Arguments and assumptions against multi classing

[Hussar]

SO just to make sure your point is clear here, being MORE powerful then the rest of the table isn't a problem if someone in a theoretical other game MIGHT be more powerful? I don't understand at all how that makes any sense.

But, you were more powerful, barely, than 4 support characters. The argument is that multiclassing makes your character more powerful. And, let's not forget, in your example, other than the Beastmaster, every other character multi classed (very poorly) too.

I mean, good grief, reverse the levels of your fighter/Mastermind and he doubles his damage output. The fact that you have this many characters and, because they all multiclassed, none of them have multiple attacks per round is hardly a fair comparison.

IOW, your character was more powerful than the rest of the table because the rest of the table made choices to make their characters as absolutely weak as possible. Being the DPR king in this group is hardly proof of anything other than you have a group that apparently is not power gamers.

 

[5ekyu]

Two parents sell their baby's soul to a fiend, then leave her on the steps of a temple of Helm. The temple raises the child and trains her to be a paladin, but the fiend has its hooks in her. The fiend wants to corrupt the paladin, and one way to do that is to give her access to warlock powers. The fiend doesn't want to 'win' too quickly, because a high level fallen paladin is better than a low level one.

But the paladin-or Pal/War-will be trying to do good deeds all her life. Probably be consciously trying to defeat the plans of the fiend. Is that a reason for the fiend to take away her warlock powers? No! That would defeat the fiends own plan!

Elric of Melnibone's patron is Arioch, Prince of Swords, Duke of Hell, and all around proper baddy. Elric was the....least evil...of an evil race. Elric hated Arioch, hated serving him, and tried not to do his bidding. Arioch didn't really directly ask much of Elric, apart from asking him to dedicate the slain to him. Elric's warcry was "Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!"

Arioch wanted Elric to destroy the city of Tanelorn. Elric wanted to save Tanelorn, and successfully defended the city from an army of Chaos demons. Did Arioch take Elric's powers away? No. Even at the end of the world when Elric personally slew the gods of Chaos-including Arioch-Elrics powers were never taken away.

The comic character Spawn was given powers by the Devil. Spawn even had a 'Power Clock' which ticked down whenever he used the supernatural power bestowed upon Spawn by the Devil. Spawn knows that when the clock reaches zero then he'll be under the Devil's thumb for eternity, a fate he badly wants to avoid!

But Spawn uses his power to work against Satan! Does Satan take away Spawn's power? No, even to the point where Spawn replaces Satan as the ruler of Hell.

Some of my worst experiences in 40 years of D&D is when DMs take away my agency over my PC. They do this by picking on any PC who, conceptually, gains some or all of their powers, their game mechanics, their special abilities, from an intelligent supernatural source. "If you do that then your god will take your powers away", "If you save those orphans instead of these orphans then you'll lose your paladinhood because you failed to save some orphans. Gotcha!"

The DM takes away my agency through the threat of taking away my PC's game abilities unless I do what the DM wants my PC to do. But I play the game to make those decisions myself, not to watch the DM play my PC as just another one of his NPCs.

So, in those games, the players quickly learn to avoid playing clerics, paladins, warlocks, druids, whatever classes have their powers taken away by DM whim. Nobody says, "Your fighter is making the wrong choices in my opinion, therefore he no longer gets more than one attack per round, loses his fighting style, and cannot use any abilities of his subclass. Any further infractions and you'll be a 1HD commoner. Because I said so".

I an very glad that 5e PCs cannot have their powers taken away, RAW. If the DM does, he is abusing rule zero to do so, and may lose his players as a result.

This seems to paint the DM in an adversarial role.

It also somehow redefines player agency into clerics defying gods and keeping their daily prayers.

How odd.

See, here is the rub... in my games, I cannot remember ever having clerics lose powers and certainly not warlocks. The **possibility** tends to work to create characters with pact and religious ties that suit their intended character play.

Additionally, the higher power might be perfectly fine with this "defiance" of it fits longer goals.

In my experience, pulling the plug is simply so far down the list of options that its rarely used... if ever... but the threat is important.

But, to be very clear, if there were some omni-god of player agency which declared that all powers granted had to be kept forever or Hasbronies would descend to punish... the pacts and clerics etc would most certainly find it different as every bit of their "payments would have to be paid up front.

"You want to level to 2? Once I give it you keep it? Well, here is your list? Call me when it's done, since the Hasbronies forbid ongoing service contracts."

 

[Invisible Stalker]

You can't multiclass with Paladin if there are no Paladins.

Gotta take out the roots of the problem, not the branches and leaves.

I agree, get rid of the players and DMs that don't like paladins. Problem solved.

 

[5ekyu]

Just to be clear... I dont think the "yes patrons and gods can cut the power to their followers/pawns" are suggesting it as common or anything to be done to remove free will or as any immediate response to any slight.

They are, at least I am, saying it is a part that needs to be considered in the player gm discussion about those classes and what the agreements between character and patron/divine.

If the patron-pact and deity-cleric is, as some suggest, restrained to only (on the divine/patron side) capabilities **explicitly stated in the rules** then it is not a relationship, not a pact, but a case of an enslaved divinity or patron.

The patron/divine is not explicitly allowed to removes powers... well it also isn't explicitly allowed to refuse leveling, to spy on its pawn/follower.

So if you take that approach, it's not anything the character has to concern with or player discuss... the patron/divine just lays down and offers up power.

That's why, imo, the classes make sure to emphasize working out the details with gm-player and character-patton on same page.

Maybe one pair handles it with permanent endowments. Maybe others dont.

But player agency should not be so transformed into granting unilateral control over arrangements with NPCs, imo.

But others may have different views.

 

[Kobold Boots]

In previous editions, paladins could fall and lose their class abilities. We know this, because the rules said so. Rules As Written.

But in 5e, such rules are conspicuous by their absence. The lack of such rules =/= these rules exist RAW, because Rules As NOT Written are not Rules AS Written.

Oathbreaker.

First, the examples I quoted from the very fiction that inspired the hobby, plus actual written 5e text to the tune of some patrons don't pay any attention to their warlocks, shows clearly that it is NOT a given that such beings automatically punish transgressors.

Generally I agree. Depends on:

1. Patron - Some may care, most probably won't until you have something they want. I'd imagine that some patrons seed the world and see what grows, while others may have a direct reason to empower a character.
2. The story - As a DM or GM, I never overlook the patron/deity relationship and how that factors into the world or the setting. At low levels, players get a lot of slack usually. At higher levels less so because the relationship generally matters more to the patron. Of course, I let the player know this directly out of game and through tells during the game, but I do the best I can to make sure it comes across naturally. Things have to make sense and folks need to be comfy with it.

Second, even those beings who are inclined to punish wayward servants do so by in-game means, such as sending more and more powerful loyal servants to persuade/kill the naughty PCs. What they don't do is punish them by metagaming! They don't mess with our real world character sheets, they mess with the game-world characters!

Agree, though to be fair - it's much better to have the character go through in game things that are not immediately thought to be punishments, but rather trials. "Ok, you schtuped the king's daughter.. now I need you to go find the golden fleece."

And here is an assumption: the player is deliberately playing wrong! But in my experience what happens is that the player and DM disagree about the best way to role-play their devotion. In real life religious people, even of the same religion/denomination/church disagree about religious matters, and each still goes on happily being a member of that religion. But the DMs I'm talking about say it's their way or the highway, taking away the player's agency.

The first example character in my previous post was a Pal/War whose parents sold her soul to a fiend, left her on the steps of the temple to Helm, was brought up and trained to be a good paladin, while the fiend was secretly rubbing his hands with glee in the thought that he could slowly corrupt a high level paladin. It just would not make ANY sense for the fiend to take her warlock powers away because that would defeat the fiend's own object, and it wouldn't make any sense for Helm to cripple his own paladin's fight against the will of the fiend.

Yet, on this forum and in real life, the knee-jerk reaction of some DMs is, "Paladin/Warlock? The player MUST be making a mockery of the story and the PC cannot possibly make sense!" Ban, ban, ban!

Well there's the small problem that a character without a soul should not be able to become a paladin in the first place. Granted, this is my world view and other DMs can do whatever their desires are, but if the world follows a generic "gods need followers" and "soul is the faith" model, then being trained by Helm followers is great, but when you finally go to be empowered by the god and the soul isn't there... oopsy. Now if you wanted the demon pact that enabled the warlock to gain power to also take on some paladin'y goodness, I'd have no issue there. Sounds fun.

I have no issue with any multiclass combo that makes sense from a story perspective. Classes to me are like templates, no one walks around in game going "Hey you're a paladin, or Hey you're a warlock", but if you come to me with a backstory that doesn't make sense setting wise and you want the powers, I'll say "OK" and then you'll find out at some point in your roleplay over time that the story your parents told you was a little off.

You get to do what you want, but you don't get to do it exactly the way you thought. Most players are ok with that so long as the game (and most importantly their character) is cool and makes sense.

 

[Seramus]

There are interesting stories to be told about getting your powers cut off and how you overcome those odds.
There are interesting stories to be told about gaining power, and then using that power against your god or patron.
Either way, work with your player to come up with a great story.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

But, you were more powerful, barely, than 4 support characters. The argument is that multiclassing makes your character more powerful. And, let's not forget, in your example, other than the Beastmaster, every other character multi classed (very poorly) too.

I mean, good grief, reverse the levels of your fighter/Mastermind and he doubles his damage output. The fact that you have this many characters and, because they all multiclassed, none of them have multiple attacks per round is hardly a fair comparison.

IOW, your character was more powerful than the rest of the table because the rest of the table made choices to make their characters as absolutely weak as possible. Being the DPR king in this group is hardly proof of anything other than you have a group that apparently is not power gamers.

Well we had 1 newbie, 1 power gamer who sucks at power gaming (I mean like he makes the worst characters it is almost a joke) and 2 I would say average players... I was trying to cut my power by multi classing. By accident I synergyed a pretty powerful character.

My problem isn't "Hey all multi class characters are powerful" it's "Multi class rules make it easier to make more or less powerful characters than you mean to"

I spent years thinking High level spells were the powergame. As such my default answer was to play a single class spell caster (Bard, Cleric, Druid, Wizard) as tier one power gaming. The idea of spreading out class levels delaying higher level spells known (and spell slots if not a main caster) being a hit to your power seemed obvius to me. The problem was I also assumed the GM was more or less right with how high we were going... 16-18th level. So I deversafied, and made a much better low level character then I thought I would.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

To me, this sort of thing is entirely dependent on the game system you're using as it grants you the lens to look through the world at.

With D&D players tend to look at their characters as "class first" that's not to say that there aren't people who put together great backstories and concepts, the rules as written just shoehorn you into a certain point of view.

Now lets say just as an example, you end up playing rolemaster, where it's damn near impossible to navigate the rules system until you know what story lens the GM tells you to look at the world through, then tells you to come up with your backstory and develop your character first, based on the story and then only spend on things that don't fit the story if you can afford them.

I can't speak for Rolemaster, but with GURPS, the first job for a GM creating a new campaign is to figure out what the world looks like. You need to decide whether magic exists, and if so, what spellcasting is. You need to determine whether anyone can learn magic, or if it's limited to certain people; and whether they learn spells from a list, or if their magic manifests in the form of inherent gifts. You need to decide how many different types of magic there are, and if some magic is divine in nature, then you need to figure out the whole patron/servant relationship.

You can do anything with the system, but it takes a ton of work to reach the level of detail that D&D assumes as a baseline. Meanwhile, although D&D does all of that work up front to tell us exactly what a wizard is and exactly what a paladin is, it's a lot harder to customize if you want something that doesn't exactly follow those assumptions. You can't just change the fluff, because the fluff is intrinsically tied to the crunch, and there aren't really guidelines for how to make those changes.

 

[Arial Black]

It is unreasonable of a player to bring such a character to the DM with the expectation that it will be allowed. That's just pure player entitlement.

Player: I'm going to play a fighter this time.

DM: It's unreasonable to bring such a character to me with the expectation it will be allowed! Bloody player entitlement! Players picking their own characters! Whatever next!

 

[Kobold Boots]

I can't speak for Rolemaster, but with GURPS, the first job for a GM creating a new campaign is to figure out what the world looks like. You need to decide whether magic exists, and if so, what spellcasting is. You need to determine whether anyone can learn magic, or if it's limited to certain people; and whether they learn spells from a list, or if their magic manifests in the form of inherent gifts. You need to decide how many different types of magic there are, and if some magic is divine in nature, then you need to figure out the whole patron/servant relationship.

You can do anything with the system, but it takes a ton of work to reach the level of detail that D&D assumes as a baseline. Meanwhile, although D&D does all of that work up front to tell us exactly what a wizard is and exactly what a paladin is, it's a lot harder to customize if you want something that doesn't exactly follow those assumptions. You can't just change the fluff, because the fluff is intrinsically tied to the crunch, and there aren't really guidelines for how to make those changes.

It depends on which version of RM. If you're running classic, then there's at least a dozen decisions you need to make about what rules you're using (per rulebook). If you're running a later version it's less involved, but since the character generation is so open ended if you don't give your players a good idea of the setting and what's possible, you'll get through chargen and the game will fail.

Still, I like it more than GURPS because it's focused on the fantasy genre, though I love GURPS and have used it in the past.

KB