D&D 4E D&D 4E Homebrew Rules & Changes - Looking for feedback

[MwaO]

Wrote up a more common Paragon Multiclassing option for my experimentation thread here.

Sorcerer who PMCs Warlord with some interesting results.

 

[Garthanos]

I built Taliesin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliesin as a Classic Celtic Bard... ie in D&D as a Bard Paragon Multiclassed Druid this was before access to the Tuathan Theme...

Note I was building as an exercise to match flavor as much as anything so I do not even know if the results would play worth beans will have to build the character again ... this may be one of those things I lost off the WOTC site going down. (and a hard drive failure on my end)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am going to be in the area (Canby Oregon and possibly a few other places for site seeing depending on how relaxed we take the trip out) in late June but not for very long

Heh, looks like about a 3.5 hour drive. Mt Rainier is just a little south of me, which is pretty cool, but I'm not sure if its 3.5 hours of driving worth of cool, unless you're into doing some serious hiking.

Actually I hear there's a lot of gaming. I've been pretty busy and haven't really looked too hard at it. There's various 5e activities that are pretty easy to find, but other stuff seems to be a lot lower profile (except M:tG of course, but I don't really get into that anymore, it sucks up too much time, money and energy if you play it).

 

[Garthanos]

Heh, looks like about a 3.5 hour drive. Mt Rainier is just a little south of me, which is pretty cool, but I'm not sure if its 3.5 hours of driving worth of cool, unless you're into doing some serious hiking.

not young enough to do serious hiking lol.

Actually I hear there's a lot of gaming. I've been pretty busy and haven't really looked too hard at it. There's various 5e activities that are pretty easy to find, but other stuff seems to be a lot lower profile (except M:tG of course, but I don't really get into that anymore, it sucks up too much time, money and energy if you play it).

Have seen Hood and Rainier too and Puget Sound on one of our trips...

Yeh the familly casually does do some of that MTG periodically buying a few premade decks and congealing into our own favorite flavorful decks

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

not young enough to do serious hiking lol.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I can still walk around and do a little light day hiking, that's about it.

Yeh the familly casually does do some of that MTG periodically buying a few premade decks and congealing into our own favorite flavorful decks

Its an awesome game, and I've thought about how you could draw some ideas from it into an RPG, but you do have to kinda just play informally. Problem is I'm a BIT competitive sometimes...

 

[pemerton]

I've never actually seen Multi-Classing play yet - primarily because my players have always said its very restrictive and carries a lot of investment in feats for little reward.

For the reasons that others have given I don't agree with this. The entry-level MC feats give you skill training + stuff.

My group worked it out the utility of multi-classing straight away, both as a way of filling gaps and for expanding options - a party with no leader saw two or three PCs multi-class into 1x/day healing feats, and someone else went Swordmage because of a feat it would then open up for them.

As far as Power Swaps, we've got 2 in a group of 5 PCs: the invoker/wizard has spent a feat to get Arcane Gate (10th level wizard utility) which has seen a lot of use over the years; and the sorcerer/bard has used the bard feat that lets you take swap two powers (Multiclass Mastery, in Arcane Power).

 

[Garthanos]

and someone else went Swordmage because of a feat it would then open up for them.

I have decided for me that access to other feats is a surprisingly valuable component even if just for expanding on the flavor possibilities.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For the reasons that others have given I don't agree with this. The entry-level MC feats give you skill training + stuff.

My group worked it out the utility of multi-classing straight away, both as a way of filling gaps and for expanding options - a party with no leader saw two or three PCs multi-class into 1x/day healing feats, and someone else went Swordmage because of a feat it would then open up for them.

As far as Power Swaps, we've got 2 in a group of 5 PCs: the invoker/wizard has spent a feat to get Arcane Gate (10th level wizard utility) which has seen a lot of use over the years; and the sorcerer/bard has used the bard feat that lets you take swap two powers (Multiclass Mastery, in Arcane Power).

Yeah, I think the "give me a little leader" thing is definitely one of the most common uses. One of our parties had 5 characters and no leader. The Paladin (Cavalier) picked up the MC Warlord feat for the extra 1/day heal. It was a nice benefit, and the other perks were really just icing on the cake. IIRC she also ended up doing a power swap for another Warlord power that gave her more heals.

 

[Animakuro]

Hey guys, sorry it's taken me so long to respond again. I have been following the thread though and appreciate the feedback.

One thing probably worth mentioning is I don't have a specific group in mind for these rules - I'm hoping to find a group nearby or on Roll20 soon - and I will present the rules to my players as options they can pick and choose from, I don't plan on enforcing them harshly. And the rules will likely go through further iteration based on actual player feedback.

However, the general consensus does seem to be that I vastly underestimating the power of multi-classing. I’ll accept that this is the probably the case and I’m not going to touch multi-classing in my homebrew until I better understand it.

Also that the changes to defences and saving throws could bog the game down and become far, far more complicated than they initially appear due to the number of different interrupt powers in the game.

I’ll have to look at this one more closely and stress this rule as a work in progress to players.

Thanks again for your feedback everyone.

 

[Garthanos]

(effectively the same issue that exists with hybrids, some hybrid classes are so good that in terms of pure optimization you probably should almost always hybrid something like swordmage or wizard).

Warlords hybrid quite sweetly too and with most classes ... depending on what you want to emphasize, i think but quite well anyway.