Time of Unparalleled Darkness

Yeah I think that's the best solution, And if we do see someone just building for the mechanic power rather than the RP potential then it's better to just deal with the player rather than needlessly limit those that do use it correctly.

So the consensus I gather right now is:

1] Allow players to multiclass freely, given they meet requirements of class.
2] Limit multiclassing to three different classes, with the option for players to request the limit be increased or lifted.
3] Keep an eye on players power-building and try to ensure they are following good roleplay, and not just the mechanics.

Would this seem to jive with what you all think?

That's a good start I think can always adjust and tinker with it going forwards if needs must.

Alternatively, implement a default limit of three base classes and maybe one PRC, then if a specific character has sufficient roleplay to justify them being something like a 5 Wizard/5 Druid/5 Cleric/5 Deific Champion as some way of implementing a Mystic Theurge of Mystra, have a backend toggle that allows the limit to be lifted on a per-character basis if the build is justified.

I'm hesitant to limit PrCs given that a lot of them are very useful for RP, Take Weapon Master/Shadowdancer/Dwarven Defender where you would take one for a specific type of RP then another for another type of RP. One example would be a Wizard taking both Shadowdancer and Palemaster, To pull into the RP of Necromancy and then also Illusions and Shadowplane. Or A dwarf taking Dwarven defender and then Shifter to play into their druidic nature but also their Dwarven home.

Well neither of those PRCs are covering the bases for real deep dives into Necromancy, nor Shadow Magic.

The Pale Master PRC is a 3.x class from the Liber Mortis and what it actually does is provide Arcane spellcasting progression, along with a slew of other features that make casters more resilient. Counter-intuitively it also gives them the whole undead arm graft feature, which requires you to get into melee range to do anything with it and a free use of Control Undead once/day, which isn't actually Necromancy per-se; it's usurping already created Undead to your control. The Pale Master writeup even points out that they 'Sometimes serve or act in collusion with powerful evil characters, such as true necromancers or divine spellcasters with Death as one of their domains. TL;DR, the Pale Master is a jobber wanting to look like a real necromancer, but is more akin to a weird undead fetishist; the writeup even states that the grafting process is 'Giving into terrible necrophiliac urges', whatever the hell that means.

The Shadowdancer meanwhile has no links to Shadow Magic, that being a Forgotten Realms-specific alternate version of the Weave which more or less just takes every spell and goes 'okay now we have the same effect but it's through the bootleg pirated version of the Weave'. Shadowdancers have a bunch of weird shadow-thematic abilities, but nothing in their writeup says they're at all linked to the Shadow Weave. Spellcasters have next to no reason to pursue the class, other than increased survivability, which is usually a very poor reason to multiclass as a caster.

All of the above of course is pointless quibbling if we're intending to flay apart all the base and prestige classes to rejig them into something actually comprehensible, since I doubt anyone wants to restrict an entire PRC solely to Tormites.

Whether or not it's "real necromancy" understaking most of the features of the Pale Master class is going to be a Dark Powers check, and unless we want to just be automatically rolling Dark Powers every time they level or something, I find it a very messy class to implement.

Remember, fail five and you're no longer a PC (and I do want to have that be a thing, otherwise we're just going to have people collecting DPs for mechanical benefit)

Moreover, given the actual write up of the class, this is an intentionally antagonistic class. I'd say they're one I'd limit to people whom have some sort of arc leading into it.

Ouroboros wrote: ↑Sat Jun 10, 2023 2:22 am Alternatively, implement a default limit of three base classes and maybe one PRC, then if a specific character has sufficient roleplay to justify them being something like a 5 Wizard/5 Druid/5 Cleric/5 Deific Champion as some way of implementing a Mystic Theurge of Mystra, have a backend toggle that allows the limit to be lifted on a per-character basis if the build is justified.

Scripting side makes no distinction between base class and prestiege class that I can find to make an effective implementation of this, else I'd consider it a pretty good suggestion. Better developers than I may find a way.

Its 3 classes period or 4 classes period, but we can indeed boop people to allow 4 in a specific case. We can call a script on levelup and have it increase the limit for marked players.

If limiting PRCs can't be achieved by scripts, simply achieve it with rules. The only implementation method I can think of, for limiting players to one PRC would be a godawful clunky script ran at each levelup check which checks if they have any levels in the specific classes that PRCs include and then check again if they're taking levels in a second one of those classes, which if that's the case, then forces the levelling process to be redone until they take another base class level. But trusting in the playerbase by simply putting in a rule of 'hey don't take more than one PRC class' seems easy enough to do and would require minimal monitoring.

As to Dark Powers Checks; in PnP it randomly rolls maluses and bonuses. It's totally possible to get a set of maluses that make your character build be crippled, or near unplayable, with those in mind, to say nothing of the roleplay consequences of perfectly rolling -2 Int three times in a row on your Dark Powers Checks.

Personally, I don't see the need for distinguishing a specific rule here. I think a general rule of "your classes should reflect your character development" more than covers this case as well - if people are collecting prestiege classes like magpies, that would usually be in contravention of that, I should think.

General rule then seems good to me, and as for Dark Powers checks I have some thoughts on those as well to make them more, Limiting rather than the open ended entry they are in the source books. But I'll make a thread on that.