Prestige Classes - Alternate Base Classes

Alternate Base Classes

See also: List of alternate Dungeons & Dragons classes

While the main character classes available have been fairly stable since the 1st edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a variety of alternate base classes have been offered in supplemental books. The release of Unearthed Arcana in 1985, for instance, introduced the new (at the time) base class of Barbarian and reworked Paladins to be a type of the new base class Cavalier; Oriental Adventures also introduced a number of alternate classes more appropriate for an Eastern setting. 2nd edition added several completely new base classes; in addition, supplemental handbooks offered a variety of "kits" to customize each base class, and the Dungeon Master's Guide offered a guide of suggestions on how to balance custom new classes created by individual players. 3rd edition introduced five NPC classes not intended for player use in its Dungeon Master's Guide.

Non-core base classes are considered optional and do not always exist in all settings. For example, the alternate Samurai class introduced in the Oriental Adventures book may not make sense in a game set in a standard European-style realm. Similarly, classes associated with psionics such as the Psychic Warrior don't apply to worlds without psionics.

Besides Wizards of the Coast, other companies have published material including new base classes.

Read more about this topic:  Prestige Classes

Famous quotes containing the words alternate, base and/or classes:

    “It might become a wheel spoked red and white
    In alternate stripes converging at a point
    Of flame on the line, with a second wheel below,
    Just rising, accompanying, arranged to cross,
    Through weltering illuminations, humps
    Of billows, downward, toward the drift-fire shore.”
    —Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    “They must to keep their certainty accuse
    All that are different of a base intent;
    Pull down established honour; hawk for news
    Whatever their loose phantasy invent
    And murmur it with bated breath....”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    “One marvels why ... the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.”
    —E.M. (Edward Morgan)