PrC Evaluation Thread

[Luccan]

I think the main problem is this class is 10 levels long. I'm not convinced it's worth giving up levels in most BAB base classes. I condensed it down to three levels recently and even then I buffed some of the abilities

[noce]

Unbalancing Blow at 8 is a full round action but if the attack hits, allows all threatening allies to attack the foe. Possibly good if you have lots of martial buddies. Considering the party makeups I’ve seen in my groups, this ability wouldn’t see much use. -1

I think this is a strong tactical option, you know, what I'd expect from a Tactical Soldier.

When you get this your full attack is three attacks.
If there is only another melee in your party, your party is getting two attacks at full bab instead of your -0/-5/-10 routine, and that's not an entirely bad option against high AC enemies. It only goes better if there is another melee, or an animal companion, or a summoned monster or the like.

Also, consider that your allies could be more capable than you: for example if you face an Evil Outsider with high DR/good and the fellow paladin wields a holy weapon, then giving up 2nd and 3rd strikes for a single attack from him is a wise choice.

There are a variety of situations that can put this feature in good use (you've been disarmed, or grappled...), so I wouldn't give the PrC -1 for giving you a viable option.

[Zombimode]

Also, giving a -1 for an ability because your parties won't benefit from it as much?

That seems incorrect.

Unbalancing Blow is a support ability. And support abilities always depend on the party make up. Is a Bard's Inspire Courage a bad ability only because it would do almost nothing in a party of a Wizard, a Psion and a Dragonfire Adept? Of course not!


For anectodical reference my current parties are a) Hexblade, Rogue/Swordsage-thingy, Wilder, meele-happy Warforged Artificer; and b) Factotum/Chameleon, meele happy Cleric, Fighter/Swordsage/Warblade, Ranger/SA Fighter/Monk/Barbarian/Ape Lord.
For both parties (especially the second) Unbalancing Blow would be a really nice ability.

[liquidformat]

So a couple comments, first Offensive Strike seems like it could be pretty easily replaced with Robilar's Gambit and you would have a useful class feature two levels early. Also Unbalanced Blow is as pointed out decent in a number of groups. Quite often it is an ability that could find use especially if everyone knows what the group is going to look like going into the game. Also Knight would probably be a decent entry into this PRC. Over all I think 12/20 seems right here

[Mike Miller]

Thank you all for correcting me on the unbalanced blow ability. I will update it when not on mobile.

[Mike Miller]

War Hulk

Spoiler

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1)
The War Hulk is spoken of as a class for Giants, which seems to mean NPCs. However, there is a two sentence note about NPC war hulks. As for the chassis, it has d12 HD, which is great. The skill list is laughably bad with 3 skills, which makes its 2 skill points per level seem generous. No BAB progression… I don’t think I’ve seen that before. One can assume the strength increase each level is enough to not provide BAB, but still… and finally good FORT save.

As noted above, the strength score of the WH goes up by 2 each level. These bonuses stack and are untyped.

No Time to Think reduces all skills of mental abilities to 0 with the exception of intimidate. Good luck finding your car keys!

Great Swing at level two allows for a full round attack that targets three adjacent squares which you threaten. One attack roll is made for all the targets. You can avoid friendly fire, which is nice. However, it doesn’t function with great cleave.

Mighty Rock Throwing at level three lets you throw rocks for 2d8 points of damage with a decent range increment.

Mighty Swing just reduces the previous attack to a standard action.

Sweeping Boulder allows the rock throwing to hit two adjacent targets.

Toughness comes in at levels 8, 9, and 10. I suppose 9 more HP is better than not having bonus HP, although one good bonus feat would probably be better than this.

Massive Sweeping Boulder at level 8 allows for four targets in a line to be targeted.

The capstone is Massive Swing, which affects all threatened targets instead of just three adjacent. This can be pretty great crowd control with the right weapon.

Overall, this is a pretty good class. I think it could have been condensed some, but the STR bonuses are nice. Not having BAB is somewhat crappy if you happen to want to PrC out to something with a higher BAB prereq. The change from a full action to a standard feels like a case of “+ numbers” with a slight variant. The class feels pretty good though, so I will go with 10 / 14

2)
Competitive choices for similar roles are Barbarian, Fighter, and, for this source, Marshal. Barbarian is probably the closest comparison point for opportunity costs, as you have a similar “can’t think” mechanic within Rage and also STR boosts. Rage is a bit more of a one-trick pony and No Time to Think is more skill knee-capping. I think they are pretty comparable and it can come down to your campaign. If you mostly have small numbers of enemies, you won’t be making as much use of the Swing with WH but you can utilize Rage just as well. If you have large numbers of enemies, you’ll likely be getting more use out of Swing but Rage is still fun. Also, pounce is a thing. As far as barbarian goes, it is really close. Fighter and marshal have less going for them though. Fighter is fighter. You can build it for crowd control, tripper being the standard. You won’t have the boosts to damage and you’ll need to use more resources to get the kind of attacks the WH has. You have the feats to waste three on toughness if you really want to make that comparison. I think WH takes it over fighter. Marshal is really only being mentioned for the source. It doesn’t have full BAB so is entering later. It also isn’t as strong a contender for front line combatant. You’ll definitely have to use more resources to fill the same role as the WH with a marshal, so I say the WH takes it. So far WH looks pretty good.

I do want to mention initiators, though. They can fill the same role as the WH and do it better. Sure, they don’t have +20 STR over 10 levels, but their maneuvers can accomplish most of what the WH can do. With all that in mind, I’ll give this a 2 / 4.

3)
At a glance, the prereqs seem short and simple. BAB is just a matter of time and cleave isn’t a bad option. However, being large or larger isn’t the simplest feat. Do goliaths qualify, as being large for them is better in this case? I wouldn’t say the one prereq makes it a major pain, but it is worth stopping and considering. I’ll go with “medium” pre req 1 / 2

War Hulk: 13 / 20

[Blue Jay]

The Survivor PrC from Savage Species also has no BAB progression.

The no-BAB progression limits you to just 2 iteratives by 20th level, and it also puts a noticeable cap on your Power Attack. I haven't tried to do any math yet, but there's probably a real trade-off between crowd control and single-target nova. Do you think that's going to be a balanced trade-off with the War Hulk? To me, it feels like the War Hulk's big advantages over other crowd-control specialists will be most noticeable in extreme scenarios, like where you're outnumbered 6:1 or something. In more typical scenarios, I'm not sure the War Hulk's performance is really going to stand out as much relative to something like a spiked-chain tripper. And I think the more standard melee builds might be able to crank out a lot more damage against a single target. So it feels like a more traditional melee build might be able to get a more favorable balance between single-target stuff and crowd-control stuff. Do you think my feeling is accurate here? Or will the war hulk do just fine in both areas?

[noce]

I want to add two minor consideration:

• Goliath Barbarian racial substitution level allows you to effectively become Large while raging, so if the race itself is not enough you might just take this strong substitution level; reach is really a good thing for a War Hulk
• Speaking of damage, I think a single level in Exotic Weapon Master is too good to pass up: grab a one-handed exotic weapon with 2 hands and enjoy +20 damage from +20 STR; there are even a couple of ways to do this with a reach weapon

[upho]

The no-BAB progression limits you to just 2 iteratives by 20th level, and it also puts a noticeable cap on your Power Attack. I haven't tried to do any math yet, but there's probably a real trade-off between crowd control and single-target nova. Do you think that's going to be a balanced trade-off with the War Hulk? To me, it feels like the War Hulk's big advantages over other crowd-control specialists will be most noticeable in extreme scenarios, like where you're outnumbered 6:1 or something. In more typical scenarios, I'm not sure the War Hulk's performance is really going to stand out as much relative to something like a spiked-chain tripper. And I think the more standard melee builds might be able to crank out a lot more damage against a single target. So it feels like a more traditional melee build might be able to get a more favorable balance between single-target stuff and crowd-control stuff. Do you think my feeling is accurate here? Or will the war hulk do just fine in both areas?

Hmm... Well, though it's been almost a decade since I last played 3.5 (so take my comments with a big grain of salt), I think you're mostly right here, at least in a very general sense. However, IIRC it seems to me a WH built to get the most out of their silly Str could mitigate quite a lot of the single-target damage shortcomings compared to more standard melee builds, on top of having a mass control power greater - or at the very least more reliable - than that a typical chain tripper. For example, adding to noce's point about the Goliath barb racial sub level and assuming my memory doesn't fail me:

1. A goliath War Hulk could combine Dungeon Crasher fighter 6+ and a barb level with the Goliath racial sub (perhaps also adding the usual Spiritual Totem (Lion) ACF for a bit of additional combat versatility). This also provides access to the Knockback feat which I recall bypasses the special attack limit of the War Hulk's Great/Mighty/Massive Swing, and if so allowing for free powerful bull rushing of all hit enemies, the WH's Str bonuses at 10th by themselves causing a massive +60 +30 extra Str based Dungeon Crasher damage to all enemies bull rushed into a solid object.
2. Adding Shock Trooper and a second level of barb with the Wolf Totem(?) variant to the above also nets free Improved Trip IIRC, bypassing the awful prereqs, and should result in some pretty hilarious extra control and damage potential with ST, as I believe every enemy bull rushed into another enemy gives free trip attempts against both enemies (again bypassing the WH limitation). The successful trips should in turn trigger the free attacks provided by Improved Trip, and any hits a second free bull rush and in many/most cases a second instance of that bonkers Crashing damage.

With a suitably big and nasty reach weapon and a boosted reach, this combo should be able to turn tons of enemies crowding a room into fine red mist with a single standard action, and it probably has enough damage potential to be pretty effective also against a BBEG and a minion or two if there's a wall nearby. And then there's of course the vastly increased potential of stuff with Str based DCs, like that of Staggering Blow for stunning.

While this would of course a pretty highly specialized build, I also think the WH is a highly specialized fringe PrC and that it should probably be rated accordingly, assuming builds which actually try to capitalize on their insane Str considerably more than your typical melee builds try to capitalize on their comparatively sane Str.

Again, this is assuming my rusty 3.5-fu is still good enough in this area. Please let me know if it's not!

@Mike Miller: Regarding our previous discussion about the format for this evaluation, browsing through the work done so far seems to have cleared up any lingering questions and doubts I had. Keep up the good work!

EDIT: Fixed the added Crasher damage I somehow managed to double up... /EDIT

[liquidformat]

So like upho said there are actually a lot of interesting fringe cases that make War Hulk super powerful the best place to point and where I normally go is combining War Hulk with Hulking Hurler. In an epic level game I played my WH/HH used an adamantine +1 rock of sizing that could deal 4,099d6 damage at max weight. At points in that game I literally was throwing buildings at enemy armies.

Anyways another example is Barbabrian 2 (Goliath Barbabrian, wolf totem)/Psychic Warrior 5/War Hulk 10 with knock down feat and spiked chain of sizing can do some pretty incredible things with Massive Swing.

Over all I think 13/20 seems reasonable for war hulk, it is a fringe case prc but if you lean into it hard you can be very powerful.

[Zombimode]

Yeah, it really depends on the use case. For many PCs War Hulk is a really bad choice, and I don't mean ill-fitting cases. No Time to Think is really bad for most PCs in an actual campaign that is not a string of combats.

War Hulk is a nice DM tool, on the other hand.


If I would rate PrC for their use for player characters I would rate it quite low, like 5 or 6 because it is so niche.

[Kalkra]

You can technically combine this with Uncanny Trickster, Heir of Siberys, and/or Legacy Champion to get a bit of BAB and more skills at the cost of some HP and a level. Also, you can take bloodline levels for extra Strength, if you've got some build that's focused only on Strength and literally nothing else.

[Mike Miller]

@Mike Miller: Regarding our previous discussion about the format for this evaluation, browsing through the work done so far seems to have cleared up any lingering questions and doubts I had. Keep up the good work!

Hurray! I remember feeling like there was a disconnect in our discussion preceding this project. Thanks for the encouragement. It is certainly a massive undertaking.

I appreciate all the feedback and corrections when I am terribly wrong. Extra special thanks for the votes everyone casts!

[Mike Miller]

Warchief

This is very clearly an NPC class. I don’t even want to go over the full details with a rating. I’ll hit on the basics and you’ll see what I mean.

First of all, the special prereq is: must have led a tribe in battle. Ok, that could be done by a PC, but think about how many NPCs do that. Also, the first class ability boosts members of the tribe (+2 STR for the duration which scales to +10 at level 9, -1 HP/HD per turn), not the class itself. Therefore, the primary feature of the class doesn’t even have a use for an adventurer in a standard mashup adventuring party. You don’t have a real class feature past this (if you even count that) until level 8. Sure, your CHA goes up, but so what? You aren’t going to be using it for anything with Warchief.

The level 8 ability just lets you maybe throw a henchman under the proverbial bus once per turn so you don’t take a hit. That’s it. For a PC, this might receive the lowest rating yet. However, I think it would be disingenuous to rate it along the same scale as the rest, when it is very clearly not meant for PCs.

Can you take it? Sure. Would you take it? Only if you were playing a 2 person game: 1 DM and 1 player with a very select game style in mind. Even then, why not just make a fun character and take leadership? This class does almost nothing for a PC.

As a recurring villain though, this can be a lot of fun for a DM. Initially, the DM uses it at level 1 when the mooks only get +2 to STR. Then later, they are at +6 STR. Finally, he is throwing them in front of the party members to avoid being hit and the mooks have +10 STR. That is way more enticing than building a PC with Warchief.

If you insist on seeing a rating for this pathetic excuse for a PC, I will give it 2 / 20, because the prereqs are a joke. Nothing about the class features make me want to give it points and you better believe any other base class would give you more interesting options for a PC than this. So I’ll add this to the main list, but it will be with an obvious *NPC* designation.

[Mike Miller]

The Survivor PrC from Savage Species also has no BAB progression.

The no-BAB progression limits you to just 2 iteratives by 20th level, and it also puts a noticeable cap on your Power Attack. I haven't tried to do any math yet, but there's probably a real trade-off between crowd control and single-target nova. Do you think that's going to be a balanced trade-off with the War Hulk? To me, it feels like the War Hulk's big advantages over other crowd-control specialists will be most noticeable in extreme scenarios, like where you're outnumbered 6:1 or something. In more typical scenarios, I'm not sure the War Hulk's performance is really going to stand out as much relative to something like a spiked-chain tripper. And I think the more standard melee builds might be able to crank out a lot more damage against a single target. So it feels like a more traditional melee build might be able to get a more favorable balance between single-target stuff and crowd-control stuff. Do you think my feeling is accurate here? Or will the war hulk do just fine in both areas?

I think you have it pretty well figured out. Single target battles are where the WH is weaker than other builds. The more enemies there are, the better the WH will perform over time. If he can reliably line up three enemies, he has great potential prior to the capstone.

[TheCount]

a quick question, is there a system in how you go through the books?
just asking as i saw the next one is the exaggerated cheese.

[Mike Miller]

a quick question, is there a system in how you go through the books?
just asking as i saw the next one is the exaggerated cheese.

Chronologically by publication date excluding setting specific sources. I have a list in order I am using, but am on mobile atm. I thought it would be good to see the progression of PrCs as they developed. I always think of BoED as 3.0 material, but it was published in the 3.5 era.

Spoiler: List of Source Books in Order

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2003/06 Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG)
2003/09 Miniatures Handbook (MH)
2003/10 Book of Exalted Deeds (BE)
2003/11 Draconomicon (Dr)
2003/12 Complete Warrior (CW)
2004/04 Expanded Psionics Handbook (XPH)
2004/05 Complete Divine (CD)
2004/07 Planar Handbook (PlH)
2004/08 Races of Stone (RS)
2004/09 Frostburn (Fr)
2004/10 Libris Mortis (LM)
2004/11 Complete Arcane (CAr)
2004/12 Races of Destiny (RD)
2005/01 Complete Adventurer (CAd)
2005/02 Races of the Wild (RW)
2005/03 Sandstorm (Sa)
2005/04 Lords of Madness (LoM)
2005/05 Heroes of Battle (HB)
2005/07 Weapons of Legacy (WL)
2005/08 Stormwrack (Sto)
2005/09 Magic of Incarnum (MoI)
2005/10 Heroes of Horror (HH)
2006/01 Races of the Dragon (RDr)
2006/03 Tome of Magic (TM)
2006/04 Complete Psionic (CP)
2006/05 Player's Handbook II (PH2)
2006/06 Fiendish Codex I (FC1)
2006/08 Tome of Battle (ToB)
2006/09 Dragon Magic (DM)
2006/10 Complete Mage (CM)
2006/11 Cityscape (Ci)
2006/12 Fiendish Codex II (FC2)
2007/01 Complete Scoundrel (CS)
2007/02 Dungeonscape (Du)
2007/05 Complete Champion (CC)
2007/05 Drow of the Underdark (DrU)
(the list is from WotC somewhere)

[liquidformat]

Comically I have actually played in a game as a warchief and it was a lot of fun. It was a Game of Throwns style game where each player was the leader of their own group and there were wars, politicking, espionage and so forth. The leader I created for my group was an adjusted orc barbarian 2/Fighter 1/warchief 3/orc warlord 5/Legendary leader 5 with aspirations to take war chanter but didn't get that far. It was quite fun and quite silly.

Anyways I think warchief should get 4/20 I mean considering you can take it as a level 4 character it isn't a horrible dip for 1-3 levels if you are going to have minions....

Also both warhulk and warchief are quite interesting in gestalt games.

[Mike Miller]

Comically I have actually played in a game as a warchief and it was a lot of fun. It was a Game of Throwns style game where each player was the leader of their own group and there were wars, politicking, espionage and so forth. The leader I created for my group was an adjusted orc barbarian 2/Fighter 1/warchief 3/orc warlord 5/Legendary leader 5 with aspirations to take war chanter but didn't get that far. It was quite fun and quite silly.

Anyways I think warchief should get 4/20 I mean considering you can take it as a level 4 character it isn't a horrible dip for 1-3 levels if you are going to have minions....

Also both warhulk and warchief are quite interesting in gestalt games.

The minions are rest icted to your clan and race, which is pretty specific. The boost is also only for STR and slowly kills them, so idk. I can't see it being justifiable even as a dip. I stand by my 2/20.

That is pretty great that you have used it though!

[Troacctid]

Chronologically by publication date excluding setting specific sources. I have a list in order I am using, but am on mobile atm. I thought it would be good to see the progression of PrCs as they developed. I always think of BoED as 3.0 material, but it was published in the 3.5 era.

And then after that I imagine chronologically for setting-specific books, and then chronologically for Dragon Magazines?

[Mike Miller]

And then after that I imagine chronologically for setting-specific books, and then chronologically for Dragon Magazines?

I would rather do dragon mag before setting specific both because I have all the dragon mags for third ed (except maybe a couple) and I am more familiar with them. That is a long ways off, though. The final group would be the 3.0 classes that weren't updated to 3.5

[Mike Miller]

Anointed Knight

Spoiler

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1)
The first PrC of the BoED sets us on a divine course. The AK is a holy knight and has a chassis that you might expect: d10 HD, 2 skill points per level, full BAB, and both good FORT and WILL saves. There is a rotating set of three class features. Each level you get one of them.

At level 1 (and every 3 levels after) you receive Anoint Self, which provides a supernatural ability of your choosing from a select list. The higher your level and CHA modifier, the more options you have. Bonuses include questionably useful feats, low DR/- , an untyped boost of 1 to a mental stat, a 3/day boost to charging attack roll, 3/day bonus 2d6 damage on hit, and lastly 3/day free action extra attack at highest BAB. You may not receive anything too useful at level 1, but these are straightforward and useful for martials.

Anoint Ancestral Weapon at level 2 (and every three levels after), is similar to the above except it provides the AK’s ancestral weapon with a supernatural ability. The options include making the weapon good, bonus hardness, ‘poisoned’ with Unicorn Blood (somewhat low DC), bonus HP, and sentience. Since you can at most receive three of these, I think the three you’ll take are fairly obvious. Unless your DM is super hyped about breaking your character’s defining purpose, you shouldn’t be bothered with the hardness or HP. At least the lowest option here is better than the previous ability.

The last repeating ability is just a bonus feat at 3, 6, 9 from a predictable list of fighter bonus feats and BoED martial feats.

The PrC is fairly mediocre and doesn’t allow a martial to do anything all that fancy. The bonuses are nice, but are quite tame and fit in with the early third edition mantra of “don’t give martials nice things.” All the options are useful, so I don’t have anything to specifically penalize. Perhaps the menu choices could have been condensed and provided as class features, done away with the bonus feats, and made it a 5 level PrC? The features feel like too little, too late. I’m not sure where to land with this one, but I’ll go with 7 / 14.

2)
As far as opportunity costs go, there isn’t a lot to compare. In fact, it is basically just the anoint self vs everything else. Bonus feats aren’t unique and anoint ancestral weapon is just equipment (also not unique). I’m not expecting this to go well for the AK. A fighter will have more bonus feats FWIW, which means it could end up with the bonus feats from the actual bonus feat specials of the AK in addition to the anoint self bonus feats and then some. The other abilities could be replicated with items, but I don’t think the AK’s higher bonuses are so good that they outweigh various builds that you need lots of feats to make work. After all, the AK is primarily a damage dealer. Sure, you save money with the boosts to your weapon, but I’m betting those aren’t the upgrades you’d typically put on your weapon.

A barbarian can match the DR and is well known for being a solid charger. The rage bonuses can match and exceed the charging bonus of the AK and doesn’t quite match the extra damage of the 3/day bonus damage. However, you get the rage’s extra damage (from increased STR) for all the attacks for the duration of the rage. As for fighter and barbarian, they don’t quite fit the holy niche and aren’t necessarily 100% better than the AK, so I can see why the AK could be the preferred option.

Paladin feels like a good comparison, except it gains spells. After fifth level, Paladin doesn’t gain anything new and exciting (except spells). If it weren’t a caster, there might’ve been a good comparison. Unfortunately, paladin spells are definitely better as a whole than the AK’s specials.

I usually find these comparisons unfair, especially earlier on, but initiators blow this class away. If the choice was 1-20 of a single initiator class or your preferred entry method with 10 AK levels, there isn’t much competition there. 1 / 4

3)
The prereqs seem minimal at first. Then you realize what a pain the selected skills are, even if the ranks are low. BAB is inevitable, but you can be looking at spending the vast majority of your ranks to enter at level 6. Putting both spellcraft and knowledge (arcana) on a martial class which won’t be using either of those skills seems wrong. 1 / 2

Anointed Knight 9 / 20

[Jervis]

I'm glad we're getting into the fun stuff now. I wish the first class in the book was a better representation of how much awesome was squeezed in.

[liquidformat]

I feel like they had potential to be a cool class if they had been given useful abilities but sadly it really is just a steaming pile. And while I understand the prerequisites they really are just a waste and everything falls flat. I think 9/20 is fine.

[Saintheart]

About the only interesting part of this thing is that it gives you a sentient weapon to which you can still apply Ancestral Relic. If you could specifically pick the two lesser powers it gets that might have been something -- 10 ranks in a skill or 3/day Daze Monster wouldn't be too bad -- but I really, really doubt that's worth waiting around for.

It does get four feats in 6 levels in effect combining Anoint Self with the bonus feats of the class, which is more than a fighter gets, but given the selections only the Dark Chaos Shuffle really makes that useful in any real way. 9/20 is fine.

[Mike Miller]

Apostle of Peace

Spoiler

Show

1)

The Apostle of Peace is much what the name implies, a voice against violence. To that end, it really is worth noting the prerequisites upfront: sacred vow, vow of nonviolence, vow of peace, and vow of poverty. That really says a lot about the class… Anyway, the chassis is comprised of d4 HD, half BAB, all good saves, and a fast (prepared) casting progression of its own from 0-9th level spells over the course of its 10 levels. These spells are drawn from its own list which heavily relies on both the cleric list and the new spells from BoED. They don’t gain proficiencies, but they do lose spellcasting while wearing armor and 24 hours after. They also have spontaneous cure spells as a cleric.

At level 1, the AoP gains Turn Undead as a good cleric.

At level 2, the AoP gains Pacifying Touch, which is similar to a calm emotions spell, presumably at will.

At level 4, the AoP gains Censure Fiends, which is similar to turn undead but for [Evil] outsiders. It can stun or banish them.

The spell list is good. Even if you are nonviolent, you can do a lot of useful things with the planar ally line, lots of healing spells, miracle, and more. Considering you won’t be starting this class before 8th level, you only catch up with a standard cleric progression at level 15 when both gain 8th level spells. You will be behind for most of the campaign, poor, and trying to resolve everything the same way – without fighting. It is a specific niche and can be find if everyone is all in for it, but it is likely to get old fast. I can’t recommend it and therefore will stick with 5 / 14.

2)

As for opportunity costs, the prerequisites jump out to me immediately. It is hard to make a serious argument that doesn’t just boil down to “well I could make this exact character concept without vows and just RP the restrictive stuff.” There is rarely a case where you are better off having four vows. If I took Toughness four times, I would have 12 more HP than the comparison character and whatever magical items I wanted. Why does that look preferable right now?! 0 / 4 Also, why is toughness X 4 not a sarcastic argument?

3)

The prereqs are pretty heavy: decently high base will save, decent amount of skill ranks, and four vow feats. Without even getting into the specifics, this is going to be a specific character style and definitely worthy of “major” prereq assignment. 0 / 2

Apostle of Peace 5 / 20

P.S.: formatting issues (if any) are due to mobile posting

[liquidformat]

I think you are overlooking one really big factor in your rating here, which is Vow of Poverty gives you free feats which really means the investment is in fact only 2 feats which puts this in moderate, so I am going with 6/20.

On a side note I have played in a game where the dm just straight dumped the skill requirements which moves this to a pretty easy entry at level 5. In that case it is a much better prc.

[Mike Miller]

I think you are overlooking one really big factor in your rating here, which is Vow of Poverty gives you free feats which really means the investment is in fact only 2 feats which puts this in moderate, so I am going with 6/20.

On a side note I have played in a game where the dm just straight dumped the skill requirements which moves this to a pretty easy entry at level 5. In that case it is a much better prc.

I have seen VoP in action and I don't like it. I could see a slightly higher rating than what I have though.

Even with lowered skills, you need flaws to get in that early. Four feats.... Yuck

[liquidformat]

I have seen VoP in action and I don't like it. I could see a slightly higher rating than what I have though.

Even with lowered skills, you need flaws to get in that early. Four feats.... Yuck

How so Vow of nonviolence and Vow of Peace are exalted feats, if I play human, I take sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty at level 1. VoP gives you an exalted feat every even number so level 2 I get Vow of Nonviolence and level 3 I get Vow of Peace, Level 1 I take Cleric, Level 2 and 3 Swordsage, level 4 I am an Apostle of Peace. If I want to leave level 3 feat open for something else I can take Vow of Peace at level 4 and still get in to Apostle of Peace at level 5.

Either way the fact that VoP gives me potentially 10 exalted Feats really means I am only investing 2 feats. There aren't enough or good enough exalted feats, so taking vow of nonviolence and peace really doesn't hurt you as long as you take them from your VoP bonus exalted feats. I have played VoP druids and primevals on multiple occasions and to be frank I have trouble filling all the exalted feat slots because a lot of them are either or feats like Favored of the Companions, Servant of the Heavens, and the Knight of Stars or they are class specific.

[Saintheart]

I'd actually rate the Apostle of Peace as a 2/20 due to the fact you literally cannot play the class without a DM ruling that the PrC's features override its prerequisites.

Apostle of Peace gets to wear magic items that protect them, right? Ring of Protection, Bracers of Armor? Yeah, well, the problem there is the Vow of Poverty, which expressly says you cannot use any magic item bar those that are used on your behalf, no borrows, no loans, wear a Ring of Protection and you've broken the Vow, so long Exalted feats (sparkly +2 feats they are for the most part). And therefore, if you have a DM who rules under the Complete Arcane rules about PrCs, goodbye to the prestige class as well.

It's not 1/20 because at least the webwork of Vows and abilities still allows you to beat the snot out of undead and constructs with your mundane quarterstaff.

It's a great idea, just badly executed and not really that compatible with combat-based games. Sure a druid can play it. But then that's more a testament to the fact the druid can literally walk around naked and still completely pwn the game, it doesn't make the Apostle of Peace any better.