Prestige Classes, Power Creep and DM Autonomy

So recently the Slovenly Trulls (who I love) did an episode where they tried to puzzle out the purpose of and general role of prestige classes in 3E/3.5E, and why they might have some caveats like “only if your DM approves” and “must stay in x region”.¹

As an old white man who spent too much of his youth reading shit for nerds, I naturally had to rush in and write way too many words. But hey, they like sources and explanations… I hope.

In the beginning…

The 1st Edition Bard was the peak of unattainable and OP, so much so that in the novel Azure Bonds² one is revealed to have been playing God… for a literal god (Moander), then later he becomes a god… and it all fits perfectly within lore and pretty much nobody questions it.

This is not a joke, when we are first introduced to the character he has no name… specifically because the bards among the Harpers punished him by erasing his name and all memory of him from the world. Bards could do that kind of thing in 1st Edition…. at least NPC ones could.

Basic D&D

Basic D&D has the dubious honour of being the game that first proposed that just being a dwarf, an elf, or a halfling was basically the same as having a difficult profession such as a Fighter, Wizard or a Thief.

Yes, back in the day Dwarf was a variant of Fighter, halfling was a variant of Thief, and elf was Fighter/Wizard combo. This was as far as mixing and matching classes went… you may commence the speculation on the why.

Bards kind of existed in this but as the most convoluted class possible, and only if you happened to obtain The Strategic Review, Vol. 2, No. 1.³

AD&D (1st Edition)

AD&D provided both the underlying premise, that there were variants of classes, and also two alternatives… one of which was actually the theoretical path to godhood since it’s how you became a Bard.

Subclasses

AD&D referred many classes are derivative of others. Rangers and paladins were types of fighters you needed special stats to get, druids were a special type of cleric, illusionists were a type of magic-user, etc.

So, this enforced two things – one is that it the game was determined to be unplayable and unfun if you rolled poorly at the start… and two that there were types of core classes.

To try to balance this out, difference classes needed different volumes of experience points than others – so if you only qualified for one of the plebian classes… at least you got to level up faster before you died.

“Dual” classing

If, IF, you rolled very lucky stats and had multiple 15+ scores in your sheet AND you had elected to become a human or half-elf, and you campaigned long enough without being perma-death you could… according to the rules, change professions.⁴

Then, once you attained an equal or higher level in your current profession as you had in your previous professions… which of course meant, in the interim you were operating at a disadvantage compared to your single class party members. Generally there was also no real benefit to the party to doing this, since this the system tended to punish unbalanced parties.

(I scare quoted Dual because it was statistically improbable you’d get to do more than one class – becoming a Bard required: Fighter (5-8 levels), Thief (5-9 levels) and then training to be Druid… but you magically became a Bard instead.⁵

So largely the only “dual” classed characters were NPCs like Elminster the Sage and Tenser (the first Fighter Wizard, played by Ernie Gygax… Ernie is extremely proud of this and will tell literally anyone about it). Otherwise it was the domain of idle conversations, and suspect “I this is my character from a different campaign… I can just play them in this one right…”

Multi-classing

Right at the start, if you had the right stats and the right race…. (some classes were race locked, most infamously only humans could be paladins for some reason… but like also there was this thing for a while only gnomes were “real” illusionists), you could elect to be multiple classes at once (but only the “base” tier ones – Fighter, Thief, Magic-User, Cleric). Humans couldn’t do this, because reasons.⁶

This meant that you had the tedious chore of dividing your experience points by the number of classes you had, then checking if that number brought you to level up. You couldn’t do anything other than an even distribution, so basically you sort of had to commit to a concept at the start and stick with it. Dual classing remained the only way to pivot midway.

Oriental Adventures

While not everything bad in 1st Edition can be blamed on this book, somehow it always makes its way into every list of bad ideas. (Example: it has Comeliness in it)

The book introduced both the idea of special, regional classes (Samurai instead of Fighter, Wu Jen instead of Mage-User) so classes were becoming less and less archetypes – and more specific professions of refined details and there was more focus on requirements. (Ninjas required you to have a specific second class)⁷

Unearth Arcana

Also known as Gary Gygax’s desperate attempt to restore solvency and retain control over TSR Inc (it didn’t work). This is, in my opinion, the beginning of the end when it comes to class confusion.

The book shook up the way classes… because Paladins were not longer a variant of Fighter, but were to be variant of a Cavalier…⁸ a whole new classes that was absurdly OP and the origin points for raising stats by levelling up. Yes, this was a single class trait in AD&D.⁹ They sucked, nobody liked them, except for power gamers.

So, at this point it became fairly cemented into people’s minds that some classes were better than others, more elite… and how that evolved was weird.

2nd Edition AD&D

Since world’s of D&D are inherently controlled by the mechanics of the system – the shift in edition created all kinds of weird stuff – particularly since the classes were now more of list rather than a tree. Rangers and Fighters were similar, but one was not officially derivative of another.

Bards become mainstream

Okay, now for the first time – you could just be a bard using the core rules… right away… and um… it was fine. It was fine. It made it weird when you had novels about bards being super powerful but it also created an interesting dynamic around Olive Ruskette who thanks to being depicted by infamous pervert Clyde Caldwell is the first “official” D&D bard to appeal to those who love charlatans, short stacks and feet.¹⁰

A crop of a cover from a painted cover, focusing on a conventionally attractive halfling lady in a fur lined coat, holding an oversized yarting (fantasy guitar) with a bare leg and mostly bare foot extended for the viewer. — Guess we gave up on halflings have hairy Hobbit feet pretty early on…

So, it was probably a good thing in the long run.

But… there was still a hierarchy – paladin’s were inherently more prestigious due to having high stat requirements, and high experience point per level cost, rangers similarly but less so.

Old alternatives and new ones…

2nd Edition kept the options for you to multi-class, again just with the basics – and dual classing… again don’t really know anyone who did it.

But, once the expansion materials started coming out – settings with their own classes like Dark Sun, books that were not setting specific but came with race specific classes (my favourite being Mouse Burglar) and entire books just of more class options.

Sheer overload

And then you got settings like Spelljammer and Planescape that basically encouraged you to mix them all together.

New books, new Dragon articles, new RPGA materials etc meant that 2nd Edition quickly hit critical mass for options and then just kept going. For years. And years. Few of these options were particularly more powerful in isolation – but they quickly made just running a game to be a potential nightmare for the DM wanting to use standard limitations to create challenges.

You had to set down ground rules what could and couldn’t be included, new players had to absorb massive info dumps of lore to explain the differences in classes, origins, etc. It was a lot for a game that was built around the idea that you could just pick up some dice, roll up some stats and have a new character in ten minutes.

On top of this there were frequent attempts to reintegrate things left behind in 1st Edition like psionics,¹¹ monks, and assassins…¹² but in ways that never really worked. Frequently it just validated the clunky way many players had already crowbarred them back into their games, and thus created more problems.

Everything was too complicated, too convoluted and still expected you to create a new character from scratch every time you wanted to experiment with an idea. What we needed was a fresh start, something that would let you determine your destiny as you went…

3rd Edition

Everything got shaken up when Wizards of the Coast took over and decided to hit the reset button – D&D was going to be like it was back when Gary was in charge… but different and better. We’d be back in Greyhawk. Monks and Barbarians would be back, but not Cavaliers because fuck those guys – everyone could get stats by levelling up now! Power to the people!

Dual classing was no longer a thing, it was no longer needed. Classes no longer had varying experience point requirements. Monks were back, assassins were back (ish), and we were freed from the grip of the Satanic Panic and could say demon again!

Mix it up… but not too much

Multi-classing was for everyone, and while you were encouraged to keep your classes close – you would only get minor experience point penalties. But, most importantly… you could now mix it up.

You could have a ~~thief~~rogue (apparently demon and devil were fine, but thief was not) who becomes a paladin, a ranger who who gets really, really angry when you don’t realize that only YOU can prevent forest fires and a horny wizard who becomes a monk for self-defence and immunity to STDs.

You could also take NPC classes like commoner, but only if you hated yourself. But on top of all the choices you had multi-classing, you could now also…

Have a little prestige!

The core rules also introduced three prestige classes, following essentially with the promise that this was to be the shape of things from now on – instead of starting as an elite… you would start as a generic adventurer, lowly pond scum and rise up to being a class.

NPCs would also have these classes, so now when you met an NPC claiming to be an arcane archer, you could know immediately a bit about their background, their abilities and their limitations. One of the first prestige classes, the Assassin, was arguably best suited to villainous NPCs.

Finally, PCs felt integrated as they were playing in a world where the same rules applied to them as to other great heroes, elite warriors and squirrels.

Oh yeah… anything could have classes now. Anything.

Kung Fu Brawler & The Demon of Hate Squirrel

Early conversations on this option focused on the idea of using the modularity to avoid having to home brew in effects – one could simply give an elite bar brawler a few levels of monk to buff up his unarmed attacks.

But soon, very soon, people started to explore the real possibilities and I will never forget someone showing me how they had made a squirrel that was “technically balanced” for party but could almost guarantee a Total Party Wipe by being attacked at in camp by a squirrel.

Seriously, take a squirrel “template”, put on top of it, put 6 levels of Sorceror, 2 level of Monk, 4 levels of Barbarian. You end up with a tiny opponent who has +8 to hit, can punch for 1d6, has AC 16, 47 hit points (1 + 6 x 2.5 + 2 x 2.5 + 4 x 6.5), can cast Fireball (10d6) from 880 ft. away, then can go invisible until they get close enough to Summon Monster II – and is considered a “fair” encounter for a party of four 3rd level characters, with an NPC commoner guide. (12.25 levels vs 12.25 challenge rating)

It was a wild time to be playing with a first time DM who was seeing random advice on the Internet and not weighing up if he was getting this advice from people who run long campaigns and people who run ultra-lethal one-shots.

So naturally Wizards of the Coast looked at the chaos in 2E since took over, and all of this going on with 3E and said, “What a great opportunity to sell more books!”

The rise of the Power Gamer

Munchkining, power gaming, min/maxing, these things had always been present in Dungeons & Dragons and had… to a large extent, always been looked down upon. In earlier editions, while it was possible to build overpowered builds they generally relied upon a complicit DM – someone to ensure a steady supply of the right magic items. But for the most part.. they’d been quite limited.

Power gaming in 1st & 2nd Edition often relied on multiple characters cooperating, or having very specific magic items, suspiciously high stats or a other incredibly improbable combinations. There was a lot of focus in AD&D that being powerful meant being a powerful group with a good balance of classes and choices, and that DMs controlled the power level through the supply of magic items.

People who played in RPGA and competitive dungeons often optimized to absurd degrees received opportunities to be testers for 3rd Edition and more than one I know of admitted to deliberately not reporting exploits purely because they wanted to have the strategic advantages in RPGA modules. From what I could see, it worked.

In the build up to 3rd Edition, there was some general opinions shared by the editor of Dragon Magazine that he felt people should embrace their “inner munchkin”,¹³ and that they thinks would be pretty good actually, etc. Omnious as that sounded, it was mostly about living the game as a power fantasy.

With the announcement of 3rd Edition though, it included the unforgettable subtitle of “My PC Can Beat Up Your PC” which promised first and foremost, 3E characters could “beat the snot out of” 2E characters as a weird way of claiming they’d made the combat better.¹⁴ It was not a good sign.

Then came the new era with Dragon Magazine #274! 3E was out, Gary Gygax had a regular column in Dragon Magazine, the D&D movie we don’t talk about was being anticipated, Prestige Classes got a 3 page special by no less than Monte Cook himself.¹⁵ Following that was a four page article on how to keep your characters alive which included being nice to the DM, be a good player etc but the part the editor chose to highlight was “Make yourself Captain Kirk: Let the other PCs be the Red Shirts”.¹⁶

Notably they also introduced a new subsection to Forum & Sage Advice. POWERPLAY! Where instead of focusing on interesting backgrounds, etc, it would focus entirely on how to optimize your mechanics.¹⁷Inc¹⁸ The first prestige class in Dragon followed almost immediately.

One of the first supplements to come out is Sword & Fist, which foolishly tries to make Cavelier’s happen again (boo! hiss!) but also lets you wield big weapons one-handed by using ~~reverse~~Monkey Grip.¹⁹

By June 2001, this had progressed to the extent where when they wrote an article on catering to the different types of player at the time – the first and foremost type to be considered was the Powergamer.²⁰ Now in Robin’s defence (I’ve met him and think he’s pretty cool) the article is primarily about making sure everyone has a good time, but I can’t help but notice two of the seven categories basically describe powergamers… and in order to make them sound like someone you’d want to play with he had to combine them with a steam venter.

Right after this, the game had also gotten so out of hand, that Sage Advice now included “This is official errata”. And they even started taking a break on POWER PLAY!²¹ It made a comeback before the end of the year.²²

A capture from the Dragon Magazine inside cover which features the table of contents and the painting of a sexy halfling rogue who looks like Betty Elmore. A comment by Pete Whitey confirms she's supposed to be a halfling and was painted by Larry Elmore. — Also like,sexy female halflings just looked like scaled down versions of Larry Elmore’s wife Betty, and they covered up their feet! Is this even the same game!? (Dragon #285)

And just to be clear, this was a weird stance to be taking even within the community, Munchkin,²³ the card game satirizing this kind of play came out in September 2001. It is also not really possible to overstate to what extent Wizards was fixated with this as a means to sell books – in the official chat rooms and forums they would do searches to determine how often new books were being mentioned, which sales generated the most discussion.

By July 2002, we have “Epic Prestige Classes” to “Rival the Gods” that is given 9 pages²⁴ because the Epic Level Handbook²⁵ has just been released. This is again, less than 2 years into 3E. A few months later, we’re proposing that feats (which are closely tied to prestige class eligibility) should decide how you role-play your character.²⁶ Being able to kill gods is now not only explicitly endorsed, your build for doing it is also supposed to dictate how you do everything else.

This continues on with Power Gamers becoming more and more of a focus, a feature on playing as monster both warns power gamers may create problems and includes “5 Ways to Inspire Power Gamers”,²⁷ POWER PLAYS is now sometimes a full multi-page feature,²⁸ and 3.5 is coming soon!²⁹

3.5 Edition

Around the time that 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons was released, the big buzz word in tabletop role-playing games was “cinematic”. Long time rival company White Wolf Games had huge success with Exalted by way of encouraging everyone to describe their actions in a “cinematic” manner.

Dungeons & Dragons decided to do this by adding some truly batshit levels of OP. Subclasses were back, but multi-classing was still heavily encouraged even before they started adding prestige classes. I invite you to speculate how hard this makes it for a DM to anticipate what might happen as the adventure develops, let alone a module writer with no knowledge of the players.

Even Skip Williams is having to roll back old advice, which is problematic since the title is now “Sage Advice: 3.5 Issues: OFFICIAL ANSWERS“.³⁰ Skip is also doing chats etc, so the perception is to play “correctly” you must follow what he says and angry people are getting banned on forums for calling him an idiot, innumerate, etc.

Remember how in 3E you could just take a feat to swing big weapons? Now in 3.5E you can combine that with increased critical threat range!³¹ Increasingly, books are divided into “For Player” and “For DM” so DMs are both struggling to keep up, and also somehow one man (Skip) is supposed to provide guidance on how to balance it.

Even something as simple as the weapon size resulted in an absurd table appearing in Sage Advice because this is now a thing that breaks games.³²

A this point we now had people coming into the forums etc asking how they were supposed to run Mind Flayers because even though they were a high challenge rating, their party obliterated them due to combination of aggressive feats, immunities, etc.

DMs don’t want to tell their players they can’t have their toys, after all that player paid a lot of good money for that book and Skip hasn’t said there’s anything wrong with it! So by default, it must be okay! Even if it is a kobold with infinite stats.

Creating Optimized builds for comedic and game-breaking effect became a pretty popular hobby and way to show you were well informed. There’s a lot of them. Basically instead of making homebrew, people were making bizarre creations out of the materials provided.

These were the things that new Prestige Classes needed to compete with.

This is now the world as you know it

Now remember, everyone is now being told to optimize into this nightmare system then design their character around the optimized build – and every month Wizards of the Coast is releasing new prestige classes – often with very narrow focuses. Many of them are really only intended for NPCs (they’re the books for DMs), many for players (they’re in the books for players) and some are for both.

Basically these prestige classes, which started as an option to access very specialist builds or options if you find that’s how you’re gravitating to – became the every growing list of options available if you didn’t want to design your own custom build – and the requirement if you wanted your character to have a role in society.

But even this wasn’t really working because depending on the requirements, you could still have incongruous designs – met your requirements to become an arch-mage? Sweet. Now you can level up as a barbarian. They didn’t really guarantee anything about a character, and often acted as artificial barriers.

Sure your character is entirely devoted to their goddess, has attained mastery in combat… but since they went with a slightly different avenue to combat and didn’t engage in the one particular sex act involving an invisible stalker, you cannot attain this particular prestige class, so cannot attain this rare ability which is supposed to be granted at your goddess’s discretion.

4th Edition

Swapped out Prestige classes for “Paragon Paths” which were only available after 10 levels of advancement in your core class, so you could never mix and match. The downside of this was you were essentially locked into one path, and only got any options after a level that most players don’t reach.³³

This edition also tried to incorporate a lot of previously class specific roles into general options – you could now use rituals etc to raise the dead etc, so really your class was just what unit did you want to do in combat – and success in combat was once again more of a tactical wargame matter.

It was a bold experiment, and while I know of one person I otherwise respect who thinks it was a good solution – they quickly moved away from it.

5th Edition

You can still do some pretty absurd builds, you can make a Tabaxi monk who can come alarmingly close to the speed of sound. But the absence of prestige classes and the focus on flexibility, it has dramatically reduced the potential for mayhem.

The lack of prestige classes has also opened up interpretations of roles etc, Dark Justiciars can be trickster clerics but they could also be arcana domain or war domain. There are a lot of options for DJ Shart without feeling you need to write the character around the feats/traits that you’re only taking to check a box.

That said, we still have Warlock Invocations which are remarkably similar to the 3E/3.5E approach to feats so maybe we haven’t progressed that far anyway.

However one major improvement is that NPCs no longer are expected to be bound by the same rules, so you don’t need to produce DM only classes and then ask your DM to do all the work sorting out the specifics

Conclusion

Prestige classes were an interesting experiment in 3E and 3.5E that started as a means to allow players options as they developed rather than locking in their role at the start, but they quickly became the opposite of that as it became more and more necessary to plan your attainment of the prestige class from the word go. Once there were more than a dozen of them, it became impossible to guess much about someone without breaking the forth wall and checking the book.

As 3E focused on power gamers as a means to sell books, prestige classes quickly became split between those intended to appeal to power gamers (for players) and those that were intended to provide challenge (DM permission required). Where they did appear as DM only, it was basically a more complicated way of doing monsters.

This also meant that, since your power was no primarily dependent on the choices you made regarding the options provided in books, it was harder for DMs to maintain any sort of control of their own campaigns – withholding particular magic items just didn’t so it any more, and it was hard to argue you couldn’t use your thing you paid $50 for when it was “Official”.

As they evolved and became more numerous they also flattened the variation in the world, becoming a shorthand not just for the power set a character would have but also the personality etc. Because of this a lot of players very specifically sought ways to avoid using them, or get better results without them etc.

Ultimately they’re a cool idea, but they’re better served with guidelines and suggestions rather hard rules tied to game mechanics. Most of them can be substituted with multi-classing and a little homebrew tweak as necessary.

1
Lyssa & Shardae Episode 36: Rashemen Gynarchy & Other False Promises (Slovenly Trulls, Podcast, 2 March 2024)
2
Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb Azure Bonds (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1988)
3
Doug Shwegman “Statistics Regarding Classes: (Additions) – BARDS in Tim Kask (Ed) The Strategic Review (Vol. 2, No. 1, TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1976) at 11
4
Gary Gygax Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Player’s Handbook (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1978) at 32 – 33
5
Gary Gygax Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Player’s Handbook, above, at 117 – 118
6
Gary Gygax Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Player’s Handbook, above, at 33
7
Gary Gygax, David “Zeb” Cook and Francois Marcela-Froideval Oriental Adventures (TSR Inc, TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1985)
8
Gary Gygax Unearthed Arcana (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1985) at 16
9
Gary Gygax Unearthed Arcana, above, at 15
10
Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb The Wyvern’s Spur (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1990) Cover
11
Steve Winter The Complete Psionics Handbook (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1991)
12
Sean K Reynolds The Scarlet Brotherhood (Wizards of the Coast LLC, Seattle WA, 1999)
13
Dave Gross The Wyrm’s Turn in Dragon Magazine #260 (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, June 1999), at 6
14
Dave Cross The Wyrm’s Turn in Dragon Magazine #260 (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, September 1999)
15
Monte Cook Class Acts: Create Your Own Prestige Classes in Dave Gross (Ed) Dragon Magazine #274 (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, August 2000), at 46 – 48
16
Robin D. Laws Indispensible: 12 Essential Secrets to Staying Alive, at 74, in Dave Gross (Ed) Dragon Magazine #274 (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, August 2000), at 73 – 76
17
Sean K. Reynolds POWERPLAY in Dave Gross (Ed) Dragon Magazine #274 (Wizards of the Coast
18
, Renton WA, August 2000), at 111 – 113, 121 – 23
19
Jason Carl Sword and Fist: A Gudiebook to Fighters and Monks (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Rent WA, January 2001), at 7
20
Robin D. Laws Taste Test: Pleasing ALL of the players ALL of the time in Dave Gross (Ed) Dragon Magazine 284 (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, June 2001), at 42 – 46
21
Skip William Sage Advice, at 102 – 103 in Dave Gross (Ed) Dragon Magazine #285 (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, July 2001)
22
Stephen Schubert POWER PLAY in Jesse Decker (Ed) Dragon Magazine #290 (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, December 2001) at 116 – 117
23
Steve Jackson & John Kovalic Munchkin (Steve Jackson Games, Austin TX, September 2001)
24
Andy Collins Rival the Gods: Epic Prestige Classes in Jesse Decker (Ed) Dragon Magazine #297 (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, July 2002), at 52 – 61
25
Andy Collins & Bruce R Cordell Epic Level Handbook (Wizards of the Cost Inc, Renton WA, July 2002)
26
Eric Cagle Feats of Personality: Learn how feats can define your character in Jesse Decker (Ed) Dragon Magazine #299 (Paizo Publishing LLC, Bellevue WA, September 2002), at 68 – 73
27
Johnn Four Monster PCs: Can I play a troll?, at 103 in Jesse Decker (Ed) Dragon Magazine #307 (Paizo Press LLC, Bellevue WA, May 2003), at 102 – 105
28
Michael Mearls The Play’s the Thing: POWER PLAYS: Move and Spells Combos in Jesse Decker (Ed) Dragon Magazine #307 (Paizo Press LLC, Bellavue WA, May 2003) at 108 – 109
29
Ed Stark Revision 3.5 Update in Jesse Decker (Ed) Dragon Magazine #307 (Paizo Press LLC, Bellavue WA, May 2003) at 60 – 63
30
Skip Williams Sage Advice: 3.5 Issues: Official Answers at 98 in Jesse Decker (Ed) Dragon Magazine #312 (Paizo Press LLC, Bellevue WA, October 2003) at 98 – 102
31
And Collins, David Noonan, Ed Stark Complete Warrior: A Player’s Guide to Combat for All Classes (Wizards of the Coast Inc, Renton WA, December 2003), at 103
32
Skip Williams Sage Advice: Equipment and Combat: Official Answers, at 104 in Matthew Sernett (Ed) Dragon Magazine #316 (Paizo Press LLC, Bellevue WA, February 2004), at 100 – 104
33
J.R. Zambrano D&D: Apparently There’s No Country For High Level Characters (27 December 2019) <belloflostsouls.net>

Prestige Classes, Power Creep and DM Autonomy

In the beginning…

Basic D&D

AD&D (1st Edition)

Subclasses

“Dual” classing

Multi-classing

Oriental Adventures

Unearth Arcana

2nd Edition AD&D

Bards become mainstream

Old alternatives and new ones…

Sheer overload

3rd Edition

Mix it up… but not too much

Have a little prestige!

Kung Fu Brawler & The Demon of Hate Squirrel

The rise of the Power Gamer

3.5 Edition

This is now the world as you know it

4th Edition

5th Edition

Conclusion

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One thought on “Prestige Classes, Power Creep and DM Autonomy”

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In the beginning…

Basic D&D

AD&D (1st Edition)

Subclasses

“Dual” classing

Multi-classing

Oriental Adventures

Unearth Arcana

2nd Edition AD&D

Bards become mainstream

Old alternatives and new ones…

Sheer overload

3rd Edition

Mix it up… but not too much

Have a little prestige!

Kung Fu Brawler & The Demon of Hate Squirrel

The rise of the Power Gamer

3.5 Edition

This is now the world as you know it

4th Edition

5th Edition

Conclusion

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One thought on “Prestige Classes, Power Creep and DM Autonomy”

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