D&D 3.5: A question for fellow DM's

Do you play D&D?

Hell yeah!	92.9%	[ 13 ]
No way! Nerd...	0.0%	[ 0 ]
Poll Whore.	7.1%	[ 1 ]
Total Votes:			[ 14 ]

[alec_king_of_dorks]

I'm DMing a campaign and one of the players, namely the ranger, wants to level into a homebrew prestige class and I'm not sure if I should let him use it.

It is here. Please tell me if you would allow this class in your campaign.

[Dark Hunter Akala]

It looks pretty high powered to me, there's a lot of archery related feats that would otherwise take him a lot longer to gain access to.
I think it could get out of hand pretty fast. Plus, there aren't any real trade offs, and the skill list is huge. I'd recommend your player checking out the Order of the Bow Initiate prestige class in Complete Warrior. It has the same route with an archery based character, but isn't as high powered. If your character is focused on archery, it stands to reason that he shouldn't get a bunch of animal related abilities as well. He could cross class into druid for that.

[ThePhantomSquee]

Personally, I'm inclined to say the opposite--this class doesn't look like it's doing nearly enough to make archery a viable option. Of the bonus feats it gives, Run and Far Shot are fairly useless except in very specific circumstances, the damage bonus is negligible, and the other abilities related to tracking and animal companions are just extras. That basically amounts to taking an entire 10 levels for only 3 feats you're ever going to actually use.

I echo the above statement endorsing Order of the Bow Initiate, though. It's a much better-put-together class and will actually help him out with the archery stuff without having to sink 5 levels into the class first.

As a general rule, treat anything from dandwiki with extreme caution, because most of it is terrible.

[Laertes Ursus]

Beware the DnDWiki, for therein lies madness. I would be very careful with anything that comes out of that site, and should things get out of hand be ready to rescind or nerf the abilities.

[Tralk]

Laertes Ursus

Beware the DnDWiki, for therein lies madness. I would be very careful with anything that comes out of that site, and should things get out of hand be ready to rescind or nerf the abilities.

General rule of thumb for new DMs. Disallow all homebrew. D&D Wiki is the PERFECT example of how NOT to homebrew. I stumbled upon a homebrew race earlier. +2 to all stats. LA +0. That's not at all broken right?

[Lanackse-Kanvae]

Tralk

Laertes Ursus

Beware the DnDWiki, for therein lies madness. I would be very careful with anything that comes out of that site, and should things get out of hand be ready to rescind or nerf the abilities.

General rule of thumb for new DMs. Disallow all homebrew. D&D Wiki is the PERFECT example of how NOT to homebrew. I stumbled upon a homebrew race earlier. +2 to all stats. LA +0. That's not at all broken right?

I'm so putting my homebrew race past you for evaluation when I feel that it's ready.

[ThePhantomSquee]

Tralk

Laertes Ursus

Beware the DnDWiki, for therein lies madness. I would be very careful with anything that comes out of that site, and should things get out of hand be ready to rescind or nerf the abilities.

General rule of thumb for new DMs. Disallow all homebrew. D&D Wiki is the PERFECT example of how NOT to homebrew. I stumbled upon a homebrew race earlier. +2 to all stats. LA +0. That's not at all broken right?

Off the top of my head, my favorite example of the sheer lack of effort or intelligence going into most of the homebrew there was a particular prestige class. It was ostensibly a sound-themed mage, which is a concept I love--but the writer had put almost no effort into it: there was no fluff, no description of what the class does, etc. Just a table with each level of the class giving either [spell-like ability] X/day or Listen +X.