D&D 5E Multiclassing... in or out?

I ran a short series of 3.5 adventures for my nephews and houseruled no multiclassing as they were new to D&D at the time. I am likely switching to 5E soon and having them create new characters. I will likely rule multiclassing out to hold down options until they are slightly used to the feel of character archttypes. That being said I am not sure how I would houserule them going forward, so I am seeking ideas from others. As of right now I feel I may go in one of three directions. First leave multiclassing out with archtypes and backgrounds this may hold enough customization for them to enjoy. I admit when I played back in 3.5 I liked it to develop a specific feel of character and often because it was necessary for prestige classes. That said I have deep reservations as some threads speak of class "dips" to optomize something I absolutely disliked from 3.5. Second option allow multiclassing but it must be an equal increase between both classes. Though I can understand RP reasons why straight balance might not fit best. So third option any class selected must have a minimum number of leves of 1/4 so for example at 20 lowest class must be atleast 5 levels. Lastly though I am not currently considering it is fully open/free multiclassing. I was wondering however is there a reasonable RP reason (non optimization) reason something like taking a single secondary class level that you can think of? It feels to me if a PC would have justification via RP to multiclass it would be for more than one level. How do you handle multiclassing in your games?

for me two crucial questions are:

* how old are your nephews?
* how many other role-playing opportunities do they have?

If they are comparatively young and without other opportunities, you have a great responsibility on you -- you get to share with them the joys of the hobby and make it sing for them. If that's the case, I do not know why you would bother limiting them in any way at all. You are their guide, and your values at the table will set their minds for the future: in that situation (which I am fortunate to be in regularly these days) I want to foster their creativity as much as I possibly can; house rules may emerge at the table, but I want them to play the game, play characters, and not exploit edge-case twinks.

If they are young with lots of opportunities, play the game *you* want. Again, you have a responsibility, and your rp values need to shine amidst a much broader field. In that case, I myself would not restrict multi classing, but it's really your choice.

If they're older players, it matters less, I feel.

Thank you, Kobold Stew I fully agree on letting thier creativity being the driving force. They are both young teens though my 9 year old niece has recently joined. It has been an immense pleasure and truly rekindled my own joy for the game. After thinking through your comment I realize I am making a bit of a mountain out of mole hill as optimization is not thier goal more the RP itself. As an added note hear a young child scream "My witchy woman just blasted that guy with fairy power" was one my favorite gaming joys of all time. Were still working on the RP but I am learning just as much as them. I just wondered how others navigated this?

There was an interesting thread in June asking a similar question -- it might also have some ideas for you.

CrashFiend82 said:

That said I have deep reservations as some threads speak of class "dips" to optomize something I absolutely disliked from 3.5.

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There are some dips that can up power in certain circumstances (a fighter taking 1-3 levels of barbarian for Rage), but all of them push back something else (multiple attacks are delayed by however many barbarian levels you take).

I was wondering however is there a reasonable RP reason (non optimization) reason something like taking a single secondary class level that you can think of? It feels to me if a PC would have justification via RP to multiclass it would be for more than one level. How do you handle multiclassing in your games?

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There are some RP reasons - joining a guild that requires all students go through training to acquire Skill Set X. Some "skill" sets can be gained through feats, others not as easily.

There are also character design reasons - not all builds have a path built for them. I'm currently playing a character that, style-wise, is based on the main character from Assassin's Creed 4. The Battle Master fighter does a great job with a lot of the abilities, but adding in some levels of rogue will give it more of the "right feel."

You don't need to worry about min-maxing because multi-classing is actually not very advantageous .

You miss out on ability score improvements, extra attacks, and higher level spells by multi-classing.

Level dipping is even less smart because it cuts you off from the highest level abilities of a character's main class.

epochrpg said:

You don't need to worry about min-maxing because multi-classing is actually not very advantageous .

You miss out on ability score improvements, extra attacks, and higher level spells by multi-classing.

Level dipping is even less smart because it cuts you off from the highest level abilities of a character's main class.

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I'd argue that Warlock's last 3 levels are pretty meh, and so taking a dip is less harmful for Warlocks. Of course this doesn't hold true to all classes.

It's a little funny, actually. In 3E, martial classes could dip all over the place while casters were crippled if they strayed from the One True Path. Now, it's the other way around. Casters can do pretty okay with multiclassing thanks to the unified spell table, but martials have crucial abilities delayed if they multiclass (Extra Attack, et cetera).

Dausuul said:

It's a little funny, actually. In 3E, martial classes could dip all over the place while casters were crippled if they strayed from the One True Path. Now, it's the other way around. Casters can do pretty okay with multiclassing thanks to the unified spell table, but martials have crucial abilities delayed if they multiclass (Extra Attack, et cetera).

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What's particularly weird is that the Playtest MC rules had hard rules which DID account for Extra Attack at least semi-properly, but they dropped that! It seems like it'd have been trivial to account for it, especially given they do acknowledge it as an issue. Oh well!

Ruin Explorer said:

What's particularly weird is that the Playtest MC rules had hard rules which DID account for Extra Attack at least semi-properly, but they dropped that! It seems like it'd have been trivial to account for it, especially given they do acknowledge it as an issue. Oh well!

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Agreed. I might house rule that if you have 5 total levels in classes that grant Extra Attack, you get Extra Attack. (Not sure what to do about the 11th-level power bump, since each martial class has its own thing for that level, but this would at least solve the problem at low- to mid-levels.)