Excerpt: Multiclassing (merged)

[Wolv0rine]

If it makes you feel better, that phrase has only been commonly used on the boards for about a year and change

I know, but it's still nice when someone bothers to mention you made a good point, or made a point nicely (regardless of it's strength), or both. I don't really throw into threads very often, so my posts tend to get bypassed and overlooked alot. This thread's been surprisingly responsive to my involvement. It's rather nice. That you WotC for screwing up MCing badly enough to generate a thread I had to stop and vehemently bitch in!

 

[Kishin]

Cue the opening chords of White Lion's "When the Children Cry."

I disagree with the point you were making about Fighter/Mages in 3.5E (In all honesty, it is a dark and dreary road where the rest of the party's effectiveness quickly outpaces yours, and instead of 'not as good at X as primary class' you eventually become 'fail at both X and Y'), but that quoted retort right there won you this and possibly all other threads for the next two days.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In all honesty, it is a dark and dreary road where the rest of the party's effectiveness quickly outpaces yours, and instead of 'not as good at X as primary class' you eventually become 'fail at both X and Y'

In 30+ years of playing D&D, I have played very few single-classed PCs- perhaps as little as 5%- and I have not once missed the power of a solo-classed PC. Concerns about effectiveness are, have always been, and always will be secondary to my concerns about whether a particular set of abilities (in whatever system) most accurately represents the idealized version of the PC floating in my head.

This is one of those things in 4Ed that makes me feel as if they're trying to get me to trade my heroes for ghosts.

This is ultimately one area of gaming in which its probably impossible for the sides to reconcile with each other, so let's just agree to disagree (profoundly).

that quoted retort right there won you this and possibly all other threads for the next two days.

I'm glad any day I can make someone besides me smile!

 

[Torchlyte]

In 30+ years of playing D&D, I have played very few single-classed PCs- perhaps as little as 5%- and I have not once missed the power of a solo-classed PC. Concerns about effectiveness are, have always been, and always will be secondary to my concerns about whether a particular set of abilities (in whatever system) most accurately represents the idealized version of the PC floating in my head.

This is one of those things in 4Ed that makes me feel as if they're trying to get me to trade my heroes for ghosts.

This is ultimately one area of gaming in which its probably impossible for the sides to reconcile with each other, so let's just agree to disagree (profoundly).

...but isn't the persistent complaint on this thread that these new multiclass options are "weaker" because they cost feats? Nevermind that they have the enormous advantage of not disrupting your character's spell level/sneak attack/rage advancement (in 3e terms).

Would I spend a feat to allow my Wizard to give up Wind Wall in exchange for gaining Cure Serious Wounds? You'd better freaking believe it!

Would I spend a feat to have my 5th level rogue give up 1d6 of his sneak attack in order to cast Invisibility once per day? Probably. Most rogues would think that's a pretty sweet deal.

Would I spend a feat to allow my Paladin to give up his special mount in exchange for casting Fly once per day? Depends on the Paladin, but for most, yeah.

Would a Druid spend a feat to give up his Wildshape in exchange for 1d6 sneak attack damage? Hell no! But he wouldn't whine about having the option.

QFT

Edit: Which is better, Toughness (23 HP at level 20) or a power swap feat? How good is Lethal Hunter (d6 quarry => d8 quarry), really? How good is Backstabber (d6 SA => d8 SA), really? I think the opportunity cost of these feats is being overstated on this thread.

 

[Hambot]

Going by the DDXP sample characters, the abilities a fighter gets to fulfill the role of defender... are not Exploits. You cannot act as a defender, even if you invest heavily in fighter MC. If you can't pick up the ability to fulfill a second class role (even crappily), yes, it is dabbling.

Of course, being able to pick up a second class-role through feats would probably be overpowered, which is why previous editions made doing so cost levels.

*Cough* Leadership feat *cough* I choose a codzilla cohort.

Yup. Overpowered. Been there, DM'd that.

Although I did like the leadership feat for turning a mount into a cohort that didn't die to a random 10d6 fireball.

 

[Mirtek]

You agree with me that D&D is written with rules and guidelines so that it is better to have one of each role. So why punish parties that choose to fill the "missing" Controller role with mutliclassing? The punishment is making multiclassing too expensive.

Below Andy makes my point that you should have each role even if you have to multiclass to cover a missing role.
[...]
going entirely without any one of them means you're likely to have a significant vulnerability to cover in other ways.

Which is a quote about something that was true in earlier editions (in this case from 2006 and is one of the stated goals of 4e to get away from (to make the 4 martial or 4 arcane, ... party viable)

 

[see]

All characters get the same number of power selections every time they gain the appropriate level--"losing" a class power in this instant is absolutely no different than choosing, say, Cleave instead of Tide of Iron from your own class's list of powers. You aren't losing anything, you're making a choice. A choice, remember, that retraining allows you to make even as a single class character.

The opportunity cost of something is equal to the value of the next best choice you could make. So, if your two top choices for the one power you can select are Cleave and Tide of Iron, and you very slightly prefer Cleave, then the opportunity cost of selecting Cleave is Tide of Iron. That is a cost. You could have the benefits of Tide of Iron, and you are giving them up for the benefits of Cleave. Tide of Iron's benefits are what you're paying for Cleave.

To make it really explicit — in 3e, your 19th-level wizard, upon reaching 20th level, could take a single level of cleric. The opportunity cost of that was giving up a 20th level of wizard. You clearly lost more than you gained by making that choice, didn't you? That loss was opportunity cost. Yes, you're still better than a 19th-level wizard, but that isn't the basis for the comparison; the comparison is to what else you could have done with that 20th character level.

Less extremely, consider a 20th level 3e wizard in combat, who is down to two spells – meteor swarm and fireball. The cost for casting meteor swarm this round is giving up the damage from fireball this round.

You're playing chess. You could move your rook to safely capture your opponent's knight, or you could you could move your bishop to safely capture his rook. If you take the rook (the more powerful piece), your opportunity cost was his knight.

You want another class's power in 4e? Then you're paying the explicit cost of a feat and the opportunity cost of the best power in your class you could have chosen otherwise.

The question then becomes, will another class's power generally be worth the combined cost of losing a feat and the best available in-class power? If the powers of the classes are finely balanced enough that the best available out-of-class power doesn't make you more powerful than the best available in-class power, the answer will be no; selecting a cross-class power will always be a suboptimal build because you gave up both an in-class power and a feat, and in exchange got a power only as powerful as your in-class power.

 

[Mirtek]

If I go to the restaurant, peruse the menu, and decide to order a cheeseburger, am I throwing away options because I order the eggs benedict instead? (Assume for the moment I'm not an enormous glutton and am, in fact, capable of eating only one meal at any given mealtime.)

If you are only allowed to order eggs benedict if you order your cheeseburger without cheese you are.

So you would have A+B +feat. Of you can swap the feat to get A+C. A=B=C

In the former case you have 2 options plus the power of the feat (no matter how small it may be). In the later you just have two options and no added feat

Because you sacrificed the feat to get C instead of B and since B&C are equally powerfull you did not gain any increase in power from that to balance out for the lost power of the feat.

 

[Mirtek]

So no Wizards who want to be effective should multiclass/PrC? Because giving up caster levels is almost never worth it power-wise.

The funny thing is that late 3.5's solution to this was to burn a feat (for practiced spellcaster)

 

[FireLance]

A character with a Multiclass power feat gains access to an additional power (the "entry fee") without trading one of their own, thereby gaining (one hopes) some additional functionality in battle. These powers are in addition to their standard class At Will powers. I'm guessing this because there's no indication under Initiate of the Faith that the multiclass character loses their primary class At Will power. To give classes more At Will powers from a different source might be too much.

I've got no issues with the first multiclass feat (if anything, I wonder if it might be a little overpowered). I'm just not convinced that the subsequent multiclass swap feats are worthwhile. In addition, I wanted to point out the fallacy in the argument that the swap is worth a feat because the character is exchanging the "worst" power in his primary class with the "best" power in his secondary one.