D&D 5E Multiclass House Rule

[cbwjm]

I think that fact that some people played multiclass cleric/wizards or mystic theurges in earlier editions is good enough reason to want to try and make the combo work well in 5e.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

MAD isn't a barrier: I can be a Wizard/Cleric, dumping Wisdom while having access to many great spells that don't require Wisdom. Or dumping Int and going the other way. I can be a Sorcerer/Bard and not worry about MAD at all. Ooh, how about a Ranger/Cleric or Ranger/Druid? Cleric/Druid is extremely attractive too. Of course, you don't have to dump the other casting stat. 4 or 5 ASIs take two stats to 20.

Comparing to AD&D isn't reasonable: The half-elf MU/cleric was a real favorite back in the day because it was *so* good: Lose less than one level of MU to get almost full-level Cleric casting. So good, especially since many games ignored demihuman level limits.

You also have more spells available to you every day.

You also get to combine subclass features in interesting and possibly disturbing ways. Did you want your War Cleric or other hitherto semi-martial full-caster to gain a second attack? Were you hoping to stack Evoker, Dragon Sorcerer and Cleric bonuses to elemental cantrips, without losing any spellcasting? Or did you prefer getting out of a frontloaded subclass like Diviner Wizard early? How about a bladesinger or valor bard moon druid?

So yeah, this is rather unbalancing. At most levels, why would a caster want to do anything else?

Anyway,

Ken

 

[KarinsDad]

You don't start with a combo, you start with an archetype, a concept. If no one class can do it, MCing is an option.

Maybe YOU always start with an archetype or a concept, but not everyone does the same thing. I have had players look through the PHB until a good idea came to mind. At that point, some of them are looking at the mechanics. "Gee, a Monk can stun foes. That sounds cool.".

This concept that everyone creates their PCs the same way and it's bad wrong fun if you do or don't do it a certain way is just not valid.

So, that cleric/magic-users 'worked' in AD&D doesn't make them an archetype that 5e must make 'work' as well.

Hence the term houserule. I have no problem that 5E didn't allow this type of thing straight out of the box.

What would make an even combo something that should work in 5e would be an heroic concept or archetype that needs it.

Or the fact that someone just wanted to try it. You seem really wrapped around the axle that the concept must come first. It doesn't have to. It might have to for you, but not every player is the same.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hi,

MAD isn't a barrier: I can be a Wizard/Cleric, dumping Wisdom while having access to many great spells that don't require Wisdom.

Sure you could. But, for example, with point buy, you are required to pay at least 5 point buy points. Wis dump becomes 13 instead of 8. That's points you cannot spend elsewhere. It has a cost.

Or dumping Int and going the other way. I can be a Sorcerer/Bard and not worry about MAD at all. Ooh, how about a Ranger/Cleric or Ranger/Druid? Cleric/Druid is extremely attractive too. Of course, you don't have to dump the other casting stat. 4 or 5 ASIs take two stats to 20.

Sure it does. As compared to a one class PC who uses extra ASIs for feats or CON or some such. Again, a cost.

Cleric/Druid is attractive? Maybe. Compared to a Cleric, the PC has worse AC. Compared to a Druid, the PC has lower level creatures it can Wild Shape into. Pros and Cons.

Bard / Sorcerer has fewer Sorcerer points. Bard X / Sorcerer X cannot just cast all Bard spells or all Sorcerer spells. It effectively halves the number of spells cast per day per class. There's a cost.

You are making the claim without details. That's an opinion. Put together an actual multiclass build and an actual single class build (say, level 12), and we can critique them together by comparing them and see what the multiclass build gains over the single class build and what it loses from the single class build.

You also have more spells available to you every day.

It's the exact same number of spells as if using the PHB multiclass rules and sometimes, it's one fewer spell per day.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I suspect that a lot of players played similar leveled Wizard (Magic-user)/Cleric Elves in 1E and 2E. It's an iconic D&D archetype that is no long viable in 5E. It was not an artifact of the rules, it was intentional in the rules.

Of course they did, it was simply how MCing worked, why it was designed that way was irrelevant to the player deprived of an alternative.
That doesn't make it a archetype mechanics aren't archetypes.

Maybe YOU always start with an archetype or a concept, but not everyone does the same thing.

Irrelevant. If you want to claim 5e isn't delivering an archetype a past edition could, at least articulate the archetype in question.

Or the fact that someone just wanted to try it.

In 1e if you just wanted to try a cleric/mu, the game delivered an evenly advancing 1/2 elf or a serially advancing human 'with2 classes.'
5e let's you do either, and a lot more besides. Modest system mastery may warn one away from many of those options, but 5e isn't the kind of game that seeks to make all options equal.

Besides, the evenly advancing cleric/mu compares favorably in 5e. It can be of any race, it can reach 20th level with 20 HD and +6 proficiency like everyone else, and it can cast 5th level spells as well as a 20th level caster instead of being limited to single-digit ability. Sure, it may be sub-optimal, but it was, then, too.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

Sure you could. But, for example, with point buy, you are required to pay at least 5 point buy points. Wis dump becomes 13 instead of 8. That's points you cannot spend elsewhere. It has a cost.

Yes, it has a cost. It's a small cost for the benefit. Oh no, my wizard must have a decent Wisdom save and Perception. Terrible. Not.

BTW, Wisdom is *not* a dump stat for Wizards. That honor usually goes to Charisma and Strength.

Also, as I mentioned before, Cleric/Wizard is not the only option if you don't want MAD.

Small or no cost. Big benefit.

Sure it does. As compared to a one class PC who uses extra ASIs for feats or CON or some such. Again, a cost.

Yes. And a very small one for what you get.

Cleric/Druid is attractive? Maybe. Compared to a Cleric, the PC has worse AC. Compared to a Druid, the PC has lower level creatures it can Wild Shape into. Pros and Cons.

The cons don't nearly balance the pros.

Bard / Sorcerer has fewer Sorcerer points. Bard X / Sorcerer X cannot just cast all Bard spells or all Sorcerer spells. It effectively halves the number of spells cast per day per class.

By which you mean that a Sorcerer/Bard gets to cherry pick his spells from two classes, and mix and match class and subclass features to suit.

This is a huge net benefit.

There's a cost.

And a small, small cost.

You are making the claim without details.

I sketched a few examples. That's enough.

That's an opinion.

Um, yeah. Most things short of mathemetics are.

Put together an actual multiclass build and an actual single class build (say, level 12), and we can critique them together by comparing them and see what the multiclass build gains over the single class build and what it loses from the single class build.

If you cannot see how cherrypicking the very best wizard and cleric spells is totally awesome, if you cannot see how taking 2 levels of Diviner for the awesome second level ability combined with 18 levels of other spellcasting classes for things you really want is also awesome, or how stacking damage bonuses from multiple spellcasting subclasses without losing high level spells is also totally awesome...

...then there's really no possibility of reasonable conversation on this topic.

Look, you don't need anyone's blessing to do exactly what you want. Your game, your rules, your fun. Really. Who cares what I think?

Anyway,

Ken

 

[KarinsDad]

If you cannot see how cherrypicking the very best wizard and cleric spells is totally awesome, if you cannot see how taking 2 levels of Diviner for the awesome second level ability combined with 18 levels of other spellcasting classes for things you really want is also awesome, or how stacking damage bonuses from multiple spellcasting subclasses without losing high level spells is also totally awesome...

...then there's really no possibility of reasonable conversation on this topic.

...then there's really no possibility of a detailed comparison as opposed to claims. It sounds like you don't want to back up your opinion.

There is already cherry picking with multiclassing. Paladin 8 / Warlock 2 with real powerful ranged attacks for limited cost. Paladin / Warlock doesn't even make much sense ("Wait, you deity is ok with you gaining power from a fiend from hell?"), but it is still played at tables.

Tens of thousands of players have already played Warlock 2 / Some Other Class X because Warlock is so front ended. I had 3 players do that in our campaign such that the table decided to ban Warlock multiclassing completely.

The game already has these type of multiclass shenanigans. Cleric 1 / Wizard X is a fine example. It doesn't mean that they are unbalanced unless one does an analysis to figure it out. We banned Warlock at our table due to anecdotal evidence (like the Sorcerer/Warlock being able to do the equivalent of Disintegrate level damage multiple times a day at level 7 or so).


If Cleric 7 / Wizard 6 was balanced in AD&D when the rest of the PCs are level 8, then this too might very well be balanced.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think that fact that some people played multiclass cleric/wizards or mystic theurges in earlier editions is good enough reason to want to try and make the combo work well in 5e.

Except, they kind of didn't. If I played a fighter/mage/cleric in AD&D, playing an EK 7/Tempest Cleric 6/Wizard 7 in 5E is not at all the same thing* because 5E doesn't have multiclassing by AD&D standards. What it has is more akin to the custom class construction rules in the 2nd edition DMG.

* You get cumulative HP instead of averaged HP, your spells are all wonky and you have spell slots way more powerful than a 7th level wizard should have, proficiency modifier and cantrips are too powerful, your saves are wrong (instead of the best of all three 6th-7th level classes' saves, you get only one, but that one class's saves are boosted to 20th level) and your advancement is extremely slow. Not at all the same experience.

Just because two things are both labelled "multiclassing" doesn't mean you can expect them to behave the same way. If you want AD&D-style multiclassing experiences, just introduce AD&D-style multiclassing rules instead of trying to shoehorn AD&D round pegs into 5E square holes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Except, they kind of didn't. If I played a fighter/mage/cleric in AD&D, playing an EK 7/Tempest Cleric 6/Wizard 7 in 5E is not at all the same thing*

EK Acolyte could cover it, vaguely, the cleric levels possible in 1e were pretty low. Or EK/Paladin, perhaps?

You get cumulative HP instead of averaged HP, your spells are all wonky and you have spell slots way more powerful than a 7th level wizard should have, proficiency modifier and cantrips are too powerful, your saves are wrong (instead of the best of all three 6th-7th level classes' saves, you get only one, but that one class's saves are boosted to 20th level) and your advancement is extremely slow. Not at all the same experience.

Just because two things are both labelled "multiclassing" doesn't mean you can expect them to behave the same way.

So, 5e uses a version of MCing introduced by 3.0, which really is a very intuitive, even elegant system, in it's basic concept. Each level is like a building-block, you stack them up to match your character concept. Less complicated/granular than a point-build system like Hero or GURPGs, still retains the D&D mystique of classes & levels, while providing much-expanded player options without equally-expanded bloat.

All it needed was a set of classes that were equally elegantly-designed to mesh with it.

It never got them.

The closest, by far, was the 3.x fighter (after first level: BAB, saves, bonus feat at each even number level, that's it - aside from which feats can be taken and a very few fighter-only feats), and it was all alone in that regard.

Also completely un-necessarily screwing up 3.x MCing was the way saving throws scaled, and the way caster levels were handled. Y'see, 3.x had 'BAB' instead of THAC0, it was just a bonus that progressed at different rates - 1:1, 3:4, or 1:2 - for different classes, when MCing, you just added them up. (Adding levels of all classes with the same BAB progression together beforce calculating and adding to those of different progressions would have been even better). Saving throws also added, but the problem was more pronounced because 'good' saves started at +2, so take several classes with a good save and you had a huge bonus, while your other saves stayed 0 (again, obvious solution: total the good and bad save levels separately, calculate them, add the result, but no). Then there were caster levels, they just stayed separate, and even if they hadn't there was no 1/2 BAB equivalent, so if you took a non-caster class, pht, nada. OTOH, feats and stat boosts were calculated from total character level and worked fine.

5e, perplexingly, looked at that, saw the problem, and fixed it for saving throws, attack bonus (proficiency in general) and caster level - then turned around broke it the same way for ASIs/Feats and Extra attack.
Why? Idontknow. He's on third...

It also, probably not coincidentally since MCing is optional, has classes that don't have anything like the 'building block'/modular 'elegant' design that the MCing system cries out for.

So. Yeah. My solution, so far, is to just not use MCing. I could see an extensive re-write of classes - or just tweaks of ASIs, Caster level, & Extra Attack - probably among other things, to improve on it...

 

[KarinsDad]

Except, they kind of didn't.

I don't know. I played a Mystic Thuerge in 3E and nobody, even the DM, thought he was broken. I don't remember the name of the exploit, but I even used the one that allowed both classes to be nearly the same level casters and nearly the same caster level as the other PCs.

It would be fun to play a Mystic Thuerge in 5E.

Just because two things are both labelled "multiclassing" doesn't mean you can expect them to behave the same way. If you want AD&D-style multiclassing experiences, just introduce AD&D-style multiclassing rules instead of trying to shoehorn AD&D round pegs into 5E square holes.

Isn't any significant houserule change trying to shoehorn other idea round pegs into 5E square holes?

And yeah. 5E multiclassing is closer to 1E Character With Two Classes (without most of the limitations) than it is to 1E Multiclassing. But, it's ok to try to houserule the 5E multiclassing rules to try to emulate 1E multiclassing. Take a deep breath. It's ok. Nobody is messing up your table.