A few comments from a playtester

[small pumpkin man]

1) I am well aware of that. It was not my point here at all.

You said you could get high level powers without low level ones. The iniatiate feat gives a first level power, and is required for the other feats and PP abilities.

2) I'm perceiving this from a realistical point of view. In any previous edition multiclassing or dual-classing meant that you began with 1st level powers -- now you can start by lobbing Fireballs and Prismatic Sprays right from the start just by burning a Feat? Uh... no more apprenticeship period or "learning curve" at all? Doesn't seem very logical to me.

A little fudge? If my DM allowed to do that without any sort of "apprenticeship period" in the story, I'd seriously consider walking out of the campaign (and the whole group). You see, it would totally break my immersion and suspension of disbelief if I thought about becoming a wizard's apprentice one day, and could already hurl fireballs the next morning.

The rules dictate what is balanced and fun. Sometimes getting a level takes 20 years, sometimes it takes 2 days, restricting what people can do "realistically" upon leveling up is allways going to be campaign specific thing, and as such obviously should be dealt on a case by case basis, not specified in the rules.

Let's make it even more "exciting" and "fun": no need to burn a Feat -- you may pick whatever powers you want. Want a cleric/fighter/wizard/warlord/ranger? Just pick anything appropriate for your level from all the lists. It would not be balanced, but certainly more fun, right?

Usage of fun as a dirty word pretty much instantly invalidates your argument, even before you start implying balance gets in the way of fun.

 

[MyISPHatesENWorld]

From the latest post in the thread....

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=15948269&postcount=147

"I have a question:

We have heard Half-Elves are the multiclassing race, and have seen some Half-Elf pregens. The pregens don't seem to tell the whole story, so my question would be how good of a multiclassing race are Half-Elves, and do Half-Elves not suck this time around(as compared to 3E)."

"Half-elves WERE the multi-classing race in the playtest. They were AWESOME. Apparently too awesome as they don't resemble their playtest stats at all. Initially they got a free multiclassing feat at character creation and could multi-class in more than one class if they wanted. Of course, that was also with the original multiclass rules, which arguably were pretty different. Now they're not so hot. They do get a free encounter power (chosen from the at will powers of any class) and get a cool ability to take the feats of both elves and humans (both of which rock - so this is pretty cool.) But there is nothing to them that I can see that make them multiclass focused at all anymore.

They're a spiffy race, but will most likely see play with heavy RPers or minmaxers building CHA heavy classes."

 

[rhm001]

I know there's the link to the discussion, but there's some extra "stuff" to dig through there, so I thought I'd add this from the thread.

Half-elves WERE the multi-classing race in the playtest. They were AWESOME. Apparently too awesome as they don't resemble their playtest stats at all. Initially they got a free multiclassing feat at character creation and could multi-class in more than one class if they wanted. Of course, that was also with the original multiclass rules, which arguably were pretty different. Now they're not so hot. They do get a free encounter power (chosen from the at will powers of any class) and get a cool ability to take the feats of both elves and humans (both of which rock - so this is pretty cool.) But there is nothing to them that I can see that make them multiclass focused at all anymore.

Emphasis mine; confirms the human/elf feat option.

EDIT: Blast! Beten to it; I swear that wasn't there when I started typing...

 

[hong]

I thought only Hong used that kind of replies? ;P

Seriously, are you telling me that thinking and even a minimal degree of realism is bad in 4E? It's all about combat and cool-awesome-whatnot powers, and not about any logic in the story?

The trick is to realise that "story" != "what I do in combat".

 

[Nytmare]

Is there something stopping someone who wanted to play a 10th level fighter who decided to start a magely apprenticeship from taking Ghost Sound?

As opposed to the 10th level fighter who wanted to, I don't know, awaken some mystical power granted to him by his arcane heritage by chucking fireballs around?

 

[small pumpkin man]

Is there something stopping someone who wanted to play a 10th level fighter who decided to start a magely apprenticeship from taking Ghost Sound?

As opposed to the 10th level fighter who wanted to, I don't know, awaken some mystical power granted to him by his arcane heritage by chucking fireballs around?

Currently? Yes. AFAIK, It can't be done. Ghost sound is a specific "class feature", not a power, meaning you can only get it as part of an initiate feat, not the later feats (and assumably not as part of the PP replacement) and the Wizard Initiate feat doesn't give it.

So yeah, it requires either making a different initiate feat up yourself, or waiting untill the arcane splatbook when they'll likely put some new initiate feats in.

 

[ZetaStriker]

Late, but I just want to say one thing.

Because there have never been stories where someone develops really, really potent abilities that suddenly surface which they can only use infrequently (read: daily).

Richard Rahl, from the Sword of Truth series.

 

[Rechan]

Late, but I just want to say one thing.



Richard Rahl, from the Sword of Truth series.

I was being facetious.

 

[jdrakeh]

Stop doing that. Or you're going to give yourself a headache.

Verisimilitude and realistic rules have been a key selling point of D&D since 1974! Take your fantasy and die, heretic scum!

 

[Lurker37]

This thread has raised an interested question about retraining:

Does it occur before or after you select feats/powers for that level? In other words, can you use it to get the requisites for abilities you also buy that level, or do the retrained feats etc only count for abilities bought at later levels?

If retraining lets you fulfill prerequisites for other abilities bought that same level, then even single-class characters could change substantially in a single level-up. I wonder what exactly is involved in retraining? Is it meant to take time? Money? Require a tutor? Can it be done mid-dungeon or does it require a visit to a town?

It occurs to me that this is a parallel to 3E multiclassing. If a the player of a 3E fighter announces at level-up that they're taking a level of wizard, which they've roleplayed no interest into until now, and the DM doesn't require them to explain how their fighter learnt spellcasting, that strikes me as a variation of the same thing. Some groups would not even consider this a problem, while other may well implode over it.

Further to that, I would hope that any rules for time and resources required to retrain or multiclass will be in the PHB rather than the DMG, so both DM and players know what is expected well before it becomes an issue. ( I'm assuming that the player does not give the DM forewarning of their retraining/multiclassing intentions, which is quite possible in an inexperienced group. )

On another point, it's interesting that although some aspects of multiclassing seem unimpressive when described, based largely on a perceived loss of number of available powers (or feats), playtesters have reported that it works without overshadowing single-class characters, and those who have chosen to multiclass have not regretted it. Either it works better in practice than it sounds, or we don't have the full picture.