Do you multiclass for raw mechanical power or for character reasons?

[MoonSong]

Let me try to take you at your word, and put out a few examples that I think will show how crazy saying that book-fluff is the only right way to play.

I'm not sure how you keep reading absolutes into my posts. (And if you are aware [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] and me are different posters)

First, please let me know the definitive fluff for the Fighter. You know, the book-fluff that is the only type of fighter you'll allow.

Already said fighter is a generic warrior and not likely an IC construct.

I'm playing in an official 5e setting, Forgotten Realms. I have a character from Kara-Tur which is oriental themed. Am I playing the game wrong if I describe my character having a wakizashi instead of a short sword?

A short sword could be any sword of such size and overall characteristics. So, no? (now if you wanted to refluff a gladius or a claymore...)

Of course, it's lucky I'm playing a character from Kara-Tur because I wanted to play the Samurai fighter subclass from XGtE, and I understand you wouldn't allow it without Japanese fluff.

Somehow I'm conditioned to consider plain disregard of flavor as a sign of munchkinism, but whatevs your PC, not mine. In my mind I would still keep considering your character as Japanese in denial, that wouldn't change things, but some players can be nasty about it.

I've got a new player who's familiar with fantasy tropes from reading but not D&D classes. She wants to play an elf with a strong nature connection who can transform into birds and other beasts of the forest, but she's never heard of druids except with Stonehenge and doesn't want to be part of their organization. Is this person unsuited to play D&D without serious reeducation? Or can they play D&D as long as I shoot down their character concept?

No reason all druids ought to belong to the druid's society -which is setting dependent- but certainly only a druid would belong in such society.

Okay, the new player has a friend who wants his character to fight with a rapier and stiletto, should I insist it's a dagger and he's not to call it a stiletto because it will ruin the fun for the other players?

This borders on strawman. If it doesn't exist, of course you can approximate it. Though I'm not sure any game has or needs that much of a fine resolution.

He's going to play a swashbuckler, do I explain that until he takes the subclass at 3rd he needs to adhere to the "official" fluff of the rogue class, he can't be out of the shadows and full of panache until then?

That's a problem with the system. And like I said not everything is -or has to be- an in game construct.

I want to play a hard-swilling dwarven tavern brawler, is the monk class closed to me?

Same example as with the samurai/druid before. No idea how you extrapolate my personal preferences/game style into an imperative for everybody else. If you can somehow turn a D&D wizard into an innate caster that doesn't desire her powers and views them as a curse without being constantly put out of immersion by the dissonance between flavor and mechanics and somehow convincing everybody in the party that you are not that kind of caster despite clear evidence to the contrary -or that it becomes almost active sabotage of the party by deliberately playing dumb and essentially withholding key resources form the party- then more power to you. I certainly can't, that is why I need the sorcerer -and the Divine Soul archetype while at that-.

Or let me put forward an example for you. Would you honestly buy (and seriously treat as that) a high level fighter with maxed Constitution, Dexterity and Strength, two fighting styles and one of those -5/+10 feats as a weak, frail defenseless waif that is afraid of blood and faints at the mere idea of violence?

 

[cbwjm]

Speaking of reskinning, one of my favourite articles I ever read in dragon magazine was the one called the colour of magic. It was for basic DnD, and talked about theming spells to suit the character. A witchdoctor might make cast magic missile and make cuts with a knife in air causing cuts to appear on the target instead of actual missiles shooting out of their hand at the target.

 

[ClaytonCross]

I like theory crafting but I also like interesting unique characters. So both. I like them to feed each other. I come up with a character idea with a unique test, e then try to make it somehow, but then I get features I wasn't building for and try to make it functional and not just a munchkin. The new unexpected features and choices to make it work then turn back around and redefine the characters details.

I thing D&D is two games in one. Its a Role playing game yes, but its also a tactical strategy game, in my mind. I really like the challenge of bringing those to ideas together. The RPG provides purpose and the Strategy gives the choices a more tangible element which I believe makes the RPG more full and fun. I would get board of it without ether side. The process of combining the two is a unique and interesting task in and of its self and so has made theory crafting characters to make them work on both sides a third game in and of itself. I make characters all the time I never intend to play just for the joy of theory crafting and brining these elements together. I think you can see by all the theory crafting threads and discussions of story vs strategy that I am not the only one. It makes learning the rules fun which was useful as a player and as a GM, so not only is it fun to say "can I?" or "how can I?" during a session but out of sessions as well.

So to me, "multiclass for raw mechanical power or for character reasons" is not a thing. Its more of a both or nether when it comes down to character I will play. I might play with a character story idea that is broken and convoluted "I am the son of an Archangel and a Demon trying to win approval in both worlds!" Tiefling Divine soul Sorcerer multiclass Cleric of Trickery? I can also, go for max DPS with a Gnome Smite Knight, Paladin 2/Fighter Champion 15 on a horse with a Lance for maximum critical, and Bard 3 for extra spells slots and rapier so I can thoroughly be ready to sing songs about "13 Lowkeys sitting on a bed, one fell off..." etc. But I would never play ether of these unless they fit both sides and would be fun not just for me but also my group. I am not normally going to play a group role or class already filled in my party so that I can let others shine. They are fun to build regardless. I mean we should all have a Gnome Paladin Bard with a rapier on stand by at a moments notice ... but I don't really want to play one. : )

 

[Ogre Mage]

One of the most mechanically powerful multiclass dips in the game -- Warlock 2 -- is also one of the easiest to justify from a roleplaying standpoint. Because it is easy as your PC going -- I need more power. So I'll make a contract with [insert name of entity here]. It's basically a shortcut to gaining a lot of power, both in a metagaming and in-character sense. Whereas suddenly developing wizard abilities, which supposedly takes years of hard study (where did you get this time while you were adventuring?) seems odd from a roleplaying standpoint.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This is where I'm coming from - reskining isn't changing the mechanics, so it only makes sense where the mechanics will have the same expression. [...]
If Charlie is playing in Eberron and want to describe it as his aggressive shifter nature (true-breeding lycanthropes without a curse but that can change), why does the non-mechanical addition of hair sprouting out which is not described by the mechanics suddenly a deal breaker?

The only valid method of generating mechanics is to look at the reality of the game world and determine how that reality is expressed within the language of the game mechanics. The reason that this is a big deal is because you aren't following the proper order of operations. There's no reason for us to believe that the mechanics of the barbarian rage would be the best or most accurate mechanical representation of an aggressive shifter nature.

I don't buy for a second that anyone would have honestly come up with the entire barbarian rage mechanic as an accurate reflection of a shifter bloodline, if they hadn't been attempting to retrofit the existing mechanics into a reality where they were never intended. I mean, come on. Seriously.

The common argument in favor of mutable fluff is that fluff doesn't matter, and that keeping the mechanics consistent is important for balance reasons. I'm not saying that you necessarily buy into that, but that's the kind of audience which 4E pandered to. On the extreme end, you had people re-flavoring a maul into a sign post or an uprooted sapling - not because they thought that maul stats were the most accurate reflection of those objects, but because they knew using the stats for an existing weapon would be balanced from a mechanical perspective. (It never occurred to them that trying to fight with a sign post rather than a purpose-built weapon is a ridiculous proposition which should be treated as such.)

This is untrue because there is more to the world then just the PCs. First example for the druid that pops to mind is I've run treant NPCs that were absolutely, word-of-DM druids. That were not built with the druid class. They couldn't wild shape. They shared some casting and had other features that made sense for a plant-based druid. But they absolutely were still druids, and my players had no problems understanding it. What "Druid" means in-game is not the same as the druid class.

If you tell me that this treant is a druid, and that it can't do most of the things that a druid in the book can do, then I now know far less about how the world works than I thought I did.

Like I said before, the reason I'm buying the book in the first place is because I want to know how the world works, and now you're telling me that the section on druids doesn't even accurately describe what a druid is within the game world. If the rules in the book don't sufficiently describe the game world, then the book you've sold me isn't a finished product.

The DM, acting in their capacity as world-builder, already has absolute freedom to change anything they want in their world. That's no excuse for giving them only half of a world to start with.

 

[Li Shenron]

What it says in the title.

Usually I found very little reason in multiclassing at all, for either of those.

 

[DammitVictor]

The only valid method of generating mechanics is to look at the reality of the game world and determine how that reality is expressed within the language of the game mechanics

This argument, right here, invalidates the rest of your post-- this is a massive unexamined assumption which, if you would take the time to examine it, you would hopefully realize is purely personal preference couched in a great deal of misplaced moral outrage.

Most RPGs, especially 21st century RPGs, do not even attempt to function as fantasy physics simulators. All of them engage in abstractions and ellipses for the sake of ease and fun of gameplay, including the fact that they have character mechanics that represent multiple in-game realities. It does neither the gameworld nor your understanding of it any harm to add to those abstractions a piece at a time in a campaign.

If it helps, remember that last campaign's abstractions need not apply to your next campaign, either--the game's fiction resets to its default state with the game itself.

Like I said before, the reason I'm buying the book in the first place is because I want to know how the world works, and now you're telling me that the section on druids doesn't even accurately describe what a druid is within the game world. If the rules in the book don't sufficiently describe the game world, then the book you've sold me isn't a finished product.

The DM, acting in their capacity as world-builder, already has absolute freedom to change anything they want in their world. That's no excuse for giving them only half of a world to start with.

Think, for a second, about the six billion and counting human beings on this planet, the thousands of species of complex non-human animals, all of the varied sports and crafts and religions that exist on Earth-- and how many whole libraries of unique books exist to catalog it all, and failing. D&D core is what, 800 pages?

Even the most laser-focused campaign setting, an anti-kitchensink like Dark Sun, is going to be orders of magntude more complicated with multiple societies of more-or-less cosmopolitan sophonts, the verifiable existence of multiple forms of magic, and all of the trappings of a good D&D game.

At the height of its workforce, WotC could never have produced a campaign setting with rules for every option that players would like to try out. Perhaps it was easier in the 3.5 era when monster stats translated directly into PC rules-- but surely you remember what an unmitigated trainwreck those rules were. The judicious use of reskinning allows a DM to provide options for their players with a minimum of writing their own mechanics wholecloth-- they use existing rules where they can, and then only patch over the holes with homebrew.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Most RPGs, especially 21st century RPGs, do not even attempt to function as fantasy physics simulators.

If you want to call those games RPGs, then that's a massive unfounded assumption of your own.

An RPG where the mechanics of the game do not reflect the reality of the game world is not an RPG in any meaningful sense of the term. It has merely mis-appropriated that label for the purposes of marketing.

 

[DammitVictor]

EDIT: Not worth it.

 

[Blue]

Or let me put forward an example for you. Would you honestly buy (and seriously treat as that) a high level fighter with maxed Constitution, Dexterity and Strength, two fighting styles and one of those -5/+10 feats as a weak, frail defenseless waif that is afraid of blood and faints at the mere idea of violence?

You don't have the slightest idea what reskinning is, do you?

Reskinning is using a different description that fits the same mechanics.

Your example above doesn't fit the mechanics. So no, it's not allowed.