PrC shouldn't take more than one 'detour' level to enter.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well, something like 80% of the D&D games I have been involved in saw no more than 3 total levels of advancement during the game.

Which does mean that anything tailored to even moderately specific builds is either going to be something players start with in a game that starts at mid-high level or is something that players never get to use at all - which really makes it rather a waste.

[Username17]

Well, something like 80% of the D&D games I have been involved in saw no more than 3 total levels of advancement during the game.

Which does mean that anything tailored to even moderately specific builds is either going to be something players start with in a game that starts at mid-high level or is something that players never get to use at all - which really makes it rather a waste.

+1.

I've seen games that went 6 or even 10 levels. I've played in them and run them. But they are very rare.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

My own campaigns always run a long time, but we handle this problem by allowing free resets - people can retrain their characters, swapping skills, feats and classes, as long as the "core" remains the same (You'd not be able to rebuild a barbarian as an archmage since that would violate consistency, but swapping a barbarian for a warblade or a duellist for a swordsage will be treated as "was always a warblade/swordsage").

[hogarth]

I'd rather see most prestige classes retooled as alternate class features (i.e. you give up class feature X in order to get class feature Y instead). I dislike the philosophy of "Invest in a bunch of garbage now and you'll get something super-awesome later" (e.g. the Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil). Prestige classes should be about doing some things better and some things worse, not doing some things better and nothing worse (but it's OK because I wasted a feat on Spell Focus [Abjuration]).

[MGuy]

I agree with Hogarth. But then again I hate prestige classes to begin with and would rather see the whole lot of them tossed out the window and turned into selectable class features.

[mean_liar]

Custom, campaign-and-player-specific PrCs with easy/non-existent prereqs, and theme-sustaining character rewrites/rebuilds to suit the dominant power level of the PCs combine to cover off most of the egregious negative elements of RAW/RAI DnD.

[Judging__Eagle]

I've always favored the "free training" model. I've tried to make my game settings such that the players can come in with characters of any level, and know roughly the setting, their character's mentalities, etc. easier, and ahead of time.

[Psychic Robot]

While this is somewhat off-topic, I hate prestige classes in 3e. Not that I don't like the concept very much--I really like the concept of prestige classes and how they serve to make viable some character concepts. What I dislike about them is that they lead to the inevitable "messy character sheet" of Wizard 8/Fighter 1/Eldritch Knight 10/Spellsword 1. That irritates me on an aesthetic level, and I hate it. The other part about PrCs that I dislike is that you're forced to play in the game for a certain amount of time before you actually get to fill out your character's mechanical concept. Let's take the Eldritch Knight as an example.

The basic premise of the class is a wizard who can fight. That's a good thing--the sword-swinging wizard is a fantasy trope that should be supported. The problem is the prerequisites.

a) Must be able to cast third-level arcane spells.
b) Must have proficiency with all martial weapons.

The obvious intent of the class is to go fighter 1/wizard 5. But that's the problem right there: you have to be six levels into the game before you can take the class (and God help you if you're playing a sorcerer). When you finally get your first level in the class you get the equivalent of a fighter level with a lower HD.

A +4 BAB at level 7 just isn't that impressive. On top of that, you have the spellcasting ability of a wizard two levels behind you. You have to get several levels further into the class to "catch up" with everyone else.

That, right there, is the problem. In my current game, we've been playing over a year and we've just reached level 8. That means that if I had wanted to play a gish, I would still not be able to play in the mechanical fashion that I wanted. Now, I know that some of that is "gaining power over time" and "training with fighters to gradually learn how to fight" and blah-blah-blah. A year of playing is still a year of playing. And while the wait could be alleviated by leveling faster, not all DMs are going to do that.

Now, as I finally return from my meandering to the actual point...

I dislike PrCs because they take so darn long to help you realize a mechanical concept. I am a firm believer in making up base classes for every character concept. The problem with that, though, is that a) not everyone has the time or energy to create unique classes for every players, and b) not everyone is comfortable creating their own homebrew stuff. Most people just want to play with what they're given, and PrCs are what they're given.

TL;DR: Eldritch knight should be a base class.

[mean_liar]

I see a lot of complaints about leveling progress... I haven't really ever encountered that. The games I've been in still don't make it to 18+, typically dying around 13 or so, but based on a weekly play schedule they still manage to achieve teens regularly.

What gives? Are you in games with underclocked enemies? Nerfed or arbitrary (and slow) leveling?

[hogarth]

I see a lot of complaints about leveling progress... I haven't really ever encountered that. The games I've been in still don't make it to 18+, typically dying around 13 or so, but based on a weekly play schedule they still manage to achieve teens regularly.

What gives? Are you in games with underclocked enemies? Nerfed or arbitrary (and slow) leveling?

I can't speark for anyone else, but my face-to-face gaming schedule is probably closer to monthly than weekly.

[Josh_Kablack]

The games I've been in still don't make it to 18+, typically dying around 13 or so, but based on a weekly play schedule they still manage to achieve teens regularly.

What gives? Are you in games with underclocked enemies? Nerfed or arbitrary (and slow) leveling?

Sometimes both. Sometimes heavy roleplaying sessions, sometimes DMs who divide XP share between NPC allies as well as PCs. (heck 3.0 cohort rules explicitly had cohorts get half shares of the party XP)

But in 3.x the RAW assumptions are:

• 13.3 encounters per level
• no more than one level per session

Now, let's consider one of the most common gaming set-ups in my experience: a group that meets for 4-6 hours every weekend at the student union throughout the semester.

This year, such a group would be around from Aug 31st until Dec 11th (with some members likely around one additional weekend before or as many as two additional weekends afterwards, (some folks just have projects and in-class finals, others get shafted with exams on the saturday of finals week) but not the whole group)

That gives them 14 sessions.

The first session is going to be mainly hellos, game recruitment and chargen. If folks are new to the system, this could even take 2 sessions. Even for 1st level 3.x characters.

One week is lost to the thanksgiving day holiday. This gives them 12 sessions.

At least one more week is going to be lost to other holidays (halloween parties this year), illness, needing to focus on academics, family visits, and/or drama. Just assuming each participant only misses one week means the DM also misses a week, which only leave 10 weeks of advancement for each character.

That's 10 sessions for each player and a max of 10 levels during the semester.

The highly variable part is the number of encounters per session.

Most groups I have played with in the past decade have used maps, terrain and minis, so set-up time in notable and encounters are intricate, but other groups just draw a couple Xs and Os on the chalkboard and turbo grind. In my experience, I would assume an average of maybe 5 encounters per session. Yeah some sessions have way more, but then other sessions have big chunks of time spent in non-encounter activities like RPing Rob's character's ill-advised affair with the Elven Princess or wondering when the hell Steve is going to show up so the adventure pegged to his character can start.

Let's go with the assumptions of 6.67 encounters per session at an average of a fair CR. That translates to a level every other session, which seems to be an advancement rate that nobody's going to call way too fast nor stupidly slow. However, that generates a whopping 5 levels per semester. And that's assuming that nobody spends XP on items, spells or has level loss occur in game.

And while more than a few of those games manage to run both fall and spring semester, for the potential to advance ten levels, it's notably less than half of those games which run even the entire fall semester. I'm serious when I tell you that Collin finally getting a girlfriend was a bigger loss to the hobby than Gary Gygax's passing. But a game that ends halfway through the semester (ie after initial report cards or midterms) is highly unlikely to advance more than 3 levels.

****

The odd thing about that whole rant, is that even now that my game group is older, and mostly not-in-school anymore, the general patterns tend to hold - enough weekly games never make it past the first month or two that the games which do stand out as memorable for that reason alone.

[Emerald]

I'm running a game at college this semester, pretty much as Josh described--though we're all in the same dorm and know each other from last year, so meetup and chargen is significantly faster. Because 6 of my 8 players only have one prior campaign under their belts, and because we're trying to let every DM run at least one campaign, my current group has ditched the XP system and decided to just level every session. (Since the one or two battles we might have in a session are huge horde/powerful boss/etc. intense battles, we'd probably level every session anyway, so we might as well not bother with exactly what the XP total is and figure that on the fly for item creation and so forth.)

Even with this leveling setup, which with my home group I'd call ridiculously fast, we miss several sessions and only made it to level 20 the last campaign because the DM said "Okay, you get 6 more levels through divine intervention before the big finish" to let people see what really high level play is like. When I'm not under time pressure or a round-robin DM schedule, my home group usually takes about a full year of weekly sessions to go from 3rd to 16th or thereabouts.

[mean_liar]

...When I'm not under time pressure or a round-robin DM schedule, my home group usually takes about a full year of weekly sessions to go from 3rd to 16th or thereabouts.

This is usually what I'm used to. Campaigns last roughly a year or so; the few that went longer are still generating laughing reminiscence, years later.