How often do your players multiclass?

[doctorbadwolf]

Yep. All I was saying was that booming blade only really guarantees your damage is within an acceptable range of a featless characters. Once you throw feats into the mix that’s no longer guaranteed. Can someone make a character with damage feats and optimize using them poorly such that booming blade still keeps up? That’s surely possible but not really the point I was making.

That also isn’t a point anyone has made.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If the argument is that Booming Blade ameliorates the need for Extra Attack in the level 5-7 range so that you can dip more effectively, than yea, that really shouldn't be in dispute. Assuming a decent proc rate on the extra 2d8 for BB (and if it isn't proccing, the enemy isn't moving, so win-win), you're looking at a DPS increase of 8-9*hit %, which is pretty close to an extra attack for a non 2-hander. And you didn't spend a precious low-level feat on it! It makes going sword and board for a gish actually feasible.

Now, if damage is your number one priority, absolutely you should be targeting using a 2 hander with GWM (or archery with SS), but then you shouldn't really be building a gish anyway.

I’d also add that even if DPR is your focus, that just means you’re going to want to gish differently from someone who wants something else. Hexblade is a good gish option, bc it lets you make the caster your main class, or just use Hex and Hexblade’s curse and cantrips to get even closer to EA damage, even exceed it for a level or two.

I haven’t run the numbers, but I’d be unsurprised if a two weapon fighter/Hexblade, with chain pact and Booming Blade/GFB, can keep up just fine with frog’s GWM pure Battlemaster Fighter. Especially with stuff like Armor of Agythis, and Shadow Blade, etc.

And while most gish builds will be “behind” the pure fighter, it will be small enough that most of the time it will wash with other table factors, and you’ll have a lot more tricks up your sleeve.

 

[the Jester]

For my game, it depends on the player as much as anything. I have some players who are crazy for multiclassing, and others who are single-classers by nature, and others yet who multiclass when it fits the character enough. I think I fall into the latter category as a player.

IMHO, multiclassed pcs are roughly equivalent to single-classed pcs of the same level, so it's not about power gaming, it's about breadth of ability vs depth of ability.

 

[delericho]

I've only had one player express an interest in multiclassing, but his character turned out not to have the stats needed for the class he wanted. That's out of three campaigns and one aborted run through "Lost Mine of Phandelver", so not a huge sample set.

I'm pretty glad of this - if a player really wants to use that option then I'm not going to stop them, but it would definitely be my preference to see multiclassing removed from the game.

 

[FrogReaver]

I've only had one player express an interest in multiclassing, but his character turned out not to have the stats needed for the class he wanted. That's out of three campaigns and one aborted run through "Lost Mine of Phandelver", so not a huge sample set.

I'm pretty glad of this - if a player really wants to use that option then I'm not going to stop them, but it would definitely be my preference to see multiclassing removed from the game.

Yep. I would like to see mutliclassing removed and more classes added to help fill in the conceptual gaps. I shouldn’t have to multiclass fighter and wizard to play a strong weapon user that augments himself with arcane magic IMO.

 

[Yunru]

Yep. I would like to see mutliclassing removed and more classes added to help fill in the conceptual gaps. I shouldn’t have to multiclass fighter and wizard to play a strong weapon user that augments himself with arcane magic IMO.

Yeah, because returning to 3e's Class-for-Every-Concept is really what we need.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah, because returning to 3e's Class-for-Every-Concept is really what we need.

Classes designed for a particular goal feel much more organic and are much better able to capture a particular character idea over the whole level arc than multiclassing. It’s also much easier to create class balance when you only have to worry about specific interactions than the possibility of all options interacting with every other option.

 

[Count_Zero]

I've seen multi-classed characters once in the handful of the 5e campaigns I've been in - and it was for role-play reasons. I was in an X-Crawl campaign, and the party had an Metal band theme. The player who was playing the lead singer bowed out of the group, so my character (who was a rogue and a pro-wrestling style manager), ended up stepping in as the lead singer, so I ended up cross-classing as a Bard to fit the role.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Classes designed for a particular goal feel much more organic and are much better able to capture a particular character idea over the whole level arc than multiclassing. It’s also much easier to create class balance when you only have to worry about specific interactions than the possibility of all options interacting with every other option.

While I agree with this for the most part, I also don't think the designers will ever actually make every concept that someone wants to mechanically represent as a class or subclass, even if 5e lasts 30 years, so I'd rather keep multi-classing.

Because, I could make my gnomish swashbuckler who uses magic and invention (tinkering and alchemy) to make up for what his mundane skill can't do in his quest to murder large numbers of evil wizards and their servants, and keep his companions from suffering the same fate as his old crew (murdered by necromancer to be used as thralls in a territorial duel with another a-hole sorcerer), and also just invent some cool ish along the way, without multiclassing...but not particularly satisfyingly.

And I don't think they'll make a class or subclass that just gets the concept right from the jump, which is totally fair.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

way back when in 2e we had all sort of house rules...I didn't realized until years later they were because everyone wanted spell... and that is long and short of it. in 3e that was pretty much true too (until Bo9S came out then we saw warblades and swordsages). 4e we didn't see much (maybe 1/3 of our players ever multi classed at all, and I think I am the only one who paragon multied).

5e is pretty much back to 3e days, everyone wants spells, but the amount of spell casters like eldritch knight have cut down multi a bit.