How much do you enforce special prestige class requirements?

[Wings of Peace]

Essentially what the title says. I don't mean things like feat or skill requirements. I mean things like having the players become memebers of a secret organization or (because this one is my pet peeve) gender restrictions in cases like the Hathran.

I for my part rarely enforce the special requirements on account of I hand craft my campaign settings so if a prestige class requires membership into an organization or exposure to a particular magic artifact/magic rock/magic whatever that magic whatever generally doesn't exist in my campaign.

[Tyndmyr]

Deed restrictions are enforced. Ditto for alignment.

Membership and gender requirements are not.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Essentially what the title says. I don't mean things like feat or skill requirements. I mean things like having the players become memebers of a secret organization or (because this one is my pet peeve) gender restrictions in cases like the Hathran.

I for my part rarely enforce the special requirements on account of I hand craft my campaign settings so if a prestige class requires membership into an organization or exposure to a particular magic artifact/magic rock/magic whatever that magic whatever generally doesn't exist in my campaign.

It all depends on how much actual In-Character Prestige there is with the Prestige Class. If it’s really just a skill set, then there’s no reason to do it. But if it’s really tied to an organization, you damn well better get into that organization.

Examples:
Assassin: No reason an assassin has to be part of a guild. Though the character should probably still kill someone for no other reason than to practice their assassination skills.

Mage of the Arcane Order: Well that whole thing is built around the Arcane Order. Hell, it’s signature ability is tied to a specific artifact. Yeah, you gotta join the Arcane Order here.

[Eldariel]

I enforce none and frequently rework the PrCs for different fluffs; this means the fluff requirements change as fluidly as characters that use them.

[FMArthur]

It all depends on how much actual In-Character Prestige there is with the Prestige Class. If it’s really just a skill set, then there’s no reason to do it. But if it’s really tied to an organization, you damn well better get into that organization.

Examples:
Assassin: No reason an assassin has to be part of a guild. Though the character should probably still kill someone for no other reason than to practice their assassination skills.

Mage of the Arcane Order: Well that whole thing is built around the Arcane Order. Hell, it’s signature ability is tied to a specific artifact. Yeah, you gotta join the Arcane Order here.

I do this in almost all cases. The quest to become a Drunken Master is one thing I will insist upon, though.

[Telonius]

I'm pretty much with Shhalahr on this.

Gender requirements are usually silly and not enforced. Some particular exceptions might be made for things like Drow- and Lolth-based PrCs, where both the goddess and the society are infamous for being sticklers about that sort of thing. But that's the exception and not the rule.

[arguskos]

I change the requirements to fit my world, and often times weave PrCs into the world with requirements, but I also very much believe that such helps attach PCs to the world in a tangible fashion, so I'm weird.

[Tyndmyr]

It all depends on how much actual In-Character Prestige there is with the Prestige Class. If it’s really just a skill set, then there’s no reason to do it. But if it’s really tied to an organization, you damn well better get into that organization.

Examples:
Assassin: No reason an assassin has to be part of a guild. Though the character should probably still kill someone for no other reason than to practice their assassination skills.

Mage of the Arcane Order: Well that whole thing is built around the Arcane Order. Hell, it’s signature ability is tied to a specific artifact. Yeah, you gotta join the Arcane Order here.

That's probably more accurate to what I do. I enforce membership requirements if the membership is involved in the crunch. That's the only time. Its pretty rare, too.

[Saph]

I generally play them by the book - I've always disliked the attitude of "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff". The main situation in which I'll change them is if it's impossible or impractical for the PC to satisfy the requirements, in which case I'll substitute something appropriate.

[Kylarra]

I generally play them by the book - I've always disliked the attitude of "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff". The main situation in which I'll change them is if it's impossible or impractical for the PC to satisfy the requirements, in which case I'll substitute something appropriate.

This is what I do generally as well.

[Ozymandias9]

It depends on the table I'm catering to. But, if I had my druthers, I would generally enforce them all in some manner or another.

I have no problem, however, with altering them to better suit the setting or the character in question.

There are, for example, sun and light themed prestige classes and deities coming out the ends of most settings. If you want to play, for example, play Morninglord in Dragonlance or Bright Warden in FR, it would take quite the stickler of a DM to be unwilling to make the cursory changes needed.

[Kaww]

Depends. In current game an atheistic CN warmage wanted to become holy scourge. He had two strong reasons not to be let in the PrC and he wasn't. On the other hand the same player later wanted to be an elemental savant (electric), since he had a substitution and mostly used those spells I didn't insist on him having a peaceful contact with an outsider. This was a natural extension of his existing character and I let it happen. So I don't enforce such rules to players that already play this PrC from the start. Then again, that's my style.

How many DMs made rainbow servants travel all the way to hidden temples and back, just to enter the PrC? Which lvls were they?

[Susano-wo]

To me, the big thing is necessity. Is it reeeely necessary for the character be, say, non good to be a hexblade? And the whole assassin requirement thing? Silly. What about an assassin of the church? or a solo assassin who kills those he thinks deserve it, especially if the law won't punish them?

I think it should all depend on context, and the individual campaign.

[true_shinken]

I generally play them by the book - I've always disliked the attitude of "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff". The main situation in which I'll change them is if it's impossible or impractical for the PC to satisfy the requirements, in which case I'll substitute something appropriate.

That's also how I roll.

[Dr.Epic]

Those can be half the fun of joining. I so want to play a storm lord in at least one campaign and if I plan to make that build that character is walking around with a 30 ft copper pole until they get hit by lightning. So, yeah, it's a good roleplaying exercise. It'll at least give them something for their character to think about.

[Urpriest]

The few prestige classes with gender requirements amuse me. For one, every time they're brought up I can't help but mention Eunuch Warlock. I would definitely enforce their special prestige class requirement if a player wanted to play one.

[ranagrande]

Yeah, I usually enforce them. I find that's also a good way of limiting some classes like the above poster. Ur-priest is highly abusable, and I don't really like it, so I just enforce the part about the character needing to have been trained by an ur-priest. Which they will never find.

[Zanatos777]

I generally play them by the book - I've always disliked the attitude of "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff". The main situation in which I'll change them is if it's impossible or impractical for the PC to satisfy the requirements, in which case I'll substitute something appropriate.

This is what I do.

[WarKitty]

I generally play them by the book - I've always disliked the attitude of "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff". The main situation in which I'll change them is if it's impossible or impractical for the PC to satisfy the requirements, in which case I'll substitute something appropriate.

Or you could do what I do and not enforce all the mechanics either.

I mostly ignore fluff. I also have rules for if you want to swap out your class features for others, you can.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I generally play them by the book - I've always disliked the attitude of "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff". The main situation in which I'll change them is if it's impossible or impractical for the PC to satisfy the requirements, in which case I'll substitute something appropriate.

It's not so much "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff" as "WotC has far too narrow a vision of what this PrC is," I think. The aforementioned assassin is a prime example. Assassins are people who kill other people with surprise and/or subtlety, often for money. Every adventurer who's gotten a surprise round off on their opponent is technically an assassin. The DMG requirements, however, assume a highly-structured assassin's guild and all that entails. Is ignoring the requirements in that case justified? I think so.

Most PrCs are that way to me, so I ignore most of the fluff. Mages of the Arcane Order can pull in raw magic to shape to their whims, Hexblades are just people around whom people tend to be unlucky, and so forth. The issue is that PrCs were originally meant mostly for flavor and for customizing campaign worlds and characters, so it made sense for requirements to be rather specific. The way they turned out, however, isn't anything like the original intent, instead just being a way to realize concepts that base classes don't cover, so I don't feel enforcing flavor prerequisites is really a good thing at all most of the time.

[Amphetryon]

For me, it depends entirely on the player who wants to enter a PrC. Is he entering it primarily for mechanical reasons, or did something about the presented flavor grab his interest? I'm all for 'flavor is mutable', but if the writeup is what got my player psyched to play a PrC with specific requirements, I'll work those requirements into the campaign as much as possible. If he's not after the flavor, but wants the mechanics, the fluff text gets excised for something more suitable.

[Petrocorus]

It's not so much "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff" as "WotC has far too narrow a vision of what this PrC is," I think. The aforementioned assassin is a prime example. Assassins are people who kill other people with surprise and/or subtlety, often for money. Every adventurer who's gotten a surprise round off on their opponent is technically an assassin. The DMG requirements, however, assume a highly-structured assassin's guild and all that entails. Is ignoring the requirements in that case justified? I think so.

It comes from AD&D. Back then, Assassins needed to enter the Guild to be Assassins. They needed to be evil, and they were rules about how much it costed to get someone assassinated and how much the Assassins was earning. And at high level, they even had to kill their superior and take their place in the guild to be able to level up.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

It comes from AD&D. Back then, Assassins needed to enter the Guild to be Assassins. They needed to be evil, and they were rules about how much it costed to get someone assassinated and how much the Assassins was earning. And at high level, they even had to kill their superior and take their place in the guild to be able to level up.

Yes, I'm aware, and I've played several AD&D assassins myself. 3e, however, has no standard assassination fees, no grandmaster benefits, much less of an emphasis on poison, etc. In the AD&D context, it makes sense to have guild assassins because the whole class is based around being a guild assassin, but if the only aspect of the assassin related in any way to a guild is "must kill someone to join," it makes much more sense to remove that single requirement and let others enter the PrC than to add all the guild trappings and restrict it to an official guild.

[Saveducks]

One of my players wanted to join (mage of the arcane order?), so I made him go through his wizardry college manuscripts and go through a plethora of random registration requirements, by the end of registartion he was writing an essay on "Advanced zombie-slaying, theory"

[Morithias]

We just do it if it's convenient or not. If a player wants to play an Urban Soul, but the temple that has to bless him will literally have no other purpose in the campaign we ignore it. If the campaign actually involves the fluff in some way we use it. The reason we do this, is because most of the time said 'blessing' would be '15 minutes of roleplaying that only involves one character'.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I'd generally enforce the special requirements depending on the campaign. For instance, if I were DMing a Forgotten Realms campaign and someone wanted to be a Hathran, yes, I'd enforce the gender restriction. It's an intrinsic part of the Hathran identity in Forgotten Realms, and I'm a stickler for canonicity. If someone wanted to be a Hathran in a non-Forgotten Realms campaign, I'd consider allowing males to join, depending on how the player and I reshaped the fluff of the PrC to fit the campaign. Generally speaking the special requirements are often the most important, since they give the strongest impression of the PrC's identity, what it represents in a character and the campaign world.

[Pechvarry]

I'm currently playing a Lawful Good Human Paladin of Tyranny in one campaign. We tend to not care about pretty much anything that can be rationalized otherwise. We'd let the same character take a dwarven substitution level and then go into an elf-only prestige class, too.

[Curmudgeon]

I try to enforce all of them, and I do always enforce the ones that require some sort of definitive action (such as the Assassin's prerequisite kill). For organization memberships I generally make it convenient for the PCs to find someone of the organization they want to join; a quest halfway around the world just to get to organization HQ doesn't seem like it would add any fun to the game.

[dsmiles]

I generally play them by the book - I've always disliked the attitude of "mechanics are sacred, ignore the fluff". The main situation in which I'll change them is if it's impossible or impractical for the PC to satisfy the requirements, in which case I'll substitute something appropriate.

+1 to this.

[Mystral]

Special Requirements are enforced. If the player doesn't like them, substitutes can be found. (Like joining a guild)

For Gender: Never had a player who wanted to play a gender specific class, especially not with the "wrong" gender.