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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 4398213" data-attributes="member: 40522">Multiclassing in 3E/3.5 was usually suboptimal for spellcasters. I really liked the mystic theurge in concept, but it was really tough to play. When my old group did City of the Spider Queen, my mystic theurge was killed in the first session. I has an enlightened fist that died in the second session of a different campaign. Multiclass characters could rarely handle the same challenges that a more focused character could. A certain amount of optimization is unavoidable (and even a good thing, since it shows that you care about your character's success). But fundamentally, characters getting killed still boils down to either one of a few root causes: 1) the character does something extremely stupid; 2) the dice are just totally against the players and the DM lets the dice fall where they may; 3) the DM threw something too hard at the party. It's usually the last one. Characters who aren't able to take on a challenge indicates a DM who isn't able to read a character sheet. Think of character sheets as checklists: players are telling you the sorts of things they want their characters to be able to do. It's facetious to think that a cleric 2/paladin 3 can take on a challenge appropriate to a 5th-level cleric or paladin, they need challenges appropriate to a 2nd-level cleric AND a 3rd-level paladin. They're trading depth of expertise for variety. My 4E party is very striker-heavy; out of six characters we have four strikers and two leaders. Hence, I don't include challenges for defenders or controllers. I don't clog the battlefield with minions since there is no controller to blast them away or a defender to wade through them with a melee weapon. I give the party combat challenges where they have to fight high hit-point monsters to accomodate all those strikers. We still haven't had a character death (although we've been close twice), and no one has noticed a shortcoming in the group. I'm not going to "punish" players for not wanting to play defenders or controllers.</blockquote>

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