Shadow Levels: A way to roleplay the acquisition of Prestige Classes in D&D 3.x
The Roleplay of Prestige Classes
My games normally enforce the roleplay (non-game-mechanics) requirements for Prestige Classes (and, where relevant, feats and level progressions). It’s not enough for the character (PC or NPC) to simply meet the prerequisites, they usually have to DO something.
Pages 204-205 of DMG II, in discussing the design of new prestige classes, calls them character requirements. If a character takes a Feat, their personality and play style should reflect the attributes described by the feat. So far as I’m concerned, the flavour text is rules just as much as the game mechanics requirements are.
Taking a Prestige Class usually involves making a commitment to an organisation of like-minded individuals, or to a cause, or to a particular world-view. Sometimes this requirement makes no difference at all, and sometimes it requires a PC to go to a certain place and perform certain actions, or even roleplay an appropriate scenario, before they can take their first level in a character class. It is my belief that this adds a great deal of plausibility and realism to what is otherwise purely an issue of game mechanics but one of immense significance in terms of character development.
The problem with this requirement is that many of my campaign scenarios stretch over several character levels, especially at the lower end of the XP scale. A not-atypical example might comprise:
- An extended road trip with encounters;
- a subplot setting up or developing a broader campaign theme or plotline;
- a dungeon which propels the characters in an unexpected direction;
- more travel and more encounters;
- devopments within the subplot, which will often link it to other subplots already in existance;
- a location (possibly another dungeon) which resolves the events from the first dungeon;
- still more travel (and still more encounters);
- a conclusion to the subplot that establishes or develops the background to future scenarios, and may directly connect with one or more.
All of which take place before the characters get somewhere that provides the opportunity to filfill the requirements that permit a PC to adopt the character class that he wants, and has planned for some time. This isn’t a real problem if the level is gained at the end of that string of events, but if it falls somewhere in the middle or, heaven forbid, at the start, it can be serious issue. Characters have earned 3, 4, 5, 7, and even 13 levels on such minor quests!
Shadow Levels
To solve this problem, I came up with an idea I called “Shadow Levels” for my Shards Of Divinity campaign as a way of giving characters their levels on the spot, and yet deferring the actual choice of character class level for a more opportune time.
The House Rules
Here’s how this particular set of house rules work:
1. If you gain levels beyond what is needed to qualify for a particular prestige class, those levels can be taken as one or more “shadow” levels. A “Shadow” level means that you progress in BAB, HD, Saves, and Stat Increases as usual but all other benefits of gaining the level are put on hold. Feats can either be taken with the Shadow level or deferred until the level is converted into an actual character level.
2. Shadow Levels must be committed to a class at the time they are earned, and only one character class can have shadow levels committed to it at a time. Up to half the skill points that would be earned if the character actually gained a level in the class to which the shadow level is committed may be spent at the time the Shadow level is earned, the rest have to wait until the shadow level is converted. This means that if points are going to be needed to represent specific training that comes with the actual character level, the points are reserved for doing so, but the character can put up his other skills right away.
3. Conversion of a Shadow level to a complete character level requires the character to earn between 1 xp and 1% of the requirement for achieving the level. This just means that you actually have to do something in the way of PLAY to convert a shadow level to a real level – WHAT that something is will depend on the class in question, and its flavour text/roleplaying requirements. When all shadow levels have been converted to actual levels, the character receives this xp (which may be enough to gain another level, depending on how much was earned and how much the character needs to gain his next level)!
4. Shadow levels can ONLY be taken with the GM’s express permission and only when the character qualifies for the Prestige Class in question but cannot actually take levels in it right away for campaign continuity reasons.
5. Shadow Levels cannot be used to qualify for feats and other classes until converted.
6. All the other ‘normal’ rules of character advancement apply, eg if you earn too much xp from a single encounter you can still only gain 1 level and stop 1 point short of the next, just as though the shadow levels were levels in a character class.
That means that if your character progression calls for you to be in the capital in order to be inducted into the Prestige Class at a certain character level, you don’t have to be held hostage to the timetable of character advancement, and can continue to adventure with the group for a period of time.
The ‘commitment’ restrictions simply mean that you can’t put these things off indefinitely, so returning to the capital (or whatever) remains a priority.
The extra experience “earned” by performing whatever is required in terms of roleplay in order to qualify is both a thinly-disguised bribe to put up with the delay, and a reward for enhancing the game, and the campaign world, by doing so.
The Application Of Templates
It’s a funny thing: solve one problem, and you can often turn the solution to other problems. I had a player who was considering buying the Lich template (Shards Of Divinity is an evil campaign, so there was nothing wrong with doing so in principle). The question was how to handle the level adjustment in-play? It seemed unfair to the other players to simply permit him to add a couple of unearned levels, but there was no rules mechanism for taking templates in the course of play. It also seemed unfair to simply take away a number of earned character levels and replace them with the template’s level adjustment.
It wasn’t long before the obvious occurred to me: Why not take Shadow Levels to represent the conversion process from mortal to Lich? Since the Lich template didn’t confer additional skills, the character would forgo additional skill points for a couple of levels, but in every other way, it would work perfectly. And they’d get the xp benefits to compensate for the skill point loss.
Since then, the player has found a Prestige Class that confers Lichdom and then Demi-Lichdom over a span of multiple levels, so the technique was ultimately unneccessary, but it remains in my toolbox for future use. The downside of his choice is that it takes twenty levels of advancement, while the Template took about eight.
Shadow Feats
I was describing the Shadow Levels concept to a friend of mine, some time later, and he raised the suggestion of empoying a similar technique for characters who did not meet the roleplaying requirements of a feat, even though the game mechanics requirements (the prerequisites) were satisfied. A character could take a “Shadow Feat” that conferred half the bonus, or conferred the advantage half the time, until they completed the requirements. Again, you could only have one “Shadow Feat” at a time, so there was a deadline that had eventually to be met.
Although this proposal has not yet been introduced to the campaign, there seems no reason not to at least float the notion to the players. The objective, after all, is to enable characters to undertake the progression path they want, without interfering with the roleplay of doing so.
Or, to phrase it another way, to liberate the roleplay from the tyranny of game mechanics. After all, which is the more important?
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June 25th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Spooky. You know, I am using an almost identical solution to the same problem!
The way I handle templates, though, is to break the benefits down into a level progression. PCs can acquire a template by allocating earned xp levels to the template just like any other class. Some templates might force the character to spend their future level increments on buying the template (eg Lycanthropy). Others might allow the player to choose to allocate their levels as and when they wish.
Lurkinggherkin’s last blog post..Quest For The Hanging Glacier – Character Sketch: Albrigon
June 25th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I love this idea. Most DMs I’ve played with simply hand waved the character requirements away, but it can be so much fun going through it. The only one I really got to experience is the drunken master’s requirement of going out drinking with a drunken master and not ending up passed out, in jail or dead.
Nicholas’s last blog post..DM Dilemma: My Party Kicks Too Much Ass
June 25th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
@Lurkingherkin: It’s interesting that you’ve got something similar going. There aren’t that many good solutions to the problem, in my opinion; and there hasn’t been anything written about it that I’ve across. What are the differences between our approaches?
The only thing that I don’t really like about the solution you’re using for templates is that sometimes there isn’t really a partial solution to some of these. But on reflection, you could have a complete transformation and not get all the benefits right away. It would make ‘sufferers’ acutely vulnerable when they initially transform, though.
@Nicholas: Most DMs handwave the roleplaying componant because of the difficulties in providing the right circumstances at the time they are needed, no matter where the characters happen to be and what they are doing. That’s what this solution provides – a way to defer those when they aren’t practical. At the same time, they give the DM the responsibility to provide those circumstances as soon as they can; the system will only work if the players can trust the DM to do so. Of course, of the players don’t trust the DM, the campaign has bigger problems!
June 25th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Man, those Shadow Levels are a good idea! Our current game is definitely of the “kick in the door” style so we just lvl up in whatever we meet the mechanical prereqs for whenever we want, but this will be a great way to do it when we do a more RP focused game later.
Also, instead of creating shadow levels to apply templates, you could just create a prestige class that does it in increments, like the Dragon Disciple. Over the 10 levels of that PrC, you end up getting pieces of the Half-Dragon template a little bit at a time. When you are finished, you have gained the Half-Dragon template. This may take a bit more work, since you will have to make up your own prestige class, add some non-template abilities to it, and balance it, but IMO it is the most fun way.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
@Robert: Glad you find the idea useful, Robert. The suggestion you make for creating a prestige class that confers the template is essentially the solution that the player has gone for in my campaign, though he found a prestige class created by someone else instead of creating his own. It’s also similar to the technique offered by Lurkinggherkin in his comment. Another big question that occurs to me is why should a template with a +2 level adjustment take 5 or 10 levels to achieve? Of course, if you specify that the number of levels required to exist in the Prestige Class is the same as the level adjustment of the template, then our solutions all become more alike. In fact, the biggest distinction becomes when the actual transformation takes place and whether or not template consequences are spread out over the course of that transformation.
December 31st, 2013 at 8:34 pm
I believe the reason the prestige classes take more levels is that they are inserting the template gains among the other components of character advancement (saves, BAB, skills, etc.). Using the prestige class eliminates the gaping holes in skill and feat advancement that simply purchasing a template produces (either with unspent XP or by the “shadow XP” method described here).
Personally, it seems to make more sense to me to treat some templates (such as Lich) more like a magical item, with associated XP (and perhaps gold, or other) costs as usual. I have not considered this much, but I would probably treat “Lich” like a significant artifact rather than a standard magic item. What XP cost would an item that conferred Lich abilities have? That’s what the phylactery is, right? Determine that and you have the cost of becoming a Lich.
December 31st, 2013 at 10:25 pm
There are two good reasons for not adopting the approach you describe, David.
The first is where the Template or Prestige Class confers knowledge, skills, or a perspective that cannot be acquired any other way than through education and/or training from existing members of the class. That experience cannot be acquired from nowhere, and even if the acquisition of this expertise is not to be roleplayed, the contact with the other members of the class that leads to the PC being accepted certainly should be, When the PC is in the middle of a dungeon, or out in the wilderness, this encounter is not possible. Game mechanics should always take a back seat to Roleplaying, in other words.
The second is where the Template involves a significant mental or physical transformation, which the GM believes should take place over time rather than all at once.
In either case, it is desirable to have a mechanism that doesn’t confer a change suddenly or at once.
And what if the cost that you determine is greater than that required for the character’s next level? Do they get the benefit of that level, even if they will lose it when they take the template? How do you explain that?
When neither of these conditions applies, when it makes no difference, then your approach works just fine. But this is so rare that it can hardly be considered a normal technique, since it implies that there is no value in taking the prestige class or template in question.
May 13th, 2014 at 12:47 am
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