D&D 5E Can you share your experience with a featless/multiclassless game?

[ECMO3]

To me that doesn't show what you're saying. You were talking about "amazing feats", and Magic Initiate isn't an "amazing Feat", really. It's decent but it's not wild, and people picking it at level 4 are not doing it for optimization reasons, they're doing for it for RP reasons - literally to get a familiar.

For a melee Rogue it is hard to beat magic initiate. You can get a familiar plus booming blade. That adds a lot to your SA damage and meshes very well with cunning action.

 

[Flamestrike]

I have not played a multiclass sorcerer, but I have played a lot of multiclass wizards, both cleric-wizards and arcane trickster-wizards and I never felt left out. You still get the slots, you just have to pick spells that upcast well.` Sure they don't have as powerful spells, but they have other things going for them that a straight wizard doesn't.

Its better in this edition, but there still isnt anything that fundamentally changes the way the game is played like spells that come online at 5th (3rd level spells).

Revivify and Spirit Guardians for Clerics. Fireball and Hypnotic pattern for Arcane types.

5th is also the level that Extra attack comes online for Martials (providing an exponential growth in ability for them) and other features that alter gameplay in fundamental ways like Stunning fist and Bardic inspiration on a Short rest.

Im not dissing multiclassing here. Im just pointing out that its not the beast it used to be, and there are serious trade-offs when doing it, so it never becomes the clearly optimal choice (barring Rangers after 5th level or so).

 

[Flamestrike]

For a melee Rogue it is hard to beat magic initiate. You can get a familiar plus booming blade. That adds a lot to your SA damage and meshes very well with cunning action.

Seeing as you can just stay put and attack with Advantage these days as a Rogue with the Aim action, a familiar isnt really needed (and it stops initiative issues you might have relying on a familiar, and it getting killed).

The extra damage is nice though.

 

[ECMO3]

Or sword & board. Those are viable as well - and Sentinel + Sword and Board is an excellent feat and weapon combination. You might not have seen it but I certainly have and people really appreciate having shields.

Or sword and board with shield master feat. I think that is the favorite fighter I ever played.

 

[ECMO3]

Seeing as you can just stay put and attack with Advantage these days as a Rogue with the Aim action, a familiar isnt really needed (and it stops initiative issues you might have relying on a familiar, and it getting killed).

The extra damage is nice though.

Agree to a degree, but a familiar is useful and if you are looking at one 1st level spell, cast once a day, it is hard to beat find familiar for just about any non-caster. Also using steady aim wastes a bonus action, using a familiar doesnt. So without a familiar it is steady aim and booming blade with advantage and then you can't move (and probably won't get the extra BB damage). With the familiar it is BB with advantage, then disengage and BBEG takes even more damage on his next turn if he moves. Also you can use a familiar for a ton of other things, both in and out of combat and in term of action economy it puts you well ahead of where you would be without it.

The cantrips are the special sauce for the feat though.

 

[Flamestrike]

Agree to a degree, but a familiar is useful and if you are looking at one 1st level spell, cast once a day, it is hard to beat find familiar for just about any non-caster. Also using steady aim wastes a bonus action, using a familiar doesnt.

Yeah but with a familiar you have to deal with this:

Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In Combat, it rolls its own Initiative and acts on its own turn.

Which can lead to readied actions, and can be a bit of a pain to resolve

IMG's I also have the death of a Familiar grant a level of Exhaustion on the caster. That's more for old school reasons though (where losing a familiar hurt you), and to make casters protect their pets a bit more.

That's just how I like to play it obvs.

 

[Weiley31]

Not big on MCing in 5E. Single Class progression is good enough for me.

In regards to Feats, I've actually toyed with the idea of allowing a PC to select a feat every five levels or ala 3.5 where you get one every three levels. That way you can still get ASI's but if you want a Feat still, you get em. Course you can still trade in one of your ASI's per usual 5E rules if you want extra feats. (in that case, it would probably be a feat every five levels+your Feat/Racial Feat/Supernatural Gift at Level 1.)

 

[pming]

Hiya!

That STILL makes no sense... Your argument, putting aside how realistic it is or not, doesn't tell me Feats are bad, it tells me the Fghter is sub par!

And a Fighter really isn't that bad until the very high levels. But it IS Bland if you can't add some extra spice with a Feat. Like, I can build a Battlemaster with high CHA and Rally, for exemple, but then my CHA is pretty uselss outside of Rally itself and maybe 1 or 2 skill rolls here or there. So, I look over to feats and see what I can pick that works with that character. Maybe I can pick up Skill Expertise, or maybe Actor, or maybe Linguist to use my skills on more people, or maybe I'll double down on the Temp HP and go for Inspiring Leader! Or maybe I'll pick up Magic Initiate Bard and pick the Entertainer Background and just have my character introduce himself as a Bard despite not being that class on my sheet. Then I can stay back and in one turn Insult an enemy to death while Praising an ally so they have some Temp HP (Okay now I kinda want to play that, drats!). Or maybe I'll ignore CHA and just grab Healer because nobody's playing a class with healing?

I'm not even thinking about what everybody else is doing, but rather trying to come up with more options I can pick from so I can approach more situations from different angles others than just 'I hit it with my sword'. I like Feats because it gives me things to chose when level up, but it's not as annoying as picking spells.

You want to talk about illusion of choice that end up all looking the same? Look at the Cleric spell list one of these days... Augh. 5e Clerics are SO BORING!

And can we stop this BS elitist judgy thing where people who enjoy rolling big numbers are looked down upon? YES I like to roll high and kick butt in combat. What of it?! My fun is just as valid as you, Mr. "Roleplay More To Make your Character Different"!

Ok. I think I see where our heads are butting here. Y'see, I DON'T see the "regular Fighter" as sub-par or 'bad'. Quite the opposite, actually. You see adding of Feats as adding "spice" to your Fighter. We see Feats as adding "spice" to the fighter, but your only real choices of spice is black pepper, salt, or oregano. In other words...all Feats do is add an almost forced, pre-determined "ability" to a generic 'build' of Fighter. Want to be good with a bow? You have no choice...you MUST take Sharpshooting or you will simply be far worse than every other Fighter (Archer) you come across that does have Sharpshooting. So...what did you actually gain by taking that Feat? What 'uniqueness' did you get from taking SS when every other Archer is ALSO going to have SS? You aren't special an more. You are typical. Average. Bland. Expected. You want to be unique? DON'T take SS. You'll suck compared to the SS guys, but at least you'll be different!

As for numbers...I don't know if you were referring to me. I have no problem with big numbers or doing "amazingly cool, super-human tasks of daring-do!" (...proof...I GM a two or three 5-hour sessions of Synnibarr every year, year and a half! [it usually takes that long for my SAN score to replenish] ). Even in D&D land, high numbers isn't bad. Personally, I prefer to see the numbers lower, but that's just preference.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Exactly. 5e uses a tier system. When you hit a new tier, your power and flexibility skyrockets. The second tier starts at level 5. Third at level 11. MCing slows this down by 1-3 levels. Since most campaigns barely get to third tier, a MC character usually never gets their 3rd tier power boost. And they only getting a short time with the 2nd if they don't single class to level 5 first. Enter disappointment.

The result is Multiclassing only being good for "weaker classes" post level 5 or 6as the campaign usually ends before you feel punished for it.

I think I experienced exactly 1 level of pain with my rogue/Wizard. Eventually my DM let me take a feat that lets me treat my rogue levels as 1/3 caster levels, and learn spells of any level for which I have slots (but only for spells level 5 or lower), but that was after I got past the weird point where I was like 3/4 or whatever, at which point I was 5/5 so I had both 3rd level spells and Uncanny Dodge. The feat was retrained at level 10.

It’s basically there because my character concept doesn’t have a class, but if it did it would at least be a half caster + ritual casting.

Anyway, on a Monk/Paladin I didn’t experience this terrible price, either, nor with my FeyLock/Paladin, nor did my wife with her Ranger/Druid, nor her Rogue/Artficer, nor my friend with his Sorcerer/Bard.

So it certainly isn’t some absolute thing that is inevitable when multiclassing.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I'd honestly not be interested in playing if feats and MC was removed. 5e is already pathetic for character customisation. Removing those last aspects of it makes it more like picking pre-generated chess pieces than actually having your own character.

I've got three currently active characters:

• A Fire Genasi Battlemaster 5, Forge Cleric 6, with the warcaster and magic initiate (druid) feat (in order to grab control flames as it suits the character background).
• A Lizardfolk Battlerager 6, with the tough feat.
• And a Kalashtar Hexblade 3, who will be grabbing magic initiate (sorcerer) for shape water next level as it suits the character background.

Which makes it pretty clear how important I consider feats and multiclassing for the experience.