This thread is growing like kudzu!
Too many posts that I disagree with to actually quote and do a point-by-point rebuttal, so I'll just sum up my position.
1)
The 4Ed multiclassing system is illogical. When people dabble in a field outside of their specialty, they don't pick up the abilities of experienced persons within that field- they start off as novices themselves. Yet this system lets you swap out a class ability for another class' ability of the same or lesser value.
From Exerpt:
When you take one of these power-swap feats, you give up a power of your choice from your primary class and replace it with a power of the same level or lower from the class you have multiclassed in.
Example: When Michael Jordan retired from basketball (the first time) and took up baseball, he didn't go from leading the NBA in several categories to leading the MLB in some category. In fact, he couldn't even play baseball well enough to get out of the minor leagues.
Are there exceptions to this? Of course- but they're exceedingly rare. To continue looking at sports, in all of history, only one player has played in both a Superbowl and a World Series- Deion Sanders. And in his case, it was one singular attribute of his that allowed him to succeed. His speed let him cover any WR in football and frequently steal bases in baseball.
There is no such synergy between melee combat and spellslinging.
2)
The assertions that 3Ed multiclassing sucked (and all variations theron) for spellcasters because it robs them of power sway me not in the least. A mage who takes the time to become proficient in thievery or warcraft is by neccessity not spending as much time on learning the Craft as his non-dabbling contemporaries, and it follows that he should be a less potent spellcaster for his extra-curricular activities...FOREVER. It also follows that he will never be as talented as dedicated rogues or warriors because he's not putting in the time on their drills while his nose is buried in some arcane tome.
Do I think that there problems with multiclassing in 3.X? Yes, the very minor one about the XP penalty/Favored class thing, which is easily ditched.
3)
This isn't multiclassing, its cherry-picking. Multiclassing- to me and obviously others in this thread- means that you are fully capable (at a proficiency described mechanically in your PC's respective levels) and responsible as a member of each of your individual classes. A Warrior Priest is both a warrior and a full priest, not some guy who can fight well and can occasionally do some
single thing priests do. If my PC were to go to a 4Ed version of such a PC and ask for some everyday priestly duty to be performed on his behalf, only to be told that he couldn't do it because all he could do is raise the dead, he'd be plenty ticked. That's a miracle worker, to be sure, but that's not a priest.
I definitely feel shortchanged by this incarnation of multiclassing rules.
Or as Judge Judy says:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060927941/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link
4)
Even if I considered this to be multiclassing (which I clearly don't), this is easily the most limited form of it ever.
From Exerpt:
You can dabble in a second class but not a third.
Even in 1Ed, I could play a 3 classed 1/2Elf, or a Human with even more with Dual-Classing (heck, Bards in 1Ed required dabbling in several classes).
So, we've gone from the most wide-open range of options within the game's history to the most restrictive.
If I were to look back and try to recapture the feel- not attempting some kind of full conversion- of most of my past D&D PCs in this system, I couldn't do it- its a rare PC of mine with only 2 classes.
Example: My NG drow Rgr/Druid/MU (who at 26 years of play, for the record, predates Drizzt by 6 years, thank you very much) is basically balanced between his 3 classes. He's a defender of nature so staunch he actually threatened the party's mage (a "Tim" wannabe) with attack if he launched a fireball at the approaching party of undead critters...because they were in the middle of an old-growth forest, uses his shapechanging abilities for surveillance, eschews most flashy spells in favor of Transmutation spells almost exclusively, and fights on the front lines of the party most of the time.
That's just one.
All that said: it may be that this all works as a system, but I don't think I'll be calling this my favorite (or even
any) form of D&D.
