The pale master prestige class has a requirement of being nongood (NWN 1). If my alignment later changes to Good, do I lose all my class abilities, or merely my ability to gain more pale master levels?

Class requirements are needed for levelling up only.

Or NWN2, for that matter. One of my favorite MotB playthroughs was as a Paladin/Blackguard.

Just a fair warning, the Pale Master is a very poor prestige class. A Wizard 5 / Palemaster 10 has the spell slots of a 10th level wizard, and the caster level of a 5th level wizard. What this means is that your spells deal 1/3rd as much damage, last 1/3rd the duration, and you have access to only 5th level spells instead of 8th level spells. This is a catastrophic tradeoff, and Pale Master is in-effect a handicap class to increase your game difficulty.

Just as a more fair warning, this is very wrong. He's correct that something like Wizard 5/Palemaster 10 is bad...but something like a Wizard 30/Palemaster 10 is extremely good (get more AC, crit/sneak immunity, more HP, and some other stuff).

In addition, Palemaster is usually used for MELEE classes. Something like a Fighter 28/Bard 2/Pale Master 10, for example. 8 extra AC and crit immunity plus some other goodies in exchange the loss of 6 feats in epic levels. Insanely overpowered in some builds.

While this is true, it's also irrelevant unless you play on persistent worlds.

The official campaigns and premium modules never give you enough levels for builds like that to become viable, and neither do 99% of downloadable modules. I can recall two or three that let you reach a level in the upper thirties... but even then you typically spend the vast majority of your time playing through the lower levels.

Plus it's pretty counter-intuitive that the prestige classes in NWN that are supposedly for spellcasters are actually only good for fighters.

So I'd still advise people to stay away from the Pale Master, unless they really know what they are doing and/or playing on a persistent world.

Thanks for the answers! I only plan to take a 1 level dip in the class, for the natural AC bonus. I think that's worth losing one caster level over, given that I still maintain full spellslot progression.

Yep. that's not a bad tradeoff.

Like anything in NWN, you can make argument for and against. It really depends on the circumstances and what you want out of it (hell, I even made some pretty fun builds with Harper Scout). Your idea for a one level dip is something I was about to suggest when I checked the responses in this thread, but you already thought of it. Enjoy your game! :)

That's irrelevant outside of PvP or high-level PW's. Very few campaigns go anywhere near 40, and he's unlikely to go much higher than 25 if he's playing the official campaigns. Given that most campaigns end around level 15, a warning about wizard 5 / pale master 10 is important. This is workable; you dodge the major issues by doing so. Personally I don't think the caster level loss is worth it, particularly at low levels where 1 round/level spells are painfully short-lived and 1 extra damage die is a pretty big boost, but keeping the sacrifice to 1 level is manageable.

Aielund Saga and Sands of Fate series are two immediate examples that spring to mind which are well known and often played. Well, as I mentioned, it's still good for a spellcaster for a level 40 campaign/world, but yes, it is a bit silly. Same goes for RDD (though that's *only* good for melee classes). But that's different from saying "it's a very poor prestige class." If anything it's one of the prestige classes that is considered overpowered and nerfed in some form. It's not. The 2 AC won't matter unless you're trying to wear full plate with (Auto) Still Spell. Either invest fully in the prestige class in the Epic Levels or don't bother, it's worthless pre-epic for a caster. Only tank types should be possibly using it pre-epic. Except you didn't just warn him about Wizard 5/PM 10 (which I agree with), you said it was a "very poor" prestige class. In fact, it's one of the most powerful prestige classes...but only at high levels. Yeah, 2 AC and 2 HP isn't worth it.

If there was any indication we were talking about a super-high-level game, then I'd agree with you. However, we're talking about someone prospectively taking their first level in Palemaster, and playing through the intervening levels. Given the context, I did not feel there was any reason to discuss how that works a bit differently in the epic levels. For a typical campaign, advice overwhelmingly should focus on level 5-15. Palemaster is just plain bad for everyone and anyone at this stage, and the payoff so far down the road that even in the campaigns where you might live to see it (like HotU) it's not worthwhile. Anyways, we can agree to disagree.


Epic mage armor also works in a pinch. It has stacking issues, but the numbers are high enough to be workable in a low-OP environment. Of course, in low-OP you should be able to get away with nothing more than pre-Epic DR spells.

There was zero indication about anything given. With a complete lack of context saying "Pale Masters suck" isn't helpful either. Should be giving general advice that at point.

If we were to assume only low levels by default, then Weapon Master is an awful prestige class because you get zero benefits until level 11, assuming you manage to take the class as soon as possible.

OP environment? Overpowered environment?

I'm assuming you generally mean "low-magic environment." EMA is also significantly (at least 3 AC better) better than dipping into one level of Pale Master. Or are you referring to EMA as an alternative to wearing actual armor and assuming there's like only +3 items available in an epic environment? Can't say I've ever seen that.

Agree to disagree, I suppose. I infer from the context of his question that he's playing through a typical campaign and is overwhelmingly likely to be on the lower end of the level spectrum. Maybe that's a fair presumption, maybe it's not, but it's the one I made.

This is true, and I wouldn't recommend weapon master for SoU as a result. It's just coming online when the campaign is ending. However, if you're playing the OC then you'll probably end around level 17, which gives you enough time to get the benefits and enjoy them for a fair chunk of your adventuring career. However, this isn't an apt comparison to Pale Master; weapon master is online and fully-functional by level 15 even in builds that delay their entry, and that's much earlier than anyone would consider Pale Master. That makes it a viable choice in a wide range of campaigns.

OP = optimization. Characters of the same level can have vastly different power depending on their build. A "high-OP" environment is designed to challenge the more powerful ones, and the "low-OP" environment is designed to challenge the less powerful ones.

As an alternative to wearing actual armor. I'm aware that's going to be too low by AC-stacking standards due to its inability to stack, but not every module is designed to challenge AC stackers. The upsides of this approach is that it's less feat intensive (1 epic feat instead of 3 for auto-still), it comes online at a much lower level, and it leaves more equipment slots open for other items. It all depends on the kinds of attack bonus you'll be up against, hence my remark about optimization. I'm aware this won't work in a high-OP environment with sky-high attack bonuses designed to get through AC-stackers' shells.

I can safely say in over 10 years of playing NWN and more than that playing RPGs I have never seen that term.

AC stacking has nothing to do with it. We're not talking about Dex characters or monks or shifters with monk levels or dedicated PMs or anything. Let's say we have +5 equipment in early epic levels to try to be nice to EMA.

A fighter in Full Plate will have 10 base + 1 Dex + 8 (Full Plate) + 3 (Tower Shield) + 25 (Armor/Deflection/Natural/Dodge/Shield gear) = 47 AC.

A mage with EMA will have 10 base + 20 (EMA) + 5 (Dodge gear) = 35 AC.

So the mage is 12 AC behind the fighter without even factoring in things like Tumble or Armor Skin, though the mage can count his Dex bonus on top of that. But even if you had 14 base Dex and 4 dex from gear you're still 8 AC behind a character who's not even trying to get his AC up. So if a monster hits the fighter 35% on the highest roll will average 0.9 hits per round while the mage will get hit 75% of the time on the highest roll and average 2.3 hits per round, or two and a half times as many hits.

And an "AC-stacker" as you put it will probably have another 5-10 AC beyond the fighter, if not more.

It's a pen and paper term. I'm more of a lurker than an active participant on pen and paper boards, but I read quite a bit when I was preparing to GM Pathfinder and picked up the lingo.

It doesn't matter whether the wizard's AC is competitive with an armored fighter, it matters it's competitive with the attack bonus of the encounters in the module. Hence my remark about high-OP and low-OP; it's about what baseline you're trying to hit and how much effort you need to make to hit it. If the benchmark is low, mage armor takes you there with practically no investment or effort. If we were to compare against a greatsword fighter without the tower shield, then the wizard is exactly the same as the guy with +5 items.