# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > D&D 3e/3.5e/d20 >  Problems with High-Level PrCs

## Coeruleum

Classes such as archmage, hierophant, and archpsion kind of annoy me. Instead of just giving high-level casters and manifesters the option to take class features instead of a bonus feat or extra spells or something, it's giving people class features that don't look that good at a steep cost and pretending it's a new class. Shouldn't a high-level mage be an archmage without having to take levels in "Archmage?" Especially since, without the +6 Spell Power in 3.5e, the cost seems kind of too steep for most builds and almost all the features only help blasters or a very few counterspell builds. Hierophant is even worse, since they're trading all of their divine spells for possibly five out of twenty non-epic levels to be more martial-like, when Miracle is strictly better than Wish. Arch Psion [sic] is the easiest straight upgrade to see, since they're paying power points rather than slots and high-level psions have points to spare, or they even take the innate ability that has no point cost unlike the arcane version, and many more psions will want psionic meditation than arcane casters will want spell focus in two schools of magic in the first place. Why didn't they just give an option for most spellcasters and manifesters to have more class features in the first place instead of trying to make up for it by having an extremely vanilla PrC that might not add anything to most builds? I would use Arch Psion on all pure psionic builds and many theurged builds mostly because there's a feat tax of one instead of a feat tax of 2 or 3 (even willing takers of Spell Focus probably only take it in one school usually in favor of Greater Spell Focus.) Hierophant doesn't seem great until after you got your 9th-level cleric or druid spells and even then I don't think you'd want all five levels unless you're epic. Archmage seems really meh in general except for blasters since it's not even like arcane casters are the good counterspellers compared to divine casters, and the spell slot cost makes it seem too restrictive for wizards so it works out to be more of a sorcerer prestige class than anything, though for non-blasters, maybe one or two levels of Spell-Like Ability could be used on a transmog build that's also overwhelmingly likely to be a sorcerer. 

Then, 3.5e is Open Games License so I can probably publish my own fixes to the core classes as much as I want and ban silly "prestige classes" that don't do what they're supposed to at my table. The thing that makes me sad is how much it seems like Wizards of the Coast's content is still used despite some of it being barely better than the worst overpowered Super God of Everything homebrewed content you see sometimes. What's kind of worse is that all the really straight power increase content tends to be tied to the Forgotten Realms setting and its authors, who also wrote settings like Golarion for Pathfinder that seem to be plagued with the same "bigger numbers = more interesting gameplay, somehow" idea.

----------


## Zanos

You don't need to be an Archmage to be an archmage in setting, any more than you need to be a Knight to be a knight, or a Gladiator to be a gladiator.

That said Archmage is very good and you're underestimating it. Reach is a +2 metamagic for free, and can be taken twice for 60ft range on touch spells. Shaping is good for even non-blasters, since it lets you exclude allies from control spells. Elements is okay even for non-blasters, since it's nice to prep a fireball or two and be able to change it to any element as needed on the fly. Spell Power is just okay, and fire and counterspelling and mostly useless. SLA has some cheese around it but I usually don't find it worth taking.

----------


## AsuraKyoko

Hierophant is usually pretty bad, though it has some uses, usually as a dip very late in a build One actual case for it that I've found is actually Ur-Priest, particularly on non-arcane caster builds. It's nice for that specifically because it progresses your caster level beyond the baseline 10 that Ur-Priest gets you, and it doesn't cost you spell progression. Its abilities are in the same vein as Archmage, and there's some nice stuff in there.

As a Druid, a 1 level dip in Hierophant is actually pretty cool, since Power of Nature allows you to pass out your class features to other creatures, so you can give your whole party the ability to Wild Shape as a Druid of your level. _Debatably_, this could include external improvements to Wild Shape from a class like Planar Shepard or Master of Many Forms.

*Spoiler: Aside on wild shape improvements*
Show

I _think_ there is a better argument for Planar Shepard, since its improvements to Wild Shape are listed as Wild Shape, as an addition to the part of the ability that says the levels stack with druid. Master of Many Forms gives its improvements as a separately named ability.

I don't actually know what the consensus there is on this, though. Regardless, even baseline Wild Shape is quite powerful to be able to hand out to anyone you want.


Honestly, though, I think that Hierophant could just fully progress spellcasting and it would be totally fine, and that Archmage's prerequisites could be relaxed a fair bit (like dropping a couple of the prereq feats).

Actually, speaking of Archmage, I'm a really big fan of how it gives a trade-off for its abilities. Rather than doing what many casting PrCs do and lose casting progression levels (which is increasingly painful as your level increases), you instead trade in spell slots for specific abilities. This is a very nice approach, since it allows for each ability to be "priced" appropriately. I really wish taht they had done that for a lot more prestige classes, as opposed to making a bunch of crappy caster classes that lose too much casting progression to ever really be worth it.

----------


## Thunder999

SLA on archmage is great, you can effectively trade a 5th level slot for a 9th level one, assuming there's a 9th level spell you intend to cast twice a day every day. Usually there is, it's really hard to go wrong with a pair of Time Stops, Shapechanges (only material components are a problem, you just get to skip the focus, which is nice albeit minor), o perhaps you might even just be a fan of a less powerful but still useful 9th level option like Maw of Chaos (no save uncapped untyped damage with a Daze rider every turn is pretty nice, a very fun readied action or celerity powered 'counterspell' not much is passing the concentration check from 20d6 damage, though I'd never personally commit this hard to it)

----------


## Maat Mons

It basically all boils down to sensibilities influenced by earlier editions.  Base classes are full of dead levels because the numeric increases were thought to be significant features.  Prestige classes are underwhelming to keep from upstaging the lackluster base classes.

----------


## RandomPeasant

The reason to take PrCs instead of giving base classes more class features is mostly that PrCs are right there with a bunch of pre-written class features, so it's sort of a waste of time to go write up a bunch of stuff so that you can get your naturalistic progression from "mage" to "archmage" rather than just accepting that the Wizard is going to go into Mage of the Arcane Order and then Archmage and get some neat tricks if they want to be a generalist caster. I am a strong supporter of bumping PrCs up to full progression so you don't need to make awkward tradeoffs (though, yes, trading spell slots is more balanced, but it is also more work which is sort of the whole point), but mostly "caster PrCs work in a way that is arguably not ideal" is not even in the top 10 things I would want 3.5 houserules to fix.

----------


## Biggus

> Hierophant is usually pretty bad, though it has some uses, usually as a dip very late in a build


Yeah, you generally take Hierophant after you've got 9th-level spells. The advantage of it over Archmage is that you've probably already got all the prerequisites by the time you want to take it.

Also, at epic levels it becomes much better because you no longer have spell progression to lose.

----------


## Coeruleum

> Yeah, you generally take Hierophant after you've got 9th-level spells. The advantage of it over Archmage is that you've probably already got all the prerequisites by the time you want to take it.
> 
> Also, at epic levels it becomes much better because you no longer have spell progression to lose.


Yeah. This was mostly started because I was considering not taking Archmage on a gestalt theurge build because of the prereqs. Like, I literally couldn't take any metamagic feats or any permanent supernatural abilities at all and I'd still have to use my human bonus feat for prereqs. What's the good of paying three feats which I'll never use for metamagic abilities that also cost a spell slot and only affect wizard as opposed to just taking metamagic abilities as a feat and being able to use them on both my classes? Archmage might just be genuinely kind of bad for some theurge builds because of those prereqs. If the "any two spell focus feats" were "any two metamagic feats" it'd be a lot easier to get into but I'd still not consider it much more than a slight upgrade unless you built to blast, just Skill Focus (Spellcraft) would be much less heavy of a feat tax than three feats to trade out your spells for metamagics rather than just taking three metamagic feats. 

And yeah not losing spell progression once you're epic is great. And some casting builds can probably eat one or maybe rarely even three levels but probably not all five until they're epic since delaying by 3 is the most you can do and still get 9th-level before epic, and you're not trading those for really anything besides more martial abilities.

----------


## Darg

The DMG PRCs were designed to be templates, not taken as is. So it's not really surprising that they suck in general.

----------

