Decreasing Prestige Class Dead Levels

[Mike Miller]

I've done some reworking of many prestige classes in 3.x in order to remove "dead levels" as much as possible and condense less useful or very common abilities. I figured I'd post it here in case anyone had a similar idea or desire to see it. I've tried to do as little altering to anything as possible beyond simply rearranging abilities to take the removal of "dead levels" into account. I'll also mention that I consider a "dead level" to be a level with "-" in the "Special" column, regardless of casting/manifesting/etc. increases. The less useful and very common abilities is a bit more subjective. Also, repeating abilities that are only increases in #/day or small increases to the ability (as in level 1 gets +1 of said ability, then level 4 is +2, then level 7 is +3) are shifted accordingly.

You can view it here.

[Nifft]

Noticed a few oddities...

Arcane Archer had 0/10 casting; yours gets 5/5.

Shadowbane Stalker had 8/10 casting; yours gets 0/5.

[rferries]

These are generally more powerful than base classes, but I suppose that's fair when you need prereqs to enter them.

[Nifft]

Why condense Arcane Trickster to 5 levels, and reduce the Sneak Attack to only +2d6 per 5?

People who take Arcane Trickster seem to want as much Sneak Attack + caster progression as they can get.

[Mike Miller]

Why condense Arcane Trickster to 5 levels, and reduce the Sneak Attack to only +2d6 per 5?

People who take Arcane Trickster seem to want as much Sneak Attack + caster progression as they can get.

Good catch with the arcane Archer and others. Originally I started out modifying more to use for my own campaign, but partway through (pretty early in the process) I changed my mind and kept things simpler so anyone could use it. Apparently I didn't check the early stuff well enough. I will revise them in a bit.

Edit: Ok, I fixed those. Let me know if you catch any other blatant alterations.

[Kamai]

Looking at classes, one thing that comes to mind is keeping an eye on DCs that rely on prestige class levels, like Death Attack, leaving a low cap of 15 + int (as compared to 20 + int for being able to take 10 levels). These classes should have a way to progress these abilities, start at 15 + stat, or gain 2 DC per level.