Classes and prestige classes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Classes and prestige classes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Archangel62
01-24-07, 08:06 PM I guess that this wasn't good enough for Redgars but I feel a need to share it.

The class system in D&D often comes under fire for certain classes or combinations that arise in the core rules. Some arguments are that a class is too strong, for example there are people that call the warlock, the favored soul, the warmage, or material in the Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, or the Expanded Psionics handbook overpowered. By the same rank there are people who argue that the fighter, sorcerer, Samurai, or Hexblade are far too weak to be effective in the roles that the class was designed for.

The first problem that often comes up with a balance question is what we should consider balance to be. If we mean balanced against each other then the comparison is impossible as each class is very different and has a different set of strengths and weaknesses, so equality is obviously not the way to go if looking for a meaningful comparison. To me balance is each class having a certain niche that they are able to fill and being able to contribute fully to a group without special interventions. I define special interventions as specific DM fiats or houserules made to enhance a character or giving one character disproportionately more treasure or bonuses than anyone else. An example might be if you add in a bunch of penalties to make a particular class useless, if you decide to specifically weaken other classes by constantly hitting their weaknesses and leaving one class alone specifically to allow it to shine or tailoring all encounters to make a certain class or character shine above all the others. This seems like a good way to test balance, see what niche this class fills and see how well it fills it and how effective it is overall.

The question of filling a role is probably where some classes get very difficult to figure out because of how they are designed. One example might be the hexblade, a class that many initially regarded as a sort of gish, in truth it’s a variation on the fighter that uses magic and dirty tricks to weaken foes and thus win in combat. You don’t tank with it and you have to be very careful with chosen spells to ensure that the right combination is chosen. The duskblade is another, closer to a gish it is more of a “Deal lots and lots of damage” class rather than a true mixture of magic and melee. The warlock…the warlock I’m not sure if it was meant to be any one thing, blaster is the most obvious but I’ve seen them used as debuffers, scouts, troubleshooters, all depending on the build that people chose. Casters are similar most people initially see them as mobile artillery pieces, I did myself when I started, after playing for a while I learned the abilities of a caster allowed for battlefield control, total restructuring of a being, and literally thousands of tactical options kept opening up, and more options kept appearing as more spells were created and metamagic feats offered.

Some of the problem that classes face have to do with effectiveness over the long haul of the game. This can change greatly depending on the campaign style but that is usually at least somewhat known at the beginning (If the game is going to be diplomacy heavy intrigue type then the smasher types might have a few issues but they probably knew that going in.) The problem I see is that each class has a sort of curve, not a curve of power but a curve of usefulness. A rogue, for example, will probably find use for themselves throughout the game. The traps will scale with them, and with Use magic Device as a class skill they can pull out a few other options to aid them in their role whatever it may be. A caster has an incredible growth in usefulness, as higher level spells are able to do more and more things both in and out of combat. Martial characters, however, run into some issues. One is that damage stops mattering after a certain point because either the beings faced have such high hitpoint totals or because reaching the enemy to strike them is a task in and of itself. Combat maneuvers have similar issues, tripping stops working at around level 10, disarming fails against beings with natural weapons (quite common at high levels) sundering is usually seen as a bad idea, and tanking only works if you can control all fields of movement and force the enemy to stick to you which you usually cannot. A class can be incredibly ‘powerful’ but I don’t debate power for the purposes of something, what I argue is the overall usefulness of that character.

On the other side of it we have the theoretical versatility or focus of a class. A barbarian is a fairly strong melee class, it is focused heavily on being a damage dealer, the muscle boosting power of rage being a nice springboard as well as helping offset the penalties to hit from power attack (A feat fairly common to most barbarians). A Ranger is also fairly focused either to archery or two weapon fighting and the spells that they have available can amplify their abilities already gained from the granted feats and skills which provide useful amplification. A paladin has abilities which make them a better tank, lay on hand, the ability to remove diseases, not to mention the spells that they gain which can greatly increase their AC, saves, and other bonuses. The paladin also gets the benefits of a mount and can do great things with mounted combat as well. The rogue has abilities which can make them great scouts or assassins depending on the inclination of the person designing the character. The Wizard, Cleric, Sorcerer, and Druid have an advantage in that their class abilities are highly mutable. Each day a caster can choose a new set of spells, making themselves artillery pieces, spies, troubleshooters, debuffers, buffers, healers, melee combatants, battlefield controllers, or some combination thereof depending on what spells they choose. This is a great power because it is effectively an example of constantly expanding class abilities, each new spell provides new tricks and stratagems for someone to use or to find a way to use in concert with other spells. The fighter is the only one I see with a problem, while feats are useful, as mentioned before, class abilities simply count for more, feat chains rarely merge well and many times will not augment previous feats on the chain, just go in a different direction. For example, Power attack, at least in core, has no feats which improve it, you have feats that show you know how to hit harder: Improved Sunder, Improved Bull Rush, Cleave, Great Cleave. Outside of core there are tactical feats and feats like leap attack which actually augment power attack but those feats are exceptions rather than the rule. A class that is made to be able to do anything will often fail unless it can ACCESS everything. This is where many classes fail because unless they are casters or are somehow capable of being able to shift their class abilities around quickly they simply become unfocused messes.

The classes aren’t equal, if they were then the classes would be nonexistent because they would all technically be the same. The basis of balance has to be how much a class can contribute to the party and how effective it is at its job. The other question that has to be answered is how much of a success was devoted to personal ability and how much was devoted to equipment. After all, if a character wins a fight because of their +15 Sword of smitey goodness, +20 Adamantine Mountain plate of Invincibility, and dozens of slotless items then the battle could have been won by anyone with the same gear. It can be hard to prove conclusively but it can do a lot to at least start on the question of how effective the class was. The other issue is the ability to handle multiple challenges, a wizard would likely defer to a rogue to navigate a trapped area, just as the rogue would defer to the wizard in areas of knowledge and secrets, and both would likely defer to the bard in social situations. This is mostly on regular classes, but as I look I think that WotC has realized that some mistakes were made and came up with an easy way to fix the problem, Prestige Classes.

Prestige classes are a new invention from 3rd edition onward and, I believe, a smart one. The prestige classes can be many things, world builders, organizational forces, sources for plot hooks, and also a way to fix bad designs. There are a lot of people on the boards who argue that prestige classes are inherently bad for many reasons, and there are ways to abuse them. But, my own view is that prestige classes are what I like to call a patch for the game, they’re a way to fix problems that crop up without having to rewrite the entire rules system. Some core examples, the Eldritch Knight is a great class for those that want to blend arcane power with combat, to try to create a harmonious blend of physical prowess and arcane might. I also argue that this class is a way to use the archtypical Spellsword without having to create new classes or come up with incredibly convoluted feat chains. It also means that you can bled the two rather than have something that simply won’t mesh as well, a level 10 wizard level 10 fighter won’t blend as well and will end up more a confused mess than anything else. The prestige classes can provide a way to make normally suboptimal choices work. But my main focus with them is their use in fixing problems with classes. Many have argued that the fighter class has issues in it, one of the counter-arguments is that they qualify for many potent prestige classes, I call that a stealth fix. I believe that the people at WotC might have realized a mistake, but what were they to do? They couldn’t rebuild the whole fighter class, and to produce enough feats to make it a truly potent class would be very resource consuming, not to mention that these feats could easily break other classes if used. Instead they design prestige classes based around fighter archetypes or offering new abilities for a style and have a fair amount of feats as a prerequisite. It means that the fighter, while not ‘fixed’ is patched enough that the player can still be useful at high levels. It also meant that if a new class didn’t work as well as intended, or had some unforeseen problems prestige classes could fix them, by having requirements native to a certain class. It also lets WotC keep some things from getting out of control, if the casters are going nuts, Witch slayers and Occult slayers can help against them, almost every new system introduced that could have some issues also has counters built in as prestige classes where the material is introduced or can be countered by pre-existing prestige classes.

The question of DM favoritism can often pop up as well, if a DM doesn’t enforce certain rules, like scribing costs or material components, the casters will be greatly favored. Just as if the DM runs dozens of encounters a day, and sets things up a different way that the characters with unlimited abilities will be favored. If a DM makes a class called the pinmaster and makes a campaign setting called balloon world where only the pinmaster can reliably kill balloon beasts then yes, the pinmaster might seem a viable or even overpowered class, but that is only true for balloon world. A DMs campaign is hard to argue as a sign of how well a class performs or doesn’t perform because house rules, playing style, luck, or even the person playing the class can have a profound impact on how well a class does. Using the generic classes I had an expert known as Crazy Harry, he was very effective even though he had almost no combat abilities, simply because I was smart and Harry could make alchemical items. This meant that I could create boosters and other items to compensate for my weakness and when combined with tactics I was very effective. But in the hands of someone else Harry might have failed, and if the DM didn’t houserule that you no longer needed to use magic to make alchemical items (the campaign was fairly low magic) the concept wouldn’t have worked correctly anyway. A DM can encase cities in antimagic fields, or create devices that give every being damage reduction 20/- or 1000/Bob to compensate for class imbalance it doesn’t change the fact that there are issues with the class and that the DM is flagrantly altering the game or the rules to greatly favor one group or another. I’ve known people who play sorcerers not due to flavor or power, but because when playing wizards they could never buy the spells they needed, almost never succeeded at research, couldn’t trade, and NEVER found a spellbook in the hoard of an enemy, even if that enemy was a wizard themselves.

My own views on this are that things do need to be done but perhaps a better way of looking at things is how. I don’t believe that rewriting each class is the answer because then all that will happen is constant rewrites to fix things as they go which would mean that the game wouldn’t be stable. Instead, new material released can offer new options through feats and prestige classes, and multiclassing options allow for a character to make something that will fit their concept as well as work well mechanically. It also means that the money keeps coming into the company and they can use book sales and feedback as a way to figure out what is working well versus what isn’t and react accordingly. They might not read the boards but I highly doubt that they ignore them entirely either, even looking at main topics and skimming for class theories and ideas they can find some fairly brilliant designs as well as problems that people notice. Their DM material might be iffy as of late but their player material is rock solid. Don’t try to use this as an argument over the nature of optimization versus roleplay because this stuff is independent of that. You can’t use nonmechanical issues to fix mechanical ones or vise versa. Instead use this as a way to better analyze problems that you see and think of how to fix the issues as you see them and why you find it to be important.
Ragix
01-24-07, 08:42 PM I'm a lazy butt, like most americans. I feel that your question (if it could be called that) is far to verbose to properly answer. Could you please post a simplified question? Thanks.
Jenos_Idanian
01-24-07, 09:01 PM It's not so much a question as it is an essay lacking a definite conclusion, although I must say you make some excellent points and that it's all very well laid out.
Archangel62
01-24-07, 11:24 PM Maybe I should have clarified more, I was giving my observations on the class system and internal balance of each in the game. The idea I had was more to spark debate and discussion about the classes and how they work. As well as how we want to define balance and what we mean by effectiveness and power for a class. My reasoning was that with all the information listed people could look at it and argue from that data.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Archangel62 01-24-07, 08:06 PM	I guess that this wasn't good enough for Redgars but I feel a need to share it. The class system in D&D often comes under fire for certain classes or combinations that arise in the core rules. Some arguments are that a class is too strong, for example there are people that call the warlock, the favored soul, the warmage, or material in the Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, or the Expanded Psionics handbook overpowered. By the same rank there are people who argue that the fighter, sorcerer, Samurai, or Hexblade are far too weak to be effective in the roles that the class was designed for. The first problem that often comes up with a balance question is what we should consider balance to be. If we mean balanced against each other then the comparison is impossible as each class is very different and has a different set of strengths and weaknesses, so equality is obviously not the way to go if looking for a meaningful comparison. To me balance is each class having a certain niche that they are able to fill and being able to contribute fully to a group without special interventions. I define special interventions as specific DM fiats or houserules made to enhance a character or giving one character disproportionately more treasure or bonuses than anyone else. An example might be if you add in a bunch of penalties to make a particular class useless, if you decide to specifically weaken other classes by constantly hitting their weaknesses and leaving one class alone specifically to allow it to shine or tailoring all encounters to make a certain class or character shine above all the others. This seems like a good way to test balance, see what niche this class fills and see how well it fills it and how effective it is overall. The question of filling a role is probably where some classes get very difficult to figure out because of how they are designed. One example might be the hexblade, a class that many initially regarded as a sort of gish, in truth it’s a variation on the fighter that uses magic and dirty tricks to weaken foes and thus win in combat. You don’t tank with it and you have to be very careful with chosen spells to ensure that the right combination is chosen. The duskblade is another, closer to a gish it is more of a “Deal lots and lots of damage” class rather than a true mixture of magic and melee. The warlock…the warlock I’m not sure if it was meant to be any one thing, blaster is the most obvious but I’ve seen them used as debuffers, scouts, troubleshooters, all depending on the build that people chose. Casters are similar most people initially see them as mobile artillery pieces, I did myself when I started, after playing for a while I learned the abilities of a caster allowed for battlefield control, total restructuring of a being, and literally thousands of tactical options kept opening up, and more options kept appearing as more spells were created and metamagic feats offered. Some of the problem that classes face have to do with effectiveness over the long haul of the game. This can change greatly depending on the campaign style but that is usually at least somewhat known at the beginning (If the game is going to be diplomacy heavy intrigue type then the smasher types might have a few issues but they probably knew that going in.) The problem I see is that each class has a sort of curve, not a curve of power but a curve of usefulness. A rogue, for example, will probably find use for themselves throughout the game. The traps will scale with them, and with Use magic Device as a class skill they can pull out a few other options to aid them in their role whatever it may be. A caster has an incredible growth in usefulness, as higher level spells are able to do more and more things both in and out of combat. Martial characters, however, run into some issues. One is that damage stops mattering after a certain point because either the beings faced have such high hitpoint totals or because reaching the enemy to strike them is a task in and of itself. Combat maneuvers have similar issues, tripping stops working at around level 10, disarming fails against beings with natural weapons (quite common at high levels) sundering is usually seen as a bad idea, and tanking only works if you can control all fields of movement and force the enemy to stick to you which you usually cannot. A class can be incredibly ‘powerful’ but I don’t debate power for the purposes of something, what I argue is the overall usefulness of that character. On the other side of it we have the theoretical versatility or focus of a class. A barbarian is a fairly strong melee class, it is focused heavily on being a damage dealer, the muscle boosting power of rage being a nice springboard as well as helping offset the penalties to hit from power attack (A feat fairly common to most barbarians). A Ranger is also fairly focused either to archery or two weapon fighting and the spells that they have available can amplify their abilities already gained from the granted feats and skills which provide useful amplification. A paladin has abilities which make them a better tank, lay on hand, the ability to remove diseases, not to mention the spells that they gain which can greatly increase their AC, saves, and other bonuses. The paladin also gets the benefits of a mount and can do great things with mounted combat as well. The rogue has abilities which can make them great scouts or assassins depending on the inclination of the person designing the character. The Wizard, Cleric, Sorcerer, and Druid have an advantage in that their class abilities are highly mutable. Each day a caster can choose a new set of spells, making themselves artillery pieces, spies, troubleshooters, debuffers, buffers, healers, melee combatants, battlefield controllers, or some combination thereof depending on what spells they choose. This is a great power because it is effectively an example of constantly expanding class abilities, each new spell provides new tricks and stratagems for someone to use or to find a way to use in concert with other spells. The fighter is the only one I see with a problem, while feats are useful, as mentioned before, class abilities simply count for more, feat chains rarely merge well and many times will not augment previous feats on the chain, just go in a different direction. For example, Power attack, at least in core, has no feats which improve it, you have feats that show you know how to hit harder: Improved Sunder, Improved Bull Rush, Cleave, Great Cleave. Outside of core there are tactical feats and feats like leap attack which actually augment power attack but those feats are exceptions rather than the rule. A class that is made to be able to do anything will often fail unless it can ACCESS everything. This is where many classes fail because unless they are casters or are somehow capable of being able to shift their class abilities around quickly they simply become unfocused messes. The classes aren’t equal, if they were then the classes would be nonexistent because they would all technically be the same. The basis of balance has to be how much a class can contribute to the party and how effective it is at its job. The other question that has to be answered is how much of a success was devoted to personal ability and how much was devoted to equipment. After all, if a character wins a fight because of their +15 Sword of smitey goodness, +20 Adamantine Mountain plate of Invincibility, and dozens of slotless items then the battle could have been won by anyone with the same gear. It can be hard to prove conclusively but it can do a lot to at least start on the question of how effective the class was. The other issue is the ability to handle multiple challenges, a wizard would likely defer to a rogue to navigate a trapped area, just as the rogue would defer to the wizard in areas of knowledge and secrets, and both would likely defer to the bard in social situations. This is mostly on regular classes, but as I look I think that WotC has realized that some mistakes were made and came up with an easy way to fix the problem, Prestige Classes. Prestige classes are a new invention from 3rd edition onward and, I believe, a smart one. The prestige classes can be many things, world builders, organizational forces, sources for plot hooks, and also a way to fix bad designs. There are a lot of people on the boards who argue that prestige classes are inherently bad for many reasons, and there are ways to abuse them. But, my own view is that prestige classes are what I like to call a patch for the game, they’re a way to fix problems that crop up without having to rewrite the entire rules system. Some core examples, the Eldritch Knight is a great class for those that want to blend arcane power with combat, to try to create a harmonious blend of physical prowess and arcane might. I also argue that this class is a way to use the archtypical Spellsword without having to create new classes or come up with incredibly convoluted feat chains. It also means that you can bled the two rather than have something that simply won’t mesh as well, a level 10 wizard level 10 fighter won’t blend as well and will end up more a confused mess than anything else. The prestige classes can provide a way to make normally suboptimal choices work. But my main focus with them is their use in fixing problems with classes. Many have argued that the fighter class has issues in it, one of the counter-arguments is that they qualify for many potent prestige classes, I call that a stealth fix. I believe that the people at WotC might have realized a mistake, but what were they to do? They couldn’t rebuild the whole fighter class, and to produce enough feats to make it a truly potent class would be very resource consuming, not to mention that these feats could easily break other classes if used. Instead they design prestige classes based around fighter archetypes or offering new abilities for a style and have a fair amount of feats as a prerequisite. It means that the fighter, while not ‘fixed’ is patched enough that the player can still be useful at high levels. It also meant that if a new class didn’t work as well as intended, or had some unforeseen problems prestige classes could fix them, by having requirements native to a certain class. It also lets WotC keep some things from getting out of control, if the casters are going nuts, Witch slayers and Occult slayers can help against them, almost every new system introduced that could have some issues also has counters built in as prestige classes where the material is introduced or can be countered by pre-existing prestige classes. The question of DM favoritism can often pop up as well, if a DM doesn’t enforce certain rules, like scribing costs or material components, the casters will be greatly favored. Just as if the DM runs dozens of encounters a day, and sets things up a different way that the characters with unlimited abilities will be favored. If a DM makes a class called the pinmaster and makes a campaign setting called balloon world where only the pinmaster can reliably kill balloon beasts then yes, the pinmaster might seem a viable or even overpowered class, but that is only true for balloon world. A DMs campaign is hard to argue as a sign of how well a class performs or doesn’t perform because house rules, playing style, luck, or even the person playing the class can have a profound impact on how well a class does. Using the generic classes I had an expert known as Crazy Harry, he was very effective even though he had almost no combat abilities, simply because I was smart and Harry could make alchemical items. This meant that I could create boosters and other items to compensate for my weakness and when combined with tactics I was very effective. But in the hands of someone else Harry might have failed, and if the DM didn’t houserule that you no longer needed to use magic to make alchemical items (the campaign was fairly low magic) the concept wouldn’t have worked correctly anyway. A DM can encase cities in antimagic fields, or create devices that give every being damage reduction 20/- or 1000/Bob to compensate for class imbalance it doesn’t change the fact that there are issues with the class and that the DM is flagrantly altering the game or the rules to greatly favor one group or another. I’ve known people who play sorcerers not due to flavor or power, but because when playing wizards they could never buy the spells they needed, almost never succeeded at research, couldn’t trade, and NEVER found a spellbook in the hoard of an enemy, even if that enemy was a wizard themselves. My own views on this are that things do need to be done but perhaps a better way of looking at things is how. I don’t believe that rewriting each class is the answer because then all that will happen is constant rewrites to fix things as they go which would mean that the game wouldn’t be stable. Instead, new material released can offer new options through feats and prestige classes, and multiclassing options allow for a character to make something that will fit their concept as well as work well mechanically. It also means that the money keeps coming into the company and they can use book sales and feedback as a way to figure out what is working well versus what isn’t and react accordingly. They might not read the boards but I highly doubt that they ignore them entirely either, even looking at main topics and skimming for class theories and ideas they can find some fairly brilliant designs as well as problems that people notice. Their DM material might be iffy as of late but their player material is rock solid. Don’t try to use this as an argument over the nature of optimization versus roleplay because this stuff is independent of that. You can’t use nonmechanical issues to fix mechanical ones or vise versa. Instead use this as a way to better analyze problems that you see and think of how to fix the issues as you see them and why you find it to be important.
Ragix 01-24-07, 08:42 PM	I'm a lazy butt, like most americans. I feel that your question (if it could be called that) is far to verbose to properly answer. Could you please post a simplified question? Thanks.
Jenos_Idanian 01-24-07, 09:01 PM	It's not so much a question as it is an essay lacking a definite conclusion, although I must say you make some excellent points and that it's all very well laid out.
Archangel62 01-24-07, 11:24 PM	Maybe I should have clarified more, I was giving my observations on the class system and internal balance of each in the game. The idea I had was more to spark debate and discussion about the classes and how they work. As well as how we want to define balance and what we mean by effectiveness and power for a class. My reasoning was that with all the information listed people could look at it and argue from that data.