RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1087007657[/unixtime]]PrCs don't need to exist AT ALL for fighters. Feats alone should be able to cover most anything you want to do.
PrCs are simply an excuse to stop work on fixing the fighter and barbarian classes.
I agree that the Core classes need work, but I strongly disagree that PrCs don't need to exist for fighters and that everything should be done with feats. (Unless you are asserting that PrCs don't need to exist at all, which is a seperate argument)
If you ask me, all Fighter Type PrCs should be like the Frenzied Berserker, but all official PrCs should be roughly equal in overall power to similiar Core Class/Multiclass Builds.
From a DM view, Fighter-PrCs should exist to
- Represent influential organizations or fighting styles in his game world
- Provide game-mechanical rewards for players who can mesh their character concepts with those organizations or styles, thereby promoting game-world cohesion and PC involvement.
- Reward players who have a narrow character concept with additional bonuses towards advancing that concept at the expense of character versatility
- Provide a band-aid fix or flavor shift to mechanics that the DM doesn't like, but doesn't want to make major changes to. For example: want the whip to be a primo weapon, but don't want everybody taking it? Just include a Fedoraed Archaeoligist PrC who gets bonuses to performing all those crazy whip manuevers, can use his whip for movement purposes and gets to hurt things with natural armor, and bingo it's fixed enough for you without needing to errata any of the Core Rules for it.
From a Player View, PrCs should exist to
- Provide your character with more specific choices than do Core Classes.
- Reward your character for concentrating on one particular choice instead of diversifying.
- Reward your character for completing lengthy story elements (ie special prereqs)
Even if you want to do everything as feats, their should still be Fighter PrCs which allow characters to advance a given concept further by giving out specific bonus feats faster than the fighter gets selectable bonus feats at a cost of specific feats for prerequisites. That's not to clear, so let me use an example. The hypothetical "Nifty Cavilier" is a mounted combat type PrC for fighters. It should be identical (or at least balance-wise equal) to the fighter core class in what it grants, save that it should grant X specific mounted combat feats, where X is equal to the number of prerequisite mounted combat feats it requires. Thus a Nifty Cavilier is X feats better than a fighter at mounted combat, but X feats worse than a fighter at doing things other than mounted combat. PrC design like this does mean that PrCs are more powerful than core classes, but only within their specific niche, and their specific focus means that they are worse than core classes in other areas. This rewards specific character concepts without unfairly punishing players who have more general concepts.