I'm not going to answer every one of your points, because it is clear form your post that your preliminary assumptions differ from mine substantially.
Particularly, the idea that you are "forced" into a one-level dip, frankly, makes no sense. I do not in the current game ever feel "forced" to multiclass, and there is nothing in the current playtest packs that makes multiclassing any more inevitable or "forced".
However, a few small notes:
So here's what each class gives with a 1 level dip & how that expands beyond tier1.
Bard
Is there a reason you don't list the two first-level spells that Bards get? That, um, seems a substantial part of the class. To get that, and to get a free (better than) Healing word proficiency times/long rest seems much more powerful than anything you are suggesting for Cleric.
- L1:Expertise in two of your skills
- Currently expertise is double proficiency & bounded accuracy is already destrpyed by scaling proficiency bonuses alone even without expertise. This is a problem but perhaps not specifically a multiclass problem.
It is clear you really don't like expertise. Fine -- I don't like it because it erodes the nich I think rogues shoudl hold, and I think too many classes have it, and you can get it through feats etc. But, as you note, that's really separate from the multiclassing issue.
Ranger
- L1:Favored enemy: You always have hunters mark prepared & can cast it without needing to maintain concentration...
- Ruh-roh: It's entirely possible hunters mark will change in a way that solves this but I think that's a stretch. This is a pretty serious bit of dip candy for any classs that makes weapon attacks& the pressure grows the more attacks a PC makes each round. We don't know what the non-light weapons will ultimately look like but this is already starting to singlehandedly pull an already questionable dip in ways that are looking like it significantly misses the mark for that goal Crawford laid out.
It's worth at least observing that you need to spend a spell slot to cast it.
Cleric Red Alert
- 1st:Channel Divinity: This is a heal or nuke that scales based with both proficiency bonus uses in addition to proficiency bonus number of dice
- This is an anility that misses that goal by an extreme degree. Any wisdom based class is going to be feeling some pressure & it could be good enough that even non-wisdom based classes start feeling pressure
Can you explain why this causes you more anxiety that Bardic Inspiration?
Finally, I'll talk about your thoughts on Holy orders, which requires a 2-level dip, and as such becomes part of a build established over many sessions.
- 2nd: Holy Order: Choice between A: Martial weapon proficiency & heavy armor proficiency, B: proficiency in two skills from arcana history nature persuasion & religion and you add your wisdom mod to it on top of whatever you normally add, C: an extra divine cantrip and you regain one of those proficiency bonus/long rest proficiency bonus(d8) channel divinity uses when you take a short rest....
- A is pretty awesome on top of everything else. Even now it's common for characters to dip cleric just to get heavy armor proficiency
- B is freaking amazing for a face character & further exposes how bad bounded accuracy is by making the best face character a bard X/cleric 2 leaps & bounds beyond anything else.
- C is something that makes an already overly desirable dip pressuring ability even better and
A. will almost certainly be possible from a 1-level dip in Fighter, so it does not seem overpowered. I would prefer characters invest in Wisdom and be rewarded for it.
B. feels overstated to me. Yes, the presence of Persuasion there makes it powerful, but I do not think there's anything wrong with giving Expertise-level bonuses on Intelligence skills, since Int is so often a dump stat in any case. Compare the Knowledge cleric in the current game -- how often do people complain how it is uber-powerful? In my feedbck, I am going to suggest the bonus only be for INT skills (and so investigation rather than persuasion), and that fixes it for my tastes.
C. Multiple levels of investment into cleric so that you can get Channel divinity features is actually what I want a cleric "dip" to give. This is good design, and if you see it as the obvious choice, then that's good design, doubling down on the core distinctive cleric mechanism.
I'm really not seeing a problem here.
There are definitely some serious problems
We're operating with different assumptions, clearly, but we're both playing the same game. Some of this reaction seems extreme to me, and I think with small tweaks it could be even better.