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Prestige classes

A prestige class is a second table of levels for a class that stops short of the rest, as the bard does at 30. You reach it only by a calling: a deed found somewhere in the world, never by experience alone. The game never names one, but the world leaves hints, such as a statue’s inscription.

There is no multiclassing. You keep the class you chose for good, and the prestige class adds to it.

  • Your level is your total. A bard of level 30 called into a prestige class becomes Hunter 1 at level 31, and Hunter 30 at 60. The status bar shows the total. The character screen shows both: Bard 30, Hunter 4.
  • The cap. Each class has a last level (the table says which). Past it your experience still counts, but buys no level. A calling raises your cap by the prestige class’s levels.
  • The calling is open to a character of a class it calls from, at the level it asks (that class’s last), who has no prestige class yet. Walking through it calls you at once, and you are told so. If you have less experience than the next level costs, you are given exactly what you lack, so your first prestige level comes at once. Experience banked past your old cap buys every level it can, all at once.
  • Everything carries across. Your class’s abilities, talents, skills, hit points, and mana stay as they were. Each level from then on is the prestige class’s: its hit points, its mana, its skill rolls and the skills it is known for, its bonus talents, and its abilities, at its own levels. What a level gives by your total still holds: no hit points past 50 and no mana past 60 (see Levelling up). So does the experience your race and first class need.
Prestige classLevelsHit pointsManaSkill rolls a levelKnown for
Hunter30702Athletics, Survival
  • Hunter: One who has sworn the old oath on the road and been answered: a fighter whose weapon comes to the hand when called.

Hunter

A bonus talent at levels 5, 10, 15, 23, 28, from Weaponcraft or Guard.

LevelAbilityEffect
1Spirit weaponactive (in the shape of any melee weapon, for the time of wielding one, 6 seconds at normal pace, with what the hands held put away as any swap; no mana, cooldown, or check, as often as you like): a weapon of spirit-stuff of that shape, made and weighing as its plain base, is put in your main hand (both, for a two-handed one), and one you hold fades first. It strikes +3 to hit, threatens criticals 2 lower, and ignores every point of the target’s Protection; it fades the moment it leaves your hands (put away, swapped, dropped, sold) and cannot be thrown

The Hunter has sworn the old oath and been answered: a fighter whose weapon comes when called.

Spirit weapon, from Hunter 1, calls a weapon of spirit-stuff into your hand. It takes the shape of any melee weapon you choose, for the time of wielding one and nothing else. It is a plain weapon of that kind in every way (its damage, weight, and grip), with +3 to hit and a threat 2 lower, and it ignores every point of the target’s Protection. It fades the moment it leaves your hands, and cannot be thrown (see Spirit weapon).

Callings

Each world calls in its own way:

  • The Ascmearc, for a bard of level 30 or more, not yet called, to be a Hunter: the strange spirit (who speaks only to the Kind or better) grants it when spoken to, met on the way (downs, roads, vale, woods). You are told: “The oath is in you now, as a blade is in its sheath. You are a hunter.”

See also: Classes, Experience and levelling up, and Talents.