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Message: <blockquote data-quote="roguerouge" data-source="post: 3537446" data-attributes="member: 13855">That's a valid criticism. I expressed myself inexactly. The time penalty would apply to all the players and the DM would have talked to the players at the start of the campaign about whether they wanted to try this approach as a house rule. There's no choice here that doesn't have drawbacks, whether it be the increased complexity but decreased storytelling plausibility of power-gaming or the decreased choices but increased storytelling plausibility of this solution. Myself, I have no problems with certain cross-classing. If you're playing a ranger, I see no problem with adding levels in barbarian or in fighter. If you're a bard, taking levels in sorcerer shouldn't be an issue. If you're a scout or a swashbuckler, I don't see a real problem with taking a level of rogue. Sorcerer, barbarian, favored soul, bard, ranger and fighter seem like the classes which strain plausibility the least for a PC hero adding a class. (Either they discovered their inner magic/rage/soul/groove/dog person or they just got all this experience fighting would be my rationale.)But the years of unique training and/or life experience implied in certain classes makes certain leaps implausible from a storytelling perspective in ways that OotS made clear with Elan's attempted wizard level. Rogues, clerics, wizards, druids, and paladins fall into this category for me. Most established religions have procedures to sort out who would be a good leadership figure for their organization and those procedures and training take time (cleric, paladin). A connection to nature is not something that's picked up quickly. Ask any farmer. And acquiring that list of skills that the rogue has access to required a lot of time in the school of hard knocks. And the science of making physics cry "Uncle!" ought to be hard to pick up.Again, there's some connections that make even these distinctions difficult. I mentioned one above with the swashbuckler, scout, or bard taking a level in rogue. Other obvious counter-examples would be a barbarian or ranger taking levels in druid, or a cleric with domains in knowledge and magic taking levels in wizard. The underlying argument remains, however, that you have a STORY rationale for these new classes. Again, it's fine if you talk things out with the players before they make critical decisions in character design. And it's important to note that you can still add these classes as a player  in one of a few ways. One is to write said years of life experience and training into your character history prior to starting. (I flunked out of wizarding school because I had a bad teacher! If only there was someone in the party who could teach me! That androgynous elf looks like he'd be a good teacher!) Another approach is to multi-class your first level, as it details in the DMG. A third would be to choose to add this level at a time convenient for the rest of the party. Communication is the key at the outset and throughout. Talk out the story rationale with your players if that's your motive for restricting access to multi-classing.</blockquote>

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