The Dragon’s Breath #22

26 November 2003

Adding Prestige Part I:
Making the Class

by Claudio Pozas

Creating a Prestige Class is a risky endeavour. It is hard to determine if that cool class you just made up is balanced or not. Having quite a few Prestige Classes under my belt, I eventually developed a working system for building Prestige Classes.

Step One: Determine the Theme

The first thing you have to do is think about your Prestige Class’ theme. Try and boil it down to a simple multiclass progression. For my example, I will create the Battledancer, an elven warrior that blends warfare, art and magic. In its most basic form, it is a variant Fighter/Wizard, so let’s start at that.

Step Two: The Build-up

Next, put together a class table using the multiclass progression you settled upon. For our proto-battledancer, the table looks like this:

Fighter/Wizard

What does this table show us? This is, in theory, a Prestige Class with no pre-requisites (you could even enter it at 1^st level). It has average base attack bonus, saves that can rounded to good Fortitude and Will, with poor Reflex. It grants, over 10 levels, proficiency in all armor and shields, and with all simple and martial weapons,  three bonus feats from the fighter list and one bonus metamagic or item creation feat. It advances your arcane spellcasting power by five levels, and also gives you a familiar that advances (albeit slowly). It has a "d7" for Hit Dice and 2 skill points per level. All this for zero prerequisites.

Step Three: Requisitioning

Next, sit down and think what kind of abilities all members of this class, no matter their background, should have. Does this prestige class require some combat experience? Mastery of some skill? Some additional trick (represented by feats)?

For our battledancer, I settled upon these requirements:

-          Race: Elf or Half-Elf. This is an elven prestige class, after all.

-          Base Attack Bonus: +4. This is a good benchmark, since with this experience a fighter can already have Weapon Specialization.

-          Spells: Ability to cast arcane spells, which must include cat’s grace and bull’s strength. The overall theme of the class is a warrior that augments his skill with magic, and these spells are perfect fits for the theme. This also requires at least a Wizard 3 or a Sorcerer 4. Since I want Bards to be able to qualify, I’ll drop bull’s strength.

-          Skills: Concentration 4, Perform (dance) 3, Tumble 3. A bard or rogue will have an easier time meeting these requirements, but well-spent skill points can help even a fighter meet these requirements.

-          Feats: Combat Casting, Martial Weapon Proficiency (rapier) and Weapon Finesse are a must for this class, since I want the quick rapier to be its hallmark. Dodge, Light Armor Proficiency and Still Spell are the final feats that round out the feat selection well, since they pave the way for class features down the road I’m already thinking of. Any elf fulfills the rapier proficiency prerequisite, and a rogue or bard can fulfill the weapon and armor prerequisites. Of course, fighters, rangers, barbarians and paladins breeze through these requirements.

These requirements can be met by a Fighter 3/Wizard 3, or Rogue 5/Wizard 3 or even by a Bard 9, so while steep, they can be met at reasonable levels.

Step 4: Cards on the Table

Now that the requirements are settled, you can go back to the original table and start tweaking it to compensate for the difficulty to enter the class. Avoid giving the prestige class abilities granted by core classes, since these can be claimed by multiclassing into those. The point here is flavor. Don’t be afraid to be specific here, since the whole point of prestige classes is to specialize.

Here are the abilities I want to give to the battledancer:

-          Add Intelligence to Armor Class when lightly armored: This encourages characters with high Intelligence scores to enter the class, and prevents full plate wearers from breaking the rules.

-          Use spells in light armor: Like the bard, this helps portray the "warriors that augment their skill with magic" idea.

-          Make it easier to cast spells in combat. That’s the whole point.

-          Cast spells through the rapier. That’s just fun.

-          Bonus feats that encourage acrobatic combat, like Mobility and Whirlwind Attack.

-          Increase in spellcasting power: if spellcasting is a requirement to enter the class, don’t give it a new spell progression. The class should advance any spellcasting it requires to qualify.

As for the numerical part, let’s extrapolate from our proto-class:

-          The proto-class has average base attack, but I want to increase it to good, since this class must be really skilled in battle, and the required 5 Wizard levels already penalizes this aspect.

-          The "d7" for Hit Dice can be rounded to a d8 or a d6. Let’s look at this again later.

-          The class doesn’t really scream good Fortitude and Will. Let’s put good Reflex and Will instead.

-          As for the skill points, we want a class with decent skill choices, so let’s increase this to 4, which is the same as the monk, and less than the bard or ranger.

If I want to do all this, I’ll have to make the class worse than our proto-class in some aspect. Since I don’t it want to rely too heavily on spellcasting, I’ll add only four spellcasting increases to the table, instead of the five in the proto-class. Also, the class won’t add any familiar abilities.

When distributing the abilities on the table, try and keep it consistent, with regular intervals. I coupled the battledancer’s abilities into three groups: battledance (which are non-magical and combat oriented), spelldance (which relate to spells) and spellcasting increase. I chose to start with a battledance and a spellcasting increase, then rotate among spelldance, battledance and spellcasting increase.

Next week, the full prestige class, complete with roleplaying background!

Next Week: As promised, the finished battledancer!

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