NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 6275193" data-attributes="member: 20323">While its fresh in my mind I wanted to share how I'm handling multi-classing and gestalt characters (in 3e parlance) or dual-classing and multi-classing (in AD&D parlance).Both are valid options, and in Elderblade both work very similarly.The basic idea is every character has 3 starting features regardless of how many classes they are trained as, and only 1 of these can be a core feature (*) (which are the strongest most defining elements of a class). For example:Wizards get: Read & Detect Magic, (*) Schools of Magic, and SpellbookFighters get: Evaluate Combatant, Fighting Style, (*) Weapon ExpertiseRegardless of whether you play a Fighter-Wizard split-class gestalt PC, or a multi-class Fighter 5 / Wizard 7 PC, this rule applies. Not only is this an easy balancing tool, but it also allows for permutations on a theme. For example, you could have several builds that might look like..."Gish" Fighter-Wizard: Fighting Style, Evaluate Combatant, (*) Schools of MagicThis would be a PC who uses a sword artfully and can kibitz with other warriors about intricacies of different fencing styles, whose perception in combat could be described as supernatural, and who can draw upon spells as a wizard would."Monster Hunter" Fighter-Wizard: Read & Detect Magic, Spellbook, (*) Weapon ExpertiseThis PC benefits from the spellbook which grants rituals (even though he cannot cast spells) and can read and speak the Elder Tongue to decipher ancient sigils (or impress mages), but he is also a deadly warrior who gets multiple attacks and an attack/damage bonus. His rituals supplement his martial ability.The key here is that a character will never have two (*) core features, so a player who wants to be able to cast spells (the Schools of Magic feature) must sacrifice Weapon Expertise. This makes sense for split-class PCs who start off as Fighter-Wizards, but what about PCs who start as one class and become another?Multi-classing this way is not an instantaneous change, but a gradual one in Elderblade.  What this means is that as the PC levels in their new class they undergo a retraining process which allows them to gradually swap out features/talents, probably at the rate of 1 per level. In other words, switching classes is a decision of consequence. Are they forgetting their old skills? Possibly. Are they foreswearing from practicing the assassin's trade ever again? Possibly. Are they simply focusing on learning new abilities so those old abilities fall into the background of the narrative? Possibly. Does their god or patron strip away that power invested in them? Possibly. It's up to the player to decide what it means.</blockquote>

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