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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrankTrollman" data-source="post: 1187514" data-attributes="member: 14225">I would like to get rid of all the split class PrCs, and instead make alterations to the multiclass rules which would make having a split class character worthwhile. Such changes would include:Set Spell Penetration by Character Level. As we know, a pit fiend has Spell Resistance of 32. And at 20th level you are expected to fight one. ou are also expected to have a caster level of 20 - against which a Pit Fiend your spell gets through only 45% of the time. If you are missing five caster levels, the Pit Fiend will only let your spell through 20% of the time - which means that you are less than half as effective. If you are missing 9 caster levels in 20 levels, you have zero chance of affecting the PitFiend - and your character is worthless. The SR is a "you must be at least this tall to fight this monster" index. Like DR. As such, it shouldn't punish you for taking specific conformations of classes - it should just be a character level check. That's supposed to be the measure of how tall your character is overall anyway.Set Saves by Hit Dice. This is a lot simpler than setting them by spell level - as it is already the mechanic of Gsze Attacks, Breath Weapons, and Poisonous Stingers. Furthermore, it solves the problem that people with low-level spells can't really make people fail saves. Currently, a 9th level spell has a save DC which is 8 higher than a first level spell. Since people are supposed to fail saves against spells at their level 40-60% of the time - subtracting 40% from that number means they basically don't fail ever. Heck, even a 5th level spell is half as likely to work, which means that the split classes character may as well just go home.Set Level Dependent Spell Effects by Total Character Level: Your character level is a measure of how tough monsters you should be fighting. Thus, it's a measure of how much damage your fireballs should be doing. That the split class wizard is doing less than that means that he sucks.Replace Arcane Spell Failure with Non-Proficient Spell Failure. There are several reasons to do this. The most obvious is to help the Wizard/Fighter multiclassed character. After all, when a Wizard/Fighter can't use armor that's not a nerf of the wizard class (the wizard class on its own can't use armor anyway), it's a nerf of the Fighter levels. They are supposed to be giving you armor wearing capability and aren't. The other reason is to stop the Shugenja cheese. See, when you wear armor that you aren't proficient in - it penalizes your attack rolls. Primary spellcasters, like Shugenja, don't make Attack Rolls (other people makes saves against their spells, and Save DCs aren't penalized by non-proficiency in armor). Since Shugenja are technically divine casters - they also don't worry about ASF - and thus go ahead and wear Great Armor all the time without proficiency. Feeding two birds with one crumb is good - and this actually solves a third problem by making Spell Failure chances for armor easier to conceptualize.----That's a start. If a Wizard 7/Rogue 7 were throwing around Acid Orbs that did 14 dice of damage (with potential sneak attack), with a save DC of 17 + Intelligence, and rolling d20 + 14 for spell penetration - he'd be a fairly viable character right out of the box.but, it doesn't solve the following problems:1> Higher Level Spells are a lot better than lower level spells. So much so, in fact, that the difference between a 17th level wizard and a 20th level wizard (three 9th level spells, two 8th level spells, and a 7th level spell), if expressed as six summon monster spells, is 120 rounds of Celestials casting spells on your behalf. Which is more clerical spellcasting than you get from the first 13 levels of Cleric. Thus, this doesn't even come close to fixing the Wizard/Cleric multiclass.2> You still can't stab a sword and cast a spell in the same round. Your combat effectiveness, in a very real way, is not dictated by how many different things you can do - but by how good of a thing you can do. After all, each round you can generally only do one thing (especially in 3.5 - unless you have Shapechange, but as a multiclassed character you won't). Your ability to cast a Fireball is inherently non-synergistic with your ability to swing a sword - as you can't do both at the same time. For an extreme example, the Barbarian's Rage dovetails very nicely into the Fighter's Improved Trip bonus feat - but completely negates any of a Wizard's spellcasting abilities. So this still doesn't completely solve the spellcaster/warrior multiclass.--However, if you did all this and introduced the ability to cast spells while shooting people with arrows - the Archer/Wizard could be balanced. And if this was a basic thing that Fighter/Wizards could do - we wouldn't even need an Arcane Archer PrC to make it into a workable archetype.-Frank</blockquote>

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