Leveling Up and Pre-Requisites

There was some ambiguous rules put in place by Wizards when dealing with level ups and pre-requisites which the DM team has been asked about lately.

To take a PrC, you need to meet all the pre-requisites BEFORE taking your first level of the PrC. This means that any BAB, Skill, Feat, or other requirements must be entirely on your sheet beforehand.

However, when choosing Feats, Class Abilities, and other items for your character besides the actual level they are raising, you have a lot more flexibility. The following is the steps for leveling a character, in order. 

1) Choose Your Class (Level Up)
2) Base Attack Bonus increase.
3) Base Save Bonuses Increase.
4) Ability Score Increase
5) Hit Points Increase
6) Skill Points are added.
7) Feats are chosen
8) Spells are Chosen
9) Class Features are taken.

So how do we determine Pre-Requisites for things using this list? Simple: if it's on your sheet (in the level up process) before you require the pre-requisite (before you add the item that needs that as a pre-requisite) then, you can take the item you need the pre-requisite for.

This is why Fighters at 4th level (requiring fighter 4) can take Weapon Specialization. Specialist Monks get an ability at level 6, but require typically 9 ranks in some skill or another. Despite that they require spending a point in that skill at 6th level to gain their ability, they can still do so because their Class Features (The ability they gain) fall in the list after they add skill points to their skills.

Hopefully, this clears up any confusion you may have on how pre-requisites work. If you have additional questions, please FPM them to me.

Thanks,

Lucas