For example Lets use the Marrutact from Sandstorm, it can cast as a 5th level wizard. if it then takes a prestige class that requires the ability to cast 1st level Arcane spells and advances arcane casting such as Abjurant Champion. assuming it meets all other prerequisites does the Marrutacts spellcasting improve when it takes a level in Abjurant Champion or does it gain no benefit?
[RPG] How do Prestige Classes that advance spellcasting interact with racial spellcasting ability
dnd-3.5espells
Related Solutions
These are the classes that I can find that reference a template directly. Classes that “effectively” offer a template are trickier: it’s not always clear what counts, and in any event, there’s nothing to easily search by. I don’t have a plan for tracking those down at the moment.
As predicted, almost all of them gradually build up the benefits of the template, which is granted “properly” by the capstone. The only exceptions are Vadalis beastkeeper—which is a weird case—and the wild-shape-only templates from blighter and planar shepherd. Well, and the Dragon Compendium mountebank, but that’s a base class and the feature in question is quite possibly the worst in the entire edition, and in any event Dragon Compendium is by Paizo and not Wizards of the Coast.
Prestige Classes
- Blighter 3rd (Complete Divine): skeleton
- Only while wild shaped
- Disciple of Ashardalon 12th (Draconomicon): half-fiend
- Gradually built up over the course of the class
- Dragon devotee 5th (Races of the Dragon): draconic
- Requires not having the draconic template
- Gradually built up over the course of the class
- Dragon disciple 10th (Dungeon Master’s Guide): half-dragon
- Noted in the question
- Requirements block anyone with the template
- Gradually built up over the course of the class
- Planar shepherd 3rd (Faiths of Eberron): any that turns an animal into a magical beast (!)
- Only while wild shaped
- Vadalis beastkeeper 10th (Dragonmarked): magebred, sort of
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At 10th level, your constant exposure to the arcane essence of magebred animals and magical beasts causes a transformation within your own form that mimics the magebred template.
- Spells out exactly what you get
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- Walker in the waste 10th (Sandstorm): dry lich
- Noted in the question
- Requirements block anyone with the template (not that you can get it any other way)
- Gradually built up over the course of the class
Base Classes
Not requested, but there are a few
- Death master 20th (Dragon Compendium): lich
- Gradually built up over the course of the class
- Dread necromancer 20th (Heroes of Horror): lich
- Gradually built up over the course of the class
- Mountebank 20th (Dragon Compendium; not the Complete Scoundrel prestige class): half-fiend
- While the whole class has a diabolical theme, none of the specific features of half-fiend are granted by previous class features.
- The same feature that grants the half-fiend template also whisks the character to the Outer Planes where they become “an NPC under the DM’s control.”
- Thanks to @Prevarications for pointing it out.
Best Answer
You usually need to take 1 level in the base class first
SRD > Special Abilities > Spells
Since prestige classes (almost always) require you to choose a class (that you already have levels in), and in most cases your innate spellcasting explicitly does not count as having any levels in the class you cast spells as, you cannot expect a prestige class to help here.
However!
SRD > Improving Monsters > Associated Class Levels
(emphasis mine)
Thus, when you take a level of wizard as a marrutact (or a level of sorcerer as a dragonspawn or a level of bard as a gloura), this stacks with (improves) your innate spellcasting, and means you have membership in that class for the purposes of choosing it with a prestige class. Since both the innate spellcasting and the prestige class levels stack with the base class, your total “effective” spellcasting level includes all three sources.
Note that for creatures like angels that cast as clerics and have domains, real-class-membership has further benefit:
SRD > Special Abilities > Spells
Many thanks to @Forrestfire and @Taveena for helping me track down these rules.
But there really isn’t a great reason to require the 1-level dip in the base class
Ultimately, I’ve never met a DM who actually required that one level, and refused to allow the prestige class to just work. It seems appropriate and I’m dubious that there are any cases where it is broken to do so (at least, assuming the base creature wasn’t already broken on its own; there are definitely cases of that – Black Ethergaunt, I am looking at you).