D&D (2024) The state of Multiclass-Dips in One D&D

[tetrasodium]

In one of the recent videos Crawford mentioned that they were moving the cleric subclass choice back because it was too rewarding as a dip & that they want to incentivize players to have a little more skin in a class than just 1-2 level dips that are so good players feel like they are harmed by not taking them*. With one version for four of twelve core classes & 4 of 48 total subclasses I think so far that goal is falling pretty far shy of the mark Crawford described to the point that people are even making videos about it.

Spoiler: the video

So here's what each class gives with a 1 level dip & how that expands beyond tier1.

Spoiler: Bard

• L1:armor training: Light Armor.
  • We don't yet have the new equipment details causing this to be a bit uncertain in value but we can make some assumptions. If someone is going to dip another class for armor proficiency light armor is probably not going to be the goal
• L1:One skill from the bard list & one musical instrument proficiency.
  • We don't yet know what (if any) changes will be made to skills
• Ltwo arcane cantrips [edit: they also get a level of spellcasting but that got left out initially by accident]
  • Currently we don't know if cantrips will continue to scale by character level or if there will be improvements like linking them to equipment. There are already a lot of ways to get cantrips though so this is probably just a garnish at best if we are thinking about the value with a dip
• L1: Bardic inspiration": This is only a d6 but you have proficiency bonus uses & can use it as a reaction for guidance-type boosts or a reaction heal.
  • This is starting to look enticing as a feature that will improve the next 19 nonbard levels but probably not yet good enough to feel forced into this dip
• L2: Songs of restoration: Healing word is always prepared & doesn't count against your prepared spells. Coupled with preparing three additional divination illusion enchantment or transmutation arcane spells you prepare without counting against your other 19 levels of caster prep & bardic inspiration this is starting to be a contender for a solid dip.
• L2: Expertise: Choose any two of your skills to have expertise in.
  • Currently expertise is double proficiency & bounded accuracy is already destroyed by scaling proficiency bonuses alone even without expertise. This is a problem but perhaps not specifically a multiclass problem since rogue & ranger gets this at first.

There are some questionably dipworthy abilities but barring interaction with abilities from classes we do not yet have bard is probably not a class that's going to make nonbards feel forced to dip. Bard probably meets the goal Crawford laid out.

Spoiler: Rogue

• L1:One skill from the rogue list & thieve's tool proficiency
  • Again we don't know what (if any) changes we can expect to skills
• armor training: Light Armor
  • We don't yet have the new equipment details causing this to be a bit uncertain in value but we can make some assumptions. If someone is going to dip another class for armor proficiency light armor is probably not going to be the goal
• L1:Expertise in two of your skills
  • Currently expertise is double proficiency & bounded accuracy is already destrpyed by scaling proficiency bonuses alone even without expertise. This is a problem but perhaps not specifically a multiclass problem.
• L1: Sneak attack: +1d6 on finesse & ranged weapon attacks1/round under some conditions.
  • The conditions are easy to meet. Even without knowing what weapons will look like sneak attack is probably not a prime reason to dip rogue1
• L2" Cunning action
  • Nice but barring any secondary class feature interactions dipping 2 levels of rogue for cunning action is probably not too much pressure. Rogue probably meets the goal Crawford laid out/

Expertise is a big problem if bounded accuracy is a thing wotc intends to keep. Rogue is probably meeting the goal Crawford laid out though.

Spoiler: Ruh-roh Ranger

• L1:armor training: light arnmor medium anmor & shields
  • It's hard to say how good this is but better than or equal to what 4 of the current 4 classes have
• L1: Martial weapon proficiencies & 1 rangerskill of your choice
  • We don't yet have the new weapons but this may or may not be incentive to dip ranger or feel disadvantaged for not doing so.
• L1:Expertise in two of your skills
  • Currently expertise is double proficiency & bounded accuracy is already destroyed by scaling proficiency bonuses alone even without expertise. It's also worth noting that this is expertise in two of your skills not two ranger skills since we are talking about excessive dip incentives. This is a problem but perhaps not specifically a multiclass problem.
• L1: two non-evocation primal cantrips & preparing two non-evocation 1st level primal spells without counting against the prep slots for your other 19 levels of non-ranger caster prep.
• L1:Favored enemy: You always have hunters mark prepared & can cast it without needing to maintain concentration...
  • Ruh-roh: It's entirely possible hunters mark will change in a way that solves this but I think that's a stretch. This is a pretty serious bit of dip candy for any classs that makes weapon attacks& the pressure grows the more attacks a PC makes each round. We don't know what the non-light weapons will ultimately look like but this is already starting to singlehandedly pull an already questionable dip in ways that are looking like it significantly misses the mark for that goal Crawford laid out.
• 2nd:a fighting style
  • It's hard to say how much more valuable this is & if this with 12/18 will be more valuable than 1/19 without knowing more classes & specifics. This is probably not a concern for dip overvalue, but ranger is already looking very sorlocky just from a one level dip.

We don't yet have enough details from the other weapon using classes to talk degrees or anything but the ranger almost certainly looking like it falls quite a bit short of the goal Crawford described

Spoiler: Cleric Red Alert

• 1st:Armor training: Light armor medium armor & shields
  • It's hard to say how good this is but better than or equal to what 4 of the current 4 classes have..
• 1st:No skills
  • Probably a good thing we should see more of.
• 1st:Channel Divinity: This is a heal or nuke that scales based with both proficiency bonus uses in addition to proficiency bonus number of dice
  • This is an anility that misses that goal by an extreme degree. Any wisdom based class is going to be feeling some pressure & it could be good enough that even non-wisdom based classes start feeling pressure
• 1st: three divine cantrips: Guidance, Resistance, 1 other...
  • these are extremely solid additions that a character can bring to the group on top of the already bad Channel Divinity pressure.
• 1st: Two forst level divine prep slots
  • Again very solid additions to any caster (divine or not)
• 2nd: Holy Order: Choice between A: Martial weapon proficiency & heavy armor proficiency, B: proficiency in two skills from arcana history nature persuasion & religion and you add your wisdom mod to it on top of whatever you normally add, C: an extra divine cantrip and you regain one of those proficiency bonus/long rest proficiency bonus(d8) channel divinity uses when you take a short rest....
  • A is pretty awesome on top of everything else. Even now it's common for characters to dip cleric just to get heavy armor proficiency
  • B is freaking amazing for a face character & further exposes how bad bounded accuracy is by making the best face character a bard X/cleric 2 leaps & bounds beyond anything else.
  • C is something that makes an already overly desirable dip pressuring ability even better and
• 3rd: subclass features. Currently this is disciple of life & domain spells
  • Those are very good but maybe not woirth going further as a dip yet. Other cleric subtypes could add very desirable things for some classes to take

cleric misses the goal Crawford described by miles to the point where it's reasonable to wonder just how much wotc is interested in meeting that goal.

There are definitely some serious problems with the goal that was described already & some of them need direct changes while others could be minimized by going back to 3.x style spell slots for different classes being separate rather than combining. Going to point by point or choose N skills from this class when awarded to be proficient with every so often while leveling with the number of times a skill is chosen times proficiency bonus being how much it adds to the d20**. Both of those & some form of dual classing with a 2.5-3x exp need multiplier (or even just the multiplier) would likewise help. [edit: going back to 3.5 style knowledge skills & divisions of them could help some areas too]


* I'm doing some paraphrasing from memory & treantmonk includes the direct quote snippet in his video so good enough.
** redo the target DCs to fit

 

[Xamnam]

Not that this in any way invalidates the bulk of, nor the value or interest of your post, but in light of this comment

cleric misses the goal Crawford described by miles to the point where it's reasonable to wonder just how much wotc is interested in meeting that goal.

I do think it's worth mentioning that in the Crawford video, it's specifically called out "I mentioned the most important one of the two issues is we're asking you to make this momentous decision before you even played the class before you even see what it's like to be just a vanilla member of the class." Multiclassing is a major concern, but they're also trying to adjust level one to grant the base class fantasy in a better way, so sometimes those goals will conflict.

Carry on.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

There are definitely some serious problems with the goal that was described already & some of them need direct changes while others could be minimized by going back to 3.x style spell slots for different classes being separate rather than combining. Going to point by point or choose N skills from this class when awarded to be proficient with every so often while leveling with the number of times a skill is chosen times proficiency bonus being how much it adds to the d20**. Both of those & some form of dual classing with a 2.5-3x exp need multiplier (or even just the multiplier) would likewise help. [edit: going back to 3.5 style knowledge skills & divisions of them could help some areas too]

While treantmonks really makes good points, the ideas you present here are the worst ideas for OneDnD I have read in a while.

Edit:
I think someone mentioned, that you could just use prof bonus as printed int the class table to determine uses and power of class abilities when you multiclass.

A different solution could just be having a shared pool of pb uses per level for class based abilities.

Maybe even a combination of both. So you can only use 2 uses of pb times per day of class abilities until you reach lvl 5 in that class. And so on.

 

[tetrasodium]

Not that this in any way invalidates the bulk of, nor the value or interest of your post, but in light of this comment

I do think it's worth mentioning that in the Crawford video, it's specifically called out "I mentioned the most important one of the two issues is we're asking you to make this momentous decision before you even played the class before you even see what it's like to be just a vanilla member of the class." Multiclassing is a major concern, but they're also trying to adjust level one to grant the base class fantasy in a better way, so sometimes those goals will conflict.

Carry on.

That bold bit was not unnoticed but it certainly does not obliviate the other... Someone just walking into the game for the first time can be given a pregen & make a new character later when they are more experienced. As someone who mostly GMs the other one is quite a bit more irksome the longer a game goes on because a player can choose to MC at any time but the GM is expected to be fair with the spotlight across all players including the newbie once covered under that bold bit weeks months or even years ago.

While treantmonks really makes good points, the ideas you present here are the worst ideas for OneDnD I have read in a while.

Edit:
I think someone mentioned, that you could just use prof bonus as printed int the class table to determine uses and power of class abilities when you multiclass.

A different solution could just be having a shared pool of pb uses per level for class based abilities.

Maybe even a combination of both. So you can only use 2 uses of pb times per day of class abilities until you reach lvl 5 in that class. And so on.

Nah, 5e skill system is terrible & the way knowledge skills fit into it is especially awful. copying it into one d&d as the exclusive set of skills would be awful. The 3.x style multiclass but without 3.x style prerequisites of 5e likewise creates lots of issues that oned&d should absolutely make efforts to do better about.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Nah, 5e skill system is terrible & the way knowledge skills fit into it is especially awful. copying it into one d&d as the exclusive set of skills would be awful. The 3.x style multiclass but without 3.x style prerequisites of 5e likewise creates lots of issues that oned&d should absolutely make efforts to do better about.

Ok, you could improve the skill system a bit. But you are really suggesting to go back to not adding caster levels and track them seperately?
Sorry, but this was the best idea. I mentioned that i really despised pathfinder 1 for not fixing the issue, while the little known trailblazer just did it.

 

[tetrasodium]

Ok, you could improve the skill system a bit. But you are really suggesting to go back to not adding caster levels and track them seperately?
Sorry, but this was the best idea. I mentioned that i really despised pathfinder 1 for not fixing the issue, while the little known trailblazer just did it.

not so much just don't add them & track them separate as do that while updating dual classing to no longer be combo specific rules with some improvements taken from the good parts of MC. There's an interactive spreadsheet showing how such a thing could line up oon Alice's sheet across the table from Bob's single classed PC but it didn't get linked originally by accident.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

not so much just don't add them & track them separate as do that while updating dual classing to no longer be combo specific rules with some improvements taken from the good parts of MC. There's an interactive spreadsheet showing how such a thing could line up oon Alice's sheet across the table from Bob's single classed PC but it didn't get linked originally by accident.

I don't dislike the Idea as a whole. I thought, you wanted to have the spellcasting progressions seperate in the current system. As an alternate form of multiclassing, I'd support this Idea (like multiclassing and dual-classing without the species restrictions).
But I definitely don't want to get rid of the current system, which is more flexible and works well barring a few class specific cases. But I don't want that discussion again. So this is the last I say in this thread.

 

[Xamnam]

That bold bit was not unnoticed but it certainly does not obliviate the other...

Oh good, and certainly it does not. It just sounded like that video, given the creator, was focusing on one side to the neglect of the other, so I thought it worth making sure the context was present here.

It's thorny, because I definitely agree with you on the Cleric front. That Divine Spark is...not game-breaking, likelily, but increasingly attractive to give any class an emergency heal, especially given that it's ranged. The tricky spot for so much of this is anything that scales off of Proficiency Bonus, given that you never have to sacrifice that progression, and I doubt they're willing to add a separate number that's expressly used to modify multiclass PB skill usage.

 

[mellored]

I feel this is holdover fear from 3.5. Because I really hadn't seen any major issues with it in 5e. With the biggest issue being the moon druid at level 2.

Some minor issues, but it seems like they are addressing that.

 

[James Gasik]

At some point, most classes stop giving you new and interesting features. You can go multiple levels without anything remotely fun. Most of the fun features you get are in the first few levels. As long as this is true, the desire to multiclass will always exist.

And you don't want to push back fundamental features too much either, since there's this desire for players to want to feel like they're "actually playing their class".

Multiclassed individuals have existed in the fiction D&D has been based on from the very beginning- Conan is both warrior and thief. Elric of Melnibone is a warrior and a warlock. Fafhrd has a skill set much like Conan's, the Grey Mouser is a Dex Fighter/Rogue who dabbles in black magic. Where D&D is currently going wrong is that the game isn't balanced around ala carte multiclassing, because single-classed characters are not equal to properly built multiclassed characters (it's very easy to make a terrible multiclassed character).

There should be a single-classed character just as powerful as a Hexblade/Paladin. That there isn't any other way to do what this multiclass does is the reason why it's so popular.

Most games don't reach high levels, and the rewards for being a Tier 4 and up character don't always seem so exciting. "Huzzah, three levels later, and I got another use of Indomitable!".

And the current Cleric shows that they still don't get it. Ok, I can't take a one level dip for Domain and Heavy Armor. But I still get spell slots, medium armor, shields, and a powerful healing ability that scales with proficiency bonus. So tell me how a Wizard 20 is better than a Cleric 1/Wizard 19? Epic Boons? Sorry, try again.