Excerpt: Multiclassing (merged)

[Hella_Tellah]

What some people seem to want is to be as good a fighter as a single-classed fighter, and as good at being a wizard as a single-classed wizard. This is blatantly, and categorically, utter munchkin crap. You shouldn't be able to replace two characters.

No, but you could, in theory, have a character who is good at 1/2 of what a fighter does and 1/2 of what a wizard does, and be as powerful as a single-classed character. That's the ideal multiclass situation, as far as I'm concerned. I like the 4e dabbler model just fine, though, since I expect my ideal multiclass model would be hell to design.

As an example, my ideal 3e Mystic Theurge would be capable of casting about half of the spells on the Cleric list, and about half the spells on the Wizard list. She'd have no more spell slots than a normal caster, but would be able to fill them with a wider variety of spells. The Archivist fits this fairly well, although as-written it's preposterously overpowered.

My ideal 4e Mystic Theurge would be able to pick spells from a smaller list of Wizard spells, as well as prayers from a smaller list of Cleric spells. He'd still have the same number of at-will, encounter, and daily powers. 4e multiclassing is pretty close to that, actually, except for the feat expenditure. Time and exposure to the system may prove me wrong, but right now it looks like the cost in feats will either be way too high for combinations that are only okay (A Cleric taking the Warlord training feats, for instance), or the cost will be way too low for combinations that are clearly good and useful (like a Rogue taking Wizard training to become invisible on a regular basis). It just looks a bit slapdash, really. This form of multiclassing was clearly designed as an add-on to an already solid system, rather than as a fundamental aspect of the system, as it was in 3e.

I'm sure it will be decently balanced and prevent some of the abuses in 3e, and it definitely addresses the caster multiclassing problem elegantly, but I do wish they'd designed all of the classes with multiclassing in mind from the get-go.

 

[Mokona]

The game ... basically assumes you have the rough capabilities of the 4 roles.

Emphasis added

Quote Skip Williams, "Your Place in the Party", http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cwc/20061226:

Four Basic Character Roles

From the game's early days back in the 1970s to today, the D&D game has used four basic structures for characters. Nobody has ever given these structures formal names, so for purposes of this article we'll call them Sturdy Brawler, Stealthy Rascal, Arcane Spellslinger, and Divine Guardian. Each of these character types contributes to a party's success in a different way, and the most effective parties have at least one character to fill each role.

It's possible for a single character to fill more than one of these roles, especially when you begin exploring the options that multiclassing makes available, but it's difficult to excel at two roles and nigh impossible to excel at three or four. So, here's our first lesson in character creation -- Pick a single role to fill in a party, at least to start. The best characters do one thing and concentrate on doing that one thing well.

 

[Pinotage]

Pinotage, I am very confused by what you think multiclassing is exactly. You have yet to define it in any way which would make 3.x more acceptable than 4e.

The biggest thing is there really is no such thing as multiclassing as far as the characters are concerned. They simply have the ability to do certain things..

I'm trying really hard not to bring 3e into this!

We all know that 3e multiclassing didn't really work very well in a lot of instances. That's a given. And we can all agree that a 1:1 power ratio between the classes just doesn't work either (it's stupidly overpowered). You can't be a full fighter and full mage at the same time. Some other power ratio between the two classes is required to make a fighter/mage as a concept of equality between classes work. 4e's feat system offers a few powers in a new class at the expense of feats that could've boosted the main class. You get versatility, but you water down the main class to provide the few extra powers (possibly even a lot depending on the general power level of feats) and in some instances to get them to work (like a fighter requiring a light blade for sneak attack). You get some additional versatility, but the classes are never equal. If you start fighter, you'll always be a fighter with a few wizard powers. You'll never be equal amounts of fighter and wizard in a ratio of power relative to a single class that actually works.

Let's be clear. 3e never generally achieved this, but did very well with certain combinations. 4e's paragon path system might actually achieve this. The feat system? I don't think it can. It doesn't offer a 'true' multiclass that works with equal parts of each class since you'll always be more of one class than the other.

Pinotage

 

[3 Man]

Wow, after reading all of that I feel I should receive an award!

In the past I have multi-classed a bit and seen it attempted many times by my players. Personaly I was always seeking to recreate my original DND elf:fighter-magic user-scout. Each time the attempt was made by me or my players the character felt, while thematicly interesting, overty underwhelming in terms of game mechanics. I did not admitedly ever get into all of the extra books which may have had a good solution for my elf grail, though.

All preambles aside I feel from what limited information is currently available I could at last recreate my circa 1981 elf! Eladrin fighter with a move silent skill and a magic missle! I could teleport, sword people up, sneak around and cast the occasional magic missle. How cool is that?! And only 27 years in the making...

 

[Bishmon]

The other main criticism: that doing this with feats is unbalancing, neglects the fact that feats have been changed in 4e. They do not do nearly as much as they did in 3e, where granting class features and in some cases exotic new powers was commonplace. They mostly provide modest bonuses. These feats: were they to represent the simple ADDITION of powers to the characters repetoire, would be horrendously unbalanced, especially for the heroic tier. Who the hell would want to take "Lost In The Crowd" when you could just take a multiclass progression and get three free powers. The point is they allow the secondary class to fill a spot in your character's statistics rather than just grafting it on

This seems to be a lot of speculation since we're largely in the dark on what feats can do in 4E. Of the very few feats we've seen has been the Toughness feat, which grants HP equal to 3 + level. If you're a 10th level character, would you rather have 13 HPs, or the chance to swap a daily power out for one of the same strength from a different class? The former makes you better, while the latter makes you different. That's an issue.

Fortunately, it's an easy fix for those who think it might need to be fixed. Personally, I'll probably keep the initial multiclass feats, but then just roll the Novice/Acolyte/Adept Power feats into a single feat.

Besides that, I mostly like the multiclassing. I really want to play a dragonborn fighter/"sorcerer" who is able to manifest his strong elemental connection in a couple ways other than just the breath weapon, and this looks like it'll work great. I also want to play an elven ranger who can take the rogue multiclassing feat to fill the trapmonkey role and get some sneak attack to boot.

My biggest disappointment is the warlord/cleric feats. Hopefully I could swap out a fighter encounter power and get the proper Healing Word, but I think that's a bit murky.

 

[Counterspin]

I don't understand this obsession with an even split. It's not necessary for any concept that your power come exactly half from two different sources. And if it's not a concept issue, and not a balance issue, I'm not sure why anyone should care.

 

[mneme]

Ok, much slogging needed to make the comments I wanted to anyway.

1. Yeah, about what I expected. Except that the initial "dip" feats are somewhat stronger than I expected, and the power-switching ones a touch weaker.

2. Ok, I see the base problem with power switching. The real issue is that even in 4E, the classes -aren't- equal. Wizards get fewer HP with each level-up than Fighter, but receive stronger (yes, not equal -- stronger; a wizard daily will generally easily out-damage a fighter-daily and then some, and the encounter powers of a wizard are a good deal stronger as well) powers in exchange.

This means that even aside from questions of balancing the base training feats (which they aren't from this excerpt, but are probably more so in the actual printed material with more details), the Power switching feats cannot be balanced--the appropriate cost for letting a wizard swap his daily for a fighter's daily (for the most part, negative; the wizard should pretty much never do this) cannot be equivalent to the appropriate cost for letting a fighter swap his daily for a wizard's (in this case, the cost is two feats with some other benefits; that's probably about right). So rather than force every fighter to be a fighter/wizard just to keep up, they've made some combinations less than viable--sure, this means you're going to see a lot less multiclassing into fighter than the other way around (though the per-encounter abilities might be interesting enough to trade a wizard per-encounter, for the right class), and certainly far less power-trading in that direction than fighters grabbing up, oh, say, cleric, warlord, ranger, and wizard powers (for healing, tactics, striking, and AoE, respectively), but it does make all combinations viable even if they optimize very differently.

3. They deliberately overpowered the base multiclassing feats. Yes, they also slapped a stat requirement on them, but going from the right classes, that's not really a penalty. This, IMO, is why there's a restriction on two classes (though I'd guess that there will be Paragon multiclassing feats that let you grab a third class); getting a skill, a power, and futher qualification is quite good for just one feat, letting you do this for all your feats (well, three of them. Str=>3.5, Wiz=>1, Int=>1, Cha=>1.5, Dex=>2; clearly, martial classes are still better at multiclassing, or more flexible at it, anyway) would be too much. OTOH, several of these are quite good on their own (even aside from possible bonuses like Stealth & Thievery for Sneak of Shadows, which fits the flavor but not the text of the exerpt); I would guess, particularly given the lameness of many fighter powers compared to non-fighter powers, that in fact, the Fighter feat gives a straight +1 to attack, not per encounter -- so even a wizard->fighter combo isn't unlikely; she would just not bother taking power feats at all, instead taking Student of the Sword (thus getting +1 to her AoE spells!), Armor training, probably Toughness, and maybe taking a fighter-oriented paragon class. By contrast, a fighter might take Student of Battle just for the inspiring word and the skill (certainly, the qualification is free), but more likely will take some dailies at 10th level, trading a vanilla daily with Reliable for a tactical daily that helps in other ways if it misses (and if it hits).

 

[katahn]

No, but you could, in theory, have a character who is good at 1/2 of what a fighter does and 1/2 of what a wizard does, and be as powerful as a single-classed character. That's the ideal multiclass situation, as far as I'm concerned. I like the 4e dabbler model just fine, though, since I expect my ideal multiclass model would be hell to design.

It's worth pointing out that Blizzard, in World of Warcraft, tried this exact approach (just as powerful, lacking all the versatility) in their initial design and description of the druid class. Now in WoW the druid class is capable (depending on form and talent selection) of filling up to three roles in the 4e sense (leader, defender, and two flavors of striker) with a smattering of controllerish abilities if "outdoors" (entangling roots).

The net result has been a class that has never really found its definition. The other defenders complain because they can do more damage when acting as a striker, or are capable of being better healers when acting as a leader. Strikers complain they can't be like leaders and the druid is too close to being as good a striker and other leaders complain similarly.

The class, and the principle of "less abilities but just as capable", looks very good on paper but in practice it ends up making pure-role classes a little bit obsolete. I played a druid in WoW to the level cap of 70 (two of them actually) and I enjoyed the class, but looking at it objectively I can absolutely see the legitimacy of the complaints.

Who cares if I have a character with half the abilities of another defender and half the abilities of another controller if I am capable of filling the core roles of each just as effectively as they are? The point is I can do what the most important, role-defining, aspect of their class can do, plus I can fulfill the most important and role-defining ability of another class can too. And it isn't just that I can do them, in that core functionality I have equal potency.

In a strongly role-defined class based game that is a counter-productive thing to have.

 

[Mokona]

Having each role filled is good, and they've said it's what they're assuming...

I used black and white language in my original post when I should have been more nuanced. You've basically agreed with my point; the game designers assume you can fill each of the four roles.

The following paragraph supports my original point (even though it disagrees with the way I stated my evidence). Why? Because the mechanics that allow you to function without a Leader are leader-style mechanics available in other classes and therefore you're not getting a huge reward for your feat when you use a feat to get access to the Leader powers your group should have already had. If groups without a Leader have "different strengths" then I should have to decrease my power level to get back to regular strengths through multiclassing.

I like the new multiclass rules except the cost is slightly too high.

Quote Rob Heinsoo, "PC Roles", http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20070831a:

4th Edition has mechanics that allow groups that want to function without a Leader, or without a member of the other three roles, to persevere. Adventuring is usually easier if the group includes a Leader, a Defender, a Striker, and a Controller, but none of the four roles is absolutely essential. Groups that double or triple up on one role while leaving other roles empty are going to face different challenges. They’ll also have different strengths.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This thread is amazing, because it seems like 90% of the posters here are acting as if 1 and 2E never happened. Personally, 90% of my "time /played" in AD&D was in 2E (or 1E), and I loved the multiclassing system there, and I don't think it "broke the game" (perhaps people disagree).

Then 3E comes along with it's TERRIBLE multiclass system, and now were all supposed to like 4E's system because it's not as terrible as 3E's? Meh. The system I see there looks kind of insultingly weak. I mean, I didn't expect any Gestalt-ish, but I was expecting something somewhat closer to 1E/2E's multiclassing than 3E's. Instead we have something that's seeming equivalent to taking a random level in another class about every third or forth level, only at least most powers auto-scale now. The idea that you need to spend a Feat beyond the basic multiclassing feat JUST to swap a power with a power of another class seems a bit bogus, considering how well-balanced and deliberately interchangeable the powers seem.

To me, it just doesn't look like it'll be a lot of fun, and that's the main thing. It looks like people will take one glance at it, go "Uh, so I end up weaker? No thanks." and move on, ignoring the system entirely, unless they obsessed with a concept, in which case they'll just be a little bit embittered by the unecessary additional feat-spending.

Certainly it means now more masters of sword and spell, y'know, ever. It changes D&D's world from one where no-one is more than a dabbler. Game over? Hardly, but it's just really terminally unexciting.