Ramnza wrote:
I, however, am worried about how much cheesing a person is expected to do.
Jack, in your post wrote:
As has been said, if you can't at least contribute meaningfully to an encounter of your CR, then your party is better off without you, even if they don't replace you.
I didn't say anything about multiclassing or PrCing. I just said you need to be able to meaningfully contribute to challenges of your CR.
If you can do that without multiclassing (and a rogue and a druid can, as TA pointed out), more power to you.
That said, the idea that someone would do what you describe:
Ramnza wrote:
no matter how much better you can make me if I were to take other prestige classes, all I want to do is be a rogue from 1st to 20th, am I not pulling my weight?
I've never encountered this in 3rd Edition. Really.
In 2nd Edition multiclassing was a pain in the ass because of the way they handled leveling up, but in 3rd Edition, it's trivially easy and makes sense.
But even still, I've never met anyone who wanted to play a rogue. Everybody wants to play
"A guy/girl like..." (tm).
Maybe it's someone you made up, or it may be someone from a movie, but nobody I've seen wants to play a straight class.
Say for instance you want to play
A guy like... (tm) Indiana Jones.
Rogue doesn't do it. Fighter sure doesn't do it.
But nosing around in the splat books a bit, we see that Rogue (with high intelligence)/ Lasher/ Watch Detective/Temple Raider is about as close as you can get to IJ and still be playing D&D. True, your DM could always homebrew you a "Indiana Jones PrC", but this solution is straight out of the books.
Something more general, which was just being discussed at Nifty the other day, was the Mythic Knight, the incurably good guy in armor on the big white horse.
In theory, the Paladin does this (
), but in practice we see it can be done better with PrCs, especially now that we can throw in BoED PrC's. (We will ignore the fact, as Frank keeps reminding us, that the concept of
Exalted as written does not make you what most people would consider an upstanding citizen.)
Don't be afraid to look around at your multiclassing options, but to answer your question, so long as you meaningfully contribute to challenges of your CR, do whatever you want.
Actually, as we don't game together, do whatever you want anyway. I recommend the Sorceror/Monk/Psion as a matter of fact.
-Jack