Guidelines for making 3.5 base/prestige classes? A great answer.

[Answerer]

This is not mine, but I thought everyone here should be aware of this, because it is one of the most thorough treatments of class design that I have seen.

Guidelines for creating homebrew classes at RPG.StackExchange.com

Am I overstating this? I think the sheer number of examples and details that he goes into are very good. I'd love to see some discussion of this.

[Gnorman]

I think it's an excellent read, and would second your sentiments.

[Answerer]

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one... I suppose it is rather verbose.

[DaTedinator]

I wasn't really expecting much - for whatever reason, I tend not to when it comes to outside links - but that was really good. I especially like how he got into the question of how long your prestige class should be, and agree with his sentiment that 5 levels should be the norm - especially for most of the classes Wizards made.

[TuggyNE]

I really liked the remarks on Fighters and Wizards being simply too big a concept for any single base class (arguably, one of the main reasons there are so many genuinely terrible fix attempts out there), but the rest of the topic was also quite good, in whole and in part.

[willpell]

The link timed out on me and did not load....

[Answerer]

I wasn't really expecting much - for whatever reason, I tend not to when it comes to outside links - but that was really good. I especially like how he got into the question of how long your prestige class should be, and agree with his sentiment that 5 levels should be the norm - especially for most of the classes Wizards made.

Yeah, I definitely agree about that. I can see, though, that he got a lot of that from Djinn in Tonic's thread. Which, in fairness, he did link to.

I really liked the remarks on Fighters and Wizards being simply too big a concept for any single base class (arguably, one of the main reasons there are so many genuinely terrible fix attempts out there), but the rest of the topic was also quite good, in whole and in part.

Yeah, I think that's a bit obvious but definitely accurate. I don't think you see a lot of homebrewers attempting things like that though, since the generic stuff was already done by Wizards.

The link timed out on me and did not load....

Weird, don't know what to tell you.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

While it's a good guide, I strongly felt (as the author of two of that writer's favorite discussions on the topic) that I was reading my own words spun into a slightly different shape, right down to specific example classes used to support a 3-5 level class spread over 10 levels (the Dwarven Defender), and my choice of classes to represent a good base class (he also selected Crusader, out of all the good options there are...and there are many). Makes me wonder to what extent my work influenced his (I did appreciate the link).

I mean, credit to KRay: this is well-written, useful, and he clearly knows his stuff. I just can't help but see a lot of my own thoughts in this. Perhaps I'm overreacting (and I'm not accusing him of copying my work...he clearly put a lot of his own work into this), but it just seems like I've seen (and written) a lot of these thoughts before.

[EtherianBlade]

All in all a good read, with some interesting points. Djinn, if that article was related to or based off some of the things you've said, then kudos as well to you.

I'm creating my own d20 homebrew as well and I like some of the things said in the article about class tiers and level ranges for prestige classes. Some of the ones I have a basic workup for have some dead space for levels, making me consider the idea of reducing the number of levels to the class.