D&D 3.x Favored Class

[Tinker Gnome]

Did anyone use the Favored Class rule by enforcing experience penalties in 3.X? I never even thought about it, but I can only recall one character who was ever multiclassed last time I ran a game.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

Yes.

 

[James Gasik]

I did, but in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have. First of all, it didn't reinforce that class x was "favored" in any way. If I'm a Dwarf, and my Favored Class is Fighter, because of a combination of "Dwarves are good Fighters" and "Dwarves have a proud military tradition", it should reward me for having many levels of Fighter, not propping up a Fighter 1 or 2 dip for my Dwarven Barbarian.

Pathfinder 1e solved this very neatly.

Second of all, it wasn't even really a mechanical penalty in any real way. The only time it ever came up in a game was when I had someone who was a Ranger/Fighter/Barbarian/Rogue multiclass, and all it was doing was saying "hey, at some point you have to take that Fighter 3 level that gives you almost nothing you'll want".

And even then, like all xp penalties, the system would make them irrelevant over a long period of time anyways, since if you managed to be lower level than the rest of your party, you'd start earning more xp, so you likely wouldn't ever get seriously behind- it's certainly not really a hindrance to being able to craft magic items for half cost if you happen to be a spellcaster, for example, which grants a great deal more power.

Oh and of course, if you can meet the requirements for a Prestige Class, which many characters would want to, those are exempt from the multiclassing penalty!

Which was inevitably what the quad-classed martial character did, he found a PrC for his level 9 that, even being somewhat mid, was still better than Fighter 3, lol.

 

[Alzrius]

Pathfinder 1e solved this very neatly.

I'm 99% in agreement with this; the only 1% that I disagree with is that, whenever someone writes a new race, it's necessary (not strictly so, but it's prevalent enough to have become expected) to write a bunch of alternative favored class options for various classes. Likewise, when writing a new class you're expected to come up with favored class options for various races. So it added a bit of extra work to race and class design.