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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 9042868" data-attributes="member: 2629">Need?  no.  However, I find that it makes the storytelling aspect of the game better.  And the example you bring up from 3E - where people ran a PC through a series of weird decisions just so they could qualify for a prestige class - isn't really happening in 5E.Instead, I see people have an idea for a PC and start playing it.  They sometimes already have an idea for a multiclass they want to do later, or sometimes they have a storyline influence their character advancement by multiclassing into something that makes sense, but I tend to find most multiclassing in 5E makes sense for the PC.Sometimes the multiclassing can really help with the storytelling.  As a classic example of an "abomination" of multiclassing that I ran from level 1 to 20:  Myska Urge was a bit of a naive Tiefling.  She grew up in the service of a Noble Tiefling House and journeyed to the Underdark as a member of the guard for her employer.  That trip went disastrously bad and she escaped into the Underdark and had to find her way back to the surface, learning the skills of a ranger as she did so.  That backstory carried her to level 1 as a Ranger and she advanced to 5th level as an Archer (Gloomstalker) ranger in her earlier career.  One of the Traits she had was a belief that her ancestors, Asmodeus and Glasya, were misunderstood and underappreciated heroes that were doing everything they could to win the Blood War - and that their methods were necessary as the Goodly forces were not doing their part to help drive the Demons back.  That just so happened to play into the game's storyline, and after hitting 5th level it made sense, as she had taken some rather vocal positions in support of the Devils that she take a level of cleric (Cleric of Order) as a Cleric of Asmodeus.After she took that level, the DM had the Divine Order of Asmodeus make contact with her and tell her that she was to do as she was told as a member of the church - which would have required her leaving her adventuring life behind.  This caused a bit of a crisis of faith in her, but she negotiated the situation and was reassigned to "Missionary Work" that allowed her to recruit for Asmodeus by being an open worshipper of Asmodeus that was doing heroic things.  However, she was not going to be allowed to "advance" as a Cleric as part of this deal.  Rather than continue as a cleric, I thought it made sense for her to live to the letter of the agreement but still do as she wanted - and I had her call on her heritage as a Tiefling descendent of Asmodeus and Glasya and become a Divine Soul Sorcerer.  She advanced in that class for 5 levels (taking her to 11th character level).At that point we concluded the story arc and took a break from the game.  We knew we'd come back to these PCs, so the DM had us write up a "what are they doing" tag for what the PCs intended to do when the group dispersed for a while.  I had her decide that she'd spend more time in service of the "Noble Goals" of Asmodeus, where in she was assigned duties as a Punisher - essentially the vengeful arm of the Order of Asmodeus.  When we regrouped 6 months later, we took our 12th level and I had her advance as a fighter as she'd spent the last 6 months shooting people for Asmodeus.  The DM built the campaign storyline around what we'd been doing and I ended up hunting down a list of "bad guys" for Asmodeus.  I continued to play up the martial side of the PC, developing a bit of a "Ranged Assassin's Creed" approach to the character.  She took 4 levels in Battlemaster and 3 levels in Assassin.  At this point I was playing a Gloomstalker 5, Cleric of Order 1, Divine Soul 5, Battlemaster 4, Assassin 3 - at level 18.  She'd wrap up taking 2 more levels in Divine Soul before the campaign ended and we retired the PCs, but that was sort of a throw in as those levels came really fast.Every time I "switched" classes with multiclassing it was a response to where we'd gone in the campaign.  It furthered the story.  Could I have essentially done the same thing by just staying a ranger?  Yeah - sort of - but it worked a lot better with the multiclassing.  I believe that had the DM said that we could not multicass I would have ended up with a much less evocative storyline for the character, and the elements of her storyline that guided the adventure for higher levels would not have been nearly as interesting.  All in all - while I get that mutliclassing in prior editions was often full of rough fits in the sake of meeting prerequisities and optimization, I don't see that in 5E and I have never seen any reason, whatsoever, to restrict multiclassing.  In fact, I think a bigger problem with 5E is that certain classes are mechanically discouraged from multiclassing because they lose out on key elements they need for their class to features to stay competitive, like access to the highest level spells for spellcasting classes and Ki points for monks.</blockquote>

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