Okay yeah, this is long
IMHO, it’s not a matter of “is it worth a feat?” or any such similar questions, the question is “Is this Multi-classing?”, and to me, the answer is unequivocally (to the point of being faintly insulting) “No”.
This is dipping, as has been pointed out. And if it had been included as a sub-system completely separate from the concept of Multi-classing (which I honestly do not understand what everyone’s on about about 3E’s Multi-classing rules being abusive or broken or… whatever. It’s all about the players, man. If your players want to crack the game, they will. If they don’t want to crack to the game, they won’t. 3E Multi-classing always seemed fine to me), then it would have been interesting. Very interesting. Class-dipping feats is cool. Class dipping feats as the Multi-classing mechanics is terrible.
Personally, I’m still disappointed that they didn’t take the page from D20 Modern (especially given they’re using
three tiers of ‘power’) and go with Core Class/Advanced Class/PrC. Which IME worked wonderfully as a means of “three degrees of focusing your specificity, giving up the full oomph of staying single classed for tighter specialization”. But that doesn’t even address multi-classing. Then again, IMO, neither does 4E from what they’ve shown us.
And seriously, is there some inherent cumulative insult associated with the number of classes written on your character sheet? Maybe you’re flighty, maybe you’re tightly defining a concept, maybe you’re bored. Who knows, but aside from a slight eye roll over “Dang mang, just couldn’t make up your mind eh? Heh heh” I can’t bring myself to look down upon the character sheet that reads (yes, I am making these up whole cloth) “Fighter 6/Rogue 2/Fencer 2/Blademaster 2/Ascendant Petitioner 1” instead of “Fighter 13”. You discourage MC cherry-picking for its own sake by not front-loading classes, not by breaking the knees of the concept of Multi-classing.
And come to think of it, how would you even logically denote this form of multi-classing on a character sheet? You’re at no point actually taking
levels in a second class. Are you, for example, “Fighter 6/Cleric” (to denote that you count as a cleric too, for PP purposes and other ‘being a cleric’ instances)?
Here’s a few thoughts from a thread on Gleemax on this topic, and since I’m composing a post (and the EN World forums are currently unresponsive), I thought I’d throw them (and my thoughts on them) in, because they seem to address some of this “The problem with multi-classing in 3E” thing…
Yes, when compared to the 3e version of multi-classing, this version seems weak. But remember that they are giving up on the flexibility of the old system for benefits in the new. For instance, in the old system they had to design classes so that they didn't get the super cool abilities of that class until multiple levels in, to discourage people from just taking a level in every class they could. So now our early classes should feel more iconic to their roles. No more having to wait on abilities in your main class just because they had to balance the abilities to stop some power gamer from grabbing one level and getting all the cool stuff.
(underline mine)
Seriously? Is this one of the ‘problems with 3E multi-classing’? Because to my mind this is just better class design technique. Of course you spread out class benefits over the levels, otherwise you’ve got a front-loaded class that no-one
wants to take more levels in because it’s dull and tasteless after you’ve gotten your initial burst of class benefits. *boggles*
Another thread, another post, but again addressing 3E multiclassing:
No, multiclassing from anything for spell casting was only effective if you went to a prestige class. Even then single class spellcasters usually were more effective. "Dipping" was not good for them because spells were based on CLASS level, as opposed to CHARACTER level. end up with a lower spells and fewer of them.
Is this another one of the ‘problems’, that multi-classed spellcasters were less powerful spellcasters (unless they multi-classed into a spellcasting PrC)? Because, that just makes sense to me. If you’ve changed or diminished your study/practice to focus on something else, you’re going to fall a bit behind. And it seems the concept of “giving up some power for concept” is considered a
good thing, from the posts in this thread at least. Again, *boggles*.
(And now that EN World is responding again, I can pull quotes from THIS thread.
)
vagabundo said:
Going this route helps avoid horrible mechanics like Arcane Spell Failure for amour. We dont need it now. Serious, I hope it is gone gone.
I’ve gotta ask, what’s wrong with the Arcane Spell Failure for armored casters? I mean if it’s the goofy “armor interferes with the flow of magic” rationale D&D had at one point, yeah I though that was bollocks, but I mean if nothing else it was a pretty good concession to “game balance” and all.
And what I fear the most, really, is that this system is going to take us back to the 1E method of introducing scores of Core Classes to meet every unusual or completely different class concept (which was, really, the beauty of PrCs. You could introduce new classes that were more than just a tweaked Core Class without having to add more and more Core Classes), or the 2E method of Kits. I get the impression the 1E approach is going to dominate. And the simple matter is, when you continue to create new Core Classes, you almost immediately introduce classes that are better than the original Core Classes in some way or another.
Now, I’ll come right out and say that I have (at least) quibbles with 3E (enough to do a lot of ‘houseruling’ and outright re-writing), but so far this is one of the crappier of the things I’ve seen previewed about 4E. I don’t dislike 4E because it’s 4E, I dislike 4E because I think they just really, really screwed the pooch in their design approaches.
