like Wild Soul.

[Gruftzwerg]

Then we should already be doing things to fix it. When someone goes to get their car checked out to see if the engine has trouble, you don't show up there to yell at them about their diet. Solve problems in the context in which they arise, not by twiddling unrelated things. Someone who is choosing to be a straight Wizard, a Wizard/Master Specialist, or a Wizard/Blood Mage is not considering the tradeoff with Fighter and the options they are choosing should not be evaluated in that context. If you want Wizards to be worse, make them worse. "Wizards have Bard casting, but casting PrCs are full progression" is better than the status quo from a design perspective, and does a better job of solving the problem you have identified. You are not nerfing Wizards when you make Green Star Adept bad. You are nerfing Green Star Adepts, and they don't deserve it.

You can't fix the gap between mundanes and caster in 3.5. This is a design issue in 3.5, because we bazillion spells than can cover any niche situation and make anything the DM throws at you irrelevant. The flexibility to solve ANY kind of problem IS THE PROBLEM here^^. And this can't be fixed with some QoL buffs. Many have tried it over the past 20 years and have failed. WotC tried it with Tome of Battle to close the gap between casters and mundanes by giving them a small selection of magic-like abilities but also failed.

And while we already try to live with this power gap (with gentlemen agreements on most tables to not overshadow your teammates with your build), we shouldn't buff casters even more (unless you are playing a full T1/T2 party maybe).

edit: regarding prc like green star adept
Those are imho PRC intended for gish builds. And no, not a full BAB + 9s gish. A mundane base class with some added magic to enhance melee or ranged combat. The prc was never intended to be a full wizard equivalent prc. That is the entire intention here imho.

[AsuraKyoko]

I think the real problem with Prestige Classes that lose casting levels is that they feel really bad to take. Losing a caster level feels bad because it puts you behind for the rest of the game. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that prestige classes should give you something that is actually worth that, or trade away something less impactful instead. Archmage is the perfect example of this. Each feature has a cost of a spell slot of a particular level, so you don't get features completely for free, but you also aren't putting yourself behind in progression forever. This also avoids the problem that many classes have where you pay a cost early for a benefit later, so you have one or more levels where you are just worse off than you would be if you had stayed in your base class.

[Thurbane]

I feel like if all casting PrCs had the exact same amount of casting progression, there would only ever be 3 or 4 PrCs that anyone would take...

Having said that, though, most of the powerful and/or broken ones are already full casting, especially if they appear n a FR splat.

[Troacctid]

One incantatrix in the game is bad enough. You want to add potentially dozens more? Why not just play gestalt at that point?

[Harrow]

First of all, I think there may be some disagreement over what a prestige class is supposed to do. Saying the Malconvoker "is for dedicated summoners and creature callers only" feels a little redundant to me. To me, a prestige class is supposed to be a specialist of some kind. I don't think every character should be taking a prestige class. If you're trying to fix "Cleric/Wizard/Sorcerer get few, if any class features" by making a wider variety of prestige classes more accessible, then why not just cut out the middle man and give Clerics, Wizards, and Sorcerers actual class features? Sure, you would need to cut back on their spells in some way or risk turning every class into the do-everything Druid, but, if you're trying to "fix" classes, then that's something you should likely be doing anyway.

Casting prestige classes need to come at some cost. If they don't, then they either make too little change to be worth writing their name down on your character sheet, or they just offer a straight upgrade to what are already the most powerful classes in the game. I do agree, however, that losing caster levels is generally too much. As I said, I expect prestige classes to be specialists, losing general viability by being really good at doing one thing in particular. It kind of shoots the concept in the foot to make a specialist who can only effectively do one thing when the base generalist does that one thing better in addition to everything else. I like the Archmage example, losing specific spell slots in exchange for actual class features. You could also have class entry requirements, but you have to tread a fine line between the requirements being thematic and being synergistic. If they don't fit the class enough, they don't make sense, but if they're something everyone doing what the prestige class specializes in would pick up anyway, then they aren't a real cost. For example, Augment Summoning is a thematic choice for a summoning PrC, but also mandatory for summoners in general, and so not an effective cost.

Honestly, the more I think about it the more I like my idea of giving base classes more class features but cutting back on casting ability. Then, you could make PrCs full casting and there would still be an interesting choice between staying in the base class and having more general features, or taking a PrC and getting stuff more specific to what you're trying to do.

[pabelfly]

Out of all the concerns I have about 3.5 DnD, the fact that spellcasters don't have enough high-power prestige classes to make use of is precisely zero of them.

[RandomPeasant]

we bazillion spells than can cover any niche situation and make anything the DM throws at you irrelevant. The flexibility to solve ANY kind of problem IS THE PROBLEM here^^.

Then why are you so insistent that we make "be a green statue dude" suck? If the problem is the spells, change the spells. If you want to make me lose five levels of casting to be an Acolyte of the Skin, explain what problem that is solving. It can't be that Wizards are too good, because it doesn't solve that problem. No one forces me to be an Acolyte of the Skin. I can just keep taking Wizard levels and get all those spells you can't deal with.


we shouldn't buff casters even more

Explain to me how we are buffing casters. Show me a caster build using a full-progression version of a partial-casting PrC that is more powerful than the most powerful existing caster build. I will give you bonus points if the PrC you use is not named "Swiftblade" or "Master Transmogrifist". If you cannot do that, you are wrong when you say this change buffs casters.


edit: regarding prc like green star adept
Those are imho PRC intended for gish builds.

Then why is it half BAB. Wizard 2/Fighter 3/Green Star Adept 10 is at best marginally better than Wizard 7/Fighter 8. Wizard 2/Warblade 3/Green Star Adept 10 is flatly worse than Wizard 7/Warblade 8. The class is just bad. It doesn't matter if you apply a double standard to it, it's still bad.


I feel like if all casting PrCs had the exact same amount of casting progression, there would only ever be 3 or 4 PrCs that anyone would take...

If you look around, this does not appear to empirically be the case. Plenty of people take Mage of the Arcane Order or Archmage or Master Specialist despite those not being the best full-progression casting PrCs. Empirically speaking, the track record on diversity among full-casting PrCs is way better than that on partial casting PrCs getting played at all.


One incantatrix in the game is bad enough. You want to add potentially dozens more?

Please, explain to me what the "dozens" of partial casting classes that get class features as good as the ones an Incantatrix gets are. Hell, just give me the first dozen. I'll wait.


If you're trying to fix "Cleric/Wizard/Sorcerer get few, if any class features" by making a wider variety of prestige classes more accessible, then why not just cut out the middle man and give Clerics, Wizards, and Sorcerers actual class features? Sure, you would need to cut back on their spells in some way or risk turning every class into the do-everything Druid, but, if you're trying to "fix" classes, then that's something you should likely be doing anyway.

The reason to change PrCs instead of writing class features is that it's less work. And if you do the work of writing class features, you're back at the point of not needing casting PrCs to give up casting progression, because now there are class features you lose when you decide to seek the misty isle or whatever. If you want to nerf casting in that process, that's fine. I'm not, in this context, defending that casters should be left as-is. But "how good should it be to be a spellcaster" and "should taking a spellcasting PrC make you substantially worse at casting spells than not doing so" are separate questions, and the only way you can come to the answer to the latter people insist on is by conflating it with the former.

[Gruftzwerg]

Then why are you so insistent that we make "be a green statue dude" suck? If the problem is the spells, change the spells. If you want to make me lose five levels of casting to be an Acolyte of the Skin, explain what problem that is solving. It can't be that Wizards are too good, because it doesn't solve that problem. No one forces me to be an Acolyte of the Skin. I can just keep taking Wizard levels and get all those spells you can't deal with.

Is the glass half full or half empty?

Have you tried to look at it from the opposite point of view? The Green Star (GSA) adept is not intended to make your wizard suck. It's intended to make your otherwise mundane character into a halfway useful gish. He won't become an almost godlike and omnipotent being, but that was never the intention as you wanted to play a gish and not a T1/T2 build.

The GSA has nothing going for normal/full caster. None of these abilities you want to have on a full caster, since there are already spells that can cover the offered bonuses better. But for a mundane base like a Barbarian/Fighter, who wants to have some magical utility, it could be perfect to get into GSA.




Explain to me how we are buffing casters. Show me a caster build using a full-progression version of a partial-casting PrC that is more powerful than the most powerful existing caster build. I will give you bonus points if the PrC you use is not named "Swiftblade" or "Master Transmogrifist". If you cannot do that, you are wrong when you say this change buffs casters.

How about Wyrm Wizard (WW) as example?
Remember how I said that powerful spells are the problem to begin with? This prc give you access to spells form other classes. Normally at the cost of caster level. Thus, now I can get Divine Power, Body outside Body and Miracle (and more..) on a Wizard. Or I could get, Polymorph, Divine Power and Shapechange (and more..) on a Wu-Jen. Yeah, that is totally balanced.. ^^





Then why is it half BAB. Wizard 2/Fighter 3/Green Star Adept 10 is at best marginally better than Wizard 7/Fighter 8. Wizard 2/Warblade 3/Green Star Adept 10 is flatly worse than Wizard 7/Warblade 8. The class is just bad. It doesn't matter if you apply a double standard to it, it's still bad.
Because a gish doesn't rely as much on BAB as a mundane does.

You wanna hit something? Change into a high STR form.

You want extra attacks? Chose a form with lots of attacks.

You rely on BAB if you don't have access to nice spells that can compensate that. And as said above, try to see it the other way. A Fighter 8/Wiz X/ GSA X is better than a pure fighter. The prc is not meant to make your full caster build even stronger. It's intended for gishes, those who never aim for getting their 9th lvl spells and who are fine with some magic (and don't want to have omnipotent magic).

Not every class/prc is designed for munchkins in 3.5
Some (if not most) are just fluff focused low to mid tier (p)classes.

[RandomPeasant]

Is the glass half full or half empty?

Oh, the glass is significantly less than half full. And the stuff in it isn't water.


The Green Star (GSA) adept is not intended to make your wizard suck.

But the effect of taking it is that it makes my Wizard suck. 3.5 promises us "open multiclassing", the dream of taking whichever classes we want and coming away with a reasonably effective character. Green Star Adept is not a "gish PrC", because "gish PrC" is not a concept that exists in the system. It is a PrC, and while it is somewhat more difficult to qualify for as a straight Wizard than a Wizard/Fighter, it is entirely possible to enter as either, and there is nothing in the text of the class that indicates which it is supposed to be for. You are simply applying a double standard because you don't like dealing with powerful characters.


It's intended to make your otherwise mundane character into a halfway useful gish.

So, in other words, not a useful gish? Eldritch Knight is right there in core, and while far from optimal a Wizard 6/Fighter 1/Eldritch Knight 10 is clearly better than a Wizard 11/Fighter 6, not to mention a good sight better than a Wizard 6/Fighter 1/Green Star Adept 10. So what's the justification for the power level here? Is it just that "green statue man" is cooler than "mage knight"? If it's that, how is it anything other than taking the Stormwind Fallacy as a guidebook?


None of these abilities you want to have on a full caster, since there are already spells that can cover the offered bonuses better.

Then what the hell is the problem with it being full casting? If I am willing to take "stuff I can already do" rather than "being an Incantatrix" (or even the far more reasonable "being Mage of the Arcane Order") as long as it does not kick my casting to death, how on earth do you, as someone who would like casters to be less powerful, justify not giving me that option? It's like saying "I really think Fighters are underpowered, so I don't allow Tome of Battle in my games".


How about Wyrm Wizard (WW) as example?

Sure. Wyrm Wizard allows you to learn five spells that aren't on your list. That's nice, it really is. Which five spells are you learning, and why can't I learn them and also whichever ones you were getting from your base class as an Archivist or StP Erudite, either of which have access to the overwhelming majority of printed spells? When you've answered that one, what's stopping me from scribing scrolls of them as an Artificer, who can scribe literally any printed spell? Hell, at the time Wyrm Wizard was released, the Rules Compendium hadn't been printed yet and Wizards could still scribe any spell they deciphered into their spellbooks, so getting the party Wizard to agree to just the five spells he wanted most would have been a significant nerf.


Yeah, that is totally balanced.

Hold on, that's not where the goalposts were. We can argue about "balance" until you're blue in the face. But the claim you made was that increasing partial casting PrCs to full progression increased the power level of spellcasters. That's a separate question from "balance", and you prove it by showing me a build that is more powerful than existing caster builds because of making a PrC full progression. You haven't done that yet, and I doubt you will.


You wanna hit something? Change into a high STR form.

You want extra attacks? Chose a form with lots of attacks.

Why are you, someone who is concerned about spellcasters abusing powerful spells, encouraging me to cast polymorph? Why would anyone consider a spell the Green Star Adept would not have access to until his last PrC level to be a solution to the flaws of the PrC?


A Fighter 8/Wiz X/ GSA X is better than a pure fighter.

That's true. And that build with a full progression Green Star Adept is better yet. You seem convinced that it is impossible to balance 3e. Perhaps that is because you are refusing to make changes that would benefit under-performing builds.


(and don't want to have omnipotent magic).

Yes, famously omnipotent magic like "casting level-appropriate blasting spells". Just because you can't plot around spellcasters doesn't mean they are "omnipotent". I'd venture to guess that there are multiple people in this thread who can design more adventures suitable for high-level casters than you can come up with PrCs that raise the caster power level if they become full casting.

[redking]

I'd probably houserule full caster levels, if not full progression. That way the half casters do fall behind, but not in caster levels, which seems unreasonably punishing. For whatever reason, the designers wanted to keep caster level and spell progression in the same track, but I suspect that if WotC had done D&D 3.75 instead of 4E, something like this might have been implemented.

[Gruftzwerg]

Oh, the glass is significantly less than half full. And the stuff in it isn't water.



But the effect of taking it is that it makes my Wizard suck. 3.5 promises us "open multiclassing", the dream of taking whichever classes we want and coming away with a reasonably effective character. Green Star Adept is not a "gish PrC", because "gish PrC" is not a concept that exists in the system. It is a PrC, and while it is somewhat more difficult to qualify for as a straight Wizard than a Wizard/Fighter, it is entirely possible to enter as either, and there is nothing in the text of the class that indicates which it is supposed to be for. You are simply applying a double standard because you don't like dealing with powerful characters.
With "gish" I mean a mundane base for combat with weapons (incl. natural and unarmed) which gets magically enhanced.
Excuse me, but aren't you the one ignoring for which type of builds the PRC is intended? You want to ignore the "standard" set by the designers, because you feel it's wrong.
If you want full casting you are free to look elsewhere.



So, in other words, not a useful gish? Eldritch Knight is right there in core, and while far from optimal a Wizard 6/Fighter 1/Eldritch Knight 10 is clearly better than a Wizard 11/Fighter 6, not to mention a good sight better than a Wizard 6/Fighter 1/Green Star Adept 10. So what's the justification for the power level here? Is it just that "green statue man" is cooler than "mage knight"? If it's that, how is it anything other than taking the Stormwind Fallacy as a guidebook?
How about a more mudane focused "gish" with sole a dip in a caster class in favor of maybe more bonus feats? Like a Fighter 4/ Sorc 1 / GSA 10? You enter the prc at lvl 6 (the standard entry lvl for most prc) and it's a straight boost compared to Fighter 15? You are still looking at the problem from a full casters perspective and still ignoring the rest.




Then what the hell is the problem with it being full casting? If I am willing to take "stuff I can already do" rather than "being an Incantatrix" (or even the far more reasonable "being Mage of the Arcane Order") as long as it does not kick my casting to death, how on earth do you, as someone who would like casters to be less powerful, justify not giving me that option? It's like saying "I really think Fighters are underpowered, so I don't allow Tome of Battle in my games".
If a fighter picks the GSA his aim is not to maintain the flexibility that comes with (full) casting. His intend is to enhance his combat style and maybe situational solve some minor stuff outside of combat.
Whereas a full caster (build) is looking for thing that enhance their full casting. Which means for something else than GSA.
What GSA does give you are always active passive buffs. And that is what a mundane character who dips into magic is looking for. Buffs with an good action economy. And GSA gives you permanently increased STR, DR, Fortification and more. That's what you get for the lost caster levels.




Sure. Wyrm Wizard allows you to learn five spells that aren't on your list. That's nice, it really is. Which five spells are you learning, and why can't I learn them and also whichever ones you were getting from your base class as an Archivist or StP Erudite, either of which have access to the overwhelming majority of printed spells? When you've answered that one, what's stopping me from scribing scrolls of them as an Artificer, who can scribe literally any printed spell? Hell, at the time Wyrm Wizard was released, the Rules Compendium hadn't been printed yet and Wizards could still scribe any spell they deciphered into their spellbooks, so getting the party Wizard to agree to just the five spells he wanted most would have been a significant nerf.

I hope that you realize that mundane classes like Fighter, Rogue, monk and so on still exist in the same universe as Archivist, Stp Erudite, GSA (with whatsoever base classes) and Pun-Pun?
They all have totally different power lvls. That is 3.5
Not everything is on par with a wizard nor with pun-pun. And that's the main reason why many favor 3.5
Because you can choose the power lvl you wanna play. Even without relying on houserules. If "you"(r table) wants to houserule some balance changes, fine for you. No problem. But stop assuming everyone wants to play a full caster because anything else has less power.
If you want to have the power of an Stp Erudite, just play one. Why try to turn Wyrm Wizard into a copycat. They both have different intended power lvls by design. If you wanna ignore that design intention, that is up to you and your table.

You haven't provided any argument so far, why everyone should make this change? Because that is what you are advertising here, imho. As said, I would be fine with such an adjustment on a case by case basis. But as general demand it is just nuts, sorry.. :(




Hold on, that's not where the goalposts were. We can argue about "balance" until you're blue in the face. But the claim you made was that increasing partial casting PrCs to full progression increased the power level of spellcasters. That's a separate question from "balance", and you prove it by showing me a build that is more powerful than existing caster builds because of making a PrC full progression. You haven't done that yet, and I doubt you will.
Just because Pun-Pun exists, doesn't mean that everybody plays at that power lvl.
Just because Spt Erudites exist, doesn't mean everything has to be on par with it. As said, if you want to have that power level, play one and stop tying to bring everything (soon fighters, monks, samurai and commoners ^^) on par with super high tier builds.




Why are you, someone who is concerned about spellcasters abusing powerful spells, encouraging me to cast polymorph? Why would anyone consider a spell the Green Star Adept would not have access to until his last PrC level to be a solution to the flaws of the PrC?


You could make a Wizard 8/ GSA 10 and would have access to polymorph right from the first lvl of GSA. I don't get where you are seeing the problem here? A GSA would maybe chose other forms for Poly than a regular caster, due to his inbuild STR increase and DR. Ever thought of those kind of options? All you see is the glass half empty as said and not the rest. I hope that you maybe now get my point?



That's true. And that build with a full progression Green Star Adept is better yet. You seem convinced that it is impossible to balance 3e. Perhaps that is because you are refusing to make changes that would benefit under-performing builds.
No, I have 20 years of attempts behind me. Me, my group, this forum, other forums, reddit.. all have failed so far. Because the problem "the amount of flexible spells" that make you near omnipotent when (!) going full caster can't be done with simple fixes. You could only do this making all classes generic and sole differ in some minor fluff points or by banning about 80% of all spells (mostly found in the core books, starting with simple things like Feather Fall).
You would need to rewrite about 50% of the game to accomplish this goal. If you can't see the reasons, you have no clue why 3.5 has balancing issues to begin with. It's by the way 3.5 is intended and designed. Spells rely on the limited spell slot resource. And the intention was that this should legitimate and limit the power of caster. Reality is that with higher spell lvls you have enough slots over the lvls to cover most situational and daily situations at the same time. So the initial design intend to keep casters has failed totally.
(I hope this didn't sound offending or harsh. not my intention.)




Yes, famously omnipotent magic like "casting level-appropriate blasting spells". Just because you can't plot around spellcasters doesn't mean they are "omnipotent". I'd venture to guess that there are multiple people in this thread who can design more adventures suitable for high-level casters than you can come up with PrCs that raise the caster power level if they become full casting.
You have to accept that there is low tier stuff, mid tier, high tier and omnipotent tier in 3.5
And most people enjoy it that way. This way, you can have a party of commoner-like PC builds in one game, and high magic wielding casters in another with the same players. Why should everyone restrict themselves to sole "omnipotent tier"?? Why? Do you hate players who just wanna play Conan the barbarian and not Pun-Pun?

And while all the talk about pun-pun. Why don't you just play pun-pun? i mean for real. You could give you those abilities you want, and you don't need to make any rule changes for this. Saves so much time compared to finding ways to balance each of the hundredths of class to T1. Everybody plays pun-pun and picks himself the abilities. I think this is the best solution for you ;)

[RandomPeasant]

Excuse me, but aren't you the one ignoring for which type of builds the PRC is intended?

Show me the intent. Where does it say "this is for a gish". Because I don't see that anywhere.


How about a more mudane focused "gish" with sole a dip in a caster class in favor of maybe more bonus feats?

How about you respond to the argument at all. All you're saying here is "if I apply a strong enough double standard I can say it's fine". Which, sure, but you could say that about anything.


Whereas a full caster (build) is looking for thing that enhance their full casting. Which means for something else than GSA.

Why? I would actually really like to play a full caster with Green Star Adept levels if that did not cripple my casting. Because I don't want a PrC that "enhances my full casting". I want a PrC that is cool, but not mechanically awful. The argument you're making here is that I don't want the thing I want, but that argument is definitionally wrong, because I do in fact want that thing.


They all have totally different power lvls. That is 3.5

That is, again, completely beside the point and utterly unresponsive. Yes, things are imbalanced. But what you said is that buffing casting PrCs would make casters stronger. And if you can't show me an example of a caster build that is stronger than any existing caster build because it gets full casting progression out of a PrC that used to be partial casting, that claim is false. You could make some other claim like "if we made partial casting PrCs better they'd be better", but those claims are rather less compelling.


You haven't provided any argument so far, why everyone should make this change?

The opening post of this thread has plenty of arguments, as does my first post in the previous thread (which I felt no need to repeat, as OP linked that thread explicitly).


I would be fine with such an adjustment on a case by case basis.

Would you? Would you really? Because you seem pretty adamant about "Green Star Adept is totally fine guys", and I'm not sure there's a single PrC with casting progression that's actually worse.


As said, if you want to have that power level, play one and stop tying to bring everything (soon fighters, monks, samurai and commoners ^^) on par with super high tier builds.

So if I want to play at a specific power level, I should do that by not moving things to that power level so I can play with them? Again, are you sure that balance problems are insoluble and not just that you haven't tried very hard?


You could make a Wizard 8/ GSA 10 and would have access to polymorph right from the first lvl of GSA. I don't get where you are seeing the problem here?

But I thought GSA wasn't for full casters.


banning about 80% of all spells (mostly found in the core books, starting with simple things like Feather Fall).

So just to be clear, when you say "broken spells that make you omnipotent", you think the threshold for that is lower than feather fall?


You have to accept that there is low tier stuff, mid tier, high tier and omnipotent tier in 3.5

I mean, there's not and "omnipotent tier", but we're still no closer to you explaining why a Wizard 5/Mage of the Arcane Order 10 that casts as a 15th level Wizard (or even a 15th level Wizard that casts as a 15th level Wizard) is fine, but a Wizard 8/Green Star Adept 7 that casts as a 15th level Wizard is unacceptable. Or to you admitting that, yes, Mage of the Arcane Order should dock you five levels of casting.


Do you hate players who just wanna play Conan the barbarian and not Pun-Pun?

Yes, literally the only mechanism by which the game could support things at different levels of power is wildly imbalanced classes. There is no pre-existing construct that could facilitate that in any other way. If we don't let Green Star Adept be completely terrible, no one will be able to play characters that do not have the "omnipotent" power of being able to cast feather fall.

[SimonMoon6]

I think one should also always be aware of the reasons why these terrible prestige classes were created the way they were. I should emphasize that I totally agree that full casting is something that almost every spellcaster prestige class should include.

The main thing is that prestige classes need to have a cost. There has to be a reason why some people would stick to being just a wizard or just a druid or even just a fighter (for all of those "special" children out there). A wizard prestige class must never be "exactly the same as a wizard but better" or else there is no reason for the wizard class to exist after the 5 levels needed to enter the prestige class.

So, every character has to give up something to enter a prestige class. And wizards don't have anything except spellcasting. Okay, they've got a familiar, I guess, but nobody cares about advancing their familiar. (Pathfinder gives all the classes, especially sorcerer, something extra to give up, but still wizards are really all about just spellcasting.)

So, that's why a lot of early prestige classes made wizards give up some spellcasting. Wizards had nothing else to give up. And then later prestige classes looked at previous prestige classes as a precedent to follow unfortunately.

Now, of course, there's the "cost" of entry requirements for the prestige class. But I don't think the game designers thought of that as a cost. After all, suppose there's a feat that you have to have in order to enter a prestige class. Suppose it's Toughness (bad feat). Well, a wizard (with no prestige class) might take that feat and not enter the prestige class. So, a wizard who has the feat and enters the prestige class, thereby gaining cool new powers has lost nothing compared to the wizard who took the feat and did not enter the prestige class. So, from the game designer's point of view, there's no cost.

Of course, it still is a cost. It's an "opportunity cost". By forcing someone to take Toughness, they aren't allowed to take the feat they really wanted: Skill Focus (Appraise). (I mean, probably not that feat.)

But balancing opportunity costs can be difficult. Obviously, some prestige classes do it better than others. Imagine a druid prestige class that required "Natural Spell" so that they can cast spells while wild-shaped. Well, every druid already is going to take that feat. So, that's not really an opportunity cost. I mean, it technically is (Oh no, I can't take Skill Focus (Appraise)!) but not really.

So, thinking of prestige class entry requirements as being costs... well, sometimes they could be, but often they are costs in theory only. So, a caster might still get free abilities as long as they take the skills and feats that they were already going to take. Like, a class that specializes in transmutation spells will often "require" that you know some transmutation spells. That's not really a cost. That's what you would be doing anyway in order to use the benefits of the class. Or the cost of "you must be able to cast spells" in order to take a class that advances spellcasting. Not really a cost.

If anything, with such a large number of prestige classes in the game, it gets to the point where taking a specific prestige class is itself the opportunity cost since maybe you should've take another one instead. I see no reason (other than DM not allowing it) for a druid to take any prestige class other than Planar Shepherd other than for the occasional dip (like in Contemplative). So, the cost of the class ends up being the class itself, which is weird, and definitely not what the game designers would've imagined originally.

[Gruftzwerg]

Show me the intent. Where does it say "this is for a gish". Because I don't see that anywhere.
Because it has "not-full-casting"? If that ain't a big sing "not for those who wanna be full casters" then I don't know. And if you aren't a full caster, you are (at least imho) a gish character. Maybe not one that will hit the "min +16 BAB + 9th lvl spells" deluxe gish benchmark, but still a gish.




How about you respond to the argument at all. All you're saying here is "if I apply a strong enough double standard I can say it's fine". Which, sure, but you could say that about anything.



Why? I would actually really like to play a full caster with Green Star Adept levels if that did not cripple my casting. Because I don't want a PrC that "enhances my full casting". I want a PrC that is cool, but not mechanically awful. The argument you're making here is that I don't want the thing I want, but that argument is definitionally wrong, because I do in fact want that thing.



That is, again, completely beside the point and utterly unresponsive. Yes, things are imbalanced. But what you said is that buffing casting PrCs would make casters stronger. And if you can't show me an example of a caster build that is stronger than any existing caster build because it gets full casting progression out of a PrC that used to be partial casting, that claim is false. You could make some other claim like "if we made partial casting PrCs better they'd be better", but those claims are rather less compelling.

Let me try to explain the issue that you are missing out here (imho):
Like " SimonMoon6" said, a prc has to give up some of the normal class abilities, to make room for others.
A wizard has his spells and his familiar as sole abilities to trade.

A GSA gives you permanent bonuses. On a more "mundane" focused base class entry(e.g. Fighter 4/Wiz 1) you get a lil spell progression and some permanent buffs (action economy). The "mundane" trades away some of his at-will abilties (e.g. fighter bonus feats and BAB) for some magical enhancements and some minor spellcasting.
If we take a more caster focused base, we get the same benefits. Permanent magical buffs that enhance your action economy (since you don't need to cast the spells that would emulate the same effects). Further, if you play with poly/shapechange, you can now choose froms who lack DR or could need a slight STR boost to become strong and so on. Sure this ain't nothing compared to the flexibility of a full caster, but those need to use limited resources (spell slots and action) to get the abilities.

And in a world of Rocket Tag 3.5, where most fights are done within 1-2 rounds, action economy is king!

A full caster is more flexible, but a gish is more specilized in combat and can shine there more. Each of these build types deserve their own niche. Have a look at most full caster PRCs. Most of em (exceptions may exist) only feature x/day abilities and barely strong passives abilities or strong at will abilities.




Would you? Would you really? Because you seem pretty adamant about "Green Star Adept is totally fine guys", and I'm not sure there's a single PrC with casting progression that's actually worse.

As said, if I would prepare an adventure/campaign for a pure full caster party 8and request such type of builds), why not. But as soon as someone wants to play something less magical maybe at the next adventure/campaign, you have to either take the GSA as it is or take something else. And maybe I even ban T1-T2 completely if I feel like it. There are adventures that you can't play with full casters due to the potency of spells. And if you want to play those type of adventures, you restrict em. But such things are rare and always haven been talked about and agreed upon with the players.

It's always a game by game decision for me. One game can be designed for demigod-like characters, while the other may feature characters that are more like street kids. Just because everybody has the system mastery to play a high optimized game doesn't mean that this is the sole way to have fun. Sometimes you want to keep it "normal".

As such I don't see any reason so far to make any global changes for half-casting prc. They have their purpose imho.




So if I want to play at a specific power level, I should do that by not moving things to that power level so I can play with them? Again, are you sure that balance problems are insoluble and not just that you haven't tried very hard?

If you read my post you should know the answer. I have spent many years following this question, have read and heard many attempts to "balance" 3.5. As said, all failed. And I've been part of discussions where we tried to analyze the problem, why these attempts have failed. And the conclusion is what I've already said. The amount of spells at high lvl that make you near omnipotent together with the failed resource "limitation" (called spellslots).
If you wanna do another attempt, you are free to try it. Maybe you wanna put in the effort needed to overhaul all the (hundredths? thousandths?) of classes in 3.5. Dunno if you have the time for it. Other people have jobs and a life, you know. You are underestimating the size of the problem and are under the illusion that some minor fixes will solve the problem. If that had been the case, I ensure you someone else would have done it in the past 20 years.



But I thought GSA wasn't for full casters.

You have been giving caster focused examples and than denied the possibility for a GSA. So it is within the range of possible builds. And such a GSA would profit from his passive abilities while being polymorphed. A non action always free buff to the already strong polymorph forms. If you want a sole Polymorph focused build. GSA may be your choice.


So just to be clear, when you say "broken spells that make you omnipotent", you think the threshold for that is lower than feather fall?




I mean, there's not and "omnipotent tier", but we're still no closer to you explaining why a Wizard 5/Mage of the Arcane Order 10 that casts as a 15th level Wizard (or even a 15th level Wizard that casts as a 15th level Wizard) is fine, but a Wizard 8/Green Star Adept 7 that casts as a 15th level Wizard is unacceptable. Or to you admitting that, yes, Mage of the Arcane Order should dock you five levels of casting.
See above: Permanent abilities tend to cost more class resources and tend to be weaker than limited use abilities which demand actions to unleash (like spells with spellslots). This seems to be design that I see on most (p)classes. If this design is justified/balanced? Imho the intend was good, but they failed to see that spellslots aren't as limiting as they hoped for.



Yes, literally the only mechanism by which the game could support things at different levels of power is wildly imbalanced classes. There is no pre-existing construct that could facilitate that in any other way. If we don't let Green Star Adept be completely terrible, no one will be able to play characters that do not have the "omnipotent" power of being able to cast feather fall.
I mentioned Feather Fall to point out how far stretched the problem is. The design intend seems to be that it is balanced when monk still have a worse version of Feather Fall (a lvl 1 spell) even at lvl 20, because their ability is passive and sole requires you to be near a wall..
Do you see how far the rabbit hole goes? How much effort it would take to make 3.5 balanced. And it wouldn't be really 3.5 anymore. Because as said, imho most people like the fact that you can adjust the power lvl of your character for any new campaign. You can play some greenhorns or some mastermind overlords or something in between.



I think one should also always be aware of the reasons why these terrible prestige classes were created the way they were. I should emphasize that I totally agree that full casting is something that almost every spellcaster prestige class should include.

The main thing is that prestige classes need to have a cost. There has to be a reason why some people would stick to being just a wizard or just a druid or even just a fighter (for all of those "special" children out there). A wizard prestige class must never be "exactly the same as a wizard but better" or else there is no reason for the wizard class to exist after the 5 levels needed to enter the prestige class.
...

I agree with most of the stuff what you said. But I wanted to add the following:

Imho there are 2 types of PRC:
- those who fit on a single base class
- those who are more fitting for multiclassing

Over the release of all 3.5 books the situation has a bit changed with added base classes that feel like hybrid classes (e.g. Duskblade, often called gish in a can).
In both cases you only progress some of your base class(es) abilities, but not all in exchange for other stuff.

[RandomPeasant]

So, y'all think we're going to get those "dozens" of PrCs with Incantatrix-tier class features that are held back by their lost casting? Sure would be nice to see some concrete examples of all the brokenness this change releases on the world. Instead we've seen "it would introduce a way of getting off-list spells that is substantially less powerful than the ways that already exist", which is frankly a stronger argument that this is fine than anything I could come up with.


The main thing is that prestige classes need to have a cost.

I would start out by challenging this assumption. To begin with, what's the basis of the assumption? Well, the obvious answer is something about balance. If we make things have costs, we reduce the potential for powergaming. But that's not the only type of balance problem that exists. We also have the reality that many options are extremely under powered. If you were designing a PrC for Monks, giving it no meaningful cost relative to the base class might well be the more balanced approach, as Monks need all the help they can get.

And, of course, "balance" isn't the only concern we should have, and (I would argue) it is not the one that should be controlling when evaluating PrCs, particularly casting PrCs that are little more than an extension of the base class. Another concern is encouraging variety in character concepts. The game is more interesting if you play an Acolyte of the Skin in one game, a Seeker of the Misty Isle in the next, and a Nightmare Spinner in a third. As a result, we should make it easy to choose to do those things. The marginal change in balance we get going from a straight Sorcerer to one with some random full-casting PrC is well-worth the benefit we reap in more interesting characters. And, yes, some people will choose the PrCs anyway. But some people won't.

Now, I think it's fair to say that you'd like to see PrCs have real costs. But lost casting is really bad at that, because it's a variable cost, and because it inevitably creates discontinuities where a campaign that starts or ends in a given level range doesn't benefit from the balancing mechanism. If you want to balance PrCs by imposing costs (rather than simply accepting that interesting characters are more important than perfect balance), there are two good ways to do that: give base classes useful class features (like the Druid has) or have PrCs buy abilities with spell slots (like the Archmage does).

But the thing people seem to want to do, where partial casting PrCs are somehow a balancing mechanism does not and cannot work. If you think casters are too good, make them worse. But that is a separate problem from casting PrCs, and fixing it separately means that you are separating concerns and have the thing that is power level independent (the PrC) work at different power levels.


So, that's why a lot of early prestige classes made wizards give up some spellcasting.

I just don't buy that. There are plenty of PrCs, often in the same book as the ones that lose casting, that don't. I don't buy that there's some grand theory of which classes lose casting and which don't. I certainly don't buy Gruftzwerg's assertion that we can tell that some PrCs are "gish PrCs" because they lose casting (which would suggest that Mindbender is a gish PrC), or that we can see a clean trend that caster PrCs don't grant at-will abilities (or the converse, as there are plenty of partial-casting PrCs that grant limited-use abilities). Fundamentally, there is no rhyme or reason here. Some things get kicked in the teeth, some don't. So I propose that we just don't kick anything in the teeth and call it done.


Sure this ain't nothing compared to the flexibility of a full caster, but those need to use limited resources (spell slots and action) to get the abilities.

So the PrC made you worse, and we shrug because it didn't take away your power for literal nothing?


But as soon as someone wants to play something less magical maybe at the next adventure/campaign, you have to either take the GSA as it is or take something else.

And there you have it: the preferences of people who like low-power builds matter more than the preferences of people who like high-power builds. Don't need to consider that maybe the guy who'd like to play a caster has valid preferences, he can go hang so the Fighter can have fun.


And the conclusion is what I've already said. The amount of spells at high lvl that make you near omnipotent together with the failed resource "limitation" (called spellslots).

If your conclusion is "the problem is feather fall", you do not have the insight you think you do. The problem is a very small number of broken spells. Mostly minionmancy, action economy (no, Green Star Adept is not action economy, but nice joke), and form-changing magic. And then the problem is some classes that are underpowered. It's actually quite fixable, and in any case the balance problem is not caused by anything that making Green Star Adept good would change.


Because as said, imho most people like the fact that you can adjust the power lvl of your character for any new campaign.

Yes, there is no way to adjust the power level of a character other than a hideously imbalanced system. You couldn't have some standardized measure of power level and use that to determine how to put characters on a level playing field. Only massive class imbalance can work. Nothing else exists.

[Harrow]

I would like to know what mundane (prestige) classes would get as compensation here? Or is this just, "omg my T1 caster wants this cool prc ability and doesn't want to pay the power tax that would come with it"?

So what would you give mundanes?
Full BAB? 8+Int Skillpoints (together with better class skills)? Bonus Feats every two lvl?

Why should I play a non-full BAB char? I demand that all combat classes get full BAB!
Why should I play a class with minimal skill points? I demand that everything has more skillpoints!
Why shouldn't every class has Bonus Feats if even the useless Fighter gets em?

That's where this will end. As said, if you are making a PC for a "T1-T2 full caster party", I would even agree on a houserule for that specific campaign. But requiring this on a general base is just overkill.
This is pure elitism with the underlying suggestion that everybody should play T1/T2 full casters or their character sucks. Sorry, if this sounds harsh, but same goes for the demanded changes here.

Why do mundane prestige classes need "compensation"? I agree that they aren't balanced when they have to share the spotlight with casting classes, but we aren't talking about mundane prestige classes here, we're talking about casting prestige classes. Just because a solution doesn't solve an unrelated problem doesn't make it a bad solution.

Why should a casting class have to pay a "power tax" for cool abilities? That's only going to incentivize people boring but powerful characters all the time. You shouldn't be punished for wanting a game to be fun. The MIC saw that most people couldn't afford to spend gold and item slots on fun magic items because they were too expensive and the math of the game assumed you had a suite of +numbers items that were boring, if practical. So, they severely reduced the costs of many items and effects and removed the premium on combining certain magic item effects, primarily those mandatory +numbers ones. Was this a power boost? Unarguably yes. Does it allow for a wider variety of more interesting items and effects on characters, leading to more fun? Also yes.

The manner that you talk about a demand that "all combat classes get full BAB!" in makes it come across like you think it's a bad idea. It's not. The 3/4 BAB progression was a mistake. Every class should either be 1/2 or full. Monks and rogues should absolutely get full BAB, and clerics and bards should get half. I also think bards should have gotten better buffing ability earlier in core, but that's an entirely different discussion. And how you talk about more skill points and feats... Yeah, that too. Completely unironically a good idea. Pathfinder combined many skills and gave out feats every other level rather than every 3rd, and the sky never came crashing down. But, the important thing is, all these fixes that you don't seem to like the idea of have nothing to do with fixing all the terrible half casting prestige classes. They are off topic.

[Gruftzwerg]

Why do mundane prestige classes need "compensation"? I agree that they aren't balanced when they have to share the spotlight with casting classes, but we aren't talking about mundane prestige classes here, we're talking about casting prestige classes. Just because a solution doesn't solve an unrelated problem doesn't make it a bad solution.

Why should a casting class have to pay a "power tax" for cool abilities? That's only going to incentivize people boring but powerful characters all the time. You shouldn't be punished for wanting a game to be fun. The MIC saw that most people couldn't afford to spend gold and item slots on fun magic items because they were too expensive and the math of the game assumed you had a suite of +numbers items that were boring, if practical. So, they severely reduced the costs of many items and effects and removed the premium on combining certain magic item effects, primarily those mandatory +numbers ones. Was this a power boost? Unarguably yes. Does it allow for a wider variety of more interesting items and effects on characters, leading to more fun? Also yes.

The manner that you talk about a demand that "all combat classes get full BAB!" in makes it come across like you think it's a bad idea. It's not. The 3/4 BAB progression was a mistake. Every class should either be 1/2 or full. Monks and rogues should absolutely get full BAB, and clerics and bards should get half. I also think bards should have gotten better buffing ability earlier in core, but that's an entirely different discussion. And how you talk about more skill points and feats... Yeah, that too. Completely unironically a good idea. Pathfinder combined many skills and gave out feats every other level rather than every 3rd, and the sky never came crashing down. But, the important thing is, all these fixes that you don't seem to like the idea of have nothing to do with fixing all the terrible half casting prestige classes. They are off topic.

Why do have mundane classes have to pay a BAB tax? (3/4 BAB)
The problem still stays. It's a power tax many mundane classes have to face despite being mundane combatants primarily. So why shouldn't they get the same treatment as you demand for full casters? And the mundane classes most of the time only have 1-2 niches where they are good at, one of them is combat. And any 3/4 BAB mundane class has to face this power loss every lvl.
And yet, here we have "First Tier/World Problems" where some insist that a caster who loses some spell levels becomes unplayable. You still have your low to mid lvl spells who can solve many out of combat situations. Still more flexibility as most mundane builds will ever see.
"But omg, my Planar Binding gets delayed.", or "I don't get to cast Wish and Ice Assassin." or "My Fireball doesn't do enough dmg". Yeah, I can see how these problems are way more important, NOT!

I really find it funny how the "mundanes scale linear while casters scale exponential" problem find its way into "balance solutions".

We are complaining about T1-T2 Quality of Life problems while making the biggest balance issue "mundanes < caster" even worse. This is where I see the problem.

Stuff like GSA gives you permanent buffs which is an action economy buff if you wanna "focus" on combat. GSA specializes in one area and gives up power in another (spell progression). Further, it frees spell slots for other stuff. If the prc wouldn't had to pay a tax for it, it would be a straight boost to the flexibility of the caster. He will need lesser combat buffs and thus has saved a spell slot and an action. You trade flexibility for specialized powers.

The supposed underlying balance mechanics in 3.5 suggest that casters may have OP stuff because of the limited use per day, and the preparation involved. If you now have a PRC that gives em permanent strong buffs they have to pay for it in one way (familiar) or another (spell progression).

You can't have everything (unless you go pun-pun) in 3.5. Either full BAB or more abilities. Either full casting or more abilities. You make the choice. And if you want to bargain about this, do it on a case by case scenario (which is totally fine btw!). But demanding a change for everyone is assuming everyone wants to play at high optimization and with high tier casters all the time (which is imho barely the case that everybody wants this all the time). So, imho this would affect the game balance to much.

And while the requested change would give some prc some more spotlight, it would be at the cost of other prc who would become less attractive when compared to some normally non-full-caster prc. So, the problem of more and less favorable prc would just shift but not vanish. And with all that, I still fail to see any relevant justified argument other than a "I want it all"-mentality: permanent passive buffs, full spellcasting and whatnot (soon full BAB, more skillpoints... until we end on a single generic class 20 years later..):smallwink:

[RandomPeasant]

Why do mundane prestige classes need "compensation"? I agree that they aren't balanced when they have to share the spotlight with casting classes, but we aren't talking about mundane prestige classes here, we're talking about casting prestige classes. Just because a solution doesn't solve an unrelated problem doesn't make it a bad solution.

Thank you. I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall when people repeatedly demand that casting PrCs be used as a tool to solve the disparity between casters and non-casters. It's like trying to make the polymorph rules simpler by changing how the Fighter works, or fixing a car's tail lights by replacing the drive train. Solve problems where they arise. Don't make bad decisions in one area because of a bad decision elsewhere.


Why should a casting class have to pay a "power tax" for cool abilities? That's only going to incentivize people boring but powerful characters all the time. You shouldn't be punished for wanting a game to be fun.

Again, absolutely true. It's also worth noting that the complaints about how this will break the game are, in many cases, the opposite of true. The class features of the average casting PrC that is full casting now are better than the class features of the average casting PrC. That means that it is entirely plausible that the observed effect of this change on power levels is negative. Imagine that I really like the idea of playing a statue of magical jade. There are many ways I could achieve that. I could play a Green Star Adept. I could play a Warforged and fluff my character as being made of jade. I could play an Incantatrix and Persist some buffs that did what I want. It's true that 5/10 casting GSA is likely worse than the other two, but if it's so much worse I won't use it, your effort to nerf casters is entirely counterproductive.


The 3/4 BAB progression was a mistake. Every class should either be 1/2 or full.

Honestly, you can make the case there should just be the full BAB progression. At low levels, the difference between full BAB and poor BAB is essentially non-existent. At high levels, you could give the Wizard full BAB and a d12 hit die and he still wouldn't want to go into melee because he doesn't have any particular abilities at encourage doing that and being in melee with enemies makes his spells less reliable. I don't think it's a big deal either way, but if I was designing a new edition of D&D from the ground up, I would have a single BAB progression and classes would be different because they had different abilities.


"But omg, my Planar Binding gets delayed.", or "I don't get to cast Wish and Ice Assassin." or "My Fireball doesn't do enough dmg". Yeah, I can see how these problems are way more important, NOT!

One of these things is not like the others. fireball dealing less damage is, in fact, a pretty serious problem, because fireball is underpowered. Yes, you're probably still fine if you cast planar binding at 15th level instead of 11th level. But that's because planar binding is broken. We should not be encouraging people to cast it. We should providing them the tools to feel effective without ever needing to touch it. This, fundamentally, is the issue with your suggestion that the Green Star Adept should just cast polymorph. polymorph is incredibly, abusively powerful. If you want to reign in casters, keep them as far away from it as possible. Don't encourage them to hit themselves with the nerfing stick, cast it, and hope everything works out.


We are complaining about T1-T2 Quality of Life problems while making the biggest balance issue "mundanes < caster" even worse. This is where I see the problem.

Except no we are not, because you have yet to provide one single example of a PrC that makes casters more powerful with this change. The person who promised us "dozens" of Incantatrix-tier PrCs with this change is nowhere to be found. This claim is baseless and unsubstantiated.


it frees spell slots for other stuff.

Does it free up five levels worth of spell slots? No? Then this is false. An electric car may save you on gas money. But if you buy one for a $20 million markup over an equivalent internal combustion vehicle, those savings don't mean anything.


Either full casting or more abilities.

So again, is Mage of the Arcane Order broken? Is that class OP? Because I've never seen anyone say that, and I'm pretty sure most people would say it's a more powerful PrC than GSA even if the later was full casting.


So, the problem of more and less favorable prc would just shift but not vanish.

And now your position is just that the perfect should be the enemy of the good. Yes, not every PrC would be viable with this change. But more PrCs would be viable, and that makes it a good change.

[Troacctid]

So, y'all think we're going to get those "dozens" of PrCs with Incantatrix-tier class features that are held back by their lost casting? Sure would be nice to see some concrete examples of all the brokenness this change releases on the world. Instead we've seen "it would introduce a way of getting off-list spells that is substantially less powerful than the ways that already exist", which is frankly a stronger argument that this is fine than anything I could come up with.
Celestial Mystic
Divine Agent
Eunuch Warlock
Heir of Siberys
Master of the Secret Sound
Master Transmogrifist
Mythic Exemplar
Pale Master
Recaster
Sanctified One
Shaper of Form
Shapeshifter
Spell Sovereign
Swiftblade
Thrall of Fraz-Ub'luu
Thrall of Malcanthet
Thrall of Zuggtmoy
Vermin Lord
Visionary Seeker
Witch Hunter

[remetagross]

Master of the Secret Sound


I'm not finding that one. Where's it from?

[pabelfly]

I'm not finding that one. Where's it from?

Dragon #297

[RandomPeasant]

Celestial Mystic

Are the Celestial Spells supposed to be insane? Because the class features are nowhere close to what Incantatrix is doing.


Divine Agent

Some mildly accelerated SLAs are not exactly breaking the game. gate is impressive, but extremely constrained.


Eunuch Warlock

Mighty Spells is really a lot worse than Incantatrix metamagic. Greater Spell Focus is pretty good if interpreted favorably. Leadership is probably enough to push this over the top.


Heir of Siberys

This is not remotely close to Incantatrix. Your primary class feature here is a SLA that is roughly 8th level and can be used roughly twice per day. I'm not going to claim it's worse than Archmage, since you can get stuff early or off-list, but it's pretty much just Archmage with lost casting.


Master of the Secret Sound

The overwhelming majority of this is just more uses of spells you could cast anyway. The Sound of Stunning is pretty nice, but generally worse than stun ray, and you can get one use without giving up any casting. The Secret Sound is strong, but it's also an ability you get at 19th or 20th level. Not really comparable to Incantatrix giving you three game-changing abilities and all the feats you needed to enter the class by 10th level.


Master Transmogrifist

This one I think I'd probably give you. But at the same time, it's only broken because it's interacting with the mechanics for shape-changing, and those are incredibly broken. IMO, it's like saying that Malconvoker is Incantatrix-tier because it makes planar binding better. The end result is good, but most of that isn't coming from the class.


Mythic Exemplar

How do you even think this is close? Four dice of sneak attack, some save bonuses, and minor defensive abilities is not competitive with Incantatrix.


Pale Master

Undead Cohort is strong, and the potential for an infinite undead army is powerful as well. But those are abilities you get at 9th and 10th level of the PrC, while the Incantatrix gets its strongest ability at 3rd level.


Recaster

This just does worse metamagic shenanigans than Incantatrix. I would absolutely rather get to make my litany of buff spells Persistent than Quicken three of them. I guess Sudden Metamagic is nice for volume of fire, but Metamagic Spell Trigger is substantially nastier.


Sanctified One

Again, I have no idea how you think this is remotely comparable to Incantatrix. What is the cheese here even supposed to be.


Shaper of Form

The most impressive thing this does, barring some extremely generous readings of the "turn items into other items" abilities, is getting you access to polymorph any object one level early. That spell is totally nuts, but getting it at 14th level instead of 15th level is not exactly Incantatrix-tier potency.


Shapeshifter

I'm too lazy to check that the Wild Shape progression matches up with the Druid, but I assume it does. In any case, this is not remotely comparable to the Incantatrix persisting a pile of buffs, for the same reason Druid is not better than Incantatrix.


Spell Sovereign

Sure, let's assume there's enough you can do to abuse the living spell template to make this good.


Swiftblade

Sure, I'll give you that one. Without caveats, even.


Thrall of Fraz-Ub'luu

The capstone ability of this class is to do a thing that is explicitly worse than wish, at a level where you could normally cast wish. I guess staff mastery lets you do some cute stuff, but there's still significant up-front cost, unless you want to start talking about "partially charges staves".


Thrall of Malcanthet

There are better ways to be a Diplomancer. I guess this is impressive if you can activate Betrayal on all your spells, but that'd take some doing.


Thrall of Zuggtmoy

This is a straight-out comparison to Incantatrix via Spore Mastery. Unfortunately, that caps out at 10 levels worth of metamagic, and Metamagic Effect caps out at significantly more than that. An Incantatrix can even get more levels of metamagic than this without touching Metamagic Effect once they get their second usage of Instant Metamagic.


Vermin Lord

I assume there's some big cheese you can do with Hivemind? Because otherwise I'm not seeing it. And as I've said previously, I just don't buy that something you get at 10th level is as good as Incantatrix, which is good from 3rd level (or 2nd level if you have allies).


Visionary Seeker

Spell Mimic is nice, I guess. You can pull some Blue Mage tricks, but most of the ways to abuse spell emulation don't work here (I guess you might argue it ignores XP costs). And it's not until 12th level you can emulate a spell that's higher level than you could normally cast. But that's unreliable, since you have to see the spells cast. If this is reliable three XP-free castings of limited wish or wish it's pretty good, but it takes a lot more work to get there than Incantatrix takes to be broken, and it happens a lot later.


Witch Hunter

Evil Spell Resistance is no Metamagic Effect.

I see four things here that could be reasonably argued to be comparable, a few more that do abusable things at very high levels, and then a trail of things that give slightly accelerated SLAs that are in no way comparable to Incantatrix. As I expected, we fail to even get to a single dozen.

[Troacctid]

No respect for free wishes. SMH.

[RandomPeasant]

No respect for free wishes. SMH.

No substantive arguments. SMH.

[lylsyly]

And NEVER any substantive agreement either.

Just like the thread this one broke off from, the thread about what WotC considered srandar optimization, and every other thread like it them that has spawed over the years, Do i dare mention the "Are dragonwrought kolbolds true dragon thread?." Like all of them this has also became a discussion of "BALANCE."

Guess what? Even if you only use the PHB Druids are number 1, Wizards and Clerics are tied for #2, Sorcerers come in at #4, Bards at #5, and the rest basically stink!

Is this what WotC intended? I kind of doubt it since every WotC adventure basically assumed a party of 4. Arcane, Divine, Skill Monkey, and Hulk Smash. But the truth is that what WotC created was in fact decidedly unbalanced even with only the PHB. Every splatbook only made the issue worse! WHY? Because throwing spells around is a lot more fun and flashy than just hitting with a sword.

This thread is going to end up just the way all of it's predecessors did on more than just this forum for one simple reason! There are a lot of people that believe if you are NOT playing a fully optimized T1 caster then you are not playing the way WotC intended. And you will never convince them they are wrong.

I have to call BS on that one. If that is what WotC intended then why not write a PHB with only Cleric, Druid, and Wizard as classes? And don't get me wrong, I realize that a Wizard, Cleric, and 2 Druids would be a strong party. But there are people who don't want to keep track of all those spells or all those wildshape forms. Where does that leave them?

I left BG because of this attitude, Min/Max was just as bad after BG passed on to the other side. Enworld wasn't as bad but the attitude was still present.

Balance is actually possible if you can push back against all the people who will scream NOOOO!!! if you touch a T1 class's power.

[/rant]

[icefractal]

Why the heck is Incantatrix being used as a baseline for a balanced full casting PrC? It isn't, at all. It's one of the few that would be well worth losing multiple CLs for.

"Not any better than Incantatrix" isn't saying much.

Re: the OP -
I agree that many casting PrCs are overpriced in terms of lost CLs. But I don't agree that *no* features are worth losing CLs for. There are plenty of abilities out there worth losing 1 CL, and some (like Incantatrix) worth multiple.

Re: lack of "class features" / being "dull" -
Spells *are* a class feature. They're more powerful, more versatile, and more interactive than what most classes get!
If the presence of an empty "Special" column makes you feel bored, that's a personal aesthetic issue rather than a mechanical one.

[RandomPeasant]

WHY? Because throwing spells around is a lot more fun and flashy than just hitting with a sword.

You say this like it's some fundamental fact. But it's not. It's a deeply contingent, and it would be just as easy to make the system work some other way, where martial characters were allowed to do things that were just as flashy as spellcasters. Tome of Battle is a pretty good step in that direction. You just need to tune it up a bit at high levels, add some additional maneuvers for variety, and add some kind of non-combat utility.


There are a lot of people that believe if you are NOT playing a fully optimized T1 caster then you are not playing the way WotC intended.

That would seem to contradict the arguments that people are making, or at least that I am making, in this thread. I don't want to make partial casting classes full casting because I want to play a "full optimized T1 caster". Most of them, even most of the ones that got presented as "Incantatrix-tier", are not competitive with the existing options, let alone better. I want to play a Green Star Adept because it is cool, not because it is mechanically powerful. It is just not cool enough to justify crippling my character. Hell, I would consider "casters use Bard progression, casting PrCs are full progression" to be a better design than the status quo. The question here is not "how good should casters be". It is "how good should a caster who likes the idea of being a jade statue be relative to a regular one", and that question is independent of overall power level concerns.


If that is what WotC intended then why not write a PHB with only Cleric, Druid, and Wizard as classes?

You might as easily ask why write the Cleric, Druid, and Wizard at all if they need to be nerfed to balance the game. I agree that there are changes that should be made to casters, but they are honestly fairly minor. Write form-changing rules that aren't simultaneously overpowered and incredibly tedious to deal with. Hammer minionmancy into something vaguely reasonable. Reign in the ability to take extra actions. Probably do something about metamagic (though to be honest, the correct solution there is more "redesign" than strictly "nerf"). Do that and casters are fine. The thing where a Wizard casts black tentacles to lock down some opponents, or scry to monitor the big bad, or teleport to get the party to the adventure is fine, and I'm tired of people insisting it's some sort of "omnipotence" that warps the game. If you don't want to deal with that sort of thing, E6 is right there.


Balance is actually possible if you can push back against all the people who will scream NOOOO!!! if you touch a T1 class's power.

Didn't really work out for 5e, did it? They nerf Wizards really hard. And yet the debates about game balance for that game are, in the broad strokes, the same as this one. "Wizards have powers that break the plot". "Martials are useless at high levels". At a certain point, the sacred cow that is holding you back is not the people who won't let you nerf Wizards. No one, or at least no one I have encountered, seriously believes that planar binding or polymorph is totally fine as-is. The thing that is holding you back the insistence -- an insistence that is, by the way, entirely unique to D&D -- that we preserve the purely mundane warrior as a high level character. Let's try tackling the problem from that end before we take the nerfing stick to the Wizard again.


Why the heck is Incantatrix being used as a baseline for a balanced full casting PrC?

The argument, as I understand it, is very much the opposite. We can't make casting PrCs full casting, because there are apparently "dozens" of PrCs that would be as powerful as it if they didn't lose casting. When the list of those PrCs was eventually presented, it includes such luminaries as the Mythic Exemplar and Heir of Siberys.


It's one of the few that would be well worth losing multiple CLs for.

Well, yes and no. If your plan is to stack up a bunch of Persistent buffs and burn out whole wands to throw out Maximized Empowered Twinned Admixtured spells, the class could lose quite a few caster levels and be competitive. But those strategies are broken. And they are broken in a way that is very difficult to balance appropriately. Complete Arcane quadruples the damage output from blasting wands. How do you write something that is balanced for both ends of that? How do you write something that is balanced for a gish buff stack that includes wraithstrike and sadism and also one that isn't? You can't. It's the same problem as trying to equalize Green Star Adept with polymorph. The solution to a broken element isn't to have people also take terrible elements. It's to remove the broken element.


Spells *are* a class feature. They're more powerful, more versatile, and more interactive than what most classes get!
If the presence of an empty "Special" column makes you feel bored, that's a personal aesthetic issue rather than a mechanical one.

It's not a question of boredom, it's a question of character customization. I suppose you could make a case that the Sorcerer's spells known provides enough of this, and much weaker one for the Wizard's, but every Cleric (of the same alignment, and barring one spell a day from domains) gets the exact same set of spells at every level. That's boring. It means that there's nothing about the character that makes it yours. The difference between my Cleric that commands an army of undead and launches volleys of horrible curses at his foes and your Cleric who casts spells to enhance his allies is simply how we chose to behave, not anything inherent to the characters.

[icefractal]

Spells are extremely customizable - again, more so than most classes are. And I don't agree with your Cleric point, for two reasons -
1) If it were true, people should be switching over to Favored Soul en-mass because it's more fun, right? But they don't.
2) IME, prepared casters have a standard list and only switch from it when they know about particular circumstances ahead of time. And that standard list varies between characters. Your stats, feats, and gear affect which spells you'll want to prepare.

And I'm not trying to balance against Fighter here, I'm trying to balance against Wizard. Vanilla Wizard 20 is a perfectly good class. It has versatility, it's fun to play, and it can handle challenges of its CR (and quite a bit above, if optimized) well. So, it's fine, it's not underpowered. Therefore, there's no need for Wizard/PrC to be stronger than plain Wizard.

[RandomPeasant]

1) If it were true, people should be switching over to Favored Soul en-mass because it's more fun, right? But they don't.

No, because Favored Soul doesn't let you do anything you can't already do as a Cleric, and makes you less capable of doing many things Clerics can. People don't want "specialization, but your character is worse". They want specialization. When specialization is offered in a way that isn't a clear power downgrade (like choosing Beguiler or Dread Necromancer over Sorcerer), people eagerly take that trade.

[icefractal]

So they're switching to classes that know their entire list. Meaning that every Dread Necromancer has not only the same options per day, but the same options per round. Which according to your prior post, is a bad thing.

[RandomPeasant]

So they're switching to classes that know their entire list. Meaning that every Dread Necromancer has not only the same options per day, but the same options per round. Which according to your prior post, is a bad thing.

No, it's a bad thing that the guy who wants to play a buff bot and the guy who wants to play a necromancer end up on a class with the same capabilities. The people who play Dread Necromancers want to be necromancers, and it is entirely reasonable that they have similar capabilities (though I would not argue with someone who wanted a mechanism to differentiate between concepts like "necromancer who specializes in soul magic" and "necromancer who's really into vampires" and "necromancer who leans into demonology"). If, for some reason, Dread Necromancer was the class you picked for both "leader of an undead army" and "champion of the forest", that would be a problem because it would mean that a bunch of people who wanted to play forest champions had ability sets that were not meaningfully different from the people playing lich-generals. But it isn't, so that's not a problem.

[ATHATH]

I'd hesitate to grant full casting/manifesting, although I could definitely see an argument for shifting some PrCs with 5/10 progressions to 9/10 progressions (with the progression-less level being the first one).

[icefractal]

I mean, if I were actually trying to do an improvement of PrC (a significant task), I'd probably -
1) Eliminate most prerequisites, keeping only those that are essential to the class functioning, plus a simple "Nth Level" requirement. Yes, I know that never explicitly using "Nth Level" as a requirement was a design decision ... it was a bad one.
2) Figure out how many lost levels the class abilities merit (usually 0-2) and front-load those based on the division (ie. -1 at 1st, -2 at 1st/6th, -3 at 1st/4th/7th, etc.)

For instance, Mystic Theurge:
Prerequisites: ability to cast arcane spells, ability to cast divine spells
L1: No CL advancement
L2+: Advance both

But this requires looking at each class individually. I don't think there's any blanket fix that would give very good results.

[Yael]

I'd hesitate to grant full casting/manifesting, although I could definitely see an argument for shifting some PrCs with 5/10 progressions to 9/10 progressions (with the progression-less level being the first one).

I'm on this boat, too. Granting full casting basically gestalt-ishes as PrCs are basically a tax for specialization, that's why they ask for prerrequisites, and their class features deviate from Base Classes'. You can still take a casting PrC, but it may be so niche on what it does that it justifies you deviating from your normal training in pursue of obtaining new abilities.

I'd like to avoid converting every PrC on even more caster powerfuel, as it has been stated multiple times in this thread (and board overall), that casters get the good stuff, all of it, and now making them get even more goodies, whilst not losing anything when branching off into concepts so alien from their usual proficiencies.

9/10-ing 5/10s at 1st level would make up for that change of pace, but not hurt them as much for those who want those 9s earlier (what would T1-T2s do without even more powerful spells, the poor things), as a simple fix for this problem while keeping it fluffy. Although this could come up with some problems where some 10/10s are also alien concepts from standard classes and would make my argument more akin to swiss cheeze, so it could be on a case-by-case basis, and not all 5/10s.

Guys, we should just go <insert your favorite T1 class and pick a sword 20> and call it a day.

This post, Blue stands for sarcasm.

[Telonius]

The spells (and the versatility and power they give) are the heart of the balance problem. It's also a problem that's both completely baked-in to the edition, and generally too huge to solve. Googling some sources on this; it looks like there are somewhere between 1 and 2 thousand spells just for Wizards and Sorcerers (depending on how accurate people's lists are and what sources you count). That's not even counting the Cleric, Druid, or Bard list. "Fix the spells" - or a real, genuine "fix the balance issue" - just isn't going to happen without either editing and re-balancing an absolute mountain of material, or completely rebuilding the magic system from the ground up. Whatever came out at the other end of that, wouldn't be 3.5 as we know it.

How you handle that reality is more of a social problem than a technical problem, and it really depends on the personal preference of everybody in the gaming group. Are you going to go all-in on it, and throw balance out the window? It's a perfectly consistent solution. Have a gentleman's agreement not to overshadow the whole party? Also a perfectly good solution. Houserule to put some guard rails up against the worst offenders (shapechange, free wishes, kobold shenanigans) - or encourage them/discourage less-powerful options? This can also work. Whatever way you choose to deal with it, as long as the group understands it, wants to play that way, and has fun with it, it's a good solution. You achieved what you were trying to achieve.

We can't tell if your group is going to like it or not, but we can analyze what effect a houserule change would have on power. For this one - making all casting PrCs 10/10 casting - it will give casting characters more powerful and versatility, when they already have a whole bunch of both. It will also probably make it more likely that a caster would consider a PrC that currently grants something less than full casting. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to personal preference.

[RandomPeasant]

If you really feel the need to provide trade-offs for casting PrCs, the way to do that is the way the Archmage does it: giving up spell slots. That's absolutely fine, and in most cases it makes more sense than taking away levels of casting. Look at the Seeker of the Misty Isle again. Most of what it gets is already SLAs. 1/week discern location is in no possible sense worth a level of casting (as, even at 20th level, the level of casting gets a slot that could cast it each day and also a 9th level spell slot). But you could imagine someone who thought it was worth a 6th or 7th level spell slot for their character.


I'd like to avoid converting every PrC on even more caster powerfuel, as it has been stated multiple times in this thread (and board overall), that casters get the good stuff, all of it, and now making them get even more goodies, whilst not losing anything when branching off into concepts so alien from their usual proficiencies.

It's been stated, but the follow-up is pretty absent. Making Green Star Adept full casting doesn't make casters better. It makes Green Star Adepts better, but those guys suck and need the help. But the fundamental thing, the thing that is just completely ignored, is that this is not a power question. If you think casters need slower spell progression, fine. Make everyone use the Sorcerer progression. But the underlying logic is the same: having people do cool things is good.


The spells (and the versatility and power they give) are the heart of the balance problem. It's also a problem that's both completely baked-in to the edition, and generally too huge to solve. Googling some sources on this; it looks like there are somewhere between 1 and 2 thousand spells just for Wizards and Sorcerers (depending on how accurate people's lists are and what sources you count).


Sure. There are a lot of spells. But that's really not the problem. The problem isn't that casters know too many spells. If that were true, the gap between Wizards and Sorcerers would be larger. The problem isn't that casters know too wide a variety of spells. If that were true, the gap between Sorcerers and Beguilers would be larger (frankly, the gap is probably in the opposite direction of what it needs to be for this argument to hold water, but that's a whole other thing). The problem isn't that that there are too many spells to choose from. If that were true, spellcasters would be fine in Core. The problem is that there are a limited number of specific spells that are overpowered. It's not a big list, and you can just fix them. Or even ban them. But, again, the problem is absolutely not the Wizard who casts fireball, or even stinking cloud.


it will give casting characters more powerful and versatility

Since you're making this claim too, I'll put it to you as well: what build does this. What is the build you can make with a partial casting PrC that is better than what you can do now?

[Telonius]

Since you're making this claim too, I'll put it to you as well: what build does this. What is the build you can make with a partial casting PrC that is better than what you can do now?

The one that comes to mind for me is the Planeshifter prestige class. (I'd used it in one of the Villainous Competitions a while back). It's 7/10 casting currently. Some of the higher-level abilities are pretty weird. I'm not aware of any other class or ability that gives Planar Area Swap or anything like it. Getting your own demiplane pre-epic is a serious consideration (even if it comes with normal time). Plane Shift at will is another big one. You can probably get it other ways, but if you just get it natively from a Prestige Class ability (with no limits on times per day) there are fewer hoops for you to jump through.

If you're looking for things that make a (generally) single-classed character better, that would tend to be looking for classes that front-load an ability that would make a character generally stronger without sacrificing too much. For a Bard or a Beguiler, Master of Masks becomes a much more appealing one- or two-level dip. Proficiency in everything, constant nondetection, or granted Sneak Attack, with no loss in caster level. Malconvoker would be another example for a single-level dip. Any Good-aligned Cleric (or Wizard who's worried about alignment concerns for whatever reason), who's summoning monsters, suddenly has much more of the summon list open to them.

[RandomPeasant]

The one that comes to mind for me is the Planeshifter prestige class. (I'd used it in one of the Villainous Competitions a while back). It's 7/10 casting currently. Some of the higher-level abilities are pretty weird. I'm not aware of any other class or ability that gives Planar Area Swap or anything like it. Getting your own demiplane pre-epic is a serious consideration (even if it comes with normal time). Plane Shift at will is another big one. You can probably get it other ways, but if you just get it natively from a Prestige Class ability (with no limits on times per day) there are fewer hoops for you to jump through.

Isn't the private demiplane just genesis, but as a one-off? Planar Area Swap is a novel ability, but it's not exactly a broken one. Using it in combat at 18th level seems dicey, and non-combat applications seem mostly cool rather than broken. At-will plane shift at the level where you have gate doesn't seem particularly broken either (and there are ways to emulate that one, if you cheese enough).


For a Bard or a Beguiler, Master of Masks becomes a much more appealing one- or two-level dip. Proficiency in everything, constant nondetection, or granted Sneak Attack, with no loss in caster level.

None of those are exactly game-breaking. nondetection is an hour/level spell normally, so it's not much trouble for a Beguiler to have it up most of the time even at that level, and you can do it all day pretty easily by 12th level. The proficiencies or sneak attack just don't seem that appealing for someone with half BAB and no blasting or gish-oriented spells. It's probably an upgrade over straight Bard, but the Bard builds that are effective are ones where it wouldn't be a straight upgrade, even at full casting progression.


Malconvoker would be another example for a single-level dip. Any Good-aligned Cleric (or Wizard who's worried about alignment concerns for whatever reason), who's summoning monsters, suddenly has much more of the summon list open to them.

A Cleric can achieve the same effect by being Neutral. I suppose you might really want to worship a specific god and also have summons that are from an alignment opposite that god, but is that really something that needs to have a caster level taken off to balance it?

[Quertus]

The main thing is that prestige classes need to have a cost.


I would start out by challenging this assumption.

I also question this assumption, but from a completely different angle. I think that every prerequisite of a prestige class should not be considered a "cost" by one who actually is going that route.

That is, if I want to be a... police officer, I should know something about the law, and be proficient in firearms. If I want to be a Doctor, I should have some knowledge of medicine and diagnosis or something. If I want to be a ninja, I should know some stealth. They shouldn't be "Costs", they should be the logical prerequisites of being that thing.

[Thurbane]

Master of the Secret Sound

If that one isn't already in the silly PrC name thread, it should be...

Sounds like a PrC dedicated to unlocking the awesome power of arm-farts! :smallbiggrin:

[sleepyphoenixx]

A Cleric can achieve the same effect by being Neutral. I suppose you might really want to worship a specific god and also have summons that are from an alignment opposite that god, but is that really something that needs to have a caster level taken off to balance it?
There are a lot more reasons for wanting to be good as a cleric. Sanctified spells which often only work for good casters/targets like Luminous Armor, PrCs that require good alignment like Sacred Exorcist, feats like Ancestral Relic and so on. Alignment affects a lot more than just what god you can worship.

And Malconvoker is actually one of the few prestige classes where i think the loss of casting progression is entirely justified.
Not just because of the greater variety in summons (which adds a lot of variety in SLAs to Summon Monster so it's hardly worthless) but also because it doubles your summons at level 5.
That's worth losing 1 level of casting.

You could argue that it should lose casting at level 5 then instead of 1, but it's not unbalanced to lose a level of casting for what the class as a whole gives you.


The main thing is that prestige classes need to have a cost. There has to be a reason why some people would stick to being just a wizard or just a druid or even just a fighter (for all of those "special" children out there). A wizard prestige class must never be "exactly the same as a wizard but better" or else there is no reason for the wizard class to exist after the 5 levels needed to enter the prestige class.

There also has to be a reason to enter a prestige class. If you're dumping the core feature of your class for it (as you said, wizards don't really get anything else) you expect something roughly equivalent in exchange. In practice you mostly get useless flavor abilities while the PrCs with really powerful abilities give full or near-full progression.

The way to make Wizard 20 attractive isn't to make PrC's suck, it's giving wizards class features.
UA gave it a try, but their options are usually too front-loaded or too weak to really fulfill that purpose. The Conjurer and Illusionist variants are definitely the right direction though.

[Endarire]

As I mentioned elsewhere...

To add to balancing frustration is the notion - at least in my experience - that games have normally lasted from levels 1 to about 8, rarely hitting double digits. In this context, Incantatrix is oddly balanced because one of its most significant abilities, Metamagic Effect, acts as a low level capstone and something that barely fits inside an E8 game.

Considering how spiffy the Incantatrix class features are, one could spread out most or all of these class features, maybe tweak some, and just rebrand "Incantatrix" as "(Specialty) Wizard" or "Sorcerer" as a 20 level base class and people would still take it.

------

I agree with sleepy that most full casters have too few class features aside from spellcasting to meaningfully give up as a mechanical balance mechanism regarding PrCs. I also agree that giving full casters many meaningful class features in addition to casting - regardless of mechanical balance - would make the notion of multiclassing into PrCs more questionable. (Casting as a class feature is simply too important and of variable worth to try to make it a constant like the speed of light.) Losing casting for any reason is like taking a level adjustment you can't - by 3.5 RAW at least - normally simply undo by leveling a few times.

Consider the current setup for Cleric/Sor/Wiz: The first X levels (usually 5 or 6) are the 'apprenticeship' where class features are sparse. After that, then based on their build, they qualify by RAW for Y PrCs to give them class features they want in addition to casting. Want to be a summoning-focused character once your apprentice levels are done? Go Master Conjurer, Malconvoker, or some other similar class. Want to be a healing-focused caster once your apprentice levels are done? Radiant Servant and Combat Medic are likely your go-to picks.

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Among other PrCs bolstered by full casting/manifesting, "Dragon" Magazine's Mind Mage is one that should have been made full. I don't claim its power levels alone will rival Incantatrix. (Thrallherd already does, and giving it full manifesting just means .)

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I am a fan of Bards, but only partially for their casting. (I'm glad their level 9 spell progression from Sublime Chord that earned them the native level 9 casting ability in D&D 5e, but that's an aside.) For me, one of a 3.5 Bard's main metrics of success is Inspire Courage optimization (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=8936.0).

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One of the matters we've been discussing has been 'theory' versus 'implementation.' In theory, giving more power (class features) to full casters may detract from the rest of the party. Maybe. But only maybe. I agree with the notion of giving more classes full casting/manifesting so that people can play these interesting character concepts, regardless of how powerful they are compared to the current 3.5 Incantatrix.

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As GM, one of my players loved Mindbender and I agreed to let her play it with full casting. Our game never lasted long enough for that to matter, but she was relieved to have that option.

As GM for another game, one of my players played a Paladin who went Shining Blade of Heironeous and complained at the weakness of the class compared to Paladin.

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I agree that balance is subjective, and a buncha WotC and Paizo employees made stuff that likely appealed to them, their groups, or/and their bosses and didn't focus on making and sticking to any one specific metric. Perhaps it's like saying, "3.x Monks and Paladins should not be allowed to freely multiclass," before "Pathfinder Monks and Paladins have never known this burden of their 3.x ancestors." Perhaps it's also like saying, "Sorry about the weakness of the martial classes in 3.5's core: Let's make it up to you with Tome of Battle."

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As for the roles of PrCs and certain options in games, some options are simply upgrades to existing ones. I remind you of the real world Battle of Agincourt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt) where England dominated its competition because of heavy use of ranged weaponry, the English Longbow in this case. The notion of "kill 'em before they can come close enough to kill us" has been in effect for centuries in the real world and maybe even longer!

I'm certain that, in-universe, D&D characters would thoroughly understand the importance of this sort of tactic - caster or not - and casters would strive to become the best casters they could be also due to the in-universe possibility (from unlikely to certain depending on the context) that delaying their casting ability for any reason would be fatal.

But I know we're playing a game here were players may think and act otherwise.

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There are players who play for image or flavor. There are players who play for power. Sometimes, these are the same people!

For those who believe there is or should be a notable difference between power and flavor, I remind you that power is a flavor and it is delicious!

As I learned from Treantmonk, a powerful character can purposely play weaker than normal to disguise his full abilities and better fit in with others while still going (nearly) full power on threats that warrant such power. (See Gandalf from Lord of the Rings as a spiffy example.) In contrast, a weak character's best chance of fighting above his power grade is to be extremely tactical and get lucky which are things that the pulling punches character can also do to some extent.

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Regarding losing spells a la Archmage, I have mixed feelings regarding this. Since I already qualify for X class, why must I pay again to get Y feature? (I understand the designer's intent was to make Archmage a significant cost, significant return option for core arcane casters while Hierophant was a low cost, moderate return option for divine casters.) I also understand that sometimes the trade is worthwhile, and I have played at least 1 caster (a Wizard) who went Archmage for its high-end class features despite the costs.

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Here's another argument I've not seen others bring up often: If you're playing with a caster and you aren't that caster, I strongly suspect you want them to be the best they can be within the context of this game. It's easier to succeed as a group when the group is strong, and every group is made of individual members.

For example, in a 3.5/PF game where the GM enjoyed throwing us against a variety of difficult boss fights, I was displeased when I learned the party's Druid dipped an Oracle level for 'flavor' purposes, and the party's Cleric dipped Paladin for similar reasons.

Then again, this was also the game where I went Wizard and dipped Swordsage and later went Jade Phoenix Mage because I was tired of needing to use a spell slot to be effective, and this is also where I later felt displeased at my decision for being a spell level behind what I would have been as a full Wizard.

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Finally for the moment, we have the benefit of about 20 years of hindsight regarding D&D 3.x and Pathfinder 1e. Many on the dev teams for these games had much less - or even 0 - hindsight. The fact that we're arguing over what should have (not) happened many years ago means that they did enough right stuff for us to play and enjoy the game and enjoy discussing the game even if we aren't playing it! I know there are things we wanted to have happen differently in time for them to be canon mechanically in their editions, but we're still free willed beings with the ability to change things for us if we're GMing and petition for said changes if we aren't.

Thankee!

[RandomPeasant]

And Malconvoker is actually one of the few prestige classes where i think the loss of casting progression is entirely justified.
Not just because of the greater variety in summons (which adds a lot of variety in SLAs to Summon Monster so it's hardly worthless) but also because it doubles your summons at level 5.
That's worth losing 1 level of casting.

You know what else doubles your summons? Casting a higher level summoning spell and choosing "1d3 off previous list", which the non-Malconvoker will be able to do half the time, in addition to being better in every round in which he does not cast a summoning spell.


There are players who play for image or flavor. There are players who play for power. Sometimes, these are the same people!

I would say that the best model is that a player has a power preference and a flavor preference, then picks some concept where they intersect. And this means that you can lower observed power levels by increasing the power of specific options. If I really like Bear Warrior and Incantatrix, but the lowest power level I'll accept is higher than Bear Warrior, you can reduce the power level of the character I play by buffing Bear Warrior.

[Gruftzwerg]

I would say that the best model is that a player has a power preference and a flavor preference, then picks some concept where they intersect. And this means that you can lower observed power levels by increasing the power of specific options. If I really like Bear Warrior and Incantatrix, but the lowest power level I'll accept is higher than Bear Warrior, you can reduce the power level of the character I play by buffing Bear Warrior.

The best model imho is that the table first discusses the aimed optimization and power lvl of the upcoming campaign. And the DM has the last word here. Because he needs the System Mastery to check for legal builds/interactions and needs to come up with possible encounters and balanced encounters (for the entire group).

And System Mastery for high lvl campaigns with a high optimization lvl are a problem for most DM I know. And from those who say "it is not problem, play what you want", most of em just are unaware of the problems and throw in a bunch of unexpected houserules (from the PCs point of view) and think it is fine. The problem with these unexpected houserules is that this might break your build. I've seen this happening twice to other PCs, both times the player got mad/bored about this and rerolled their chars due to this. Very annoying. Thus you want a DM who can handle these things or who will tell you the houserules to expect beforehand (because he has the System Mastery to at least know where he relies on houserules for a balanced game in his opinion)

From 20years of game xp I know sole 1 other person who I think might be able to handle a high lvl highly optimized campaign the right way. And this from roughly about ~100 people I played with over the years.

And all the time you are assuming that everybody wants to play at T1 lvl. Do you know that some tables just ban full casting progression for balancing purposes? And here you are ignoring that other people just might have other feelings towards highly optimized builds.

As said, if everybody wants to play at high lvl of optimization and the DM is willing and capable of handling it, fine.
But you get a strict NO if you demand this for every table. If you sole want to play at that high tier optimization lvl, than just seek out people with the same mindset. It's that easy. No reason to demand this for everybody.

[RandomPeasant]

For the last time: there is no world in which Green Star Adept, even full casting Green Star Adept, is a "highly optimized build". People are not asking for the power level of casters to be raised. Multiple people, including you, have tried and failed to demonstrate that this change does that. What it does is equalize the power level between casters who like the idea of playing a generalist mage who is a member of a society of mages (Mage of the Arcane Order) and casters who like the idea of playing a dude who wears a demon (Acolyte of the Skin). You can tune the power level of casters to whatever you want and it is completely irrelevant to the question in this thread. If you think that we need to nerf things all the way down to feather fall because otherwise casters are "omnipotent", no one is going to stop you. But the game is a better game if the choice between Mindbender and Master Specialist is a fair one for the aspiring enchanter, regardless of how powerful that enchanter ends up being overall.

[sleepyphoenixx]

You know what else doubles your summons? Casting a higher level summoning spell and choosing "1d3 off previous list", which the non-Malconvoker will be able to do half the time, in addition to being better in every round in which he does not cast a summoning spell.

And half the time he gets two minions from his highest level slot where a different class only gets one.
Yes, you're losing general caster power for your summoning specialization.
That's a valid price for specialization as long as said specialization is powerful enough to be worth it, and i think Malconvoker qualifies.

If you don't want to be a specialized summoner don't be a Malconvoker.

[Endarire]

For a simple example, imagine every caster level loss like you as a player permanently losing a body part. What do you get in exchange for it in the short and long term? And also, what body part do you lose?

For example, if going Incantatrix3 (but not 1 or 2) requires losing a caster level with no rules legal way to get it back, would it be worthwhile? Quite plausibly. For another example, if losing your least favorite finger meant you were paid $1 billion US, would it be worthwhile? The answer is the same.

In contrast, is going Spellsword worth losing caster levels over, even as a gish? Probably not, just like losing my least favorite finger for $100,000 or less would probably not be worthwhile.

@Gruftzwerg: Maybe we're misunderstanding you here, but if you were to build a full caster or manifester for a game that ran ECL 1 to 20 as part of a party, what would you choose and why? The same goes for building a casting-based or manifesting-based gish.

To clarify, I've already expressed my preference toward a high casting ability, even on a gish, with a build such as Gray Elf Barbarian1 (Whirling Frenzy & Pounce)/Wizard5 (Conjurer)/Incantatrix10/Full CastingX for a gish due to pounce and high casting. Persistent Spell for alter self, wraithstrike, and various other buffs makes this build able to hit things despite it having low base HP and BAB.

For a full caster, that depends on my mood, but a 'simple' Sor6/Incantatrix10/full castingX is a strong baseline as a Sor.

Thankee!

[Quertus]

For the last time: there is no world in which Green Star Adept, even full casting Green Star Adept, is a "highly optimized build". People are not asking for the power level of casters to be raised. Multiple people, including you, have tried and failed to demonstrate that this change does that. What it does is equalize the power level between casters who like the idea of playing a generalist mage who is a member of a society of mages (Mage of the Arcane Order) and casters who like the idea of playing a dude who wears a demon (Acolyte of the Skin). You can tune the power level of casters to whatever you want and it is completely irrelevant to the question in this thread. If you think that we need to nerf things all the way down to feather fall because otherwise casters are "omnipotent", no one is going to stop you. But the game is a better game if the choice between Mindbender and Master Specialist is a fair one for the aspiring enchanter, regardless of how powerful that enchanter ends up being overall.

{Scrubbed}

Mind you, I don't agree that all prestige classes aren't "worth" caster level loss, or that it isn't possible to create more such prestige classes (in point of fact, I experimented with doing just that, with trying to get my GM to let me use homebrew prestige classes that lost caster levels, in order to test my game balance ideas. The *timing* of the level loss relative to the feature gain was very important, something some of the GMs couldn't understand).

But I do agree that most comments that aren't comparing Wizard 1 to Wizard 2 are rather missing the point.

Of course, at the risk of accusations of missing the point myself, I'll only slightly flippantly ask whether perhaps the point we're missing is that, to optimize a Wizard, you're *supposed* to write "Wizard 20" on your character sheet, whereas to optimize a Fighter, you're *supposed* to have to write 30 lines of pseudocode just to explain your classes? :smallamused:

Or that one is *meant* to start at the bottom, and work its way up, while the other is *meant* to start at the top, and work its way down, until party balance is achieved? That seeking "flavor" and seeking "balance" were meant to go hand in hand? And that, therefore, talk of making Prestige Classes "balanced" with the core class is, in fact, making the game harder for individual tables to use to achieve balance?

Would you say that, at least looked at in that light, such statements comparing full builds of Wizard #1 to Fighter #1 could have merit in a conversation about whether casting prestige classes should all (or most all) be bumped to full casting?

[Endarire]

Quertus:
I think you were acting facetiously, and thanks for the thoughts about the different starting points or Wiz and Fighter, but my opinion regarding full casting/manifesting and PrCs still stands because the baseline of power for every Wizard over 20 levels is Wizard20, and if someone can willingly choose options that either give full casting and extras or don't give full casting yet give something, the options are heavily in favor of more goodies, even if the caster level loss is eventually worthwhile, in large part due to fear of loss and the habituation of getting X casting ability progression per level or Y time.

To put things in perspective, when I first read the 3.0 DMG over 20 years ago, I noticed this "Loremaster" class. I didn't understand how the 3.0 game mechanics worked for PrCs and casting, but I recall thinking to myself, "Why would anyone take this instead of full Wizard?" What I would later understand is that Loremaster granted its benefits in addition to full casting because the benefits were weak on their own and intended to be granted in addition to full casting.

"Balance" is nebulous and subjective. Trying to balance for different criteria - flavor/image and power - will end up problematic because one will win. For example, StarCraft was balanced for its mechanics, but not for its image. As a game designer, how can I determine what audiences think is the most nifty based on image among a buncha bugs (Zerg), Predators (Protoss), and rebranded 40K soldiers (Terran)?

But as for playing a martial character, non-casters generally benefit more from level 2 from open multiclassing since martial classes are often front-loaded, and the default 3.5 favored class rules favor characters taking at most 2 levels from any non-PrC. The Tome of Battle was meant to fix much of this problem and did, but multiclassing is still encouraged.

Community-wide, we may just need to agree to disagree on the value of a caster level and its worth as well as under what mechanical circumstances losing one (or more!) would be worthwhile.

[RandomPeasant]

For what it's worth, I don't have any problem arguing about the topic. If Troacctid wants to come back and explain why a PrC that gets a powerful ability at its 9th or 10th class level is as good as Incantatrix (without also concluding that Truenamer is as good as Wizard), that's fine. Similarly, if Gruftzwerg wants to take another run at demonstrating which PrC it is that powers up casters when it gets full casting, I'll have that argument. My issue is the way it gets asserted on faith that casters are "broken" and "omnipotent", and then when you drill down to it the argument is "feather fall makes Monks sad". Like, maybe the problem there is the class for which "able to damage level-appropriate monsters" is a bar it has to work to clear. I don't even disagree that there are problem spells that need to be nerfed for the game to function well. I just think those spells are things like planar binding and polymorph, not feather fall.


And half the time he gets two minions from his highest level slot where a different class only gets one.

If I am dedicating myself to a specialty so completely that I lose out on doing anything else as well as someone else does, I would like to be better at that thing all the time, not just some of the time.


Of course, at the risk of accusations of missing the point myself, I'll only slightly flippantly ask whether perhaps the point we're missing is that, to optimize a Wizard, you're *supposed* to write "Wizard 20" on your character sheet, whereas to optimize a Fighter, you're *supposed* to have to write 30 lines of pseudocode just to explain your classes? :smallamused:

I would very much agree that this is a problem. Of course, the trouble with getting people to acknowledge this particular thing is a problem is that it leads you to nasty little conclusions like "maybe the full casters have some merits from a class design perspective" or "maybe it's not the best idea to design things around the idea that people will run through as many books as possible to dumpster dive for power". Can't have that, it'd make the Fighter players upset.


And that, therefore, talk of making Prestige Classes "balanced" with the core class is, in fact, making the game harder for individual tables to use to achieve balance?

This is wrong. "Balance" is not just "we can play characters that are comparably powerful". If it were, no one would have balance problems because you could just play a party of a Cleric, a Wizard, a Dread Necromancer, and a Psion (or a Fighter, a Scout, a Soulborn, and a Marshal, to be fair). "Balance" means "we can play characters that we want and are comparably powerful". In this context, it's clear that PrCs being balanced against the base class is the correct approach, as it means you can tune the whole thing to the table without insisting that the guy who really wants to play a Mage of the Arcane Order play an Acolyte of the Skin (or vice versa).

[Gruftzwerg]

For what it's worth, I don't have any problem arguing about the topic. If Troacctid wants to come back and explain why a PrC that gets a powerful ability at its 9th or 10th class level is as good as Incantatrix (without also concluding that Truenamer is as good as Wizard), that's fine. Similarly, if Gruftzwerg wants to take another run at demonstrating which PrC it is that powers up casters when it gets full casting, I'll have that argument. My issue is the way it gets asserted on faith that casters are "broken" and "omnipotent", and then when you drill down to it the argument is "feather fall makes Monks sad". Like, maybe the problem there is the class for which "able to damage level-appropriate monsters" is a bar it has to work to clear. I don't even disagree that there are problem spells that need to be nerfed for the game to function well. I just think those spells are things like planar binding and polymorph, not feather fall.

How about you adressing the points we brought up?

1) You are still assuming that everybody is fine with T1 builds (including core wizards/clerics/druids) while there are tables that restrict or even ban em. And here you require an overall buff for those that are already to strong in some peoples minds. And to some degree I can understand them, because as said: It limits many plot-options and trivializes em once you got a full caster in your party at mid to high levels. Because of all the plot solving spells.

2) A full casters has barely other permanent stuff (active or passive abilities). Their power comes from the their limited resource. This means, that they (unless heavily specialized) have to expend this resource combined with action use at any encounter he has to fight.
Lets see what happens when we give this full caster now a simple permanent ability like DR or AC as example:
On the adventuring day assuming the standard 4 encounters/day this would mean that he has 4 times per day where he saves each time an action and a spellslot to get a similar effect from a regular spell. So with the standard 4 encounters this ability would be worth extra 4 actions and spellslots compared to a regular full caster.
And if you DM/campaign shouldn't follow the regular encounter standard, you might get even more value of this. Imagine some kind of long lasting combat (e.g. a siege) where most spell durations will run out in fraction of the day.


_______________________

The developers intended balance tool here is "class building resources".
The reason why full casters are "gods" is due to their limited resource system to fuel their flexible almost omnipotent spells. this is especially true for high lvl wizards, who invested all their lvl resources (including prestige-/class selection: bad BAB and barely passive/at-will abilities but full spellcasting progession) into this limited resource system.
The reason why a Fighter 20 sucks in comprehension is because he only have all day long passive or at will (maybe situational) abilities.

The underlying intention here is that "nobrainer" classes are weaker. And nobrainer means no limited resources and no flexible abilities. The fighter even sucks compared to a Barbarian since those have to make wise use of their limited rages. And those that have "abilities with limited use per day" may be stronger, because of the complexity and planing involved.

The problem is that with increasing System Mastery in the community and the internet (guides, tips and tricks, exploits,.. yadda yadda) , the skill needed to find the perfect spell selection is near "zero".

And since most tables/campaigns barely feature more (or constant) combat, permanent and at will abilities lose value. They are barely given the opportunity to shine against limited resources.

And all this is the intended balance.
You are ignoring that Fighter 20 is also in line with the designers intention. As long as you don't get why the desginers thought fighter 20 is ok, stop assuming that Incantatrix is the sole balancing benchmark.

You want all the goodies, full power from a limited resource system (that is justified because of the lack of passive/at-will abilities) and at-will/passive abilities.

If you deny constantly these points, any further discussion is meaningless (no offense here). Because in your mind sole "Incantatrix" counts as a benchmark while the "Fighter 20" is ignored for the sake of this agenda.

[Troacctid]

For what it's worth, I don't have any problem arguing about the topic. If Troacctid wants to come back and explain why a PrC that gets a powerful ability at its 9th or 10th class level is as good as Incantatrix (without also concluding that Truenamer is as good as Wizard), that's fine.
Like, if you think that incantatrix is an appropriate balance point and you actively want more classes on its level, I don't see the point. I spend a couple thousand words going into detail about why X, Y, and Z class are as good as one of the most broken prestige classes in the game once you buff them to full progression—which probably takes multiple hours of my time between the writing and the research, as opposed to the ~15 minutes I spent scrolling through part of my warmage handbook to make the initial list—and you say "Great, that means it's totally healthy for game balance. This houserule is awesome." That just sounds frustrating, y'know? It's your game, you can try out whatever wacky rules you want. There's a spreadsheet in my signature, so the resource is there for you to do that research yourself.

[GeoffWatson]

I think none of them should give full casting progression.

With some characters, all they give up is familiar progression, which is worth much less than the ten or twenty extra abilities they gain.
Others may give up a couple of feats, or reduce turn undead effectiveness; still worth far less than what most PrCs give.

They may have to take prerequisites that they wouldn't normally take, but that's usually just one feat and a few wasted skill points.

For the vast majority of PrCs, the only thing that matters that they give up is the opportunity to take a different PrC.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I think none of them should give full casting progression.

With some characters, all they give up is familiar progression, which is worth much less than the ten or twenty extra abilities they gain.
Others may give up a couple of feats, or reduce turn undead effectiveness; still worth far less than what most PrCs give.

They may have to take prerequisites that they wouldn't normally take, but that's usually just one feat and a few wasted skill points.

For the vast majority of PrCs, the only thing that matters that they give up is the opportunity to take a different PrC.

The issue with that is that full casting is so powerful (and losing progression so painful) that most PrCs simply won't be worth that tradeoff.
A PrC that actively makes you worse at your main ability isn't something most people will take. Which is what's already happening to the vast majority of casting PrC's that lose progression.

The fact that a wizard only decides which PrC to take (instead of deciding if he wants to take one at all) is an issue with the design of the wizard class, not with PrC design.
Clerics are even worse - just look at the class table, it's completely empty after 1st level. Why would you stay in it instead of prcing out ASAP?

If you're going to the trouble of houseruling things to address that you should go for the root of the problem, not the symptom.
Otherwise you'll just switch the problem around to the point where nobody wants to take PrCs on their casters at all, and i doubt that's the intention.

The druid clearly shows how to do it right. Give the base class meaningful features that benefit from levels all the way to 20 and not taking a PrC suddenly becomes a valid choice.
UA's specialist wizard variants and some of the ACF's tried to do something to that effect, but for most schools the abilities offered are simply too weak to offer much incentive.
PF did it very well though, so if that's something you want to do i suggest taking a look there first.

[RandomPeasant]

You are still assuming that everybody is fine with T1 builds

I have repeatedly explained that this is not what I'm saying. The question of "should Green Star Adept be as good as Mage of the Arcane Order" is not a "should people be T1" question. "Should Knight of the Chalice be as good as Ur-Priest" is, but that's not what I'm advocating for. If you want Wizards to be worse, make Wizards worse. Making some Wizards worse doesn't solve whatever balance problems you are worried about, and simply restricts the options that are available and viable in your campaign.


Lets see what happens when we give this full caster now a simple permanent ability like DR or AC as example:

You mean like when they cast an hours/level buff, a thing they can already do? The idea that Green Star Adept is going to somehow make it so that spellcasters crush encounters without needing to expend spell slots is just wholly unsubstantiated. And, of course, it's also irrelevant, because huge swathes of partial casting PrCs don't grant unlimited-use resources.


The reason why full casters are "gods" is due to their limited resource system to fuel their flexible almost omnipotent spells.

I reiterate that you think this includes feather fall.


The underlying intention here is that "nobrainer" classes are weaker. And nobrainer means no limited resources and no flexible abilities.

Then why is Truenamer worse than Warblade? There are a lot of classes in the game, and it is true that the best ones are the spellcasters. But past that basic inequality, it is very difficult to come up with a truly consistent theory of class balance, because there are classes that are any particular way most power levels.


Because in your mind sole "Incantatrix" counts as a benchmark while the "Fighter 20" is ignored for the sake of this agenda.

I would love to have a version of this debate where people don't tell me what I think. I'm not ignoring "Fighter 20" for the sake of an agenda, I'm ignoring it because a thing that is not a spellcaster is irrelevant to the question of the relative balance of different spellcasters. I have repeatedly claimed that I think this would not make classes as powerful as the Incantatrix. If you would like to make the case that I am wrong about that, feel free to pick up the torch Troacctid has dropped.


Like, if you think that incantatrix is an appropriate balance point and you actively want more classes on its level, I don't see the point.

You were the one who claimed that there are "dozens" of PrCs that would be as good as Incantatrix if they got full casting. If you can't defend that, you can just admit you were wrong. Don't put words in my mouth. You'd think that when I responded to your claim with "prove it" and not "yes that is what I want", people would realize that I'm not actually asking for Incantatrix as a balance target.


That just sounds frustrating, y'know?

Imagine how it feels to argue with someone who won't make arguments. Yes, it would be hard for you to defend your positions and it would take effort to do so. But that's part and parcel in engaging in debate. If you don't want to do it, don't engage.


The fact that a wizard only decides which PrC to take (instead of deciding if he wants to take one at all) is an issue with the design of the wizard class, not with PrC design.

Yeah. Making the decision "class features or no class features" is just not interesting. If you want to make it so that casters are worse, feel free to do that. But making some PrCs partial progression doesn't do that to any degree worth mentioning. It just makes them less interesting.

[lylsyly]

"""The issue with that is that full casting is so powerful (and losing progression so painful) that most PrCs simply won't be worth that tradeoff."""

This right here, like I said, There are people that believe that if you aren't playing an optimized T1 caster you are not playing the game right!!

Every 3rd time it's my turn to DM I run a game where the only full casters are bards paladins and rangers. they all get the bard spell progression and are all spontaneous fixed list casters with different stats affecting their casting, no spells above 6th and I have nerfed/eliminated a lot of the 0th-6th level spells. Half casting PRCs for barbarians, fighters, monks, something similar to horizon walker and mystic theurge for players that want access to 2 spell lists ( spells per day are based on ECL).

They have so much fun with it that a lot of times they will ask me to run those rules rather than my No holds barred all source gestalt with LA+3 free campaign world.

Different strokes and all which makes discussions like this that will never reach a consensus basically useless.

Is it possible to balance the 3e classes??? Yes it is!

Step 1: nerf all T1s down to T2
Step 2: Bump all T6 up to T5
Step 3: nerf all T2 down to T3
Step 4: Bump all T5 up to T4
Step 5: Bring you ne T3 and T4 classes to meet in the middle

Can it be done? Of course it can but no-one (including myself) wants to do the work. Will it be the same game?
Yes, it will still be dungeaons and dragons EXCEPT to the crowd that believes that only by playing an optimized T! caster are you playing the game as designed.

[/rant]

[sleepyphoenixx]

This right here, like I said, There are people that believe that if you aren't playing an optimized T1 caster you are not playing the game right!!

Please don't put words in my mouth. I have neither said nor meant that. A PrC that makes you worse at what you do is bad design no matter your level of optimization.
In fact the issue affects lower tier casters far more than high tier ones. A wizard or cleric can afford to lose progression more than a bard or warmage can.
If you lose too much progression your spells become increasingly irrelevant against what the game expects you to be able to handle.

A good DM can and should compensate for that of course, but not everyone has that DM. And the CR system simply expects a certain minimum level of power at certain points.

A higher-op player will simply avoid doing that, but for less knowledgable players it turns those PrCs into a frustrating trap option.
I've seen more than one newbie get frustrated because his character sucked and couldn't keep up, because 3.5 is full of trap options that aren't necessarily obvious.
Most people enjoy playing characters that are competent at what they do.

And it's not like it's a balance issue. Most of the "OP" caster PrC's already offer full casting progression anyway.
The classes that don't mostly come in "weird crap" flavor from the time before the designers started to understand what made a prestige class good.

There is absolutely no mechanical reason for these classes to get half progression casting. It's not balance. It's completely arbitrary. And fixing that doesn't break anyones game.

[lylsyly]

Sir or Ma'am, quoting you is not putting words in your mouth!

[AsuraKyoko]

I think that saying that not wanting to give up casting progression for a prestige class means that someone refuses to play anything other than tier 1 is disingenuous at best. If someone is playing a wizard, they aren't going to want to just start skipping level ups for minimal payoff. Because that's what losing casting progression essentially is. Sure, you get HD, skill points, etcetera, but you get that with a level of commoner, too, and no wizard is going to want to start alternating levels with commoner levels.

Let's look at this from a different perspective: would a fighter want to take a PrC with low BAB and a d6 HD? Not unless it gives something really good, and, unlike casting progression, losing HD and BAB can be largely compensated for with getting bonuses elsewhere. For example the War Hulk gets no BAB progression, but instead gets +2 Strength every level, which compensates for it for the most part.

Fundamentally, if a character option makes you worse at what you want to do, people aren't going to want to take that option, unless there is some other very compelling reason to do so. What, exactly, people consider compelling is going to vary, of course, but, in general, most abilities aren't going to be worth taking commoner levels for. (Yes, I know that wizards have a slightly better chassis than commoner, but a good Will save and better skill list does not make the commoner a good class. For Clerics, instead think of it like a Warrior with a moderate BAB, which is roughly the same.)

[Troacctid]

If we're talking about incantatrix, then we need to establish how powerful it actually is. Probably the two strongest features are the bonus metamagic feats and the capstone. Five bonus feats over 10 levels is a lot for a caster, and all of them are going to be powerful and relevant, especially on an arcane thesis build. If it were just the bonus metamagic feats for the cost of Iron Will and an extra banned school, it would already be pretty good. Once you hit level 10 and get -1 to all metamagic costs, you're in super strong territory.

Instant metamagic is also good. You can use it for effects like Quicken and Twin to get a lot of value.

Meanwhile, we have some other features that have niche uses. The stealing abilities are obviously very niche. Cooperative metamagic is great for spells cast out of combat with Extend Spell, but otherwise doesn't have a lot of applications. In combat, the action cost is prohibitive. Same with metamagic effect; there shouldn't be many spells where maximizing, empowering, extending, or energy substituting their effects one or two rounds after you cast them at the cost of a full-round action breaks the game, if there are any at all.
Do you think I should actually research all the metamagic feats this could interact with before declaring it to be fair and balanced? Nah, I'll just go with my gut, it's probably fine.

So what are we left with? A prestige class with good, incrementally powerful abilities as you run up to level 10, and then a busted capstone. Very much like a lot of the classes I listed, many of which have more powerful capstones (like MotSS) or more powerful incremental abilities (like shapeshifter). And when you combine that with its affordable prerequisites and full casting, it's probably the best prestige class in the game for a warmage, beating out its competitors Halruaan elder, mage of the Arcane Order, anima mage, and tainted scholar largely on the back of being cheaper and easier to qualify for.

[lylsyly]

Comparing Warrior to Cleric? And talking about disingenuous? Do you want to fight or cast spells? Wariior at least gives you bonus feats! Yes, Cleric can ignore those feats by the ability to cast spells but then you have opted to play a T1 caster instead of a lowly sword-swinger. Once again a demonstration that T1 is the only thing to play!

[sleepyphoenixx]

If we're talking about incantatrix, then we need to establish how powerful it actually is. Probably the two strongest features are the bonus metamagic feats and the capstone. Five bonus feats over 10 levels is a lot for a caster, and all of them are going to be powerful and relevant, especially on an arcane thesis build. If it were just the bonus metamagic feats for the cost of Iron Will and an extra banned school, it would already be pretty good. Once you hit level 10 and get -1 to all metamagic costs, you're in super strong territory.

Instant metamagic is also good. You can use it for effects like Quicken and Twin to get a lot of value.

Meanwhile, we have some other features that have niche uses. The stealing abilities are obviously very niche. Cooperative metamagic is great for spells cast out of combat with Extend Spell, but otherwise doesn't have a lot of applications. In combat, the action cost is prohibitive. Same with metamagic effect; there shouldn't be many spells where maximizing, empowering, extending, or energy substituting their effects one or two rounds after you cast them at the cost of a full-round action breaks the game, if there are any at all.

So what are we left with? A prestige class with good, incrementally powerful abilities as you run up to level 10, and then a busted capstone. Very much like a lot of the classes I listed, many of which have more powerful capstones (like MotSS) or more powerful incremental abilities (like shapeshifter). And when you combine that with its affordable prerequisites and full casting, it's probably the best prestige class in the game for a warmage, beating out its competitors Halruaan elder, mage of the Arcane Order, anima mage, and tainted scholar largely on the back of being cheaper and easier to qualify for.

I disagree with your analysis. Cooperative metamagic and metamagic effect are by far the most problematic abilities the incantatrix gives.
Cooperative metamagic alone is a giant pile of any metamagic you own, applied pretty much for free to any non-combat spell any party member casts.
Metamagic effect does it to your own spells too and uses a separate pool of uses, just in case you need more free metamagic.

And i'm not just talking about persisting, which you didn't even mention. You also forgot about metamagic spell trigger, another incredibly powerful feature.

The bonus feats are excessive, especially on top of those features, and the capstone while powerful isn't especially gamebreaking unless you stack it with other metamagic reducers.
What makes the incantatrix the top-tier caster prestige class is its ability to utterly destroy the power curve of the entire parties spellcasting by letting people cast spells that are effectively balanced for being at least 4 slots higher.
A 9th-level cooperative metamagic takes only a DC 45 check. Spellcraft isn't that difficult to optimize even if you refrain from abusing item familiar, Guidance of the Avatar and +30 competence items.


Do you think I should actually research all the metamagic feats this could interact with before declaring it to be fair and balanced? Nah, I'll just go with my gut, it's probably fine.
I think you should have at least remembered persistent spell exists.:smalltongue:
Without that it's still really good - free twinning, chaining, repeating and echoing come to mind - but unsurprisingly persist is a huge gamechanger with its ability to keep up otherwise short-term buffs all day, now multiplied for the whole party. The spellcraft DC's aren't exactly easy, but they're certainly doable with a little book diving.

[Troacctid]

I think you should have at least remembered persistent spell exists.:smalltongue:
Without that it's still really good - free twinning, chaining, repeating and echoing come to mind - but unsurprisingly persist is a huge gamechanger with its ability to keep up otherwise short-term buffs all day, now multiplied for the whole party. The spellcraft DC's aren't exactly easy, but they're certainly doable with a little book diving.
I'm sorry, are you suggesting that when we're dealing with something broad and open-ended with the potential to add a lot of power to options from every corner of the game, we should put in the due diligence and investigate all of those interactions (rather than relying only on what we can think of off the top of our heads) before declaring that nothing problematic is going to arise from them?

[looks directly at camera]

[sleepyphoenixx]

I'm sorry, are you suggesting that when we're dealing with something broad and open-ended with the potential to add a lot of power to options from every corner of the game, we should put in the due diligence and investigate all of those interactions (rather than relying only on what we can think of off the top of our heads) before declaring that nothing problematic is going to arise from them?

[looks directly at camera]
Don't be ridiculous. Nobody would ever post anything if we did that.
I'm just surprised that when hearing "metamagic abuse" not only was someones first response not persist, it didn't even cross their mind.

[lylsyly]

One reason that at OUR table nightsticks not only do not stack, they don't even exist. LOL.

Look, I am not saying that Tier One should not exist, just that it's not the only way to play. We almost always play gestalt and I usually play support. Probably my all time favorite build is Bard 8 / Lyric Thaumaturge 2 / Sublime Chord 2 / Lyric Thaumaturge 8 (houseruled to increase sublime chord casting instead of RAW bard casting only) /// Scout 3 / Mystic Ranger 17. I mean seriously, I can truly do everything. Just can't do anything up to so-called T1 levels.

At times I also play a T1 Divine Caster. Dwarven Cloistered Cleric of Hanseath (RoS) 3 / Church Inquisitor 2 (ignoring alignment) / Divine Oracle 5 / Comtemplative 10 /// Paladin 20. Hanseath gives me access to War and Travel Domains, add in Knowledge from CC, Inquistion and Oracle Domains for the 1st 2 PRCs and then Chaos and Strength from my deity during the last 10 levels. Thats 5 pretty good domains (or 3 if I choose to grab the devotion feats for travel and knowledge). Again, I just play it as support. Buff, Debuff, maybe some BFC. But I can also yank that Greataxe off my back and wade in if needed.

Favorite Melee build? Plain and simple! Crafty Hunter Barbarian 20 /// Mystic Ranger 20, I would never build a true Uber-Charger but since I get the favored enemy bonuses at different levels at our table they would stack! Could do even better since we use pathfinder feat progression. Could run fighter twenty and get a feat at EVERY level.

NOW! Lets make SwiftBlade full casting! Crafty Hunter Barbarian 20 /// Battle Sorcerer (for the casting in light armor) 6 / Swiftblade 10 / Battle Sorcerer +4 Oh damn I just got timestop at level 16, When does a wizard get that?????? Or should we skip battle sorcerer and add in Abjurant Champion levels ????

Does anyone get my point yet? Tier 1 classes can already do damn near anything, even in core. If you are on the side of making all PRCs full casting you are just making them even stronger which adds to my argument of people believing that they are the only class you should be playing.

[/rant]

[RandomPeasant]

Is it possible to balance the 3e classes??? Yes it is!

Yes it is and you don't have to nerf things. It's not even especially hard. Tome of Battle gets you most of the way there in combat, and fixing it outside of combat is just a matter of saying "watch me" to the "too anime" folks and giving the guys with earth-based martial arts the Earthbending they deserve.


And it's not like it's a balance issue. Most of the "OP" caster PrC's already offer full casting progression anyway.

It's telling that when the person who insists this is power creep for casters tried to give an example of something that was held back by its casting progression, he picked a class that gets a worse version of something like three different base classes can just do. And the "dozens" of Incantatrix-tier PrCs turned into a list with such luminaries as Heir of Siberys and Witch Hunter on it.

The argument people are trying to make, but can't articulate because they're tripping over themselves about gestalt Incantatrix omnipotent feather fall Wizards is that this makes some individual casters stronger. Which, sure, but why is that definitionally a problem? Certainly casters are capable of being underpowered, and partial casting PrCs are the best way to do that. A Sorcerer/Acolyte of the Skin in a party with a Druid, a Warblade, and a (halfway-competent) Rogue is almost certainly the weakest member of the party, and very likely by a smaller margin than would exist between the strongest and weakest members if Acolyte of the Skin was a full casting.


And fixing that doesn't break anyones game.

It is, in fact, incapable of breaking anyone's game, because "balance by you can just take an option that sucks" is not a form of balance. If you want Wizards to be worse, have at. There are many ways you can do that, and I would even agree with some of them. Though perhaps not the ones suggested by someone who thinks feather fall is the path to omnipotence. But that's an entirely separate question from the relative effect of PrCs on Wizards at whatever power level you think they should be at.


I think that saying that not wanting to give up casting progression for a prestige class means that someone refuses to play anything other than tier 1 is disingenuous at best.

Especially when the things people are asking about are just absolutely awful. It takes a special perspective to look at "I would like to play a Green Star Adept without crippling my character's primary power source" and conclude "so you think Incantatrix is the appropriate balance point and only T1s are valid". Like, no, if I thought Incantatrix was the appropriate balance point I would just play a damn Incantatrix. It's a published class, you can just do that.


I disagree with your analysis. Cooperative metamagic and metamagic effect are by far the most problematic abilities the incantatrix gives.

That post is actually quite revealing. Of course Troacctid thinks there are "dozens" of Incantatrix-tier PrCs, she doesn't understand why Incantatrix is good (or how to play a Warmage, since her list of "best PrCs" doesn't mention Rainbow Servant). Incantatrix is good because in the first five levels you get the feats you needed to enter refunded and three game-changing class features. And then you continue to gain abilities at every level for the rest of the class, which range from "okay" to "great". Almost none of the things she lists come anywhere close to that. Even Swiftblade doesn't give you the extra action until 9th level, at which point the Incantatrix can just make arcane spellsurge Persistent if they are so inclined (I was probably generous when I said that class was Incantatrix-tier).

It's an analysis that just fundamentally doesn't understand why powerful characters are powerful. Master of the Secret Sound is not Incantatrix-tier. It gets a special ability as a 19th-level character that she is, as far as I can tell suggesting should be used to abuse wish. Except that the Incantatrix can abuse wish at 11th level, because he is a Wizard and can simply learn planar binding. Even a Warmage can just get UMD as a class skill somehow, buy a Runestaff with shapechange in it, and then enjoy a free wish every round for three hours. Before the Master gets the ability to do it once per day. Is XP-free wish abusable? Sure, and that's a problem you need to fix. But getting to abuse it eight levels after someone who had never heard of your PrC does is not Incantatrix-tier.


Spellcraft isn't that difficult to optimize even if you refrain from abusing item familiar, Guidance of the Avatar and +30 competence items.

You can also pick up Practical Metamagic and Easy Metamagic if you want, which will make it even easier to make the check (as will the capstone, eventually). Not to mention that a great many of the spells you want to make Persistent are actually pretty low-level. Like, sure, you could make shapechange last all day, but it already lasts 10 minutes/level, you've covered for the vast majority of adventuring days, and you can certainly make the check to Extend it if you care.


I'm sorry, are you suggesting that when we're dealing with something broad and open-ended with the potential to add a lot of power to options from every corner of the game, we should put in the due diligence and investigate all of those interactions (rather than relying only on what we can think of off the top of our heads) before declaring that nothing problematic is going to arise from them?

The time to try this argument was before you presented the things you think we should have thought of, the majority of them failed to measure up by even extremely generous standards, and then you said that you weren't going to defend them because that seemed hard.


Oh damn I just got timestop at level 16, When does a wizard get that??????

They get it at level 17. And, frankly, for a self-buffing Gish, Incantatrix is just better than Swiftblade, especially in Gestalt, even if the latter is full casting. Sure, you can pop out a time stop and throw down your full buff routine. But that costs you a lot of spell slots, which the Incantatrix saves because he casts his spells once and they last all day (plus he can keep up stuff like wraithstrike). Full casting Swiftblade would be good. It would be a high-tier option for casters for sure. But it would not be better than the things casters can already do.


Does anyone get my point yet?

Is your point "you can build cool characters in Gestalt"? Because I don't see what a collection of Gestalt builds, most of which aren't even using partial-casting PrCs, has to do with the topic of this thread on any level.


making them even stronger

Again: prove it. Show me a build that is stronger than any RAW caster build that uses a full-casting version of a partial-casting PrC. I will wait right here for as long as it takes.

[Lans]

I



You were the one who claimed that there are "dozens" of PrCs that would be as good as Incantatrix if they got full casting. If you can't defend that, you can just admit you were wrong. Don't put words in my mouth. You'd think that when I responded to your claim with "prove it" and not "yes that is what I want", people would realize that I'm not actually asking for Incantatrix as a balance target.
.

Actually what they argued is that they would be on the same tier which gives quite a bit of wiggle room, to the point that I could argue that spell sword and bonded summoner with full casting would be on the low end of incantatrix tier.

[Troacctid]

Yes it is and you don't have to nerf things. It's not even especially hard. Tome of Battle gets you most of the way there in combat, and fixing it outside of combat is just a matter of saying "watch me" to the "too anime" folks and giving the guys with earth-based martial arts the Earthbending they deserve.

It's telling that when the person who insists this is power creep for casters tried to give an example of something that was held back by its casting progression, he picked a class that gets a worse version of something like three different base classes can just do. And the "dozens" of Incantatrix-tier PrCs turned into a list with such luminaries as Heir of Siberys and Witch Hunter on it.
It's no wonder nobody else is bothering to list any prestige classes that would be overpowered with this change. You went through all the ones I listed and essentially replied "Nuh-uh!" to each of them, then proclaimed that the houserule must be balanced if this was all anyone could come up with.


Especially when the things people are asking about are just absolutely awful. It takes a special perspective to look at "I would like to play a Green Star Adept without crippling my character's primary power source" and conclude "so you think Incantatrix is the appropriate balance point and only T1s are valid". Like, no, if I thought Incantatrix was the appropriate balance point I would just play a damn Incantatrix. It's a published class, you can just do that.

That post is actually quite revealing. Of course Troacctid thinks there are "dozens" of Incantatrix-tier PrCs, she doesn't understand why Incantatrix is good (or how to play a Warmage, since her list of "best PrCs" doesn't mention Rainbow Servant). Incantatrix is good because in the first five levels you get the feats you needed to enter refunded and three game-changing class features. And then you continue to gain abilities at every level for the rest of the class, which range from "okay" to "great". Almost none of the things she lists come anywhere close to that. Even Swiftblade doesn't give you the extra action until 9th level, at which point the Incantatrix can just make arcane spellsurge Persistent if they are so inclined (I was probably generous when I said that class was Incantatrix-tier).

The time to try this argument was before you presented the things you think we should have thought of, the majority of them failed to measure up by even extremely generous standards, and then you said that you weren't going to defend them because that seemed hard.
If you have a problem with my warmage handbook, you can tell me about it in PMs instead of being passive-aggressive. Bold of you to say I don't understand incantatrix when you don't even know what makes Heir of Siberys so strong. And since you keep harping on this, I said potentially dozens. There are over 250 prestige classes in the game that progress casting at some but not all levels. I haven't looked through all of them, and I certainly haven't playtested all of them. Neither have you. Frankly, if I were going to list all the things you should have thought of, I could have just pointed you towards the whole spreadsheet, since apparently you didn't bother to research anything farther afield than Complete Arcane.


It's an analysis that just fundamentally doesn't understand why powerful characters are powerful. Master of the Secret Sound is not Incantatrix-tier. It gets a special ability as a 19th-level character that she is, as far as I can tell suggesting should be used to abuse wish. Except that the Incantatrix can abuse wish at 11th level, because he is a Wizard and can simply learn planar binding. Even a Warmage can just get UMD as a class skill somehow, buy a Runestaff with shapechange in it, and then enjoy a free wish every round for three hours. Before the Master gets the ability to do it once per day. Is XP-free wish abusable? Sure, and that's a problem you need to fix. But getting to abuse it eight levels after someone who had never heard of your PrC does is not Incantatrix-tier.
So...in order to be in the same tier as an incantatrix, you just need to be able to cast either planar binding or shapechange? Because if that's true, I think I can expand my list by another couple hundred prestige classes.


Again: prove it. Show me a build that is stronger than any RAW caster build that uses a full-casting version of a partial-casting PrC. I will wait right here for as long as it takes.
Why don't you prove it? Why don't you go through every single partial-casting prestige class and prove that none of them would be problematic if they were full casting? You can use my list. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1geywITbI4M-Up08SGD-rUHlnobR66aIgKqu7mILkmhU/edit?usp=sharing) Comb through them all and sort them by tier, marking potential red flags. It shouldn't be any more work than what you're asking of me.

[sleepyphoenixx]

They get it at level 17. And, frankly, for a self-buffing Gish, Incantatrix is just better than Swiftblade, especially in Gestalt, even if the latter is full casting. Sure, you can pop out a time stop and throw down your full buff routine. But that costs you a lot of spell slots, which the Incantatrix saves because he casts his spells once and they last all day (plus he can keep up stuff like wraithstrike). Full casting Swiftblade would be good. It would be a high-tier option for casters for sure. But it would not be better than the things casters can already do.

It should be noted that psions get swift-action Time Stop at level 11. And can abuse Midnight Augmentation to augment its duration to minutes if they want to.
You know, on top of Schism, Anticipatory Strike, Synchronicity, Linked Power and so on. Psions are the undisputed kings of messing with the action economy.
They also make powerful gishes with the right PrCs, so that's what Swiftblade is competing with.


Actually what they argued is that they would be on the same tier which gives quite a bit of wiggle room, to the point that I could argue that spell sword and bonded summoner with full casting would be on the low end of incantatrix tier.
Spell sword and bonded summoner come nowhere close to the incantatrix, full casting or not.
Spell Swords don't even get class features aside from Channel Spell and bonded summoner gives you the equivalent of 3-4 mid-level spell slots, if that.

Cooperative metamagic alone is worth more than either class in its entirety.

The only way a full casting Spell Sword is anywhere close to Incantatrix is the "full casting" part.
It's like saying the core-only fighter is "at the low end of crusader tier" simply because both get full BAB.

I don't want to be insulting but if you don't understand that and why it is so your understanding of the game's balance is deeply flawed.

[Lans]

Considering that it gets an elder elemental and the spell that normally gets you an elder elemental is level 9 I think you are mistaken with your spell slot comparison.

There is a ~100% difference between commoner and warrior, despite this they in the same tier.

[RandomPeasant]

You went through all the ones I listed and essentially replied "Nuh-uh!" to each of them

How are you complaining about my responses to you just listing names being too low-effort? What if, instead of shotgunning out twenty things you thought fit, you'd picked the four or five best ones and presented some brief analysis of what you thought was so good about them? Hell, if you'd done it right you could've ended up with a list where I said "yeah, all of those seem about as good as Incantatrix" because I factually did say that about four of the things you picked since I was not just going "Nuh-uh!". That would've put your argument in a much better position than just asserting "Mythic Exemplar is totally as good as Incantatrix" did.


Bold of you to say I don't understand incantatrix when you don't even know what makes Heir of Siberys so strong.

You notice how when people said you didn't understand Incantatrix it was in the context of a bunch of arguments about what Incantatrix does, and when you're saying I don't understand Heir of Siberys, you provide zero explanation? The class is three levels long. I'm sure it would take you less time to explain what you think I am missing than it would to act offended about how I'm not being fair to you.


So...in order to be in the same tier as an incantatrix, you just need to be able to cast either planar binding or shapechange?

That would be the opposite of my point, actually. Incantatrix is capable of doing things you can't just replicate by casting spells (at least, not without way more spell slots than anyone gets). If you want to prove something is comparable, it should have similarly uniquely powerful options, not just "it can do a thing that characters can do most of the game earlier already".


Why don't you prove it? Why don't you go through every single partial-casting prestige class and prove that none of them would be problematic if they were full casting?

"Why don't you provide me with a comprehensive proof that I am wrong about hundreds of things instead of me providing you with a single explanation that I am right about a dozen things?"

Well, for one, because that's not how burdens of proof work. I did make arguments about the things you put forward about what I assume to be the best examples of classes that might be problematic with this change. How about you go and engage with those instead of just calling them "Nuh-uh!". What is it about Mythic Exemplar that's so powerful? Why should I consider Evil Spell Resistance game-breaking? Why is it that PrCs with abusable capstones are Incantatrix-tier when it is generally agreed that Truenamer and Healer aren't Wizard-tier? How about a one-sentence summary of your position to go with the one-sentence summaries of mine, and then we can dig down into whatever seems like the most worthwhile cases.


Considering that it gets an elder elemental and the spell that normally gets you an elder elemental is level 9 I think you are mistaken with your spell slot comparison.

I think that's an argument that's worth engaging with. Though I would prefer to see these arguments presented when someone names the PrC they think is a problem, so we don't have do do guess-and-check analysis.

It's true that you need summon monster IX to pop out an elder elemental, but I don't know that that's a good one-to-one comparison. Summon spells offer a lot of versatility, while the bonded summoner can't even change which type of elemental he summons. It's true that the bonded summoner's elemental companion has some advantages, but the most obvious of those advantages -- duration -- points to a different comparison: planar binding. It's true you can't use it (or even the greater version) to summon an elder elemental, but you can use it to summon some pretty comparable creatures. And while planar binding is abusable, I don't think the use-case of summoning a single ally that has a CR three less than your level is particularly comparable to the Incantatrix.


There is a ~100% difference between commoner and warrior, despite this they in the same tier.

That's just because no one wants to have a separate tier that is just "screw you Commoner" tier. I agree that a PrC doesn't need to be exactly as strong as Incantatrix to be comparable, but I don't know that a looser restriction elevates any of the PrCs I dismissed. Perhaps someone who believes it does could provide some kind of analysis.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Considering that it gets an elder elemental and the spell that normally gets you an elder elemental is level 9 I think you are mistaken with your spell slot comparison.

An elder elemental is a beatstick. A good beatstick, but still just a beatstick. Trying to equate it to tons of free metamagic for an entire party is completely absurd.

Let's take a look at a the difference between a wizard 5/incantatrix 9 and a wizard 5/bonded summoner 9, when he gets the elder elemental.


Wizard 5/Bonded Summoner 9:
- cost: 8 ranks in knowledge(planes), loses familiar
- 14th level wizard casting
- elder elemental companion with familiar benefits
- immunity to 1 energy type, paralysis, stun, poison, sleep, flanking

Wizard 5/Incantatrix 9:
- cost: Concentration 4, Know(Arcana) 8, Spellcraft 8, Iron Will, 1 MM feat, 1 school of magic except divination
- 14th level wizard casting
- 4 bonus metamagic feats
- Cooperative Metamagic at least 10/day (assuming 18 starting Int and a +4 item) to add any metamagic you possess to a spell an ally casts
- Metamagic Effect at least 10/day to add any metamagic you possess to a spell already in effect
- Metamagic Spell Trigger to use any metamagic feats you have with wands and staffs
- Seize Concentration
- Instant Metamagic 2/day
- Snatch Spell

Assuming the Incantatrix can make a DC 45 spellcraft check - which is quite doable - she can add metamagic worth at least 10 9th level spell slots from Metamagic Effect alone.
She can further add metamagic worth another 10 9th level spell slots to spells her allies cast.
She can also cast the equivalent of a level 13 slot (7th level spells + persist) with Instant Metamagic 2/day.
She has at least 5 metamagic feats for this purpose and Metamagic Spell Trigger to also use them on wands and staffs.

The Bonded Summoner has a permanent 9th level beatstick summon.
He has immunity to one energy type (5th level spell slot)
He is immune to stunning, sleep, poison, paralysis and flanking (a couple of low and mid level slots).

That's it. That's all bonded summoners get. The only thing that's not easily replicated with a handful of low-mid level slots is the all-day elemental.
The incantatrix can make at least 22 spells last all day before getting into Metamagic Spell Trigger. Or do pretty much everything else metamagic.
And that's a conservative estimate - an optimized wizard probably has more int and you can both take metamagic reducers and push spellcraft to be casting the equivalent of 11th+ level spells pretty much all day.

The conclusion should be obvious. The Incantatrix is several orders of magnitude more powerful than the Bonded Summoner. It's not even a contest.
Going by things you can't easily replicate with a few spell slots a Bonded Summoner is equivalent to about 1/22 incantatrix at best, going by the relative amount of 9th level slot power they can deliver in a day.

[Lans]

It's true that you need summon monster IX to pop out an elder elemental, but I don't know that that's a good one-to-one comparison. Summon spells offer a lot of versatility, while the bonded summoner can't even change which type of elemental he summons. It's true that the bonded summoner's elemental companion has some advantages, but the most obvious of those advantages -- duration -- points to a different comparison: planar binding. It's true you can't use it (or even the greater version) to summon an elder elemental, but you can use it to summon some pretty comparable creatures. And while planar binding is abusable, I don't think the use-case of summoning a single ally that has a CR three less than your level is particularly comparable to the Incantatrix.



That's just because no one wants to have a separate tier that is just "screw you Commoner" tier. I agree that a PrC doesn't need to be exactly as strong as Incantatrix to be comparable, but I don't know that a looser restriction elevates any of the PrCs I dismissed. Perhaps someone who believes it does could provide some kind of analysis .


The only tier list for prestige classes that I found had Void Disciple in the same tier as Incantatrix. BS with full casting is comparable to this.

[Troacctid]

How are you complaining about my responses to you just listing names being too low-effort? What if, instead of shotgunning out twenty things you thought fit, you'd picked the four or five best ones and presented some brief analysis of what you thought was so good about them? Hell, if you'd done it right you could've ended up with a list where I said "yeah, all of those seem about as good as Incantatrix" because I factually did say that about four of the things you picked since I was not just going "Nuh-uh!". That would've put your argument in a much better position than just asserting "Mythic Exemplar is totally as good as Incantatrix" did.
If mythic exemplar were full casting, it would double-advance you for four of its levels, something no other class can do. Even if you only went the sneak attack route, it would still easily be one of the best warmage prestige classes in the game; not much out there gives that kind of damage boost with no prerequisites.

Heir of Siberys is powerful in large part because of the interactions that a Siberys mark has with other material, including various spells (such as spell haven and marked pulse), feats (such as Mark of Stars and Dragonmark Mastery), and magic items (such as dragonmark rods). It also gives you Action Surge, which lets you take an extra standard action in a round.

Witch Hunter would be a one-level dip for divine grace that doesn't drop any progression. Every Charisma caster and their mother would be taking it. It's like mindbender if it didn't cost skill points and gave full BAB and armor proficiency. Everything else is icing.


You notice how when people said you didn't understand Incantatrix it was in the context of a bunch of arguments about what Incantatrix does, and when you're saying I don't understand Heir of Siberys, you provide zero explanation?
Okay, since I was obviously too subtle, I intentionally gave a shallow analysis of incantatrix that didn't account for persistomancy to illustrate a point, as seen in the white text in that post and in the sarcastic follow-up. The devs weren't thinking about every possible interaction when they wrote those abilities, and whoops! They ended up making an overpowered class. You are making the exact same mistake. If you put this rule in a book, future optimizers would be aghast that you didn't realize how broken it would be with whatever broken thing resulted. That's the point. You can see my actual analysis of incantatrix in the handbook.


The class is three levels long. I'm sure it would take you less time to explain what you think I am missing than it would to act offended about how I'm not being fair to you.
Nope, it already took longer, and I didn't even go all that deep into the weeds.


That would be the opposite of my point, actually. Incantatrix is capable of doing things you can't just replicate by casting spells (at least, not without way more spell slots than anyone gets). If you want to prove something is comparable, it should have similarly uniquely powerful options, not just "it can do a thing that characters can do most of the game earlier already".
Why would a prestige class that fully advances casting be competing against the casting that it doesn't have to give up? You're a wizard, right? What do you lose? Only familiar progression, two bonus feats, and the ability to take planar wizard substitution levels.

More importantly, if infinite wishes at level 11 is the baseline, why does any prestige class even matter in the first place? Like, who cares if you have persistomancy? You have free wishes. You're literally Pun-Pun. What does incantatrix do that's better than that?


"Why don't you provide me with a comprehensive proof that I am wrong about hundreds of things instead of me providing you with a single explanation that I am right about a dozen things?"

Well, for one, because that's not how burdens of proof work. I did make arguments about the things you put forward about what I assume to be the best examples of classes that might be problematic with this change. How about you go and engage with those instead of just calling them "Nuh-uh!". What is it about Mythic Exemplar that's so powerful? Why should I consider Evil Spell Resistance game-breaking? Why is it that PrCs with abusable capstones are Incantatrix-tier when it is generally agreed that Truenamer and Healer aren't Wizard-tier? How about a one-sentence summary of your position to go with the one-sentence summaries of mine, and then we can dig down into whatever seems like the most worthwhile cases.
The first time I gave a one-sentence summary of my position, you demanded I add lots more sentences. The second time I did it, you said it wasn't the time.

[RandomPeasant]

The only tier list for prestige classes that I found had Void Disciple in the same tier as Incantatrix. BS with full casting is comparable to this.

Void Disciple gets ranked highly because of highly-specific shenanigans that I would argue aren't even principally derived from the class features (as with most things involving body outside body, it is the real culprit there).


If mythic exemplar were full casting, it would double-advance you for four of its levels, something no other class can do.

See, this is the kind of thing that is super easy to clear up if you just make your arguments. No it wouldn't do that, because obviously "full casting" does not mean "14/10 casting", because that is more than full.


Heir of Siberys is powerful in large part because of the interactions that a Siberys mark has with other material, including various spells (such as spell haven and marked pulse), feats (such as Mark of Stars and Dragonmark Mastery), and magic items (such as dragonmark rods). It also gives you Action Surge, which lets you take an extra standard action in a round.

spell haven is neat, but one Quickened spell does not an Incantatrix make. It's nice that it doesn't take a spell slot today, but it's limited to 5th level or lower, you can only have one, and you have to pick the spell in advance. Hard for me to see that as better than the single use of Instant Metamagic the Incantatrix gets before you can even take Heir of Siberys levels. marked pulse is cute, but "save or prone" a few times per day is a lot worse than the defenses an Incantatrix can put together (it's also worth noting that if it's really that great, you can get it from a greater mark you got by taking feats).

Mark of Stars is alright, but you only have a very short window with it before you get foresight, and "never surprised" is an ability best-suited to precisely the high-op rocket launcher tag environment Incantatrix is better for anyway. Spending a feat to Quicken an ability I can use twice per day and may not even want to use in combat hardly seems compelling, and it is limited by a resource you get a fixed number of per level.

Don't Dragonmark Rods let you cash out dragonmark abilities for other abilities? Unless there's some "of a lower rank" thing I forgot, it seems like using it with a Siberys mark would be the worst way of using one.

Action Surge is a feat, you can just take it if you want it. What Heir of Siberys gives you is two extra action action points per level, meaning you forgot the "per level" caveat on that "extra action".


Witch Hunter would be a one-level dip for divine grace that doesn't drop any progression. Every Charisma caster and their mother would be taking it. It's like mindbender if it didn't cost skill points and gave full BAB and armor proficiency. Everything else is icing.

You mean the characters that are already a level behind in casting? It seems like giving them some extra-special nice things would actually be okay. I also don't know why you are saving "gave full BAB" like full BAB at a single level means more than Weapon Focus, or why anyone would be excited about proficiency in armor that stops them from casting spells.


If you put this rule in a book, future optimizers would be aghast that you didn't realize how broken it would be with whatever broken thing resulted.

Except you named the "broken things" you think result and they are things like "you can uses known-broken trick eight levels after it comes online" or "if I assume this works a specific way instead of asking constructive clarifying questions I can say something is broken". You can make the "you didn't think through the implications, be humble" argument, or you can make the "here are the examples that show why you're wrong" argument, but making both at the same time is a stretch, especially when you appear to be pretty thoroughly wrong about the second one.


Why would a prestige class that fully advances casting be competing against the casting that it doesn't have to give up? You're a wizard, right? What do you lose? Only familiar progression, two bonus feats, and the ability to take planar wizard substitution levels.

Why is it a meaningful increase in power level if a class offers you the ability to do something you can already do? If a class gives you the ability to use a level-X spell as a SLA, the only reasonable cost that can be given (barring taking advantage of asymmetries between spells and SLAs), is that of a spell slot dedicated to that spell, which cannot be more than that of an appropriately-leveled pearl of power, and should likely be less.


More importantly, if infinite wishes at level 11 is the baseline

Did you not mean that the problem was getting free wishes when you said, and I quote, "No respect for free wishes. SMH."? If not, maybe it would've been helpful to expound more on your thought process before snapping off a one-liner. If so, I absolutely think that the easiest way to abuse free wishes is the appropriate comparison for something that abuses free wishes.

[Troacctid]

Except you named the "broken things" you think result and they are things like "you can uses known-broken trick eight levels after it comes online" or "if I assume this works a specific way instead of asking constructive clarifying questions I can say something is broken". You can make the "you didn't think through the implications, be humble" argument, or you can make the "here are the examples that show why you're wrong" argument, but making both at the same time is a stretch, especially when you appear to be pretty thoroughly wrong about the second one.
Or, if you put it another way, if I came up with multiple examples of prestige classes that might break under this rule in a few minutes, imagine what a whole forum of optimizers could do in a few years.


Did you not mean that the problem was getting free wishes when you said, and I quote, "No respect for free wishes. SMH."? If not, maybe it would've been helpful to expound more on your thought process before snapping off a one-liner. If so, I absolutely think that the easiest way to abuse free wishes is the appropriate comparison for something that abuses free wishes.
If free wishes at level 11 is your baseline, it makes sense that you wouldn't be impressed by prestige classes that give you free wishes. If, like me, your baseline is lower than that (as I imagine is the case for most people, since the efreeti trick is always controversial), then a prestige class that grants free wishes is just about the strongest thing you can be doing. Also, for the record, I'm pretty sure the easiest way is a candle of invocation.

[RandomPeasant]

Or, if you put it another way, if I came up with multiple examples of prestige classes that might break under this rule in a few minutes, imagine what a whole forum of optimizers could do in a few years.

Certainly, if you did that it would be impressive. Do you have plans to do so at some point?


If free wishes at level 11 is your baseline

Again, you were the one who brought up free wishes. Maybe if you don't want people to assume your baseline involves them, you should make more sophisticated or detailed arguments than "No respect for free wishes. SMH.".

In any case, the whole thing is a sideshow. Yes, XP-free wish at 20th level is broken. But you know what? It's still broken if you lose four caster levels to get there. It's broken if you lose ten caster levels to get there. It's broken if you had no casting at all and are a Commoner. So, much like the people asking us to think of the poor Fighters of the world, you have simply identified a completely separate problem that we also need to solve, and presented it as if it implicates this change in any meaningful way.

[Troacctid]

Certainly, if you did that it would be impressive. Do you have plans to do so at some point?
Are you backtracking on your previous agreement with several of my picks from earlier? Spell sovereign, master polymorphist, whatever?


Again, you were the one who brought up free wishes. Maybe if you don't want people to assume your baseline involves them, you should make more sophisticated or detailed arguments than "No respect for free wishes. SMH.".

In any case, the whole thing is a sideshow. Yes, XP-free wish at 20th level is broken. But you know what? It's still broken if you lose four caster levels to get there. It's broken if you lose ten caster levels to get there. It's broken if you had no casting at all and are a Commoner. So, much like the people asking us to think of the poor Fighters of the world, you have simply identified a completely separate problem that we also need to solve, and presented it as if it implicates this change in any meaningful way.
If they're broken at half casting, imagine how much more broken they would be if you didn't have to give up your casting for them. At least as broken as the incantatrix, I would venture.

[RandomPeasant]

Are you backtracking on your previous agreement with several of my picks from earlier? Spell sovereign, master polymorphist, whatever?

You mean the things I said were good because they were abusing problematic systems? Because, yes, I think those fall under the exact same caveat as XP-free wish (though admittedly to a far lesser degree), and are not examples of your point. I suppose if you're willing to say that you would let someone play a RAW Wizard/Master Transmogrifist and do all the things that character can do with polymorph, I'd be willing to change my tune, but I doubt you would be.


If they're broken at half casting, imagine how much more broken they would be if you didn't have to give up your casting for them. At least as broken as the incantatrix, I would venture.

They would be exactly as broken, because the amount of broken they are is infinity. You'll remember that neither The Wish nor Pun-Pun bother to take any Incantatrix levels, because even that vaunted source of power is not a meaningful upgrade when you have shattered the game into its constituent atoms with XP-free wish. Again, would you allow me to do anything that is RAW-legal for XP-free wish to do as a 10th level Master of the Sacred Sound if I had ponied up the casting loss to get there? No? Then perhaps it is unfair for you to use that as an argument against something else.

[Troacctid]

You mean the things I said were good because they were abusing problematic systems? Because, yes, I think those fall under the exact same caveat as XP-free wish (though admittedly to a far lesser degree), and are not examples of your point. I suppose if you're willing to say that you would let someone play a RAW Wizard/Master Transmogrifist and do all the things that character can do with polymorph, I'd be willing to change my tune, but I doubt you would be.
I don't have a problem with RAW master transmogrifist other than the normal problems I have with polymorph effects (they're logistically annoying). I'd rather have one in my game than a master of many forms. At least polymorph doesn't include oozes. My last MoMF player tried to turn into a black pudding and clone himself. Talk about your headaches.


They would be exactly as broken, because the amount of broken they are is infinity. You'll remember that neither The Wish nor Pun-Pun bother to take any Incantatrix levels, because even that vaunted source of power is not a meaningful upgrade when you have shattered the game into its constituent atoms with XP-free wish. Again, would you allow me to do anything that is RAW-legal for XP-free wish to do as a 10th level Master of the Sacred Sound if I had ponied up the casting loss to get there? No? Then perhaps it is unfair for you to use that as an argument against something else.
What I'm hearing is that you agree they are at least as broken as the incantatrix and then some. I'll take the W.

[RandomPeasant]

I don't have a problem with RAW master transmogrifist other than the normal problems I have with polymorph effects (they're logistically annoying). I'd rather have one in my game than a master of many forms.

Oh, interesting. Maybe the spellcasting isn't the problem at all then. After all MoMF doesn't have any of it at all.


What I'm hearing is that you agree they are at least as broken as the incantatrix and then some. I'll take the W.

What I'm hearing is you don't understand how causality works. If you give a drug to someone who has cancer and then observe that they have cancer, you haven't proved that the drug causes cancer, just that it doesn't cure it. Since no one claimed this change fixes XP-free wish, your insistence that the existence of XP-free wish proves it is unbalanced is absolutely meaningless.

[Troacctid]

What I'm hearing is you don't understand how causality works. If you give a drug to someone who has cancer and then observe that they have cancer, you haven't proved that the drug causes cancer, just that it doesn't cure it. Since no one claimed this change fixes XP-free wish, your insistence that the existence of XP-free wish proves it is unbalanced is absolutely meaningless.
Sorry, you've lost me. First you say the free wish classes are underpowered and unplayable and should be buffed, to the point of arguing that Fraz-Urb'luu's free wish is actually worse than paying full price out of a normal spell slot, then when I argue against that, you turn around and say that obviously they're overpowered and game-breaking, but it doesn't matter and they should still be buffed? I'm getting whiplash here. Which is it? Overpowered or underpowered?

And for the record, no, I do not allow wish loops in my game, but I also don't allow Persistent Spell, and that hasn't stopped you from touting arguably the most notoriously busted persistomancy prestige class in the game as the pinnacle of balance by which all other prestige classes should be measured. So if we're all agreeing to ignore broken strategies, maybe you should come up with a different benchmark for the upper bound of acceptable power level.

[AsuraKyoko]

Comparing Warrior to Cleric? And talking about disingenuous? Do you want to fight or cast spells? Wariior at least gives you bonus feats! Yes, Cleric can ignore those feats by the ability to cast spells but then you have opted to play a T1 caster instead of a lowly sword-swinger. Once again a demonstration that T1 is the only thing to play!

Well, at the risk of feeding the troll, I will respond, since I feel like I should correct any misunderstandings that may have arisen from my previous post.

First of all, Warrior (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/warrior.htm) does not give bonus feats, it's an NPC class.

Second of all, I was saying that, if you have already chosen to play as a caster, taking levels in a class that doesn't advance casting feels bad. I am not saying that cleric and warrior are comparable as a whole, I'm comparing the base numerical chassis; a cleric without spellcasting isn't much different than a warrior. This is why I made the comparison; if you are playing as a dedicated caster, any prestige class that loses casting is essentially multiclassing with a non-casting class.

I don't know why you are so insistent that anyone who advocates for partial casting classes to get full casting absolutely must think that playing at tier 1 is the only way to play, but it's frankly rather insulting, particularly when it is done in such a derisive manner. If you think that casters are too strong, then that should be addressed directly, not by trying to indirectly nerf them by making their prestige class options limited. Regardless, that isn't really related to the topic of this thread.

[RandomPeasant]

First you say the free wish classes are underpowered and unplayable and should be buffed, to the point of arguing that Fraz-Urb'luu's free wish is actually worse than paying full price out of a normal spell slot

I said the Thrall's ability is worse than wish because that is factually true. There are things wish does that it does not. Specifically, giving out inherent bonuses, or emulating 8th level spells (it also can't emulate higher level spells, but wish can't do that anyway, so I'm not sure what that's about). Those are, in my view, the typical use-cases for wish that aren't game-breaking cheese.


then when I argue against that

You mean when you posted a one-liner that you thought was clever? For someone who calls analysis that disagrees with them "Nuh-uh!", that's an awfully low threshold for "argument" you've got there.


you turn around and say that obviously they're overpowered and game-breaking, but it doesn't matter and they should still be buffed?

Imagine you have two problems with your car. It's tail lights don't work, and the windows don't roll down. Is pointing out that even if you fix the tail lights the windows won't work a reason not to fix the windows? No? Then why the hell is pointing out that a class has an ability that would be broken on a Commoner and needs to be fixed for the game to function a reason not to fix other issues with that class?

I agree that there is more than one problem with D&D 3.5, and that this change would not fix all of them. But I never claimed it would, and your insistence that it needs to be valuable is neither helpful nor insightful. If you have one trick for fixing the entire game, go open a thread for it. If not, stop using one problem as a reason not to fix another.


touting arguably the most notoriously busted persistomancy prestige class in the game as the pinnacle of balance by which all other prestige classes should be measured.

You brought up Incantatrix before I did. If your claim is not "there are a bunch of PrCs that would totally be as good as Incantatrix if we gave them full casting, I promise", maybe make a different claim? If you want to say something like "there are a bunch of PrCs that would totally be as good as Mage of the Arcane Order or Master Specialist", you can go ahead and claim that, and my answer totally would be "yeah, that seems fine and is the point". I don't understand how it is that you keep bringing up broken stuff, then accusing me of using the broken stuff as a balance benchmark.


I don't know why you are so insistent that anyone who advocates for partial casting classes to get full casting absolutely must think that playing at tier 1 is the only way to play, but it's frankly rather insulting, particularly when it is done in such a derisive manner. If you think that casters are too strong, then that should be addressed directly, not by trying to indirectly nerf them by making their prestige class options limited. Regardless, that isn't really related to the topic of this thread.

Exactly. You want casters to be worse? Fine. Make them worse. I've said repeatedly there are proposals for that I'd agree with. But as with the XP-free wish thing, it is a separate problem and should have a separate solution. I don't go tell people who are looking to fix the Fighter or deal with XP-free wish that they need to deal with the plight of the Green Star Adept as well.

[redking]

I said the Thrall's ability is worse than wish because that is factually true. There are things wish does that it does not. Specifically, giving out inherent bonuses, or emulating 8th level spells (it also can't emulate higher level spells, but wish can't do that anyway, so I'm not sure what that's about). Those are, in my view, the typical use-cases for wish that aren't game-breaking cheese.

It's actually unlimited real wishes and real miracles at 5th level. The 10th level capstone is worse than what it gets at 5th.


Thrall of Fraz-Urb'luu

The Thrall of Fraz-Urb'luu from Dragon Magazine #333 has a remarkable ability. People have often commented on its capstone ability, Alter Reality before, and it's good, but the 5th level ability Staff Mastery, is even better.


Staff Mastery (Ex): Upon reaching 5th level, you have mastered the use of magic staffs in emulation of your demonic master's skill with these potent magic items. You can now wield any magic staff, as if it were a +1 greatclub, at no risk of causing the staff itself damage. In addition, the staff is treated as an evil weapon for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction. You are considered to be proficient with the staff for this purpose.

You can use any magic staff as if its spells were on your spell list. Additionally, you may opt to activate a staff using your own lifeforce rather than expending charges. For each charge that the staff activation would normally consume, you instead take 1 point of Constitution damage. If you don't have a Constitution score, or are for some reason immune to ability score damage, you cannot power a staff with this ability and must use the staffs charges to manifest its spells.

Take a level of binder to bind Naberius to get Faster Ability Healing to heal your constitution damage, and you have unlimited ability to expend charges from staffs.

Where the real power is shown is when the staff contains a spell that normally requires XP expenditure. Staff of true creation? Staff of simulacrum? Staff of whatever you want now that you are a virtual god?

You can enter at 7th level at the earliest, and must be chaotic evil (perhaps your your DM will allow you a different alignment adaption). Whether the DM will throw the players handbook at you for deploying this PrC is another matter altogether.

[RandomPeasant]

It's actually unlimited real wishes and real miracles at 5th level. The 10th level capstone is worse than what it gets at 5th.

But again: do you think that ability is balanced now? Do you think there is an amount of casting you could give up that would make it balanced? If not, why is changing the amount of casting the class gets a meaningful concern with respect to the ability's balance?

[Troacctid]

I said the Thrall's ability is worse than wish because that is factually true. There are things wish does that it does not. Specifically, giving out inherent bonuses, or emulating 8th level spells (it also can't emulate higher level spells, but wish can't do that anyway, so I'm not sure what that's about). Those are, in my view, the typical use-cases for wish that aren't game-breaking cheese.
It can create magic items with no restriction on price. You want an inherent bonus, here's a tome. You want a high level spell, here's a staff that can cast it, and because of your earlier class abilities, that staff also effectively has unlimited charges. "But if we ignore the cheese!" First off, stop moving the goalposts. You originally said that the spell itself was better. "Explicitly worse than wish, at a level where you could normally cast wish" were your exact words. Now you're trying to tell me when you said explicitly, you really meant implicitly? Second, saying it's worse if you ignore the main thing that makes it better is just a wishy-washy way of admitting that it is actually better. Third, even if you only compare the "fair" uses for it, I'm sorry, but I would rather pay 0 xp to cast any 7th level spell than pay 5,000 xp to cast any 8th level spell. Maybe you feel differently, and I'm sure we could argue about it, but claiming it's an objective fact that the latter effect is better is nonsense.


You mean when you posted a one-liner that you thought was clever? For someone who calls analysis that disagrees with them "Nuh-uh!", that's an awfully low threshold for "argument" you've got there.
Most of what I see in the post in question is bald assertions that this is not as good as incantatrix, this is not breaking the game, this is worse than incantatrix, this is not comparable to incantatrix, this is not even close, this is worse, this is not on the same tier, not remotely comparable, worse, worse, worse. And then for some of them you also summarize some of their class features. So essentially, I argued that they are good because of their class features, which are good enough ("Yeah huh!"), and you argued that they are bad because of the same class features, which are not good enough ("Nuh-uh!"). Do you want to go back and forth a few more times?


Imagine you have two problems with your car. It's tail lights don't work, and the windows don't roll down. Is pointing out that even if you fix the tail lights the windows won't work a reason not to fix the windows? No? Then why the hell is pointing out that a class has an ability that would be broken on a Commoner and needs to be fixed for the game to function a reason not to fix other issues with that class?
Things are interconnected. If you fix the window in a fast and cheap way that ends up breaking the door, all you've done is exchange one problem for another. Is the car actually any less broken overall?


You brought up Incantatrix before I did. If your claim is not "there are a bunch of PrCs that would totally be as good as Incantatrix if we gave them full casting, I promise", maybe make a different claim? If you want to say something like "there are a bunch of PrCs that would totally be as good as Mage of the Arcane Order or Master Specialist", you can go ahead and claim that, and my answer totally would be "yeah, that seems fine and is the point". I don't understand how it is that you keep bringing up broken stuff, then accusing me of using the broken stuff as a balance benchmark.
Incantatrix is the example in the OP.


It's actually unlimited real wishes and real miracles at 5th level. The 10th level capstone is worse than what it gets at 5th.
I'd say a lesser restoration staff is a lot more efficacious than a binder dip, but yes.

[Nelfin]

I don't have the system mastery that you all seem to have. I thus didn't read all the details of this thread: actually, I don't understand 1/10 of the arguments made in here. But I have a naive question since I surely missed the point of the discussion.

Why are you still arguying?

This is a proposition to change the prestige class of non full casting (or manifesting which I have no idea what it is) to full casting. Agreeing that make sense or not have no bearing on the end result from my point of view. This will be a houserule that any DM can discard (if the DM were to be aware of this proposition in the first place). The Green Star Adept is still there, printed in an official book, so that it is still usable as is at the tables who think that a full casting Green Star Adept is uneccessary and let the people who think that full casting should be a thing do their stuff at their table. Did I seriously missed a fundamental point of the discussion or what?

[RandomPeasant]

First off, stop moving the goalposts.

I haven't moved a single goalpost. You, however, somehow went from "partial casting PrCs kinda suck" to "so you think XP-free wish is fine, huh", which is not so much "moving the goalposts" as "shipping the goalposts internationally".


Now you're trying to tell me when you said explicitly, you really meant implicitly?

No, I meant "explicitly". The word you're thinking of is "strictly", which you'll note that I didn't use, because I didn't mean that.


Most of what I see in the post in question is bald assertions that this is not as good as incantatrix

Oh, wild, I responded to your claim that things are as good as Incantatrix by comparing them to Incantatrix. And, yes, I think they are not as good. The fact that I feel the need to say that, rather than saying "yes this is as good as Incantatrix and that is fine" should perhaps be understood as evidence that I don't think Incantatrix is fine.


So essentially, I argued that they are good because of their class features, which are good enough ("Yeah huh!")

You listed names. That is not, by standards I would recognize, an argument. The fact that you feel it is unfair to dismiss your lack of analysis with minimal analysis is a failure on your part, not mine.


Do you want to go back and forth a few more times?

I would love to go back and forth ever on a number of those. Even the ones I agree with you on, really. It would be nice to know why you think Spell Sovereign is good, given that you think Incantatrix is good because it gives bonus feats. But you have yet to dedicate so much as a word to why Celestial Mystic is good, you just seem to think that we should all read your mind and agree with you. Which, given that I have just as much ability to read your mind whether you post in this thread or not, leaves me wondering why you'd bother posting here if that's how you expect to communicate.


Things are interconnected. If you fix the window in a fast and cheap way that ends up breaking the door, all you've done is exchange one problem for another. Is the car actually any less broken overall?

So is your contention that the Thrall and company are not broken now? You would allow them in a game you ran with no restriction beyond RAW on how their abilities work? If not, how is this a reasonable analogy for you to make?


Incantatrix is the example in the OP.

Fun fact: OP and I are different people, and may have similar, but not identical, positions about things.

[Troacctid]

I haven't moved a single goalpost. You, however, somehow went from "partial casting PrCs kinda suck" to "so you think XP-free wish is fine, huh", which is not so much "moving the goalposts" as "shipping the goalposts internationally".
Sure you have, and no I didn't.


Oh, wild, I responded to your claim that things are as good as Incantatrix by comparing them to Incantatrix. And, yes, I think they are not as good. The fact that I feel the need to say that, rather than saying "yes this is as good as Incantatrix and that is fine" should perhaps be understood as evidence that I don't think Incantatrix is fine.

You listed names. That is not, by standards I would recognize, an argument. The fact that you feel it is unfair to dismiss your lack of analysis with minimal analysis is a failure on your part, not mine.
Well, you originally asked for a list, not a thesis. My original argument was my initial expression of incredulity that the OP was comfortable with the possibility of creating even more incantatrix-tier prestige classes, and I stand by that. This houserule is playing with fire and has the potential to break more things than it fixes. I guess I could talk more about other possible unintended consequences, like the risks of devaluing multiclass builds or obsoleting the prestige classes that weren't buffed, or I could talk about how there are always a limited number of "best" options that will float to the top and make everything else less appealing in comparison, or I could talk about how the goals of the proposed change are overly broad and vague and would benefit from being more targeted. I haven't done that and honestly, if it did, it sounds more like something I would want to generalize for Patreon content, or as an article for my stores website.

Anyway, if I put minimal effort into an argument, and you put minimal effort into contradicting my argument, I think our positions are already pretty clear—I think the thing is at least yea strong because I think it has class features that are so good, and you think the thing is less than yea strong because you think the class features I think are so good are actually not so good. Same evidence, different conclusions, what else is there to say? It's just a Monty Python argument, except that if I let you have the last word, you'll apparently spend the rest of the thread dunking on my picks like they failed some kind of challenge and crowing about how no one could come up with any arguments against you. 😒

TL;DR Yeah-huh


I would love to go back and forth ever on a number of those. Even the ones I agree with you on, really. It would be nice to know why you think Spell Sovereign is good, given that you think Incantatrix is good because it gives bonus feats. But you have yet to dedicate so much as a word to why Celestial Mystic is good, you just seem to think that we should all read your mind and agree with you. Which, given that I have just as much ability to read your mind whether you post in this thread or not, leaves me wondering why you'd bother posting here if that's how you expect to communicate.

So is your contention that the Thrall and company are not broken now? You would allow them in a game you ran with no restriction beyond RAW on how their abilities work? If not, how is this a reasonable analogy for you to make?
Look, if you really want to know more about my reasoning, you may as well just go read my warmage handbook and come back. I covered literally every prestige class in the game that can legally advance warmage casting. That's where I pulled the examples from. Check the notes column; all the ones I've mentioned here probably have a solid paragraph or so.

[RandomPeasant]

Well, you originally asked for a list, not a thesis.

I asked for a list because you didn't even bother to provide that when you made the claim. I don't feel that your unwillingness to provide any evidence for your position initially excuses your providing inadequate evidence later, and I don't see why you would expect anyone too. I don't even really get why you felt it was useful, because you have to provide that reasoning at some point to be right, so all you're doing is wasting time.

Consider, for instance, the Heir of Siberys. You, as I understand your position, believe that this is an Incantatrix-tier PrC, and believe that because it allows access to a variety of options that have a Siberys Mark as a prerequisite. That's a fair argument, and I can imagine someone being persuaded by it, even if I am not. But how we got to that argument is:

1. You make a naked assertion that there are "potentially dozens more" Incantatrixes.
2. I express skepticism that there are in fact "potentially dozens more".
3. I express skepticism again.
4. You name Heir of Siberys without explanation.
5. I explain why I think you are wrong, based on my view of what makes the class effective.
6. You make a snappy reply that cannot be construed as addressing Heir of Siberys specifically.
7. I ask for any kind of explanation of your position again.
8. You point out that making arguments for your position would take a lot of time.
9. You claim I don't understand what makes Heir of Siberys so strong.
10. I point out that you haven't explained what I'm missing.
11. You give your reasons for thinking Heir of Siberys is "potentially" an Incantatrix.
12. I explain why I disagree with those reasons.

How is that possibly a productive use of our time? I don't even think that passes muster by the "Troacctid's time is more valuable than everyone else's" standard you appear to hold to. It takes over a page to go from my one-sentence analysis of the class to yours, and you were the one who brought it up. That's my issue. Your goal appears to be to make low-effort comments until I wander off without noticing that you never actually explained why you were right.

And this is far from unique to the Heir. We didn't get your "it's free wishes" argument until a page after your initial claim, despite something like a quarter of your examples relying on it. You still have yet to say word one about your inclusion of Celestial Mystic or Thrall of Zuggtmoy. If you don't want to have those arguments, that's fine. But bringing them up and not defending them isn't making your case. It would be much more compelling, and much more useful to me as an interlocutor, to have "there are several PrCs that let you emulate wish without spending XP and I don't think they need to be more powerful" than "there are dozens of possible Incantatrixes" as an argument. Then we could have the discussion about the degree to which XP-free wish implicates this change on page one instead of now.


This houserule is playing with fire and has the potential to break more things than it fixes.

That's a colorable argument. So far you've found, generously, four things it breaks. It fixes the Green Star Adept, Blood Mage, Acolyte of the Skin, and Elemental Savant. That's the scales balanced, and it's not even all the examples in one book.


devaluing multiclass builds

Multi-classed spellcasters, famously a thing that is valuable and effective in the status quo.


obsoleting the prestige classes that weren't buffed, or I could talk about how there are always a limited number of "best" options that will float to the top and make everything else less appealing in comparison

Those are really the same thing. And, sure, there would be winners and losers after this change. But the power band would be a lot smaller, and that seems like a good outcome. I mean, otherwise how do you justify complaining about balance at all? Sure, if we let people use XP-free wish to get items of arbitrary power, that will make them better than people who don't do that. But that's just the best options floating to the top like they would whatever those best options happened to be.


I haven't done that and honestly, if it did, it sounds more like something I would want to generalize for Patreon content, or as an article for my stores website.


If you want to make the argument for your position somewhere other than this thread, why argue for your position in this thread? Your position appears to be that you are very definitely right, and we should all immediately intuit your logic and agree with it, but that actually explaining that logic is simply too much work to ask you to do. I... do not find this argument compelling.


Look, if you really want to know more about my reasoning, you may as well just go read my warmage handbook and come back. I covered literally every prestige class in the game that can legally advance warmage casting. That's where I pulled the examples from. Check the notes column; all the ones I've mentioned here probably have a solid paragraph or so.

I dunno, I feel like reasoning you don't think is good enough to be worth copy/pasting over when you tried to make your case probably isn't worth my time. Like, I spent several posts trying to get to what you thought was so good about Master of the Secret Sound and the answer is apparently "it can use an ability in a way I would under no circumstances let it use, and that means we can't make it better because reasons". That's the argument you were willing to raise! If there are other arguments you weren't willing to copy from a place you had them written up already, I cannot imagine that I would find them compelling.

[AsuraKyoko]

I don't have the system mastery that you all seem to have. I thus didn't read all the details of this thread: actually, I don't understand 1/10 of the arguments made in here. But I have a naive question since I surely missed the point of the discussion.

Why are you still arguying?

This is a proposition to change the prestige class of non full casting (or manifesting which I have no idea what it is) to full casting. Agreeing that make sense or not have no bearing on the end result from my point of view. This will be a houserule that any DM can discard (if the DM were to be aware of this proposition in the first place). The Green Star Adept is still there, printed in an official book, so that it is still usable as is at the tables who think that a full casting Green Star Adept is uneccessary and let the people who think that full casting should be a thing do their stuff at their table. Did I seriously missed a fundamental point of the discussion or what?

Manifesting is psionics; a spellcaster casts spells, whereas a manifester manifests psionic powers.

From what I understand of the discussions, there are 2 major positions (with individual variations, of course):


Spellcasting prestige classes should not be buffed because casters are already powerful enough, and giving them more things is just widening the gap in power between martial and caster characters. (Or because it could lead to broken combos)
Spellcasting prestige classes should be buffed, because those that lose caster level advancement are almost universally not worth it, and there's a lot of otherwise cool classes that never get played because of it.


Honestly, I am generally in the camp of having casting prestige classes fully progress casting in most cases. That being said, I think that having other tradeoffs for the abilities you get is warranted. I think that Archmage is the best example of that, since it trades off tangible things (namely, spell slots) for each feature you get. Using this method would allow for costs that are tuned to the power of the feature granted, while also not scaling up over time.

As for why people are arguing, the point of the thread is to discuss the idea of having full casting advancement, so they are debating the merits of that idea. At least in theory, I think that people are more picking apart each other's arguments now; I think that taking a step back and clearly stating their points without getting tied up in the current debate may be a good idea. It might also be a good idea to step away for a while and come back to this later.

[Troacctid]

I asked for a list because you didn't even bother to provide that when you made the claim. I don't feel that your unwillingness to provide any evidence for your position initially excuses your providing inadequate evidence later, and I don't see why you would expect anyone too. I don't even really get why you felt it was useful, because you have to provide that reasoning at some point to be right, so all you're doing is wasting time.
Or, from another point of view, my initial post was already both a complete argument and an explanation of why I would not be inclined to adopt this fix, and if the OP wants to convince others that this is a good fix, the onus is on them to convince us, not the other way around.


That's a colorable argument. So far you've found, generously, four things it breaks. It fixes the Green Star Adept, Blood Mage, Acolyte of the Skin, and Elemental Savant. That's the scales balanced, and it's not even all the examples in one book.
Correction. I have no concrete findings, only speculation and concerns, because I have neither playtested this rule nor thoroughly researched it. I get the impression that you, too, have done neither of those things.

[Lans]

Void Disciple gets ranked highly because of highly-specific shenanigans that I would argue aren't even principally derived from the class features (as with most things involving body outside body, it is the real culprit there).


.

Okay, would you accept that there could be dozens of prestige classes would be the same tier as Incantatrix if the tier was the top tier that was a significantly to broad in power like the bottom tier of the normal tier list?

[RandomPeasant]

Let's talk about one of Troacctid's examples: the Vermin Lord. So what does the Vermin Lord do?

It gives you a +4 bonus to AC, pro-rated over the whole class. It gives you some vermin companions, none of which have enough HD to be particularly impressive at the level you get them. You get a bite attack that works well in a grapple, an exciting and viable prospect for you, a caster in a half-BAB/d6 HD PrC. You get flight for an hour a day, in case you forgot that you have the ability to animate a zombie dragon to fly around on, or turn yourself into an eagle, or cast overland flight. You get a version of stoneskin that is modestly better (you ignore damage from adamantine weapons too!), but mostly worse (the total damage absorbed scales slower and caps at 1/3 that of the spell). You get a poison that deals 1 point of STR damage. Not "1d6", the number 1. You get "pincer claws", an ability that exists only on the Vermin Lord class table, and therefore does not do anything.

In exchange for all this, you lose four levels of casting. This is, objectively, a terrible deal. It is extremely bad. You have sacrificed the ability to ever cast 9th level spells for a collection of powers the most impressive of which are bad versions of 5th level spells.

However, there is one additional thing you get. And this thing is (I presume, as she has not bothered to advance any argument for this particular example) the reason the class would be spoken of in the same sentence as the Incantatrix. It is the capstone of the PrC, and it is extremely powerful. To simplify the explanation of the cheese, a 10th level Vermin Lord can turn a swarm of vermin into something that casts as a Sorcerer with a level of several hundred. And the Vermin Lord has access to that casting.

So the status quo is that if your Dread Necromancer buddy decides that he thinks centipedes are cool and he wants some centipede powers, he spends nine levels getting progressively worse at casting spells in exchange for some abilities that he will barely be able to use. Then, he takes the 10th level of Vermin Lord, and the campaign explodes.

Under the proposed change, your Dread Necromancer buddy would spend nine levels getting things that are, to be honest, worse than his baseline class features, but keeping up with the spells that let him carry his weight. And then, at the 10th level of Vermin Lord, the campaign explodes.

What Troacctid wants you to believe is that it is totally fine if a character gets to blow up the campaign with 300th level Sorcerer casting and 14th level Dread Necromancer casting, but completely unacceptable if a character gets to blow up the campaign with 300th level Sorcerer casting and 18th level Dread Necromancer casting. If avoiding that latter outcome means a guy who likes bugs has to play a character that sucks for the levels the campaign actually happens at, so be it.

Personally, I believe that no one should be able to blow up the campaign with 300th level Sorcerer casting, but such an outcome is apparently beyond all possible consideration.


Using this method would allow for costs that are tuned to the power of the feature granted, while also not scaling up over time.

It is also pretty much perfect for balancing most of the PrCs Troacctid is complaining about. If you're really concerned that Visionary Seeker getting some extra spells per day is game-destroying, just make its ability to emulate spells come out of spell slots.


Or, from another point of view, my initial post was already both a complete argument and an explanation of why I would not be inclined to adopt this fix, and if the OP wants to convince others that this is a good fix, the onus is on them to convince us, not the other way around.

Then why give the list at all? If you meant "there could be dozens, I don't know and neither do you", you didn't need to give the list, you just needed to explain that was your argument. But giving the list makes the attempt to backtrack to "I just meant to be humble and check your work" rather transparent. We have seen what "dozens" means. It means "maybe four". I find "this would cause maybe four things to be on par with the Incantatrix" to be an entirely reasonable tradeoff for "this would cause at least that many PrCs to become competitive in a single book".


Okay, would you accept that there could be dozens of prestige classes would be the same tier as Incantatrix if the tier was the top tier that was a significantly to broad in power like the bottom tier of the normal tier list?

At that point I would start to question whether "the same tier as Incantatrix" was really a meaningful category. There aren't a lot of published full-casting PrCs I would put there. Dweomerkeeper. Shadowcraft Mage. Planar Shepherd. That sort of thing. A lot of the things in the "+2 tier" category in the PrC tier system are there because they have really weak entries, not because they are particularly objectively powerful. Warshaper is a great upgrade if you are a Shifter with a couple of levels in martial classes, but the idea that it's on the same level as Incantatrix is pretty laughable.

[Troacctid]

So the status quo is that if your Dread Necromancer buddy decides that he thinks centipedes are cool and he wants some centipede powers, he spends nine levels getting progressively worse at casting spells in exchange for some abilities that he will barely be able to use. Then, he takes the 10th level of Vermin Lord, and the campaign explodes.

Under the proposed change, your Dread Necromancer buddy would spend nine levels getting things that are, to be honest, worse than his baseline class features, but keeping up with the spells that let him carry his weight. And then, at the 10th level of Vermin Lord, the campaign explodes.
Sounds like one of these is a lot more dangerous for balance than the other.


Then why give the list at all? If you meant "there could be dozens, I don't know and neither do you", you didn't need to give the list, you just needed to explain that was your argument. But giving the list makes the attempt to backtrack to "I just meant to be humble and check your work" rather transparent.
You asked me to give examples. Why are you responding to anything I post? It's a discussion.


We have seen what "dozens" means. It means "maybe four".
That's right, because I, one person, have surveyed every prestige class in the game and delivered a comprehensive list of every potentially problematic interaction in the span of less than an hour, and you, also one person, have meticulously analyzed and tested each of them to determine conclusively that exactly "maybe four" prestige classes in the entire game would rise to the level of incantatrix. 👏

What is with you? Why are you so hung up on the exact details of my back-of-the-envelope estimates? The next time there's a "Guess how many marbles are in this jar" contest, are you going to grill me on exactly what formula I used to come up with my answer, and demand that I show my work in a formal mathematical proof? Like, do you actually think I had a list of Exactly Thirty-Six Prestige Classes That Would Be As Good As Incantatrix If They Were Full Casting, filed in a note and ready to go, and that's where I got my initial ballpark of "potentially dozens"? What do you think "potentially" means?

Just for you, I will assemble another, more complete list of prestige classes that might rise to the level of brokenness under this change. Here you go.

Aberrant Paragon
Abolisher
Aeromancer
Anarchomancer
Arachnomancer
Arboreal Guardian
Ardent Dilettante
Argent Savant
Artist's Vengeance
Athar
Athasian Dragon
Battleguard of Tempus
Battlepriest of Cormyr
Black Flame Zealot
Bladesinger
Bonded Summoner
Bone Knight
Brimstone Speaker
Cataclysm Mage
Cave Stalker
Celestial Mystic
Celestial Paragon
Cerebrex
Child of the Night
Citadel Elite
Cloaked Dancer
Cosmic Descryer
Courtier
Cyran Avenger
Daggerspell Mage
Daggerspell Shaper
Dark Scholar
Deadgrim
Deathstalker of Bhaal
Demonbinder
Disciple of Asmodeus
Dispassionate Watcher of Chronepsis
Divine Agent
Doomlord
Dracolexi
Dragon Devotee
Dragon Prophet
Dragon Slayer
Dragonheart Mage
Dragonsong Lyrist
Dread Witch
Drow Judicator
Drow Paragon
Effigy Master
Eldritch Disciple
Eldritch Knight
Eldritch Master
Elemental Archon
Elf Paragon
Elven High Mage
Enlightened Fist
Enlightened Fist, Divine
Entropist
Entropomancer
Eunuch Warlock
Exalted Arcanist
Exorcist of the Silver Flame
Eye of Lolth
Fiend Binder
Fiendbinder
Fist of Raziel
Fleet Runner of Ehlonna
Fleshwarper
Flux Adept
Follower of the Skyserpent
Force Missile Mage
Fortune's Friend
Gatekeeper Mystagogue
Gnome Paragon
Gray Guard
Gray Hand Enforcer
Green Hunter
Half-Elf Paragon
Harper Agent
Havoc Mage
Heartseeker
Heir of Siberys
High Elemental Binder
High Handcrafter
High Proselytizer
Holy Scourge
Horned Harbinger
Hospitaler
Human Paragon
Imaskari Vengeance Taker
Impure Prince
Incantifier
Infused Spellcaster
Insidious Corruptor
Itinerant Warder of Yondalla
Jade Phoenix Mage
Justice Hammer of Moradin
Knight Phantom
Knight of the Raven
Knight of the Skull
Kobold Paragon
Landforged Walker
Legacy Champion
Lord of Tides
Loredelver
Luckstealer
Maester
Magic Filcher
Magical Trickster
Malconvoker
Martyred Champion of Ilmater
Master Arcane Artisan
Master Astrologer
Master Transmogrifist
Master Vampire
Master of Masks
Master of Radiance
Master of Shadow
Master of Shrouds
Master of the Secret Sound
Mighty Contender of Kord
Mind Mage
Mindbender
Moon Guardian
Mountebank, Spellcasting
Mystic Keeper of Corellon Larethian
Mythic Exemplar
Nightmare Spinner
Ollam
Oozemaster
Ordained Champion
Osteomancer
Pact-Bound Adept
Pale Master
Pathwarden
Planeshifter
Platinum Knight
Prestige Bard
Prestige Paladin
Prestige Ranger
Prophet of Erathaol
Purifier of the Hallowed Doctrine
Rage Mage
Rainbow Servant
Recaster
Renegade Mastermaker
Ruby Knight Vindicator
Sacred Purifier
Sacred Warder of Bahamut
Sanctified Mind
Sanctified One
Sand Shaper
Scar Enforcer
Scion of Tem-Et-Nu
Scourge Maiden
Shadowspy
Shaper of Form
Shapeshifter
Shark Cultist
Sharn Skymage
Shining Blade of Heironeous
Shoal Servant
Silver Pyromancer
Silverhair Knight
Skylord
Solar Channeler
Soulguard
Sovereign Speaker
Spell Sovereign
Spellsword
Squire of Legend
Stormcaster
Strifeleader
Swanmay
Swift Scion
Swift Wing
Swiftblade
Tainted Spellcaster
Talon of Tiamat
Tenebrous Apostate
Thrall of Dagon
Thrall of Demogorgon
Thrall of Eltab
Thrall of Frazz-Urb'luu
Thrall of Graz’zt
Thrall of Malcanthet
Thrall of Orcus
Thrall of Pazuzu
Thrall of Zuggtmoy
Tiger Mask
Topaz Guardian
Triadic Knight
Troubadour of Stars
True Necromancer
Ultimate Magus
Unbound Scroll
Uncanny Trickster
Unholy Ravager of Tiamat
Vengeance Sworn
Vermin Lord
Virtuoso
Visonary Seeker
Void Disciple
Walker in the Waste
War Weaver
Warpriest
Wavekeeper
Wayfarer Guide
Wild Soul
Windwright Captain
Witch Hunter
Wyrm Wizard
Yathrinshee
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on them.

P.S. I can assure you that blood magus is 100% playable as is. I've run it both as a player and a DM and it performed great. So you can knock your side of the list down to three.

[RandomPeasant]

Sounds like one of these is a lot more dangerous for balance than the other.

Yes, it is worse for balance to have something be underpowered and then broken rather than balanced and then broken. I'm glad you've come around to supporting this change.


You asked me to give examples. Why are you responding to anything I post? It's a discussion.

Because I think they are, in many cases, bad examples. What did you expect me to do, say "oh, she can name twenty PrCs, clearly she is correct that this is a bad change"?


What is with you? Why are you so hung up on the exact details of my back-of-the-envelope estimates?

Because the second you said "here are the examples" it became transparently obvious that you didn't just mean "well there could be a whole bunch". Because you could've just said "I didn't mean I have specific examples" on page one, instead of giving a bunch of specific examples, then backtracking when it became obvious your specific examples didn't prove the point. And instead of defending them, you're just saying "well what about these other things". Why should I check those other things when you've defended less than half your initial claims? Contrary your assertions, you are not exempt from making arguments for your position simply because it would take you a lot of time.

[pabelfly]

There's no good way this can go. It's either a pointless change or it buffs casters even further, the latter of which 3.5 most certainly does not need. There are homebrew changes worth considering for casting and casters but this wouldn't be one of them.

[InvisibleBison]

There's no good way this can go.

On the contrary, there's a pretty obvious good way this can go. This change makes a lot of casting prestige classes worth playing, thus increasing the diversity of the game and making it less likely that people will choose to play the actually OP classes, which are mostly already full casting anyway.


It's either a pointless change or it buffs casters even further

This change buffs non-full casting PrCs, but it doesn't buff casters as a whole. The most powerful casting classes are already full casting, so this change doesn't raise the overall power level of casters. If you primarily prioritize power, this change isn't going to change how powerful a character you can build. The problem this change is looking to address is the relative power of caster builds, not anything related to caster vs non-caster issues.

[RandomPeasant]

The most powerful casting classes are already full casting, so this change doesn't raise the overall power level of casters.

And as you can see from the examples Troacctid gave, a lot of the partial-casting PrCs that are potentially broken are broken in ways that simply can't be fixed by taking casting away. I can imagine a character who gets some persistomancy, but is balanced because they have less casting (indeed, if you simply made it so that the Incantatrix was twelve levels of casting behind normal casters, it would be almost strictly worse). It is rather more difficult for me to imagine a character you can staple The Wish's Ring of Infinite Wishes or 300th-level Sorcerer spellcasting onto and get something balanced, no matter how little casting they had at the outset.

[AsuraKyoko]

Basically, classes with broken abilities are their own, separate problem, and should be addressed separately. If we are already homebrewing things, we might as well also homebrew fix those specific abilities.

In fact, if we take those out of the picture, then this functions in some small ways as a stealth nerf for casters. Since most casters don't get class features, they are pretty much always going to be going into some sort of prestige class. If their only real options are the full casting prestige classes, of which a good number are broken (Incantatrix, Red Wizard, Dweomerkeeper, etc.), then they are far more likely to pick a broken class. However, if they have a lot of other options, then there are likely to be a bunch of people (myself included) who pick classes that aren't the broken ones.

Spellcasting is the primary purpose of playing a spellcaster, and, for me at least, the abilities of a prestige class primarily serve to add some interesting variety to that. If I have options that are fun and flavorful, but not particularly powerful, then I'll gladly take those, if they don't sabotage my spellcasting. Full casting Green Star Adept? Sure, I'll play as someone who turns herself into a green statue lady! Entropomancer? I'd love to sit around inside of a Sphere of Annihilation! Spellsword? That dude in the picture is badass as hell, I'd totally do that!

There's so many classes that are functionally only dips because they lose casting, and it's a shame, really. There are a lot of cool concepts embedded in these classes, and they are, by and large, completely ignored because they fail to advance the primary purpose of the characters who would otherwise take them. Sure, some of them may become broken, but those should be addressed anyways, since "be otherwise unusable" is a terrible payment for "break the game in one specific way".

[Troacctid]

Because I think they are, in many cases, bad examples. What did you expect me to do, say "oh, she can name twenty PrCs, clearly she is correct that this is a bad change"?
Well I don't think they're bad examples. They seem pretty dangerous to me. So I guess we're at an impasse once again.


Because the second you said "here are the examples" it became transparently obvious that you didn't just mean "well there could be a whole bunch". Because you could've just said "I didn't mean I have specific examples" on page one, instead of giving a bunch of specific examples, then backtracking when it became obvious your specific examples didn't prove the point.
I never backtracked! I stand by my original statement, and I stand by my examples. Explaining is not backtracking. SMH.


And as you can see from the examples Troacctid gave, a lot of the partial-casting PrCs that are potentially broken are broken in ways that simply can't be fixed by taking casting away. I can imagine a character who gets some persistomancy, but is balanced because they have less casting (indeed, if you simply made it so that the Incantatrix was twelve levels of casting behind normal casters, it would be almost strictly worse). It is rather more difficult for me to imagine a character you can staple The Wish's Ring of Infinite Wishes or 300th-level Sorcerer spellcasting onto and get something balanced, no matter how little casting they had at the outset.
In theory, it's the same principle as a regular wizard, dialed up to 11: balanced over time, where you have a weak early game in order to dominate the endgame. So there's a cost to it.


Basically, classes with broken abilities are their own, separate problem, and should be addressed separately. If we are already homebrewing things, we might as well also homebrew fix those specific abilities.

In fact, if we take those out of the picture, then this functions in some small ways as a stealth nerf for casters. Since most casters don't get class features, they are pretty much always going to be going into some sort of prestige class. If their only real options are the full casting prestige classes, of which a good number are broken (Incantatrix, Red Wizard, Dweomerkeeper, etc.), then they are far more likely to pick a broken class. However, if they have a lot of other options, then there are likely to be a bunch of people (myself included) who pick classes that aren't the broken ones.

Spellcasting is the primary purpose of playing a spellcaster, and, for me at least, the abilities of a prestige class primarily serve to add some interesting variety to that. If I have options that are fun and flavorful, but not particularly powerful, then I'll gladly take those, if they don't sabotage my spellcasting. Full casting Green Star Adept? Sure, I'll play as someone who turns herself into a green statue lady! Entropomancer? I'd love to sit around inside of a Sphere of Annihilation! Spellsword? That dude in the picture is badass as hell, I'd totally do that!

There's so many classes that are functionally only dips because they lose casting, and it's a shame, really. There are a lot of cool concepts embedded in these classes, and they are, by and large, completely ignored because they fail to advance the primary purpose of the characters who would otherwise take them. Sure, some of them may become broken, but those should be addressed anyways, since "be otherwise unusable" is a terrible payment for "break the game in one specific way".
Here's the thing. Gestalt already exists. It enables all of the options and creativity you're talking about, including making half-casters playable and powerful, but it works for everyone, not just casters, and it offers even more diverse combinations. I think it's a better means of accomplishing the same goal.

Alternatively, a lighter touch could probably accomplish the goal just as well. Instead of going all the way to full casting, go to 9/10 casting but 10/10 caster level, for example. Or, come up with a whitelist of classes that you want to see played, and just apply the buff to those. Or, have the off levels count towards spell level access, but not spells known or spells per day.

[pabelfly]

On the contrary, there's a pretty obvious good way this can go. This change makes a lot of casting prestige classes worth playing, thus increasing the diversity of the game and making it less likely that people will choose to play the actually OP classes, which are mostly already full casting anyway.

But they're only worth playing if they become equal or better than the power of other good casting prestige classes, which you dont seem to think will happen.


This change buffs non-full casting PrCs, but it doesn't buff casters as a whole. The most powerful casting classes are already full casting, so this change doesn't raise the overall power level of casters. If you primarily prioritize power, this change isn't going to change how powerful a character you can build. The problem this change is looking to address is the relative power of caster builds, not anything related to caster vs non-caster issues.

I'm not convinced there are many people that refuse to take a weak prestige casting class solely because it drops a few caster levels. There are plenty of weak casting classes that give full progression that no-one talks about now, what good does adding more of them do?

[AsuraKyoko]

Here's the thing. Gestalt already exists. It enables all of the options and creativity you're talking about, including making half-casters playable and powerful, but it works for everyone, not just casters, and it offers even more diverse combinations. I think it's a better means of accomplishing the same goal.

Alternatively, a lighter touch could probably accomplish the goal just as well. Instead of going all the way to full casting, go to 9/10 casting but 10/10 caster level, for example. Or, come up with a whitelist of classes that you want to see played, and just apply the buff to those. Or, have the off levels count towards spell level access, but not spells known or spells per day.

I mean, if I were to try this myself, I would start by upgrading every casting class to full casting, and then go through them and disallow things that are too powerful like Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil and Incantatrix. Overall, it's a slight nerf to casters, since they lose some of the really broken prestige classes, but it provides a bunch of new and interesting options. Since that's potentially a lot of work, I would probably lay down some guidelines, and then have my players submit classes for approval if they want them.

If there's a class that could be made reasonable by simply applying a straightforward change, then that class would probably be allowed with that change.

Regarding giving martials fun things, I'm actually a fan of the idea of allowing lower tier classes to gestalt with each other. Something roughly along the lines of Tier 1 classes can't gestalt with anything, Tier 2 can gestalt with (non casting) NPC classes, tier 3 with tier 5, and tier 4 with tier 4. I haven't had too much opportunity to try this out, but it's something that I've wanted to try for a while.

[RandomPeasant]

Basically, classes with broken abilities are their own, separate problem, and should be addressed separately. If we are already homebrewing things, we might as well also homebrew fix those specific abilities.

Or just, like, ban them. If you pretend Vermin Lord is a nine-level full-casting PrC, that is massively better for the game than RAW Vermin Lord.


In fact, if we take those out of the picture, then this functions in some small ways as a stealth nerf for casters. Since most casters don't get class features, they are pretty much always going to be going into some sort of prestige class.

This is exactly correct, and why you see sensationalist claims about "this would make dozens of PrCs Incantatrix-tier" or "this would raise the power level of casters". No, it wouldn't do that. The difference in casting between a full-casting Vermin Lord and a 0-casting Vermin Lord, after their hive mind trick, is smaller than the variance between choosing different types of vermin for your hive mind. The big trick with Master of the Secret Sound is a hybrid of Supernatural Spell and Spellpool, both of which are abilities from existing full-casting PrCs and both of which are available 10+ levels before the Master gets his. His ability is not even strictly better than either, as he gets less uses per day. If you say things like "this would cause people to take Green Star Adept instead of Incantatrix" or "this would elevate a bunch of PrCs to the level of the Master Specialist", it becomes a lot less obvious that there is a power problem here, and those claims are much more defensible.


Well I don't think they're bad examples. They seem pretty dangerous to me. So I guess we're at an impasse once again.

No, we're at a "you still haven't presented an argument for your position". We are still at word zero of your justification for Celestial Mystic. I would agree that we are at an impasse about, say, Heir of Siberys, as you have provided an explanation and I have provided my reasons for disagreeing with that explanation. But in the majority of cases you have not provided word one of reasoning for why you are correct.


I never backtracked! I stand by my original statement, and I stand by my examples. Explaining is not backtracking. SMH.

"Here are some examples" is not an explanation of "there are dozens of examples" that is consistent with "I never meant I had literal dozens of examples".


In theory, it's the same principle as a regular wizard, dialed up to 11: balanced over time, where you have a weak early game in order to dominate the endgame. So there's a cost to it.


So to be clear: you think it is fine for Vermin Lord to get 300th level Sorcerer casting at 18th level because it has only 13th level casting at 17th level? That seems like a balanced situation to you.


I think it's a better means of accomplishing the same goal.

I would disagree with that. It is true that a gestalt Warblade//Factotum is better than a Warblade. But it is better by virtue of being less focused-ly a Warblade. Gestalt is a fine solution for some people. But it's not an adequate solution for the person who wants to play a Barbarian and have that character be level-appropriate by doing Barbarian things.


Instead of going all the way to full casting, go to 9/10 casting but 10/10 caster level, for example.

So 300th level Sorcerer casting + 17th level Dread Necromancer casting also seems totally fine to you? It's really those 9th level Dread Necromancer spells at 18th level that make the Vermin Lord a problem.


Or, come up with a whitelist of classes that you want to see played, and just apply the buff to those.

The majority of examples you've provided (that are not simply completely fine) are things that are broken regardless of how much casting you allow them to have. If the Vermin Lord's capstone is not changed, I am not allowing one in my campaign regardless of how little it progresses your casting. It seems far simpler to just say "Eunuch Warlock is banned" than to say "here is a whitelist of things that are fine" (especially since the big problem there is it forcing Leadership into your campaign, which is another one of those things that is not really solvable with nerfs, though for different reasons). What happens when I miss something that is totally fine and someone ends up not playing a class they'd like because I was paranoid about phantom threats?


Or, have the off levels count towards spell level access, but not spells known or spells per day.

This is just "have abilities cost spell slots" with extra steps and less precision. It's also an absolutely massive kick in the teeth for people who aren't Wizards or Archivists, which seems like exactly the wrong way to move the game if you are trying to promote greater balance.


There are plenty of weak casting classes that give full progression that no-one talks about now, what good does adding more of them do?

But there are plenty of weak casting classes that give full progression people do talk about. Loremaster is nothing particularly exciting, but I've seen people take it. Ditto for Divine Oracle or the like.


Regarding giving martials fun things, I'm actually a fan of the idea of allowing lower tier classes to gestalt with each other. Something roughly along the lines of Tier 1 classes can't gestalt with anything, Tier 2 can gestalt with (non casting) NPC classes, tier 3 with tier 5, and tier 4 with tier 4. I haven't had too much opportunity to try this out, but it's something that I've wanted to try for a while.

This gets proposed, but the problem is that it doesn't really solve the problem of certain concepts being bad. You can fix Incarnate by sticking it onto Barbarian or something, but that's not necessarily what either Incarnate fans or Barbarian fans are looking for. Certainly there are cases where it will work, but the conceptual overlap between "Gestalt characters" and "non-Gestalt characters" is not as total as people like to imply.

[vasilidor]

I do not think actual casting goals for characters that are primary casters has been established. If my character is supposed to be some sort of wizard archetype with spell casting as a primary go to, I want my spells to be able to make a notable positive difference against CR appropriate monsters and situations. generally you need spells of a level around 1/2 the monster CR for it to be effective against the monster on a regular basis, with a +/- of about a level of 2 for the spell level depending on the monster type.
If I am a spellcaster as a secondary concern, I want it to be able to positively enhance whatever it is I am trying to do. Generally you do not need spells above 6th level for most of this in most cases. Here you are not using the spell directly against the monster most of the time, but enhancing other aspects of your character or the party.
In situation A I do not really consider sacrificing caster levels as worth it save in what i know are low op games or games in which the DM grades on a curve and adjust accordingly.
In situation B it can be worthwhile to sacrifice caster levels as caster levels are not always a primary concern. I am trying to use magic to enhance a character to be more effective. Get my warrior(type) character in a position where he can smack the flying dragon with his great sword for instance or have an easier time sneaking past some guards as a rogue character. Past a certain point in 3.X games multiclassing into something that can cast spells is almost always a necessity it feels like, just to avoid situations where your character can be shut out of an encounter by one trait of a monster.

[Jervis]

Everyone is here arguing about the most broken classes in the game and meanwhile i’m just wondering is Prestige Paladin and Spellsword would see play if they were full casting classes.

[InvisibleBison]

Everyone is here arguing about the most broken classes in the game and meanwhile i’m just wondering is Prestige Paladin and Spellsword would see play if they were full casting classes.

Spellcasters aren't broken. Spells (a relative handful of spells, that is) are broken. If the only spells in the game were magic missile and light, no one would think casters were OP, or even P.

[vasilidor]

Everyone is here arguing about the most broken classes in the game and meanwhile i’m just wondering is Prestige Paladin and Spellsword would see play if they were full casting classes.

I have wanted to play a spellsword.
They look like a potentially fun gish. being able to go around in full plate and cast spells, I want it just for that.

[Jervis]

I have wanted to play a spellsword.
They look like a potentially fun gish. being able to go around in full plate and cast spells, I want it just for that.

I mean with enough armor templates and special materials you can get fullplate with 0% ASF

[RandomPeasant]

Everyone is here arguing about the most broken classes in the game and meanwhile i’m just wondering is Prestige Paladin and Spellsword would see play if they were full casting classes.

Prestige Paladin would be a fine choice for a Cleric who wanted to be more martial but didn't want to DMM divine power. You can get in at 6th without giving anything up, and the stuff it offers is fine. It would be a pretty strong choice if your DM gives you all Paladin spells and lets you use them with Battle Blessing. One additional change I'd probably make is to remove the turning requirement as I think letting Favored Souls get into the class without any extra work is good.

Spellsword would be one of the many, many Gish PrCs you could make a case for after finishing Abjurant Champion. Reducing spell failure is nice, though more in terms of freeing up build resources than doing anything particularly novel (if you stack all the armor properties that reduce ASF, you can get 0% on pretty good armor already). Channel Spell gets you some action economy, though it's not nearly as good as Arcane Channeling.


Spellcasters aren't broken. Spells (a relative handful of spells, that is) are broken. If the only spells in the game were magic missile and light, no one would think casters were OP, or even P.

I broadly agree, but I do think there are some instances where you can point to spellcasters, particularly casting PrCs, as being broken (I just don't think they can be fixed by reducing people's casting progression). The thing where a Vermin Lord can take only things they automatically get from their class and cast as a 300th+ level Sorcerer is totally broken, and it's not because any individual spell is too good. Similarly, I think it's quite fair to say that something in the various "metamagic reducer + Personal buff + Persistent Spell" combos is broken, though identifying the exact issue is up for a lot of debate.

[Jervis]

Prestige Paladin would be a fine choice for a Cleric who wanted to be more martial but didn't want to DMM divine power. You can get in at 6th without giving anything up, and the stuff it offers is fine. It would be a pretty strong choice if your DM gives you all Paladin spells and lets you use them with Battle Blessing. One additional change I'd probably make is to remove the turning requirement as I think letting Favored Souls get into the class without any extra work is good.

Spellsword would be one of the many, many Gish PrCs you could make a case for after finishing Abjurant Champion. Reducing spell failure is nice, though more in terms of freeing up build resources than doing anything particularly novel (if you stack all the armor properties that reduce ASF, you can get 0% on pretty good armor already). Channel Spell gets you some action economy, though it's not nearly as good as Arcane Channeling.


That was a about what I first thought. I’m of the opinion that most (but admittedly not all in some weird cases) Gish PrCs pay for themselves with opportunity cost and feat taxes. If you’re putting in the work to get into them you don’t have as much room left for, say, metamagic cost reducers and the like. I was considering house ruling that most of the Gish PrCs give either full advancement or only loose 1 level up front in a upcoming home game. Granted it probably won’t make much of a difference one way or the other because my players never use my homebrew… :smallsigh:

[sleepyphoenixx]

I broadly agree, but I do think there are some instances where you can point to spellcasters, particularly casting PrCs, as being broken (I just don't think they can be fixed by reducing people's casting progression). The thing where a Vermin Lord can take only things they automatically get from their class and cast as a 300th+ level Sorcerer is totally broken, and it's not because any individual spell is too good. Similarly, I think it's quite fair to say that something in the various "metamagic reducer + Personal buff + Persistent Spell" combos is broken, though identifying the exact issue is up for a lot of debate.

Everything is broken if you stack up enough of it. It's a natural consequence of the number of books 3.5 has.
I think that's really the main issue with balance (leaving aside stuff like Vermin Lord that definitely wasn't thought through properly) - most options are fine on their own, but very few of them were designed with anything but core in mind.

The game really doesn't handle it well when you use full book access to all-out optimize something, and that isn't limited to just magic (see: ubercharger).
Even Incantatrix, the essential OP class, isn't actually that OP unless you combine it with Persistent Spell (which is one of those "wasn't thought through properly" options imo) and a whole lot of spellcraft optimization.

Which is fine. The game can't assume that everyone has access to every book, and the DM looking over a build and vetoing things that aren't appropriate to the campaign is intended (and necessary either way).
That's something i think people need to remember more often.

I wouldn't be surprised if balance never came up as a major concern during development since one of the basic assumptions of the game is that you have someone right there to stop any abuse.
It's even mentioned explicitly in the "how to DM" section of the DMG.

[remetagross]

In situation B it can be worthwhile to sacrifice caster levels as caster levels are not always a primary concern. I am trying to use magic to enhance a character to be more effective. Get my warrior(type) character in a position where he can smack the flying dragon with his great sword for instance or have an easier time sneaking past some guards as a rogue character. Past a certain point in 3.X games multiclassing into something that can cast spells is almost always a necessity it feels like, just to avoid situations where your character can be shut out of an encounter by one trait of a monster.

I completely agree with this. When you play a gish, or a support caster like a Bard, you simply pick spells that do not allow for saves. Not all monsters have spell resistance, and Practised Spellcaster exists, so I find there is not much problem in picking spells that allow for spell resistance. So you pick buffs, battlefield control spells that make new stuff appear, light debuffs, etc. and you are perfectly happy with it, because all of this complements your other, main schtick. This is how Ruby Knight Vindicator is a perfectly fine PrC despite losing two caster levels, because you just use the spells to enhance your damage dealing potential as a martial initiator.

[Lans]

At that point I would start to question whether "the same tier as Incantatrix" was really a meaningful category. There aren't a lot of published full-casting PrCs I would put there. Dweomerkeeper. Shadowcraft Mage. Planar Shepherd. That sort of thing. A lot of the things in the "+2 tier" category in the PrC tier system are there because they have really weak entries, not because they are particularly objectively powerful. Warshaper is a great upgrade if you are a Shifter with a couple of levels in martial classes, but the idea that it's on the same level as Incantatrix is pretty laughable.

I understand how that prc tier system works. That is why I pointed to void disciple. If it was just 3 tiers significantly better, a little better-a little worse, and significantly worse it would expand the number of prcs that would be the same tier while still being a somewhat meaningful category.


What do you think about making PrCs so the would fill out the remaining pre epic levels? So bonded summoner would get 3 more expansions on it's elemental?