Do you think people are just tired of splatbooks after the 3.5 era, after seeing what the never-ending splatbook nuclear arms prestige class race ultimately lead to, and are thankful for good interesting core classes that can be played to high level, and want to just stick with them?  Does the Pathfinder RPG mark the new age of far less prestige classes?

Other reasons may be we are all older now, who played through the 3.x era, and can pick and choose what we want a bit more discriminatingly, and are less reliant on splatbooks for game mechanic related things? Ideas are always good to glean, but game mechanic stuff like prestige classes, less so?  That seems to be a lot of what I am seeing in the other thread I started on getting older...

Also, just going back to core is maybe scratching that grognard itch?

Quote from: Joethelawyer;335728Do you think people are just tired of splatbooks after the 3.5 era, after seeing what the never-ending splatbook nuclear arms prestige class race ultimately lead to, and are thankful for good interesting core classes that can be played to high level, and want to just stick with them?  Does the Pathfinder RPG mark the new age of far less prestige classes?

Other reasons may be we are all older now, who played through the 3.x era, and can pick and choose what we want a bit more discriminatingly, and are less reliant on splatbooks for game mechanic related things? Ideas are always good to glean, but game mechanic stuff like prestige classes, less so?  That seems to be a lot of what I am seeing in the other thread I started on getting older...

Also, just going back to core is maybe scratching that grognard itch?

Splatbooks are alive and well in 4E. The 3.5E splatbook arms race was interrupted by WotC not publishing any more 3.5E books.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;335730Splatbooks are alive and well in 4E. The 3.5E splatbook arms race was interrupted by WotC not publishing any more 3.5E books.

But did that interruption force us to be a bit introspective, take a look around, and realize "Shit, prestige classes are a pain in the ass.  Who needs them and the kind of game they lead to."

While there are popular games there will be splatbooks, that is a given. It is also what drives the success of most big RPG companies.  I'm sure that Paizo won't be long in pumping out splatbooks for Pathfinder.

thecasualoblivion has rightly pointed out that they are and well in 4E. Indeed I would suggest they have taken splatbook approach even further given that the PHB2 is virtually considered core due to the paucity of options in PHB1.

Quote from: Fiasco;335737While there are popular games there will be splatbooks, that is a given. It is also what drives the success of most big RPG companies.  I'm sure that Paizo won't be long in pumping out splatbooks for Pathfinder.

thecasualoblivion has rightly pointed out that they are and well in 4E. Indeed I would suggest they have taken splatbook approach even further given that the PHB2 is virtually considered core due to the paucity of options in PHB1.

The point of my question is as to prestige classes specifically, not spaltbooks in general.  Or are prestige classes so integral to splatbook sales that they can not be left out?

Quote from: Joethelawyer;335736But did that interruption force us to be a bit introspective, take a look around, and realize "Shit, prestige classes are a pain in the ass.  Who needs them and the kind of game they lead to."

I think most 3E players realized this years ago. I did. Didn't need an interruption to tell me this. Notice how 4E has brought this concept into line.

For 4E, the new version of Prestige Classes is one of the lesser features of the splatbooks. The biggest thing in the 4E splatbooks are the new feats, followed by new powers with Paragon Paths a distant third, possibly 4th behind new class features.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;335741I think most 3E players realized this years ago. I did. Didn't need an interruption to tell me this.

That may be---but was Pathfinder the impetus many needed to finally say "No more" ?  A natural break with the past in some ways which justifies putting an end to them?  A way to justify getting off the treadmill?

Quote from: Joethelawyer;335728Do you think people are just tired of splatbooks after the 3.5 era, after seeing what the never-ending splatbook nuclear arms prestige class race ultimately lead to, and are thankful for good interesting core classes that can be played to high level, and want to just stick with them?  Does the Pathfinder RPG mark the new age of far less prestige classes?

WAY too early to tell, though I expect these things to work in cycles. Right now, people are still burnt out on the 3.5 splatbooks and don't really want a new shitload of the same prestige classes converted yet again (as they were from 3.0 to 3.5), this time for Pathfinder RPG. They may never get over this feeling, particularly if or when they realize they can do the conversions themselves from the Complete books, for instance.

It's hard to tell what the future is made of. What I *hope* is that there will still be prestige classes produced out there, but more in the spirit of what they were meant to be, that is, specific mechanical representations of teachings and organizations in various game worlds, some ways in which the characters can tie themselves mechanically to groups and factions encountered during the campaign.

Time will tell. It may evolve either way, IMO.

People want more stuff, and people want the treadmill. The treadmill predates 3E, as while it didn't take the same form it took in 3E the Complete Handbooks of 2E were very popular and a big part of the game. White Wolf games have also gotten a fair amount of mileage out of the treadmill, though their splatbooks have a much higher ratio of fluff than WotC splats.

The treadmill is a sign of a living game. Once Pathfinder becomes routine, Pathfinder players will start demanding new stuff.

Some people have undobutedly had enough. There will always be plenty who want more, however, and like them or hate them, they are the life blood of RPGs.

I take you point that you are referring only to prestige classes, however.  Personally I wouldn't be too sorry to see them die out a little.  They are, however, a very handy mechanic for building highly diverse characters (diverse in allowing the player an incredibly rich field of choices for the type of character they envision).

They would be better accepted if you could buy them dirt-cheap, one at a time, as PDFs.  Like, say, a 4-page PDF for $1 that had a single PrC in it.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;335777They would be better accepted if you could buy them dirt-cheap, one at a time, as PDFs.  Like, say, a 4-page PDF for $1 that had a single PrC in it.

I don't know about that. Almost every 3.x and d20 game I've heard of locally avoided them like the plague.

I only had 1 player in over a year of d20 system gaming take prestige classes.

That was in T20 Traveller... and he took it during CGen to be an Ace Pilot. But he'd had to take Skill Focus (Pilot) in order to get it... and was an 8 term PC.

In my 5 mo of D&D 3.0, my players rejected the idea of prestige classes.

I got nothing against prestige classes or splatbooks. Personaly I have no use for them as I prefer to create my own stuff or adopt the free stuff made by some other afficionado of whichever game I'm playing.

My only beef with the "age of prestige" is the tendency some companies have shown of releasing the aforementioned splatbooks to the near-exclusion of everything else, particulary adventures, which are my favorite form of product.

I don't think this tendency will end unless the buying public chooses to vote with their feet. That simple.

I never had a major problem with PrCs.  They were like 2nd/3rd careers in Warhammer.  

However, I far prefer how 4e Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies add to the core class instead of replacing it.

Whether the Pathfinder RPG supplement line will stop the proliferation of prestige classes remains to be seen. I think it's a safe bet that Paizo won't go as nearly insane on them as WotC did.

What's more, Paizo approaches the whole concept of a prestige class on completely different grounds. The prestige classes we're all familiar with from the 3.5. DMG got a solid nerf, and they were also redesigned flavour-wise. (Whence the howling on some boards, including paizo.com, when the reworked prestige classes were first released as a free web enhancement.) Take the Assassin. The whole point of that prestige class in 3.5. was to enable a rogue to dabble in spell casting. Well guess what, no spell casting for Pathfinder assassins. Why is that? Here's my guesses. Once again (as I said in my other lengthy post) the Pathfinder RPG wants to reward people who stick to class archetypes. Just as a wizard out-rogueing the rogue by recourse to the knock spell is a thing of the past, so a rogue getting wizard-y (if ever so slightly, certainly no danger of "out-wizarding" the pure caster) by cherry picking prestige classes is a thing of the past. Compared to 3.5, the difference between pursuing the rogue base class and pursuing the assassin prestige class has been narrowed considerably in the Pathfinder RPG - both in terms of flavour and in terms of power creep.

It's things like these which will lead, not exactly to a diminishing amount of prestige class material in Pathfinder books, but to their diminishing value in terms of class progression to a player. And with a detraction of value comes a detraction in their frequency in the game. Frankly, there's no other way to make core classes viable to play beyond level 5.

I'll be curious to return to this debate in a year's time, of course.