Excerpt: Multiclassing (merged)

[Fallen Seraph]

I am sorta the opposite, I think this is in some regards more realistic. Someone who dabbles in something won't instantly pick up and know how to do the basics for EVERYTHING that thing their dabbling with will do, like in 3e.

With 4e, they find something that interests them and works in concert with who they are, thus able to be better faster, but still may not have the knowledge of how to do everything, like before.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While there is some truth to what you say, there is still the nature of the accrual of skills that 4Ed completely ignores.

A dabbler in 4Ed potentially gets access to a high-level ability, but without learning any of the foundational stuff that other practitioners need to learn in order to reach that point.

A person dabbling in guitar can't simply learn how to play Malaguena without learning many chords, progressions and techniques. A person dabbling in medicine can't simply learn how to do brain surgery.

Its like getting a roof without a foundation or support pillars.

So, he may only want to learn this & that technique that helps him out, but there are things he'd need to learn before he can do that.

First learn walk, then learn run.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well you have to first multiclass before you can then take a feat to gain a power. So I would view that first multiclass as a person's specific refined study and the feat afterwards for the power to be his area of expertise in the place he is dabbling, if you get my analogy.

I say this to, with making an assumption that there could be perhaps multiple multiclass feats for each class. So you can pick and choose, which aspect of that class best fits (say two Ranger ones: The one that gives you Hunter's Quarry another gives you Prime Shot), and most likely the future power feat would go along that course.

 

[Craith]

Oh yeah- forgot one.

5) I can't choose when to "multiclass." If I read this properly, I can't choose to start multiclassing at 2nd level. To me, that sucketh hugely.

But you can, as far as I know every level up you can retrain one feat - just retrain one L1 Feat for a multiclass feat.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I Finally get to see the end of this thread. Every time over the last 3 days when i read to the last page and then tried to load the last page, I would loose the connection to enworld and when I finally loaded the page, there were 4 more added.

So my thoughts, I really like what I see so far. I think that any concept can be created withing the current setup. The opportunity cost thing, well it is impossible to say without full access to all the rules, but it seems a reasonable price to pay considering the secondary effect of cross classing - feats.

It seems to be that opening up the complete feat list (and given the greater number of feats available to a character) is a pretty potent option, add in skill cross training and power swaps and you are pretty potent in the seconday class.

The only thing it does not allow is the caster/warrior combo that is as effective (or very close to ) as the rest of the party (single classed) at both classes. That, however, was never on the cards but it seem to me to be the only reason to bring up 2nd edition multiclass combos.

It appeals to the simulationist in me, because if one multiclasses at levels other than first, the power developement is gradual, or fairly so, depending on how many feats you want to swap. It also allows a character like the Grey Mouser, (a former wizards apprentice) from the get go.

I wonder would Gandalf be a Palladin/Wizard?

 

[Jack99]

Hell just froze over I think, I agree with Lizard...

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Oh yeah- forgot one.

5) I can't choose when to "multiclass." If I read this properly, I can't choose to start multiclassing at 2nd level. To me, that sucketh hugely.

I'm not sure I can see any evidence of that - the feats don't specify that you can only take them at first level.

 

[Lizard]

I'm not sure I can see any evidence of that - the feats don't specify that you can only take them at first level.

If I ran 4e, I might houserule it that way, though -- the system works best to represent "prior training" or other pre-adventurer experience, rather than learning new things.

 

[katahn]

The other time when this isn't exactly true is when there's an archetype in the setting that, in D&D terms, encompasses multiple classes. Jedi are a good example of then, since in D&D terms they are both powerful defenders and controllers. In such situations, it's probably better to design a whole new class.

In that case you create a power source and call it "Force" or "The Force" and then build classes around it. The classes would each represent an iconic way a Jedi (or Sith) interacts with the Force.

Luke Skywalker: Defender-type with a couple of controllerish abilities that could have been taken via feats.

Yoda: Controller-type with some strikerish bits (when he goes postal on Count Dooku in Ep2 and tries to fight the Emperor in E3)

Emperor: Leader-type if you follow the hints dropped in the novels that say he was using the Force to make his troops even more effective.

Darth Vadar: Striker-type who really was good and enjoyed killing people in various ways.

 

[katahn]

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.

The problem is that the concept of multiclassing is that the sum of the power of each class combined equates to the power of a single-classed person of the same character level. In 3e this was not true. So while conceptually what you say makes sense, the implementation in mechanics for 3e did not. It had to be rectified by additional rules and splatbooks that gave us endless iterations of prestige classes.

A fighter/wizard 10/10 could only be equivilent to another level 20 character if they could seemlessly use all of their abilities and be as effective with them as any other character could. The problem is they couldn't. If geared to use their level 10 fighter abilities effectively they faced arcane spell failure as a wizard on top of everything else. If geared to not deal with arcane spell failure they wouldn't remotely have the defenses needed to survive being a fighter.

They would be noticeably less effective in combat in either role: missing more with weapon swings due to lower fighter level, seeing more spell resists due to lower caster level, seeing more of their enemies make saving throws against their spells because saves were keyed to spell level, and so forth. These issues could be worked around in prestige classes, but that to me is an admission of a highly broken system that could only be fixed by either massively rewriting it or by introducing new classes to cover the various gish combinations.

Yes it would be possible to fix multiclassing in 3e without going to 4e or its model of it, but multiclassing wasn't the only broken issue in 3e. Fixing and improving all that was bad about 3e included elements like making single-class fighters not a joke, solidifying the differences between being the wizard and the sorcerer or warlock, making clerics a class that people didn't either have to convince someone to play or just make an NPC, and so on.