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This episode I'm joined by Sam Roberts (Escape from Dino Island) to talk about prestige classes, special classes from D&D 3e that you could only take by multiclassing into them. Sam thinks of these things as a noble failure: a very cool idea whose execution almost immediately dropped the ball. But what can we learn from their corpse?
We get into that, along with a boots-on-the-ground discussion of what our experiences were like actually playing D&D 3rd edition and an exploration of advancement as a concept at large: how does it work in most games, and how might it work instead?
Further Reading
The Game Left Unplayed, blogpost by Jay Dragon
D&D third edition
D&D 3.5 edition
Sam R’s game Escape from Dino Island
Socials
Sam D on Bluesky and itch.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
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Transcript
Sam: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week, we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and ask if it did kill a man just to watch him die. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co-host this week is Sam Roberts.
The Dice Exploder seasoned for pledge drive is still live on BackerKit through the end of the week. Vote on what mechanic you think the show should cover, pickup my secret unpublished game. The more we raise, the more episodes I'll make before taking another break. Come trap me in a podcast prison of my own making. And thank you so much for your support and for listening.
We are also right now, it's still in the middle of the Dice Exploder D and D mini series. And today's episode is the most regular ass episode of Dice Exploder that this series has to offer. Less sweeping generalizations about the brand more analysis of whatever weird little thing my co-host wanted to talk about.
Sam Roberts is one of the authors of Escape from Dinosaur Island, a one-shot or short series Jurassic park inspired PBTA game that I wish we saw more games like. I invited him on the show because we talk a lot on discord, and I just wanted to talk with him about a normal little mechanic and the weird little thing he picked talk about his prestige classes from Dungeons and dragons third edition.
So in D and D you pick a class like fighter, and every time you level up, you can choose to get another level in fighter, or you can multi-class and to add a level of wizard or druid. But in the third edition of the game, they added a prestige classes, classes that you can only take once you've met some other requirements. You're no longer a level three fighter level one wizard, you're a level three fighter level, one chain master, or dwarven defender . And prestige classes could get really weird with it.
Procedures classes lead with the fiction. Instead of regular D and D advancement in what you mostly aspire to have a higher number or turn into an even bigger kind of bear, they encourage you to aspire to be a member of a group to get a specific person's blessing or to go to a specific far-flung realm.
At least that's what they might've done. As Sam R says, in this episode, he thinks DND dropped the ball on them almost immediately. And they sunk even further as third edition evolved into 3.5. So they're a noble failure in a way. What can we learn from their corpse?
We get into it along with a boots on the ground discussion of what our experiences were like actually play in D and D third edition and an exploration of advancement as a concept at large. How does it work in most games And how might it work in stead? Let's find out. here is Sam roberts with prestige classes. Sam Roberts, thanks for being on Dice Exploder.
Sam R: Good to be here.
Sam: Welcome to the Dungeons Dragons series. Which edition of Dungeons Dragons are we talking about today?
Sam R: I'm talking about Dungeons Dragons 3rd edition. And I want to clarify, more 3rd edition than 3. 5. I spent most of my time playing 3rd edition.
Sam: me too. I actually wanted to just like, pause here and like, remember being 10 years old and like, those books coming into the game store. It was the first time that a new edition of Dungeons Dragons had come out since I had started playing two years earlier at the age of eight, and the covers on those things are so cool. Opening them up, the art really was, you know, I don't want to say it was better because the weird old edition art was also really cool, but it felt more like the magic cards. I had been playing. It felt a little bit more realized. Like I loved just Looking at the class tables. Like they got rid of Thaco and made it a base attack bonus Like I thought they always should you know.
It was just so cool to page through and see everything that they had updated and learned and, like, what this new world was gonna be that we were exploring.
Sam R: Totally. It's funny, because I was a little bit older, I think. I was probably like, 14 or 15 when 3rd edition came out and I had been a big Warhammer player at the time, and so for me, I didn't even clock the beauty of the books, the, feel which now I look back on them and I'm like, oh, these are so tangible and tactile in a way that just love.
But at the time, I was enamored with how much they had streamlined the rules. Which is now funny as an indie player to be like, look at these streamlined rules! Because it's a huge, huge, dense game. Complicated book. But the fact that they had, you know, streamlined
the whole thing to like the single D20 mechanic, and the sort of systemization of it. The reason I mentioned Warhammer was because my friends and I would just argue about the rules all the time, and this felt like it took very seriously the idea of balance and cohesion and yeah, the systematic idea, which in retrospect, I don't know if it succeeded at, but certainly it succeeded at, selling that idea and making that piece really exciting.
Sam: I also remember, I remember the new classes that came with the book, and the new races, too, were really exciting. Like, seeing half orcs was, oh, what a revelation! And barbarians, it was an entirely new class that we could explore,
Sam R: Sorcerer. Oh my gosh, sorcerer all day.
Sam: the sorcerer, yeah,
Sam R: spellcaster that didn't have to memorize their spells was, what? You could do that? it was really mind blowing stuff at the time, which is funny to look back on.
Sam: Yeah. So, today we're talking about prestige classes. Do you want to walk us through what the hell this was? This was a third edition original, so give it to us. What were prestige classes?
Sam R: So, a little bit of context, in earlier editions of Dungeons Dragons more or less, you took one class, and you stuck with it. There was a way in AD& D to drop your old class for a while and switch to a new one, which is kind of similar to, like, Powered by the Apocalypse when you, swap out your playbook for a new one. Or you could start off as a multi class, like, fighter wizard, and then you'd be a a fighter wizard for your entire career.
But in 3rd edition, you basically chose your class every time you leveled up, and that was their approach to multi classing, but it also created a space for prestige classes. And prestige classes were classes you could only take after you had met a certain number of requirements, some of them would be mechanical requirements, like you have to have eight skill points in knowledge religion, or it could be in fiction requirements, like you have to have assassinated someone for no other reason than to join the Assassin's Guild, which is really one of them. Um, we'll talk more about that in a in a bit.
But that was the heart of it. And I think what was really interesting about prestige classes was when they were first pitched, interestingly, they were in the Dungeon Master's Guide, they very quickly became a player facing mechanic that was featured in player handbooks and things like that, but in the first time they show up, it's in the Dungeon Master's Guide, and I won't read the whole, description because it's very long, but I hope we can put it in the show notes. But they're really pitched as organizations or, like diegetic classes.
So like if you're an assassin, you're an assassin because you're a member of the Assassin's Guild. Or you might be a lore master because you are literally in this world a lore master. So the premise was here are some example prestige classes, but what you really want to do as a dungeon master, and the reason this is in the guide is create your own prestige classes that are unique to each campaign setting, that you built, and that give characters and players entree into owning this setting and taking the setting and making it player facing. It has a little bit of that custom moves feel.
Sam: I was really struck re reading, I was on the 3. 5 edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide here, but at the end of the Prestige classes chapter is the section that describes all of that. That is basically like the best prestige classes are going to be the ones that you make custom for your table. And it reminded me almost of the apocalypse world chapter on making your own custom moves and how the specificity of that is really gonna be exciting and what goes far.
And I really don't think they spend enough time on that here. Like, you are absolutely right that they are framing things that way, but I don't remember getting that when I read these, you know?
I just looked at the Loremaster and thought, that's cool. I wanna do that. I didn't as a DM, and I was doing a lot of DMing at this time, think about making my own content. And I wish they had pushed that harder.
Sam R: yeah, so one of the things I find fascinating about prestige classes and love about them from a sort of historical perspective, I guess, is that in the way they're actually executed, even from the, the very first time they're introduced, they kind of drop the ball. And so it's really interesting.
That tension is really interesting to me. So like say, the first thing to tell you is these are going to be in fiction concepts. And then they present you with the arcane archer, the assassin, the lore master, and these are not, they don't even feel, ultimately, of being, you know, like, like in, in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, there's the purple dragon knight, and you might not have purple dragon knights in your personal campaign setting, but at least I understand that like, I want to join the purple dragon knights, that feels like something that could exist in the world. Whereas like,
Sam: Yeah.
Sam R: It's, they didn't quite land the plane But the, but the idea is So, it gets in my head.
Sam: yeah. Well, and then that kind of transitions into like a broader conversation about advancement and like, what does advancement look like in conversation that I know you and I have had a lot of times.
Like, I think in it traditional Dungeons and Dragons, the way advancement works is you kill stuff and then you become more powerful so you can kill bigger stuff and you have more treasure and you get more stuff. And part of the joy of advancement is in like looking forward to what cool powerful things am I going to be able to do in the future? What's the seventh level spell that I'm really excited about? I remember Bigby's Crushing Hand I really wanted, right?
Sam R: Right. And so, I think you and I agree that most advancement is kind of nonsense and unnecessary. think in D& D, advancement is such a core part of the game that it's, you can't really excise it without losing something. But I also think I think Advancement does something really interesting in D& D, which is that you can, how do I say this there's an end point, like you're building towards something. And and I think in D& D, you're constantly always looking towards something you're building towards and, and that's such the fun of the game,
but it's also, I think, a big problem with the game, because you're imagining, you're looking at your, player's handbook, and you're imagining, okay, whatever level, I'm going to get Bigby's Hand, and that has nothing to do with what's going on in the game, right? That has nothing to do with what's going on in your campaign, going around, some dungeon, or parlaying with the elves in the woods, you're knowing that every day I'm getting a little bit closer to fireball.
And what I love about prestige classes is they square that circle. They say every day you're going to get closer to being a purple dragon knight, but the way you get closer to being a purple dragon knight is by first finding the purple dragon knights, convincing them to let you into their order. So it gives you that, that thing that I think is missing sometimes from like a Powered by the Apocalypse game where you're, really just playing to find out, and you you don't have the ability to think as long term.
With prestige classes you get to think really long term about who your character is going to be, but it drives you back
Sam: Who, who they are going to aspire to be at any rate.
Sam R: and then there's that wonderful tension of the game, which is, will I actually get to be a purple dragon knight, or maybe something else will happen.
Like I was looking through a lot of prestige classes before this conversation, and I noticed something funny one of my favorite books third edition, is the Manual of the Planes and most of the prestige classes in Manual of the Planes are not super interesting, although the Gate Crasher is one that, like, I love. He's just a guy who, who breaks into planes, and like, who doesn't want to play that character, right? But, you know, it says before you can take this prestige class, you must have visited two planes, but points out that you don't have to have done it on purpose.
So, like, you could have been pulled to those planes. And so I love the idea of, like, I'm just a thief, I'm bopping around, suddenly I discover over the course of this campaign I've been to two different planes. you know, so you are playing to find out what happened. It's, it's that really fun dynamic of this is where I want to go and this is where I ended up and maybe now I'm gonna be a, a gate crasher instead of a Thieves Guild member, or whatever I was trying to do.
Sam: Yeah. You're not just looking forward to being able to cast Fireball and running around and murdering as many goblins as you can so that you can get to that point. You are, like, looking forward to joining the assassins, and Part of that is a mechanical, like, leveling up until you meet the requirements, but part of that is also, like, kill someone for no other reason than to join the assassins. Like, it's an entire adventure baked into that prerequisite.
And that, this is just rephrasing what you've already said, but that, like, brings the aspiration to the present day. Like, the fact that you want to cast fireball eventually now has like a direct impact on what we are doing here right now in a way that just murdering goblins is very generic and uninteresting.
Sam R: Right. Like, I think about it almost like prestige classes make character growth into treasure. And so, what I mean by that is, you know, you go out on a quest into the dungeon to get the magical flaming sword, or whatever, and, what your base class says, what most editions of D& D say is, you're gonna get that magic sword no matter what happens, you don't need to go into that dungeon, you could go into a completely different dungeon, but if you really want that magic sword, you're gonna get it.
And prestige classes say, no, no, no, if you wanna be a purple dragon knight, you gotta go into this specific dungeon and find this specific one guy who can teach you how to be a purple dragon knight. and so it makes your character growth into the same kind of quest as your favorite quests to get your favorite magic items.
Sam: The manual of the planes thing also leads into what I think is one of the main reasons they made prestige classes, which is so the one D& D book I still own is the third edition Manual of the Planes, and I opened it up physically before we started recording and also reread those classes and looked at the Gatecrasher, and I saw that the four prestige classes they include in the Manual of the Planes are like a cleric, the Gatecrasher, who's basically a thief with some planer stuff lopped on there, an arcane class with some planar stuff like lopped on there, and a ranger that has a favored plane instead of a favored enemy.
And, it really felt like, yes, prestige classes are this perfect tool to some player facing content into a book that is otherwise just for dungeon masters.
And I remember from reading all of these 3 and 3.5 edition books how many books went that way. Like, worked that way.
Sam R: Yeah,
Sam: It was, very, very just like, this is the reason that everyone needs to buy this book, not just your GM, you know?
Sam R: mean, yeah, there, there are a lot of material realities and commercial interests that are driving a lot of the decisions in pretty much any edition of Dungeons and Dragons, but especially third edition. which I think, I think you're describing, what you're describing is exactly true, that they were a really easy way to sell more books to players which, you know, you see in 5th edition, for example, they just, pretty much everything is, is DM facing, it's all adventures, and they have a different structure of how they sell books.
But
Sam: They figured out that DMs are the people who buy the books.
Sam R: So I think the thing that that, gestures towards, which is something that I find frustrating with prestige classes, is that they have this amazing opportunity that I've tried to articulate around how they can tie the characters to the world and enmesh their character growth goals with their questing goals and the, bring it to the present, as you said.
And then I think in actual practice, what they end up being a lot of the times is, like, Tools for character optimization, or you know, you find one that does the thing your character's already doing, but with some slightly better synergies, and just take that thing instead.
And so it's like, oh, I'm a guy who fights with a sword, now I'm a sword master, and I'm basically just a swordier fighter. and a lot of, I think, the potential for prestige classes gets kind of lost there you can see, by the time 3. 5 Dungeon Master's Guide is released, the language about how they talk about prestige classes, even when they're just teeing them up, is actually really different in a way that I was surprised by.
Sam: yeah,
so, in the third edition, we start with prestige classes: in the city of Greyhawk, a shadowy guild of hired killers wields power and fear like deadly weapons. Only the most ruthless and yet subtle women and men can join the guild as members. Cool.
And then by the time we get to 3. 5, we have Prestige classes: prestige classes offer a new form of multi classing. Unlike the basic classes found in the player's handbook, characters must meet requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class.
It's totally swapped from the cool flavor thing that you were talking about to the mechanical character optimization thing.
Sam R: Yeah. And I found that to be such a bummer. I mean, I think it's ultimately why I You know, at the time, kind of soured on Prestige classes, and was really excited when 4th edition came out, and I was ready to jump on the 4th edition train, they, they actually reworked Prestige classes in sort of an interesting way, where they have these like Paragon Path and Epic Destiny, so it's like, something you automatically take but they got rid of prestige classes and it was much more like, you have your character class and you're sticking with it, and even multi classing was kind of downplayed, and at the time I was like, finally, they're just gonna let me, like, play this archetype to the hilt and be the coolest version of a fighter, instead of constantly trying to, like, game the system to get that one extra plus one bonus.
But now that I look back on it, I can see what they were trying to do, and I just think it was such a cool idea, and it makes me sad that it's kind of this weird dead end in game design. I mean, Pathfinder completely got rid of it you don't really see it anywhere else, and I keep thinking lately about like, how can I take up this mantle and, and try and do something interesting with prestige classes?
I think that it's just so ripe for, for a fresh take on it, someone who decides that prestige classes are cool and not everything wrong with dunes and Dragons
Sam: yeah, yeah, it feels like there would be tons of space in like elf game adventure modules to create organizations where when you join the organization you gain some sort of ability.
I mean a lot of the elf game kinds of stuff, I think advancement works In a way, it's not mechanical in the way that Prestige Classes is, but it is very like, fictional, diegetic, like advancement and character change happens because of the stuff that happens to your character and the stuff that your character does, the choices you make rather than leveling up. And the I feel like there's, room to make some of that more explicit, maybe, in specific adventures that are written for those games.
But I also see the legacy of prestige classes in Heart: The City Beneath, which is a game I have complicated feelings about and hopefully one day we'll do a full episode about. But like, the classes in that game are just objectively homeruns. They are so cool, they are so weird. You've got like the deep apiarist who's made of bees, and you've got the, like, vermission knight who is defender of a defunct subway system and can eventually Gain the ability to summon a train to run over its enemies, you know?
Like, these classes are absurd, they're so wild, and the first time I read them, my first thought was, oh yeah, why weren't you allowed to just start being the prestige classes immediately in Dungeons Dragons? Like, why aren't these things just variant classes? Like, give me that weird freak shit immediately. Why do I have to wait for it?
I feel like there's so much of that in D& D, of this like, advancement as this aspirational thing, but like, no one in their life, no one in the history of Dungeons Dragons has ever gotten to play a 20th level PC, even though there are cool abilities that kick in there, like, just give me the cool shit immediately, and that's what I wish we got more of. Way Heart handles that is exactly what I would like to see more from, and what I wish people would take from a prestige class, is that the abilities you can give people right away can be cool and powerful, and more than anything else, specific.
Sam R: Yeah, so, I'm gonna push back on that in a second, but I want to say first that I basically, I basically completely agree with you, and like, if not nine times out of ten, eight times out of ten, just give me a, give me a playbook or a character class that just every one of them should make me want to play it, every one of them should just explode my brain with ideas and Heart does that so well you know, Spire did that in the same way. I think the best Powered by the Apocalypse games do that as well
that said, I think there's something beautiful about the fact that prestige classes, and important about the fact that prestige classes, aren't what you start with because they allow for character change and character aspiration. And it's really cool to start off being someone interesting and specific, but it's also really cool to start off as you know, a farmhand who has big dreams. It's really cool to be Luke Skywalker or Rey as a nobody scavenger on a desert planet.
I mean, people get really hung up on numbers go up as an idea in Dungeons and Dragons that like what they really get excited about and the thing that is really powerful for them is that constant improvement.
But for me, when I think about fantasy stories, especially epic fantasy stories. What I think about is how often you see these characters having really meaningful and qualitative change rather than quantitative change.
So I think about the journey that Aragorn goes on over the course of Lord of the Rings, right, where he starts off he's this mysterious ranger, sketchy guy. And then we discover that he is a, king in exile. And he kind of changes into the king in exile soon as we find that out about him. And then eventually he becomes the king. And all of those steps are very discreet moments of character change and character growth, and he becomes a different guy.
I think about, you know, Arya Stark, who starts off as kind of just a, you know, a tomboy who rejects trappings of being a young noble girl, and she starts training as a swordswoman, but then she ultimately makes this jump to being you know, an assassin in training. And along the way also she becomes, she becomes the cupbearer, you know, for a whole season, and she's learning from Tywin Lannister about what power looks like,
so every season in a lot of these, or every book in a fantasy series, you almost, it's almost like these characters become a different character and have a different arc for that story.
And so I think prestige classes kind of gesture towards that in a really cool way, where it's like, I started off and I was the farmhand, and then, at level 5, I became lore master, you know and, I don't think prestige classes quite capture that as well as they could. I think part of it is, you're never going to start off as a farmhand in, 3rd edition but I think that it gestures towards that idea in a really cool way.
Sam: Well, I think that that's actually a perfect encapsulation of, like, my problem with D& D. Because I think what you identified there of, like, this qualitative change in characters is so much what that genre is based on, and it's the exciting thing about that genre to me.
But because D& D is so built around and locked into this aspirational numerical advancement, the best it can do is gesture towards that changing of quality through something like prestige classes.
Whereas I would much rather play a game that just had a different kind of advancement, where advancement works like I love it in Stewpot, where you start with a bunch of adventurer experiences, and you slowly give them up for town experiences that allow you to do different things. You trade in your fireball for the ability to cook, and both of those things are equally valuable within the context of playing the game and enacting your agency on the world.
And I think that like, not every game has to be like that, you can still have games that I'm excited about that prioritize that ability to cast fireball, but like, the point of the advancement is something really different than get number higher.
Sam R: Yeah, no, I, I'm with you. I, like, I do think there's something to, like, this idea that these fantasy characters, they categorically change, you know, like, like, Arya changes in a lot of different ways, but Her list of people who've wronged her, who she's planning to kill only grows over time.
Sam: Oh, that sounds like a sick advancement mechanic. I want that advancement mechanic.
Sam R: no, I, I think, I want to be really clear for anyone who's, who maybe didn't experience third edition. I'm not saying that prestige classes are like, don't, a secret amazing mechanic that was done wrong. I think they, I think they're I think they fail, honestly. I think it's a failed mechanic but I think it's a really interesting failure and it's disappointing to me that, everyone just kind of left it there.
Sam: yeah, I mean, I would say even though they became this vehicle for character optimization, I mean, 3. 5 like rewrote everything to be about character optimization because that's how people were playing the game.
Prestige classes in some ways were swept up by the tide of third edition and what direction it was headed and like I think were a really cool attempt at something different something more like the kind of advancement that I think you and I are really excited about within this existing system. Like, they, they, I think, did the best they could.
Sam R: 100 percent yeah, I mean, they're the best you can do with a game that is fundamentally numbers go up. and when when the numbers going up is so central to how the game is presented, then it becomes central to how people think about it and what they strive towards.
And then all of a sudden you're just, you know, you're picking your prestige classes because the numbers go up.
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Sam R: One thing I actually didn't talk about yet, solidly half the prestige classes in the game are half of the prestige classes in the game are proceeds classes that no character would ever take and you know, we talked about the assassin at the very beginning of the podcast, who needs to kill somebody for no other reason than to join the Assassin's Guild. And like, maybe you're running an evil campaign, but realistically, that's probably not a PC.
There's also the Blackguard, who's an evil paladin. And these are just two out of, like, the seven in the Dungeon Master's Guide. You know, and then there's, like, I have the Book of Vile Darkness, which is a really wild book. I don't, I don't know if I can recommend it. I don't recommend it. But it has a whole section of, like, 15 prestige classes. And it says right up front, like, none of these are really suitable for a player character, and most of them involve human sacrifice,
and, and, I think, there's something, like, so fascinating about what it means to take a mechanic, like, a player facing mechanic and then say these are not for players.
I think it actually, you know, you could say that this is, it's bad design. You could say it's just temptation. Like, of course, we're going to run our evil campaign now because at some point someone's going to want to play a cancer mage. Who gets a, like a tumor familiar, which is, what?
Sam: Oh my god.
Sam R: Absolutely
Sam: That rules.
Sam R: it's awesome, but it's, either, either you love it, or you're like, I'm done with this immediately. But it's another way that it speaks to their attempts to try and do something really interesting that end up kind of falling flat. Because what it, does also, and third edition carried this through to its entire structure, was that the player facing rules and the, NPC facing rules were identical. And that was often nightmarish for a dungeon master.
But what it says is, these are people who you might meet out in the world. So every time you're reading this player facing text, even if you know you're never going to play that character, you're, you now, it's like you get to read the monster manual, but in a safe way. You know, you're not, as a player, you're not supposed to read the monster manual, but you do get to read the prestige classes and get to imagine all the enemies you might fight. You get to like know who's out there in the world.
So you can imagine a version where you hand your players the prestige classes that are available at the start of your, your homebrew campaign, and half of them are evil organizations like the Red Wizards of Thay. And now you read through that, prestige class, and you're like, Oh man, I don't like that those guys are out there in the setting, and I hope I don't run into them.
And it does that all in a, in an interesting mechanical way, rather than kind of needing to tell you explicitly, like, this is an enemy that, like, no one likes to read a setting. I mean, DMs do, but like, most players, if you, if you hand your players a setting sheet, At the beginning of the campaign, they're not going to read it, but if you hand them 15 player facing classes that they can't actually take, they'll read all of them anyway.
Sam: Because maybe, maybe they could.
Sam R: No, I,
had an infamous evil campaign where they turned evil and then it was like, oh, if we'd gone a little longer, I would have let them get some evil procedure class. It would have been fun.
Sam: yeah, well, that's a perfect transition actually to the next thing that I wanted to say, which is going back to your farm hand and the dream of starting as a farm hand and then becoming a fighter and then becoming Help me out with the prestige class here. What does a fighter eventually become?
Sam R: Battle Master or master of Chains was one I'd written down. because everyone I know, like one of, one of the things, things about prestige classes was that you always you're like, I wanna be someone who uses chains, but they're just terrible. They're just worse than a sword. And so then they make a prestige class that was like, now you can be really good at chains.
Sam: them good. Yeah, yeah. So, so I'm like, I'm excited to be a fighter and then once I'm a fighter I'm like, oh, I want to be the chain master and like great so we're dreaming of becoming the chain master but 3rd edition always let me down, like trained me to become jaded about that fantasy, because no campaign ever fucking went on long enough to actually get there.
Like, I played some pretty years long campaigns, and in like the longest ones, one person maybe got a prestige class. And The most iconic character from my, edition days who got a prestige class got it because the DM waived the requirements on the class because he just thought it was cool.
Like, that's so much of D& D, that's so much of the problem I have with the aspirational advancement in D& D and why I want to just do the cool thing now, because like, I know, Christmas is coming, and this campaign is falling the fuck apart when it
Sam R: It's funny, because like now I'm thinking about it, and like, I actually can't think of a single prestige class that was taken by any player in any of the games that I ever played or played in or ran while playing 3rd edition, and I think that speaks to something interesting, which is like, to your point, like, when you're thinking about the prestige class you want to have, you're maybe not happy with your character right now, when, when the campaign is really singing, storytelling is really good, then you're in the story, and you want to keep playing, because you're interested in the story. You're not interested in getting Fireball, you're interested in what's going to happen, you know, are they going to stop the wizard before he blows up the world, or whatever it is.
And you know, and when you're focused more on the mechanics of like, one day I'm going to get Fireball, that's kind of sometimes a sign that you're not invested in the story and then the campaign maybe there's not enough energy in that campaign because suddenly
like my experience with third edition was because there were so many slack books because there was so much there's so much content coming out all the time it was very easy to get into that grass is greener mindset and be like this campaign is pretty fun but like what if I do a desert campaign and you're gonna be this new, like, desert, lizardman race that I got, that came out in this new book, and you're gonna be like, a sand dwarf, and we're gonna, fight some, some mind flayers, or, you know, like, there was always something new to try.
And so, like, my favorite character that I ran was just a fighter. Yeah, I mean, he was, he specialized in grappling, but he was just, he was just a fighter. Who like took some specific feats. And I think that kind of really says it all, that like, prestige classes were this, amazing, I think the thing I was talking about more with, about the villains is actually kind of where they were at their best. Was you'd read, you'd pick up these books
and you'd read them Yeah, like you can't pick up a D& D 3rd edition book flip to the prestige class chapter, and not just like, end up with your, your brain full of ideas and excitement, They're so compelling as a concept. They don't really land in play at all, but like, they're a joy to read.
Sam: Yeah, I think the other point that you've made several times that is really good is the blending of mechanics and diegesis is really fun in these too. I'm looking right now at the Dwarven Defender prestige class where you had to be a dwarf, it's right there in the fucking name, like, you have to be a dwarf, and apparently your alignment has to be lawful, and like, then there's some mechanical stuff too, but like, it's cool to imagine that the dwarves have their own class, that it's, this is like a cultural class, not just a mechanical thing, and now I'm imagining the like whole hall of dwarves
and this is this is the other thing about prestige classes that I think were really really good, the art the art of this dwarven defender is cool to me and it's like I can see him in the dwarven throne room I can see like 12 of them on either side of the dwarven queen just sitting there like holding their giant shields and defending her right. That's cool and that prestige classes have all of that.
Sam R: Well, that's another good example, though, because it's like, even if I'm never gonna become a Dwarven Defender, when I walk into the hall of the Dwarven Queen, I know that there's gonna be a group of amazing Dwarven Defenders who are powerful focused and lawful, and they're gonna be standing around her, right?
Like, I know what to expect now, and that's a powerful way that they work in the game. It's just such good world building.
I feel like we've been talking about how, like, the mechanics and the, the diegesis are kind of at odds with the prestige classes in a lot of ways, but one of the things that I think is really interesting is, like, and my, my spicy take right now, and you mentioned Heart before, which is such a good example, because Heart has its beats do you want to describe how hard?
Sam: Yeah, so, the way heartbeats work is, you pick a couple of beats that you have going at any given time, so, like, charm someone with tales of your exploits, or acquire a rare or powerful d12 value item, preferably magic. And then once you accomplish these beats in the story, you mark them off and you gain new class abilities
Sam R: Yeah. And so, so the reason I mention that is because and this is my, like, one of my most heretical ideas as an indie story gamer, is that, like, sometimes I feel like, the you just say the thing, you just say this is a story beat, you're gonna hit this episode, or this, this session, sometimes it takes the, the joy out of it for me a little bit as someone who, has been a, screenwriter, you know, like, I can see the story happening, and if I see the story happening, I kind of get a little bit taken out of it, And then I don't feel like, I engage my writer brain, and all of a sudden I'm not exactly playing to find out what happens, I'm like, sort of imagining what could happen and playing toward what I want to happen.
Sam: playing to find out how it happens, rather than what happens.
Sam R: Exactly, yeah, I'm maneuvering my way toward what I want to happen through the tools of story.
And so, I, I'm kind of intrigued by the way prestige classes take place. It takes such a mechanical approach to these diegetic story beats, because I think there's something really, emergent that could happen with a better version of this.
It almost happens where you're just playing your guy. This, this whole game is really just simulating the world and simulating what's there. But through this extremely simulated approach to, I'll just say it, through this extremely simulationist approach to game design, you end up with stories and character arcs and things like that, and they feel it lands right, they feel really authentic because no one was trying to make that happen.
And that's something I'm always looking for in my design, is how can you kind of do both of those things where you can have really compelling story arcs but kind of make it a little bit more like a magic trick so that people aren't playing towards story arcs, they're just playing what feels right, or what makes sense, or what will make the numbers go up, and then all of a sudden they turn around and they're like, wow, a story arc now, and it was really good.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I sometimes have trouble with that magic trick style play, like sometimes, I do think it is often more efficient to just kind of like tell people what the fuck happens or like what they should do now, but I, I do think that there's a big strength in how prestige classes create a goal for characters, compared to like, heart beats, which create like, scenes for players to
Sam R: Yeah, that's the thing, prestige classes at their best are character facing, and heartbeats are player facing. I want to be able to describe what I want as a player in a way that would be coherent to the character. So, I want my character to be a purple dragon knight, and I want my character to want to be a purple dragon knight. And what I want is for then it to be
Sam: aligned with that
Sam R: yeah, and then I want, and then I want it to be hard, like, I also as a player have a secondary want of wanting it to be hard to become a purple dragon knight, you know, I want the DM to put challenges in front of me, but in the moment, I want to be like, hey, I'm just trying to be a purple dragon knight, I can just take steps that will push me towards being a purple dragon knight in a very clear way that will then, through the game's mechanics, Make it really interesting.
Sam: Well Sam, is there anything else that you want to talk about with Prestige Classes?
Sam R: I just want to reiterate something I already said, which is that I think prestige classes, flawed as they are, are a really interesting concept that was not executed to their full potential, and I'm gonna start playing with some of these ideas, and I encourage people to take it out for a spin, too.
It's funny, I'm, like, doing the shoot, I'm, like, getting mad again. But, like, I feel like I'm, like, angling for the Otherkind thing, where everyone was like, you did that episode about Otherkind dice, and everyone was like, now I want to make an Otherkind game, and what I want is everyone to make a Prestige Class game.
Sam: I feel like every episode of this show that I do, I end up angling for that at the end, but like, I agree about prestige classes, like, I personally think the people we should be talking to are the elf game adventure writers. Like, I think the most exciting place to try to take this technology is to put it deeper into the fiction. like, a mechanical reward for fictional action.
Like, if you are out there designing a dungeon, and your dungeon is full of mushroom people, like, make it so that there's a mushroom people prestige class that the players know about and they can go try to get by being friends with the mushroom people.
Like that to me is the most exciting thing to do with this and I would love to read adventures that are doing stuff like that.
Sam R: and I see in a lot of like elf gamey adventures where they do things that are almost that, but usually it's something that sort of just happens to the character over time. And often it's not something necessarily positive. And so, so I would say, take that idea and just make sure that the players know about it early on, and that it's something they want.
you can use character growth and advancement as a lure just as much as you can use a really cool magic item.
Sam: Yeah, and like, so much of that elf game world advancement is about that, well, what happens to the person. But I, think like an important part of that is, that can be a proactive thing, not just a reactive thing. Like it doesn't just have to be My character evolves because they go into the dungeon and get cursed. It can be they evolve because they go into the dungeon and like, retrieve the blessing that they went into the dungeon to retrieve in the first place. And more stuff like that would be
Sam R: Right, and it, and it unlocks, so much of the, the elf game space right now is built around this core idea of your searching for gold. And I think it unlocks another thing you could be searching for. so what can we do with that? Let's find out. We're going to play to find out.
Sam: We're gonna design to find out.
Sam R: Yes. The Dice Exploder Mantra, designed to find out.
Sam: Thanks again to Sam for coming on, You can escape from dynamo island yourself on itch.
It's. I just wrote in here, you can escape from dyno island on edge. It should be, you can find escape from dyno island on edge, but I like you can escape from dyno island on itch. I'm just going to keep all this in.
As always, you can find me on socials at S Dunnewold or on the dice Exploder discord.
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