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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Excerpt: Multiclassing (merged)
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<blockquote data-quote="katahn" data-source="post: 4199820" data-attributes="member: 65004"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="katahn, post: 4199820, member: 65004"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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