4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[pemerton]

With 3E, i think the best way to fix it <snip> having the players invest actual in character time to dipping into any class.

I don't quite see how this works.

If the other PCs continue adventuring in the meantime, in effect the player has to skip sessions or run a PC that is different from the one s/he wants to run.

If the time just gets handwaved, what's the cost?

If the GM decides that in the handwaved time that passes, event XYZ happen that render the players' previous engagment with the ingame situation irrelevant, how is that helping anything? If it wrecks the game, nothing achieved. And conversely if the players don't mind, then what was the cost for multi-classing?

If the idea is simply to give the GM fiat power over PC multi-classing, and to give the GM licence to impose some story-derived cost on the PC as a result (eg you trained as a cleric, and now you have a new suite of religious enemies), I think the rules would do better to talk about it in these metagame terms.

(Note it's different in a system that expressly has mechanics for passing time - so in RQ or BW, if one PC is training to boost some particular skill, there are rules that allow the other PCs to spend that time profitably in other ways - eg in BW, by making money working. But D&D doesn't have such rules - the only way to mechanically advance your PC is by actually playing the game.)

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, it was good that there's something about retraining in the core, but I suspect many groups give more freedom than that. One of the PCs in my game re-spec'd from Monk to Berserker. Certainly a house-rule, there.

Like I said upthread (or on another thread?) I think the difference is between individual player authority and group authority/GM veto power. At least at my table, retraining is just part of level up: I as GM might learn about it if I look at a new sheet, or a player tells me. But it's simply "FYI". Whereas a bigger rebuild would have to be run by the group and superintended by me as GM. (This happened at least twice in my game: the ranger hybridised into cleric, and the human wizard, when resurrected, returned as a deva invoker.)

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't quite see how this works.

If the other PCs continue adventuring in the meantime, in effect the player has to skip sessions or run a PC that is different from the one s/he wants to run.

If the time just gets handwaved, what's the cost?

If the GM decides that in the handwaved time that passes, event XYZ happen that render the players' previous engagment with the ingame situation irrelevant, how is that helping anything? If it wrecks the game, nothing achieved. And conversely if the players don't mind, then what was the cost for multi-classing?

If the idea is simply to give the GM fiat power over PC multi-classing, and to give the GM licence to impose some story-derived cost on the PC as a result (eg you trained as a cleric, and now you have a new suite of religious enemies), I think the rules would do better to talk about it in these metagame terms.

(Note it's different in a system that expressly has mechanics for passing time - so in RQ or BW, if one PC is training to boost some particular skill, there are rules that allow the other PCs to spend that time profitably in other ways - eg in BW, by making money working. But D&D doesn't have such rules - the only way to mechanically advance your PC is by actually playing the game.)

There are quite a few ways to handle it depending on the type of game. This sort of thing is very easy to incorporate into the campaign. For example needing to climb into the burning mountains to contact and train with the red monks to enter a prestige class. I've had tons of parties go on adventures to help a pc achieve a personal goal like that. In a more sandboxy campaign, it's also quite easy because the passing of time isn't necessarily hand waved. The PCs may simply occupy themselves with something else in the area where you train. Another way of doing it (if you don't want to handle it in game) is literally force players who dip to burn some xp before they can take a level. Primarily what this is about is ensuring there is some kind of challenge or effort in shifting to a new class (particularly if the class's flavor is suited to it). A lot of this is going to depend on the style game you run. I can tell from your posts that you and I pretty much GM from opposite ends of the spectrum. So it is possible this wont work in your game. In my 3E game it worked very well.

 

[Bluenose]

There are quite a few ways to handle it depending on the type of game. This sort of thing is very easy to incorporate into the campaign. For example needing to climb into the burning mountains to contact and train with the red monks to enter a prestige class. I've had tons of parties go on adventures to help a pc achieve a personal goal like that. In a more sandboxy campaign, it's also quite easy because the passing of time isn't necessarily hand waved. The PCs may simply occupy themselves with something else in the area where you train. Another way of doing it (if you don't want to handle it in game) is literally force players who dip to burn some xp before they can take a level. Primarily what this is about is ensuring there is some kind of challenge or effort in shifting to a new class (particularly if the class's flavor is suited to it). A lot of this is going to depend on the style game you run. I can tell from your posts that you and I pretty much GM from opposite ends of the spectrum. So it is possible this wont work in your game. In my 3E game it worked very well.

And it's an excellent way to give the casters time to craft their utility belt of scrolls, wands, and potions. And for those time-critical plots that ensure there's never a 5MWD to resolve themselves without the PCs having to bother with them. Everyone gains.

 

[Argyle King]

One of the things I did for 3E multi-classing was to adopt fractional base saves as presented in Unearthed Arcana. It seems like a minor detail when you first look at it, but I honestly feel it did fix a few of the issues with how saves progress when multi-classing.

There are still other issues, but I was amazed by how much that one minor change made things go a little smoother.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Well, when my human warlock died, he was sent back as a Revenant, but was otherwise as much the same as possible. Gave me the excuse to have some other retraining over the next few levels (but even that was just one item per level).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

multiclassing in 3E was a double edged sword. On the one hand, when they first released the new rules, I loved how they simplified the multiclass system. That part of D&D had always been frustrating IMO and this really reduced some of the quirkiness. It really did make a difference for me. But as you point out, the class dipping and the unpredictability of some of the combos produced....unexpected results. This could work if you embraced, it could also work if you worked hard to curtail it. For me, really emphasizing the in game time investment made a huge difference. You didn't just take a level in x when you felt like it, you had to put in the training and often seek out people who could induct you (in the case of classes where there was that slrt of requirement). I think 4e responded to a problem many people genuinely had with the game. I dont fault them for tackling it and the way they went about it was more like classic D&D I think. But I would really like to see an effort made to preserve the flexibility and simplicity of the 3e multiclass system while eliminating mnag of its excesses.

Yeah, there is a sense in which 3.x has this system that seems like it should be great and all, but then OTOH it really just boils down to being a point buy system. The whole POINT of classes was to pigeonhole characters. 3.5 kind of lost that. I think respeccing characters is a useful feature, but 3.x required so much mastery of the rules to effectively use MCing that it seemed counter-productive to me.

4e definitely backed off that, a class MEANS a lot in 4e, your character mostly IS a fighter or a cleric or whatever, but you can still do a LOT with that, and when would the DM NOT be involved in a situation where a PC suddenly decided to see the light and become a cleric instead of a thief? Its nice enough if the rules can leave that up to the player, but I am not sure it is a huge gain. Certainly 4e's character gen rules demand less of players and that's a good thing.

 

[pemerton]

And it's an excellent way to give the casters time to craft their utility belt of scrolls, wands, and potions. And for those time-critical plots that ensure there's never a 5MWD to resolve themselves without the PCs having to bother with them. Everyone gains.

Quite.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not big into Multi-classing. The only reason I did it with my Warlock at LVL20 was that I couldn't find a class or feat worth taking given the party composition. So multi-class O-ssassin it was. Works well to have the extra 2d6+12 (or 1d6+6 on a miss) every encounter.
But to me, there should be no need to ever multi-class if you don't want to. So far, none of my other characters ever needed to.

Sure, there are some very effective multi-class combinations, but it isn't normally necessary.

Yeah, I agree, with 4e it certainly isn't usually necessary, there are so many other options out there. I see people doing it either to charop or because they're wanting to reproduce some very specific mechanics.

Seems to me 4e's approach in general worked well. The whole game is simpler and I guess it never seemed worth it to have all the complexity it all generates in 3e for some dubious benefits. If the rules of the game are getting in the way of doing what you want, then the problem isn't the rules anyway. Respec characters if it will be more fun. Once you decide that's going to be acceptable then all problems are solved.

 

[Imaro]

4e definitely backed off that, a class MEANS a lot in 4e, your character mostly IS a fighter or a cleric or whatever, but you can still do a LOT with that, and when would the DM NOT be involved in a situation where a PC suddenly decided to see the light and become a cleric instead of a thief? Its nice enough if the rules can leave that up to the player, but I am not sure it is a huge gain. Certainly 4e's character gen rules demand less of players and that's a good thing.

I agree with this up until the point they introduced hybrids. You have to know what you're doing when it comes to hybrids because just picking two classes that seem like they would mesh or sound cool together does not work out all the time.