D&D 2E 2e Multiclassing Play Balance without Level Limits

[dmhelp]

I really miss the old fighter/mage combo in newer d&d editions.

If you “modernize” ad&d by removing race based class restrictions (dwarf paladin, human fighter/mage/thief, etc) and demi human level limits… are any of the multiclass combinations too good?

Is a cleric/mage with unlimited advancement too good? In other words should multiclass options be restricted if you are allowing unlimited advancement?

 

[Voadam]

You generally are a level lower in each class when you multiclass but often there are additional restrictions to multiclassing.

Anything multiclassing with wizard has the armor restrictions for spellcasting.

Any multiclass with fighter gives up the big fighter ability to use weapon specialization for more attacks and additional attack and damage bonuses.

Being down a level generally means missing out on the comparative top level spell slot half the time for a spellcaster and being a touch weaker on total spell slots and caster level.

The character will be a level behind on hp and THAC0 and saves and class abilities, compared to a single class character of their best class for those attributes.

Multiclassing is strong, but being down levels is a decently big blow to power.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I really miss the old fighter/mage combo in newer d&d editions.

If you “modernize” ad&d by removing race based class restrictions (dwarf paladin, human fighter/mage/thief, etc) and demi human level limits… are any of the multiclass combinations too good?

Is a cleric/mage with unlimited advancement too good? In other words should multiclass options be restricted if you are allowing unlimited advancement?

1. Demi-human limits on class, and level restrictions, are primarily there in order to "balance" them with humans. If you remove the restrictions completely, the advantages of being a demi-human are so extreme in TSR-era D&D, it is difficult to see why anyone would play a human.

In other words, if you want to do this, you need to consider giving humans some kind of advantage. Because the advantage that humans have is that they can be any class, and never have level restrictions.


2. I slightly disagree with @Voadam - being down a level is a disadvantage, but not .... quite enough (IMO). Many demi-humans, under the old rules, would MC into thief (for obvious reasons). That said, if your primary goal is to have fun ... why not?

 

[Alzrius]

Fun fact: if you wanted to multiclass as a human in AD&D 2nd Edition, you could...if you were using the HR3 Celts Campaign Sourcebook (affiliate link). When rolling up a human character with that supplement, you got to roll for a gift with regard to your character's abilities (though a low roll gave you a penalty, and a mid-range roll got you nothing).

A roll of 20, "Magical Lineage," let you multiclass as a mage with any other character class (except druid). So did a roll of 17, "Mixed Blood," but you then had to roll a 7 on a d12 to get that particular sub-table result.

 

[Lanefan]

I really miss the old fighter/mage combo in newer d&d editions.

If you “modernize” ad&d by removing race based class restrictions (dwarf paladin, human fighter/mage/thief, etc) and demi human level limits… are any of the multiclass combinations too good?

IMO just about all of them are, unless you chop back on some class abilities to make single-classing more attractive.

We did something similar to this in our 1e-based games and for me it's been a high-wire act ever since, trying to find the point where multiclassed characters are viable without being too powerful and-or being able to do everything and thus not needing to co-depend on the rest of a party. As that co-dependence is a large part of what encourages party play rather than a bunch of one-man bands, I intentionally err a bit on the side of over-nerfing multi's.

Is a cleric/mage with unlimited advancement too good? In other words should multiclass options be restricted if you are allowing unlimited advancement?

Don't allow multi-classing within the same class group. Many years ago I once allowed a MU-Illusionist multiclass and came to regret it mightily.

 

[Jack Daniel]

The demihuman level limits are there to enforce AD&D's human-centric genre of sword & sorcery fantasy. AD&D assumes lots of self-interested adventurers running around the fantasy world, the most successful of whom will eventually become the region's local lords, patriarchs, wizards, and other rulers. (It also assumes that a given player might by running any number of characters, so having your non-human PCs suddenly hit a ceiling is no big deal — when that happens, you just keep on running your human characters for the high-level, dominion-ruling or planes-hopping adventures, only brining a demihuman out of semi-retirement when the evening's adventure is a low- or mid-level caper in need of that demihuman's unique talents.)

But if you take away the level limits and class restrictions, humans have no advantages at all, and so the players will always play demihumans — which in turn means that the game-world will eventually be ruled by high-level demihumans, lording it over the human masses. It raises the question, why weren't the demihumans already in charge before PCs started running around and getting powerful?

(And the idea that it doesn't matter if the makeup of the PC party doesn't reflect the population of the game world, because the PCs are already outliers by virtue of being adventurers? That idea makes no sense in the context of an AD&D campaign, where it's built into the very foundations of the leveling system that gaining experience also advances you through the ranks in your character's society. Adventurers in AD&D are emphatically not outliers and fringe elements.)

That's the underlying logic, at any rate. So, to the question at hand: (1) are the multiclass combinations too good to allow unrestricted? and (2) what can we do for humans if we give their best two advantages to everybody?

It's easier for me to answer (2) first, as the 2e DMG already offers a great suggestion. If you're going to let demihumans pick any class and rise to any level, they have to pay for their other advantages somehow, and it has to be heavy enough that humans are worth considering (but not so heavy that demihumans aren't worth considering). The 2e DMG suggests making nonhuman PCs in such a campaign earn double the normal amount of XP to level up, and this works well enough given that the XP tables are exponential until 8th or 9th. A single-classed demihuman will be one level behind a single-classed human (at least until name level, when they begin to fall further behind). A double- or triple-classed demihuman will advance quite slowly, and it'll hurt a bit, but it won't feel untenably glacial until after name level.

Don't allow multi-classing within the same class group. Many years ago I once allowed a MU-Illusionist multiclass and came to regret it mightily.

2e, at least, is explicit about that being illegal. 1e didn't really need to point it out, because the sub-classes were examples of their class group. If an illusionist is a magic-user, and a magic-user/magic-user is patently absurd on the face of it, there should be no need to explain to players why a magic-user/illusionist multiclass is nonsense.

(2e also helpfully slots monks neatly into the priest group and bards into the rogue group, so you know where all the classes go. There are only ever five groups — warrior, wizard, priest, rogue, and psionicist — which handily limits the multiclassing and dual-classing possibilities.)

 

[Lanefan]

2e, at least, is explicit about that being illegal. 1e didn't really need to point it out, because the sub-classes were examples of their class group. If an illusionist is a magic-user, and a magic-user/magic-user is patently absurd on the face of it, there should be no need to explain to players why a magic-user/illusionist multiclass is nonsense.

In 1e the "sub-classes" were full classes in their own right. Illusionists had different stat requirements, different spell lists, and so forth compared to conventional MUs; much like Druids (a sub-class of Cleric) had different requirements, spells, abilities, etc.

(2e also helpfully slots monks neatly into the priest group and bards into the rogue group, so you know where all the classes go. There are only ever five groups — warrior, wizard, priest, rogue, and psionicist — which handily limits the multiclassing and dual-classing possibilities.)

I get around that by simply disallowing either of those classes - Monk and Bard - from multiclassing.

 

[Voadam]

But if you take away the level limits and class restrictions, humans have no advantages at all, and so the players will always play demihumans — which in turn means that the game-world will eventually be ruled by high-level demihumans, lording it over the human masses. It raises the question, why weren't the demihumans already in charge before PCs started running around and getting powerful?

I would change that "will always play" to "will have incentives to play".

I joined and played in a long time 1e game with no level caps, high level PCs and people still chose to be humans as an option. Two out of the top five high level (20 and 30+ level) PCs were humans. When my character hit 20 it became three out of six.

People choose PC races including humans in D&D for all sorts of reasons.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I would change that "will always play" to "will have incentives to play".

I joined and played in a long time 1e game with no level caps, high level PCs and people still chose to be humans as an option. Two out of the top five high level (20 and 30+ level) PCs were humans. When my character hit 20 it became three out of six.

People choose PC races including humans in D&D for all sorts of reasons.

Well sure, but let's not forget that this is a piece of game-design put together by a wargamer who probably thought that 3 demihumans out of 5 player characters was 2½ demihumans too many (and who believed that everybody would want to play Conan because wanting to play Gandalf was weird and inconceivable). Someone who expected every player to scramble for each and every game-mechanical advantage they could get their mitts on.

In my own experience, players just want to play demihumans for the sake of it, and it does not matter how many mechanical disadvantages you pile onto elves, elf-loving players will still play them anyway. Players who approach human PCs that way are much rarer — almost everyone wants to lean into the escapist fantasy of playing a nonhuman. A mostly human party in a human-centric milieu is actually a pretty hard sell these days, and it generally takes rules even more hard-nosed than default AD&D to enforce it.

 

[Voadam]

In my own experience, players just want to play demihumans for the sake of it, and it does not matter how many mechanical disadvantages you pile onto elves, elf-loving players will still play them anyway. Players who approach human PCs that way are much rarer — almost everyone wants to lean into the escapist fantasy of playing a nonhuman. A mostly human party in a human-centric milieu is actually a pretty hard sell these days, and it generally takes rules even more hard-nosed than default AD&D to enforce it.

In my experience this varies widely person to person and group to group.

Some want to play familiar fantasy roles like elves and dwarves. Some want to play exotic options like robots or tiger-men or beings of light. Some want to play humans to have an identifiable base to roleplay in the worlds of fantasy. Some care heavily about mechanics and mechanical efficacy and power. Some care heavily about narrative role. Some just pick an option and do not care that much.

I have run long running low level AD&D groups where the party was all elves and where the party was mostly humans.

I have run wide open racial options in 3e and 5e games where it was the same, some wanted to play straightforward human people and others wanted to play exotics.

When I have wanted to play more limited palette racial options I have found it useful to be explicit, such as when I ran a gothic horror themed 5e campaign where I told everyone the concept was for the PCs to be identifiable people for the desired campaign themes and not inhuman or monstrous concepts. The party ended up with four humans, one half-elf, and one half-orc and it worked out well.