Excerpt: Multiclassing (merged)

[Kraydak]

Okay. I managed to slog through the entire thread. I have some observations.

I don't know that everyone agrees with this approach, but the obvious intent here is to deliberately prevent someone from creating a character that is equally good at being both a fighter and a wizard. That's not an accident - it's on purpose.

And adequately trivial to not warrant mention.

The only way that the above would be acceptable is if the character in question is both not as good at being a fighter, and not as good at being a wizard as the single-classed characters. This is Third-Edition multiclassing. And, let's be honest, being crappy at two jobs is something nobody wants.

*scratches head* So no one ever used 3e multiclassing rules? Huh?

What some people seem to want is to be as good a fighter as a single-classed fighter, and as good at being a wizard as a single-classed wizard. This is blatantly, and categorically, utter munchkin crap. You shouldn't be able to replace two characters.

Any quotes for that? I think you are straw-manning here.

1st, 2nd and 3.5 all allowed decently balanced, multi-role characters. 4e doesn't. I have no problem with the mechanics as presented, but I find their name, multi-classing, to be dishonest.

For everyone complaining about 3e spell-casting multi-classing: yes, 3.0's spell-caster MCing was broken-weak. However, 3.5 fixed it by the simple addition of the Theurge type PrCs. The final equation was: 2 classes=-3 caster level, +/- 1. 3.5 had the broadest multi-classing rules, able to handle anything from dabbling to 50/50 splits with moderate elegance. 4e's retrograde step is unfortunate.

 

[JohnSnow]

If the powers are balanced correctly, then a character who has 50% wizard powers and 50% cleric powers is not unbalanced. (This is probably a gross simplification, but as a general principle, I think it holds.)

That's true. Provided that the character does not also have half (the best half, naturally) of the class abilities for each class.

As far as attack spells, you're kinda right. There's no real difference (damage-wise) between magic missile and lance of faith.

On the other hand, the more options you have, the greater the chance the character is overpowered. Why? Because the character is able to use multiclassing to offset his weakness. A wizard who can easily reduce his squishyness by multiclassing (for example, if he could wear armor after multiclassing to cleric) has utterly eliminated one of the balance factors of the wizard class at no cost to himself. The cleric is supposed to wade into the thick of it and risk getting hit, whereas the wizard is NOT. The cleric's powers are all reasonably close range, while the wizard has a fair number of powers that work from a great distance.

Similarly, the cleric who could throw a massive area attack spell down is grossly overpowered. That's the 3e cleric all over again.

Once again, the balance problem isn't the spells that have comparable effects, it's the spells that offset the penalties that balance the class. For example, there's a cleric encounter power called cause fear that causes the target to flee its speed + 2 squares away from you. It can be case up to 10 squares away. To a cleric, that's somewhat useful. But it's hard for him to capitalize on the advantage by himself, since he has no powers with that kind of range. The wizard, on the other hand, can throw out that power and make the target run away. The next round, before he can get close, you can blast him with one of your long range, high damage spells.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to do it, but that kind of flexibility is definitely worth a feat.

 

[Ximenes088]

In 4e, my current character build would need the following optoins:

- Defender skills (tripping, stopping people, high defense/hitpoints)
- Rage
- Track, a little bit of ranged combat capability (rapid shot)
- Sneak Attack
- Enough skill bonuses to accomodate some bonus to knowledge skills, Diplomacy/Intimidate/Bluff/Sense Motive, Spot, Tracking (survival), Psionic skills (autohypnosis and concentration).
- Some leader bonuses (allowing extra attacks, movement, bonuses to combat, and ability to communicate surreptitiously between comrades)
- A smattering of combat-focused psionics.

I could see this potentially working if I were allowed to take multiclass from more than one class. Otherwise it's back to building new base classes that happen to encompass a large enough portion of what I want... but even then, being able to double as Defender with a smattering of Leader doesn't allow Psionics to come into play naturally later...

Fighter with Warlord multiclassing. Burn your feats on skill training and declare that your warlord's inspiration powers or your fighter's maneuvers are rage and/or psionic-flavored. There's no reason that Cleave has to be flavored as "a sweep of your fist and/or weapon" rather than "A telekinetic blast focused in the wake of your sword.", and there's no reason that an Inspiring Word applied to yourself can't be described as you going berserk and shrugging off damage. The power mechanics can be reflavored in arbitrary fashion with absolutely no impact on game balance.

 

[WhatGravitas]

3.5 had the broadest multi-classing rules, able to handle anything from dabbling to 50/50 splits with moderate elegance. 4e's retrograde step is unfortunate.

I think that 4E multiclassing is less about options to build a character and more about options to realise a character concept.

So let's try - give me a character concept that 4E multiclassing cannot handle (apart from obvious things like psionics, nature magic, and so on, because the base classes are missing).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I would agree with it being based around character concept, especially when you figure you actually have more control over which elements of the class your multiclassing you get, ie: powers.

This always annoyed me in 3e, where I want certain aspect of a class, but by multiclassing I get a ton of stuff I didn't want.

 

[lkj]

There are a lot of people saying "If all powers of level X are balanced, there should be no cost (or less cost) for swapping them out!"

But this completely ignores the fact that powers are balanced in context. I tried to get this across earlier, with my "fighter with an area attack" example. The fact that wizard power X is balanced with fighter power X assumes that wizard power X is taken by a wizard, and fighter power X is taken by a fighter. They may remain equal out of that assumed context.

For example--and I'm making this up, not offering a hint of what's in the book --an encounter power that says you can ignore the effects of a successful melee attack made against you is more valuable to a fighter than to a wizard, because the fighter's in melee a lot more often than the wizard is. (As an actually in-the-book example, consider the possibility of a fighter acquiring mirror image.) Similarly, a utility power that says you can throw a ranged or area power without drawing an opportunity attack is more valuable to a spellcaster or an archer (obviously) than to a primarily melee-based fighter.

My point? Powers are balanced in their assumed context. That doesn't mean they're balanced in a vacuum, and that there should be no cost for swapping them out.

I see where you are coming from 100% (just so you don't feel like you are yelling in the dark . . . or maybe you are being a vampire mouse . . . )

Somewhere in this mess of a joined thread, I posted that powers are probably only equivalent . . .


". . . in the context of a class and it's abilities. Presumably, if you could just pick and choose powers and abilities from any of the classes and put them together, you can create very unbalanced combinations.

In essence the equation is really: class A is balanced with class B, NOT power A=Power B."


At any rate, I think we're saying the same thing. Just leaving out all those confusing details and examples


AD

 

[occam]

Except it doesn't work like that. You get one encounter power, one utility power, and one daily power, max (plus the class ability as an encounter power for the first feat).

I haven't finished reading through the thread, yet, so maybe somebody's already mentioned this, but... I don't see where it says you can take any of the power-swap feats only once. It seems that if you wanted to, you could spend all your feats on swapping out powers with your secondary class, which could end up making a fighter look quite magey.

 

[katahn]

Fighter with Warlord multiclassing. Burn your feats on skill training and declare that your warlord's inspiration powers or your fighter's maneuvers are rage and/or psionic-flavored. There's no reason that Cleave has to be flavored as "a sweep of your fist and/or weapon" rather than "A telekinetic blast focused in the wake of your sword.", and there's no reason that an Inspiring Word applied to yourself can't be described as you going berserk and shrugging off damage. The power mechanics can be reflavored in arbitrary fashion with absolutely no impact on game balance.

Dovetailing on this, consider the rogue levels were taken to get more skill points for social interactions and not because he was dabbling in being a thief. In 4e this is much more elegantly handled by taking skill training feats as many times as needed to cover the core desired skills.

Psionics is hard to cover until PHB2 comes out with psionic classes, but the rest of the character could probably be covered reasonably well by a warlord(fighter) or maybe a fighter(warlord) depending on the emphasis desired.

 

[Rechan]

Once again, the balance problem isn't the spells that have comparable effects, it's the spells that offset the penalties that balance the class. For example, there's a cleric encounter power called cause fear that causes the target to flee its speed + 2 squares away from you. It can be case up to 10 squares away. To a cleric, that's somewhat useful. But it's hard for him to capitalize on the advantage by himself, since he has no powers with that kind of range. The wizard, on the other hand, can throw out that power and make the target run away. The next round, before he can get close, you can blast him with one of your long range, high damage spells.

And if the Wizard can do both easily, then that really eliminates the need for the Cleric and the Wizard working together on that combo.

 

[MindWanderer]

Well, sure. No one is saying that the multiclass character isn't more versatile. But is it worth a feat and a power to select another class' power? (edit: given that there's almost certainly someone else in the group who can already do something similar - if not, then the cross-class power obviously has more benefit, but that shouldn't be the norm) You said yourself that no one in your playtest group went past the initiate feat.

Even if another member of the party can do it better in general, that doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be redundant. There are cases--many cases--where having two party members capable of doing the same thing, even if one is worse at it, is extremely valuable. If a bunch of enemies are clustered together, and the wizard blasts them all, it may still be a good idea for the warlord/wizard to blast them all again. If the situation is reversed, and the bunched-together party just took a massive hit from an enemy controller, it can be extremely handy to have a second character to help with the healing. If you're caught in a pincer attack, two defenders can be invaluable, even if one is only a dabbler (e.g. a warlord/paladin). I think the abilty to pull out those kinds of options is easily worth a feat or more.

Well, you obviously know more about the system than we do, but from where I'm sitting, this kind of dabbling just doesn't look worth it. Mechanically speaking, of course. It's barely the equivalent to a 1 level dip in 3e, which would likely be more beneficial by far than these feats. I don't know - it looks like the 'real' multiclassing only starts at paragon tier.

You get a better multiclassing option, true, and yes, it's the only way to get a fully-functional class feature from another class. But it's clear from earlier editions that 'real' multiclassing just doesn't work, resulting in either superpower or multi-ineffectiveness. The only reason why it works in 4e is because every paragon-tier character is automatically multiclassed, after a fashion, so there's no other basis of comparison. I think it's a great idea, personally.

Regarding multi-multiclassing: from what we've seen so far, it's actually possible to be quadruple-classed, at least in a limited fashion (and you wouldn't want to be 25/25/25/25 multiclassed anyway): a half-elf paladin could take Scorching Burst 1/encounter as a racial ability, Warrior of the Wild and Novice Power to nab Hunter's Quarry and an encounter melee attack power, and forego a paragon path, or take Hospitaler, to function as a Leader. When we get the sorcerer class, this example won't even suffer from MAD (all Cha- and Str-based--and half-elves get a Cha bonus!). And best of all, their ability to be a Defender won't even be hampered even though they can handle quite a bit of all four roles.