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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9043182" data-attributes="member: 7006">I don't particularly like or need it, but I don't have a problem allowing for it.  Fortunately I have cultivated a playerbase for whom the game mechanics always come second to characterization.  And when you have that... the only reason to multiclass is when the character evolves in such a way that the flavor of a different class makes sense to be layered on top of it and that layering will be occurring for many, many levels.Someone wants to multiclass into Warlock simply because they want to make their attack rolls using CHA?  Uh... no.  If that purely game mechanic reason is the only reason you want to multiclass... I'll work with you to get you the mechanic as part of your normal leveling of your primary class.  I don't mind doing occasional feature swaps if there's a baseline mechanic that makes sense for your character to have (like for instance a War Cleric whose deity's featured weapon is dual-wielded and they would like to have access to the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style-- back before you could get fighting styles via feats.)  I'll be happy to let you swap out a class feature for a non-class feature and have it just "become" a class feature for you.  Better that then have you take an entire level's worth of mechanics that you don't want-- plus a whole bunch of class story and fluff you aren't going to roleplay-- just for that one mechanic.But... if you've been playing a rogue in the campaign the entire time and the campaign's story just happened to take you to a place where you could and did make a pact with some extra-dimensional being-- and you want to see that shift in your character continue-- then sure, multiclassing into Warlock and just leveling as Warlock from now on would be fine and cool.  Or you are a fighter that at some point got exposed to an inordinate amount of magical energy for some reason and you want to continue that story by going all-in on that mutation/evolution and thus multiclassing into Wild Mage Sorcerer, that's fine too.  Your story advances in a new direction and we use multiclassing to further symbolize it.  That's usually a-okay with me.And I agree with the others who have said that was the issue with prestige classes in 3E.  Prestige classes were almost all about new character story.  New fluff.  Just like all the 5E subclasses have story being their primary focus and game mechanics get layered into them to symbolize that narrative... prestige classes were meant to be that story beat change for your character.  You join an organization... and now you take a prestige class to represent that mechanically.  You learn a combat specialization and style... and take a prestige class to represent that as well.  But these are things that are not typically planned from level 1, and thus all the requirements and pre-requisites were blocking characters for no real reason and stopping characters from taking them even if the story of the game made sense for the PC to have it.  They were "required game mechanics" just because it felt like someone of this prestige class should have these mechanics.  But rather than start handing them out once you gained the class, 3E made you take them all beforehand.  It was kind of backwards.And that's the nice thing about 5E subclasses... in that you can take your flavorful advancement and evolution of your base class without having to choose it until just the point you level and select it.  You don't HAVE to decide if you are an Open Hand or Shadow monk until the moment arrives when you reach 3rd level.  Now of course a lot of people DO decide earlier, because you can choose your character's story whenever you want (including from the very beginning) even without a unique game mechanic to symbolize it. (And which is why I myself don't have any issues with holding off on the first subclass selection being at 3rd level across the board in 5E24).  I can roleplay my druid being a fey creature or having ties to the fey realm even though I won't see my first Circle of Dreams game mechanic until 3rd level.  The mechanic does not the fey realm make.  It's how you choose to roleplay it.So if multiclassing is just the handing out of different game mechanics to play... if that's really what floats someone's boat... then so be it.  Personally I think that's focusing on the wrong thing that makes RPGs what they are... but hey, people can do what they do.  And I'm not going to stop them even if I don't care about it.</blockquote>

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