Arguments and assumptions against multi classing

[5ekyu]

The time "in between" the Reagan era and the post-Reagan era is infinitesimally small, so we can actually narrow down the point at which you dropped alignment with great precision.

Just sayin'.

Only if one sees "during" and reads "for the entire"

 

[Maxperson]

An inability to conceptualize these elements under the umbrella of "street urchin" is not the fault of the concept.

Unarmored defense - whodathunk that a person with no training in wearing armor might develop skills that would make them better at avoiding getting smacked with lumpy metal things. Unless you're insisting that Unarmored Defense somehow actually makes the skin of the barbarian tougher.

Fast Movement - whodathunk that someone who spends most of their time running around the city dodging guards and other dangers might be a bit fleet of foot.

Brutal Critical - Umm, considering that the power actually comes with zero fluff attached to it, you can flavor this however you like. Maybe after years of mugging people, he just got really good at smacking people about the head and shoulders.

Indomitable Might - well, he's tough as nails, he's 18th level, so hardly a street urchin anymore - he's the survivor of masses of bloodshed and danger. Again, the power has zero flavor attached to it, so, how can you complain when the player attaches any flavor to it that the player fancies?

Primal Champion - dude, he's a 20th level character. There's a million and one ways you could easily justify this.

@Maxperson, are you seriously going to try to argue that powers that have zero flavor attached to them can never have any flavor attached to them?

Google street urchins. If one has even a 10 strength, I'd be surprised.

 

[Hussar]

So, I'm going to point this out gently, again. One person's idea of an asshat, is another person's idea of the right way to play, and vice versa.

So it is totally fair that you don't like playing a certain way; good on you! But imagine someone else does? I know, hard, isn't it? But seriously, this is just a variation on the usual. Just sub in "optimizer" and you get the same results. Some people swear by it, some people swear at it, and so on.

The one common denominator is to find a table that plays, for the most part, like you want to play. That solves almost all problems. What doesn't work I would think, is saying that other people's play styles are tied into someone's ego; I mean, sure, but if everyone at the table feels one way, and you are the odd person out insisting on a different play style, then ... yeah, it becomes onetruewayism.

If people want to run meatgrinder OSR-style games with class archetypes, and have fun doing so, that's good for them, right?

Oh, I do agree. Always play with people you can share interests with.

My issue here is that the idea that barbarian mechanics are tied to any sort of specific flavor. They aren't. There's absolutely nothing in the PHB to justify the idea that barbarians must derive their powers from any specific source. You can tell me that you want a specific source for your game, fair enough. But, don't try to pretend that there is any actual official justification for forcing your (the royal you, not you specifically) preferences on the group.

 

[Warpiglet]

Google street urchins. If one has even a 10 strength, I'd be surprised.

Add a little training and puberty.

ever heard of Mike Tyson? He could hit like a truck in his youth.

 

[Maxperson]

Add a little training and puberty.

ever heard of Mike Tyson? He could hit like a truck in his youth.

Sure. He wasn't a street urchin. A street tough given his size, maybe. He had a home and family, even if his father left them. At no point did he live by himself on the street starving. At no point was he this tiny waif of a thing that is also known as a street urchin.

urchin

That young child dressed in dirty hand-me-downs and running rampant through city streets is an urchin. Street urchins, as they are commonly called, have a reputation for getting into trouble.
Strangely enough, urchin, pronounced "UR-chin," comes from the 13th century French word yrichon, which means “hedgehog,” and is still used as such in parts of England today. As for people who are urchins, perhaps they got the name because at the time, they were so small, wild and many in number — like hedgehogs. The 19th century novelist Charles Dickens wrote about so many fictional urchins, most famously Oliver Twist, that dickens has become a synonym for urchin.


urchin

1​

a poor and often mischievous city child

Types:show 4 types...Type of:child, fry, kid, minor, nestling, nipper, shaver, small fry, tiddler, tike, tyke, youngster, a young person of either sex

 

[Warpiglet]

Sure. He wasn't a street urchin. A street tough given his size, maybe. He had a home and family, even if his father left them. At no point did he live by himself on the street starving. At no point was he this tiny waif of a thing that is also known as a street urchin.

urchin

That young child dressed in dirty hand-me-downs and running rampant through city streets is an urchin. Street urchins, as they are commonly called, have a reputation for getting into trouble.
Strangely enough, urchin, pronounced "UR-chin," comes from the 13th century French word yrichon, which means “hedgehog,” and is still used as such in parts of England today. As for people who are urchins, perhaps they got the name because at the time, they were so small, wild and many in number — like hedgehogs. The 19th century novelist Charles Dickens wrote about so many fictional urchins, most famously Oliver Twist, that dickens has become a synonym for urchin.


urchin

1​

a poor and often mischievous city child

Types:show 4 types...Type of:child, fry, kid, minor, nestling, nipper, shaver, small fry, tiddler, tike, tyke, youngster, a young person of either sex

OK. Let's try another one. Say you have a half-orc character with the urchin background. Are you going to argue they have to be little? They survived by being little and fast but not resilient and strong?

I understand the Charles Dickens archetype here but Half-Orcs did not figure into his tales. This is illuminating. While we draw on real world experience and stories that have been told, we are telling a NEW take on different tales because we are playing a fantasy game. Sure, the basic idea is a dirty little kid but this is D&D with cities that may have nonhuman inhabitants.

This is where my approach differs from what I assume yours might be. You are finding reasons to quash a character concept by using the dictionary and English fiction. I would help the player find a way to play a street urchin (or whatever background is recommended for a kid who fights in the streets and grows up fighting) who later grows into an adult who goes berserk.

By you line of reasoning, the kid probably has to be a Norseman who raids via longboat in order to take barbarian with the berserker subclass.

Again, it almost looks like you are trying to find reasons to say no rather than some way to say mostly yes. Its your game! But again, we have to be a small person to have the urchin background? No half orcs? Have to quick and not strong?

When we do this we are inventing restrictions to what end? Why paint people into corners?

 

[Ovinomancer]

OK. Let's try another one. Say you have a half-orc character with the urchin background. Are you going to argue they have to be little? They survived by being little and fast but not resilient and strong?

I understand the Charles Dickens archetype here but Half-Orcs did not figure into his tales. This is illuminating. While we draw on real world experience and stories that have been told, we are telling a NEW take on different tales because we are playing a fantasy game. Sure, the basic idea is a dirty little kid but this is D&D with cities that may have nonhuman inhabitants.

This is where my approach differs from what I assume yours might be. You are finding reasons to quash a character concept by using the dictionary and English fiction. I would help the player find a way to play a street urchin (or whatever background is recommended for a kid who fights in the streets and grows up fighting) who later grows into an adult who goes berserk.

By you line of reasoning, the kid probably has to be a Norseman who raids via longboat in order to take barbarian with the berserker subclass.

Again, it almost looks like you are trying to find reasons to say no rather than some way to say mostly yes. Its your game! But again, we have to be a small person to have the urchin background? No half orcs? Have to quick and not strong?

When we do this we are inventing restrictions to what end? Why paint people into corners?

Well, there's also the part where he's insisting that the background of growing up a street urchin means that you're still a street urchin -- 10 years old, malnourished, scrawny. That absolutely could have been true, but something happened after to get to our young adult barbarian PC, yeah? Yeah.

 

[Arial Black]

I agree thatit does not. However, I would not allow a cleric of philosophy in a setting that I run, because clerics ,in my homebrew campaigns, are a specific thing and they get their powers from deities....end of story. Allowing a cleric of philosophy would change that. Therefore, player is free to choose to play a cleric of one of the established deities (including following the established tenets and strictures that I have established for the deity in question), to find another class, or to find another table.

That's fine, and is within the DM's purview.

As I've mentioned many times, the player creates a PC that is both:-

* made according to the rules of the game

* made in accordance with the conceptual limits of the campaign world (so no lycanthrope-heritage fluff if lycanthropes don't exist)

You have said, prior to character creation, that ALL clerics in your world gain their powers from a deity. If a player shows up with a deity-less cleric then you are within your rights to say no.

 

[Arial Black]

And that is the entire point of this discussion. Some preference do not have a mutual compromise. If I am going to run ToTM onle, and someone else wants tactical combat, that's not something that can be compromised. If a table wants to run ONLY classic archetypes and NO multiclassing, and a new player wants to run the coolest new UA thing, that's not something that is reasonably compromised either.

Yeah, compromise should always be achieved, and that's why we communicate; but sometimes compromise means someone has to give up their fun for the greater good. And maybe it means that the player killer becomes a team player for the campaign, and everyone agrees to play the occasional one-shot of Paranoia.

Whoa, you're conflating very different things here!

TotM versus grid: some game rules are toggled 'on' or 'off', and everyone in the same game must use the same rule. For example, while playing on a grid, some tables might run diagonal movement to take an extra square (5ft) for each even diagonal (like 3e), and some tables use 1-for-1 movement, diagonal or not (like 4e). In such a case, it doesn't really matter which the table uses, but it MUST be that ALL creatures, PC or otherwise, use the same rule.

Multiclassing: IF the optional rule is allowed in this campaign, but the players are playing single class PCs, then a new player introducing a multiclass PC in no way spoils the other players' fun! They still get to play their own PC in any way that want.

The same applies to fluff. Let's say that one player (or DM!) treats character classes as inviolable archetypes; that 'barbarians' are one thing in both game mechanics and in world culture, etc. for every class. Let's say another player (or DM!) uses the game rules to make a RAW PC but uses their own fluff for their own PC, and the game mechanic of 'class' is a metagame construct that has no existence in the game world. Can these players play at the table without either destroying the other's fun by their very presence? Of course!

Taking my werewolf-inspired barbarian. In world, my PC doesn't approach the other PCs and say, "Hi! I'm a barbarian, but weirdly I'n not really barbaric, culturally speaking. I'm a special snowflake!"

No, my PC introduces himself to the PCs (and anyone else) in game by saying, "Hi, I'm Captain Finn Winter of the Avant Guard!". Finn would never think of himself or describe himself as a 'barbarian'. Such a thought would never enter his head! It would be absurd, because our PCs cannot look at their own character sheets! They don't realise that they are made-up avatars for 'real people' to have a bit of fun with their mates once a week (if we're lucky!); they have no knowledge of their own 5e rules 'class'.

So, the other party members might want to know what I can do, what I can contribute to the team. Sure, me the player could say that I'm a Bar 3/War 6, focusing on getting the most out of armour of Agathys and Damage Resistance, but my character could never say such a thing because he cannot be aware of the metagame.

It would be like a comic superhero being aware that he is a fictional character. When Deadpool does this (with the superpower 'Comic Awareness'!) it just illustrates that this is something that fictional characters cannot (usually) do.

So, when asked, Finn would say that he is good in hand-to-hand combat, and his military training was that of pathfinder/scout/commando-type stuff, but he cannot say that he is a 'barbarian'! The only place that word is mentioned is on the character sheet; it doesn't exist for him in the game world.

So what PCs can know about each other is equal for every PC; "I'm good at (x and y)". They cannot know if the others are 'single classed' or 'multiclassed', because that is metagame knowledge.

Given that, each PC is an individual. (I'm Not! Shut up!) Every PC is their own 'special snowflake' in that sense. Therefore one player's PC cannot spoil the 'fun' of the other players merely on the basis that this PC 'changes the whole world'! They also cannot complain about the metagame, because multiclassing IS allowed in this campaign, but they CHOSE to be single class themselves.

Player 1: I'm playing a wizard. What about you?
Player 2: Cleric.
Player 1: Cool! What about you?
Player 3: Rogue.
Player 1: Cool! You?
Player 4: Fighter.
Player 1: Cool! What about you?
Player 5: Barbarian/Druid.
Player 1: How DARE you spoil MY fun!
Player 5: ...what...?
Player 1: You have to play a single class PC, because if you don't then I won't be able to enjoy myself!
Player 5: ...but the DM said that multiclassing is allowed...
Player 1: It's a well known fact that each player gets to veto each other player's PC!
Player 5: Okay, you can't play a wizard. It will prevent me from having fun.
Player 1: How DARE you tell me what character I can and cannot play!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*