"This should be official"

[Mith]

For AD&D (i.e., the branch of the game that we're on the 5th edition of)? You could start the game as a Paladin.

Either that, or there were shenanigans going on in my group.

Nonsi has the answer for my confusion. That doesn't bar shenanigans though.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to have name level class ideas. Not at 9th level, but perhaps level 6?

[Deepbluediver]

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to have name level class ideas. Not at 9th level, but perhaps level 6?

How exactly is this different from the existing PrC format?

[Mith]

How exactly is this different from the existing PrC format?

Fair point. I am looking from a 5e perspective with no built in PrCs.

[Deepbluediver]

Fair point. I am looking from a 5e perspective with no built in PrCs.

Ah ok- I'm not familiar with 5e. In 3.5 I certainly think the idea had potential but it was wasn't implemented well, leading to a HUGE number of PrCs with only a very few that the players actually wanted to take.

I'm not going to say "there should be fewer PrCs than base classes"- whichever you have more off depends entirely on what sort of design scheme you're going for. But I do think they work best when you can splash in one or several of them for a bit of niche appeal, while maintaining most of your main build.

[Amechra]

There were a few problems, design-wise, with PrCs:

1) 3.5e's multiclassing assumed that classes were linear in terms of power. In the ideal situation for 3.5e style multiclassing, each class level would be "worth" the same amount as the others. As I'm sure anyone who played 3.5e is aware, that edition was rife with forward-loaded classes, dead levels, and quadratic power growth.

2) There was a weird insistence that PrCs be 5 or 10 levels long - while there are a few that are different lengths, they were few and far between. The problem being, of course, that a lot of PrCs just aren't conceptually worth being that long. A lot of them could have been 2 to 4 levels long with no love lost. Heck, some of them were effectively one level long.

3) Prestige classes were usually too tightly tied to a given build, by mechanical necessity. Rather than being organic, you instead had to plan out your character from day 1... which meant that any PrCs that came out later would almost always require you to rebuild your character if you wanted to try them out.

[dragonjek]

I'd like to the racial paragons redone as actual classes. They're horrible as is, but the idea of a class that takes the inherent magical and supernatural nature of their races and focuses on advancing it is really attractive to me.

You could get rid of race-based prestige classes and provide them as path options in this class as they further become icons of their species's cultural identity and traditions.

I don't know what I'd do with humans, though. Having a race whose specialty is that it isn't special or has multiple cultures is silly. My own campaign world resolves this by making them reproductively compatible with everything, even a lot of things that don't reproduce sexually (or at all). Explains why half-elves/orcs are always humans and why planetouched are almost exclusively born from human parents. This doesn't really change stats, though (although it let me add in some bizarre feats). Using just the humans as-written, trying to make class features improving their given racial features is ludicrously hard.

[nonsi]

3) Prestige classes were usually too tightly tied to a given build, by mechanical necessity. Rather than being organic, you instead had to plan out your character from day 1... which meant that any PrCs that came out later would almost always require you to rebuild your character if you wanted to try them out.

A PrCs (as a concept) is designed to allow you to be particularly effective at doing something, based on your character's "infrastructure" that had opened the door to the said PrC.
Given the above, I don't see how you'd circumvent the need to plan ahead. If you drop the prereqs, then they're just classes with less levels (which is a legitimate angle to explore)... and then you can't excuse them progressing features of other classes.
The problem with classes that have a dynamic number of levels, is that they tens to pop up like mushrooms after the rain, and with so many trees you can't see the forest anymore.
20 levels is a good framework for motivating solid class design with each class having its tools to shine w/o stepping on the toes of other classes.

[Mith]

I'd like to the racial paragons redone as actual classes. They're horrible as is, but the idea of a class that takes the inherent magical and supernatural nature of their races and focuses on advancing it is really attractive to me.

You could get rid of race-based prestige classes and provide them as path options in this class as they further become icons of their species's cultural identity and traditions.

I don't know what I'd do with humans, though. Having a race whose specialty is that it isn't special or has multiple cultures is silly. My own campaign world resolves this by making them reproductively compatible with everything, even a lot of things that don't reproduce sexually (or at all). Explains why half-elves/orcs are always humans and why planetouched are almost exclusively born from human parents. This doesn't really change stats, though (although it let me add in some bizarre feats). Using just the humans as-written, trying to make class features improving their given racial features is ludicrously hard.

I'm stealing your idea for humans.

In general, what I would like to try for 5e is that all races get a feat at 1st level, with humans getting potentially two feats at 1st with variant human. However the feat granted is for racial feats only for the non human races, and potentially a bit bigger of a list for humans.

[Deepbluediver]

I'd like to the racial paragons redone as actual classes. They're horrible as is, but the idea of a class that takes the inherent magical and supernatural nature of their races and focuses on advancing it is really attractive to me.

I know some settings do race-as-class to varying degrees, but in D&D it seems difficult to me to come up with something that isn't already represented. If your race's schtick is "magic", why not just play a Wizard or Druid? If it's "fighting", why not play a Ranger or Barbarian? The question is- what about this "class" differentiates you from other classes?

I feel like the Racial Paragon theme might work better as feat. You could the prerequisites tie into that race's stat-boosts or favored class, and then have it do....something. I don't know what, exactly; given the variety of racial abilities and themes you'd probably have to write separate feats for every single class you wanted to do one for.

I guess the other option might be some sort of Gestalt-class mechanic, where your main class is an existing one, and then in exchange for other restrictions you get to boost some of the attributes.

[Morphic tide]

I guess the other option might be some sort of Gestalt-class mechanic, where your main class is an existing one, and then in exchange for other restrictions you get to boost some of the attributes.

*points at Pathfinder Archetype system* Your class variants are over there.