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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 9121965" data-attributes="member: 19857">I feel like there's a step missing in all of this. Which is figuring out the question of &quot;why does this rule exist in the game.&quot; Either from a mechanical point of view (what purpose it's trying to serve in the game) or from a historic point of view (as in why Gygax needed to hack this rule into his system in the first place). If you can't answer that question then it feels like the rest of the analysis is just going to be an exercise in close reading of the text and arguing your point rather than getting to something useful.The purpose dual-classing serves to me seems to be a &quot;solution&quot; to the problem that we now identify as the linear fighter/quadratic wizard. As in once a player hit a certain level with their fighter they might realize &quot;oh, I want to be a wizard now because that's where the power game is&quot; without having to restart the game with a completely new character. In a game where your character was directing a small army of henchmen to do the actual work, your mid-level fighter could use their existing treasure to take some time off to let the underlings do the work while they hang back and cast their Magic Missile a few times each day. With the way XP worked you'd pretty quickly get your MU level up to your Fighter level and then be able to move on as a MU. If you're not playing the game that way, then this rule seems awkward and weird because it doesn't seem to match anything out of the fantasy source material. But if you are playing the game that way it makes perfect sense - even the rule of not letting you cast spells while wearing armor makes sense in that perspective.Meanwhile to me the multi-classing rules for demihumans look to me like an attempt to solve the problems brought on by level caps without getting rid of level caps. Since you have to split your XP between different classes it slows the demihuman advancement down so they don't hit the level caps as quickly as the human fighters and MUs they're adventuring with by exchanging more power for more breadth.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jer, post: 9121965, member: 19857"] I feel like there's a step missing in all of this. Which is figuring out the question of "why does this rule exist in the game." Either from a mechanical point of view (what purpose it's trying to serve in the game) or from a historic point of view (as in why Gygax needed to hack this rule into his system in the first place). If you can't answer that question then it feels like the rest of the analysis is just going to be an exercise in close reading of the text and arguing your point rather than getting to something useful. The purpose dual-classing serves to me seems to be a "solution" to the problem that we now identify as the linear fighter/quadratic wizard. As in once a player hit a certain level with their fighter they might realize "oh, I want to be a wizard now because that's where the power game is" without having to restart the game with a completely new character. In a game where your character was directing a small army of henchmen to do the actual work, your mid-level fighter could use their existing treasure to take some time off to let the underlings do the work while they hang back and cast their Magic Missile a few times each day. With the way XP worked you'd pretty quickly get your MU level up to your Fighter level and then be able to move on as a MU. If you're not playing the game that way, then this rule seems awkward and weird because it doesn't seem to match anything out of the fantasy source material. But if you are playing the game that way it makes perfect sense - even the rule of not letting you cast spells while wearing armor makes sense in that perspective. Meanwhile to me the multi-classing rules for demihumans look to me like an attempt to solve the problems brought on by level caps without getting rid of level caps. Since you have to split your XP between different classes it slows the demihuman advancement down so they don't hit the level caps as quickly as the human fighters and MUs they're adventuring with by exchanging more power for more breadth. [/QUOTE]

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