D&D 5E The Multiclassing Poll!

[Harzel]

I'm curious about your experience. What was bad about the dip - didn't fit the in-game narrative well, too powerful, fall too far behind? In other words: what didn't work?

Well, in truth it's a bit of a particular situation, but the heart of the matter is the pickup of shield proficiency. He has 16 DEX, so with Mage Armor he was already at AC 16 (21 with Shield spell). Now suddenly he's toting around a shield and is AC 18 (23 with Shield spell). Close to unhittable by creatures below CR5 or so. Just feels really cheesy.

Admittedly, it does delay his wizard spell levels by one level, but it still feels pretty cheap, since he gets the whole Cleric(1) spell list and 1st level cleric domain benefits as well.

 

[Ancalagon]

I most often prefer to play concepts that are melee warriors, which also have splashes of secondary magical resources. In the past (3e) this almost always required multi-classing. In 5e it is easier to do without multi-classing, with various sub-classes, and feats like magic initiate and ritual caster. I also typically like to play character's with diverse skill sets, which is now easier to do in 5e with backgrounds.

So, I went from a 3e player that always multi-classed to a 5e player that is about 50/50

My game has no multiclassing but there is a lot of this "soft multiclassing" where a character uses a background to expand the character concept - like an outlander paladin for example.

 

[akr71]

I took option 2 - Rare or disfavored. The people I've DM'd for have never multiclassed in two and a half years and over 90 levels combined. The group I play with online - at least have multiclassed and I am currently considering it.

 

[Xetheral]

As a DM: half of the 10 PCs in my last campaign were multiclass, and most of the NPCs that were fleshed out enough to have class levels were likewise multiclass.

As a player: all of the PCs I've played in 5e games (or made for games that didin't get off the ground) were multiclass.

Comments
Personally, I find that when seeking harmony between a character concept and that character's mechanics, multiclassing allows for a tighter integration. That could, however, simply be my penchant for off-beat characters combined with a mild disinterest in traditional archetypes.

Also, as a DM I permit/encourage refluffing of the non-mechanical aspects of the classes, which certainly makes it easier to mix otherwise-incongruous classes.

 

[cbwjm]

Multiclassing is pretty rare from what I have seen, I've had all but 1 player go fully single class, the other had one of my favourite multiclasses, a fighter/rogue (swashbuckler). Most of the time though, I don't really feel the need to multiclass since it means less of my main classes options. In my current games I have 1 wizard and 1 cleric. I don't want to multiclass either as it means a delay of spell knowledge. I have the same feeling for other full casters. For the non-full casters, multiclassing might be more of an option and I should also note that I don't like multiclass full casters if that is the primary class. A dragonborn paladin who multiclasses into sorcerer to unlock some of his draconic spell power is fully acceptable.

 

[Dausuul]

My experience is that it's rare and disfavored.

Incidentally, while the FiveThirtyEight article doesn't have counts for multiclassing, you can extrapolate from the class data. The class counts are per 100,000 characters (i.e., "X out of every 100K characters is a fighter"). If you add them all up, you get about 109,000. So, we know for sure that no more than 9% of PCs on D&D Beyond are multi-classed. We can't get an exact figure because we don't know how many classes each multi-classed character has (it could be 9% of PCs having two classes, or 4.5% having three classes, or 3% having four, etc.), but if you figure triple-classed PCs are pretty rare, it's probably close to 9%.