D&D 5E Ability Score Requeriments for Multiclassing, yay or nay?

[Remathilis]

Obviously we have never played together (you cannot just predict the scores on my characters just form class alone), and in 4e hitting is just way too important, but for example Battle clerics can dump Wisdom, 3.x allows for more room: crossbow fighters can have any kind of str score (including 8), "showy" rogues can have a dex as low as 13, blasty and gishy sorcerers even get away with having 14 cha, I've played paladins and know of rangers with a wisdom so low they don't get to cast spells, monks are so mad they don't have a single primary, even 2e with it's score requirements to be a class allows for some pretty low scores all over the place. It all comes to playstyle, of course in a charop heavy game you'll never see such characters, but they exist in more story and character driven games, and it is exactly there that such a steep and harsh requirements/restrictions hurt the most. I don't doubt some groups will need a way to stop endless dipping, but ability score requirements fall short on them (really, the current restrictions allow for a 9 class dipper while greatly restricting the ability of any non-optimized character to get a second class)

My group is as far from "optimized" or "charop" as you can get, and we still fall under the predictable lines. A fighter with a high strength (we tried some dex-based fighters early on, the fact they tended to be weak as heck limited their use until the Swashbuckler from CW). Even archers had decent strengths and mighty bows ("crossbows are wizard weapons"). Likewise, I can't imagine a caster with a low caster stat due to how DCs worked. I really don't think it would ever cross their minds to have a rogue with a higher str than dex or a druid with a high str/con and dumps wis.

I'm sure there is room for a farmboy who is drafted into the army and later finds God (13 str, 12 wis fighter/cleric) but I'm also fairly sure they are the minority.

 

[MoonSong]

My group is as far from "optimized" or "charop" as you can get, and we still fall under the predictable lines. A fighter with a high strength (we tried some dex-based fighters early on, the fact they tended to be weak as heck limited their use until the Swashbuckler from CW). Even archers had decent strengths and mighty bows ("crossbows are wizard weapons"). Likewise, I can't imagine a caster with a low caster stat due to how DCs worked. I really don't think it would ever cross their minds to have a rogue with a higher str than dex or a druid with a high str/con and dumps wis.

I'm sure there is room for a farmboy who is drafted into the army and later finds God (13 str, 12 wis fighter/cleric) but I'm also fairly sure they are the minority.

It is pretty easy to consider a sorcerer without a very high cha, one focused on utility magic, buffs or direct damage (like a spellwarp sniper), in fact such character would have higher con, dex and str than charisma, having only enough to enable third or fourth level slots. very far away from the save or die wizards, but very nice and fun to play despite "being suboptimal", once I even dared to play a paladin with str, con and wis penalties.

Now for sudden changes of career a thief has little to do stat-wise with a cleric or paladin, but storywise can make a lot of sense. And I don't want that kind of posibilites taken away so easily.

 

[n00bdragon]

I'm not entirely sure why this was a problem that needed fixing. It's just another rule ("but you can ignore it" is not a valid excuse for any rule's existence) that takes away from the game without adding anything in return. Why do you so particularly want to stop the man with 1 and 2 level dips covering his sheet? Ask yourself first: "Is this really that good of a character in the end?" I'm inclined to say it's not, particularly when 20 levels of wizard is the best "powerbuild" in the game still. It's just someone who wanted to achieve very specific things and happened to have a path that wasn't very plain. He's keeping up with it though so why stress about it?

 

[1of3]

My group is as far from "optimized" or "charop" as you can get, and we still fall under the predictable lines. A fighter with a high strength (we tried some dex-based fighters early on, the fact they tended to be weak as heck limited their use until the Swashbuckler from CW). Even archers had decent strengths and mighty bows ("crossbows are wizard weapons"). Likewise, I can't imagine a caster with a low caster stat due to how DCs worked. I really don't think it would ever cross their minds to have a rogue with a higher str than dex or a druid with a high str/con and dumps wis.

But that's all because the other rules in 3e. Archers need STR for damage. Not so in 5e. Finesse weapons were a bad idea for fighters. In 5e they are quite useful. Caster got bonus slots from high stat and needed the stat to cast at all. In 5e you can play a cleric with Wisdom 8, unless you want to attack with magic.

 

[delericho]

No. Multi-classing exists because the existing classes can't cover every archetype - they enable players to combine the classes to fill in the gaps. If there were a single class that did the job, it wouldn't have ability score requirements; the combined 'class' shouldn't either.

(The alternatives would be to either remove classes altogether in favour of point-buy (which probably "isn't D&D", but still), or introduce many many more classes. Either way, you don't need multiclassing any longer. Either of those would probably be a better solution to the problem, though both have their issues.)

 

[Dice4Hire]

I like restrictions, actually. They make decisions necessary in the game, and to me character creation has always been a bit of a mini-game in the larger D&D game (and no, I am not a min-maxer)

I would like to see increased requirements if one takes more than one multi-class choice (I cannot remember if you can, and am not willing to check.)

 

[silverblade56]

I say ditch them. As powerful as feats are and as much as 5E focuses on ability scores, delaying or missing some ability score boosts/feats is a fairly steep price to pay for multi-classing. It still doesn't prevent dipping much, especially for humans, and just punishes people that want to multiclass for good (story related) reasons. If someone in an FR campaign wants to play a monk of the long death (assassin/monk?) or a monk of the dark moon (monk/sorcerer) or a crazed cleric of talos (barbarian/cleric) or a huntmaster of Malar (ranger/cleric) should they really be hindered by these restrictions? I don't think so.

 

[Darth Illithid]

I say keep the restrictions. Multiclass characters should be the exception, not the rule, and that means having exceptional ability scores. It's more like old-school D&D - not everyone gets to be a fighter-mage, for example. WotC seems to want an old-school feel to D&D Next. I imagine that's why the default method for determining ability scores is the dice rolling method, with point buy or array being optional.

 

[delericho]

Multiclass characters should be the exception, not the rule, and that means having exceptional ability scores. It's more like old-school D&D - not everyone gets to be a fighter-mage, for example.

Back in real old-school D&D, back when Dragon used to stat up the 'iconic' characters that inspired the game (Conan, the Grey Mouser, etc), they were almost all multi-class characters, and generally so in defiance of the combinations allowed by the rules.

If it's good enough for them, and for Gygax, then I submit that it's good enough for me and my table. YMMV, of course.

 

[DonAdam]

I like the requirements.

In addition, I want taking the first level of a new class to come with hefty opportunity cost in the downtime system. This will, on the margin, encourage multiclassing for story rather than optimization reasons.