lichmaster
Hero
I think it makes sense to look at things in perspective.
In 2e classes did one thing: the fighter fought, the rogue (thief back then) stabbed and sneaked, and wizards and clerics cast spells. Multiclassing was a way to generate more hybrid combinations, and it was super fun to do. Balancing was not that much of a thing back then, so you could have extremely op characters or extremely weak ones, although the way XP was split between the classes and the fact that you only had a certain set of combinations restricted those issues a bit (plus the separate XP progression for each class)
In later expansions, kits or subclasses were introduced, to increase the variety of concepts one could play.
3/3.5 allowed much more free multiclassing, excepting some alignment issues. As a "brake", there was the rule of the favorite class that gave penalty for wild multiclassing. We all know how it worked. To muddy things much more, there were Prestige Classes, that were OP classes with special requirements, and kind of did with that single class what some multi class combinations allowed. I really disliked all of this, so happily moved to Traiblazer where things made sense, were balanced, and prestige class were both unnecessary and non existent.
I'll skip 4e, just as I skipped it both as a player and a DM (it just gave me the feeling of being a pen and paper MMO, although I'm sure it has some good features, like monster roles)
Now in o5e/A5E we have both archetypes/subclasses AND multiclasses. Everything is pretty much free, with the very low bar requirement of some minimum ability scores. Alignment is no longer a restriction, and same for races/species etc. This allows one one hand to literally make whatever concept you want, but on the other hand the number of possible permutations (including feats and class features) becomes absurdly high. Playtesting all this requires so much time and effort that is probably not entirely possible, or better, is done by the players themselves in the years after release.
One (alleged) problem of some multiclass combinations in 5e is that they do allow quite a bit of cheesing. That is true and probably not entirely avoidable. I don't know how many people exploit those kinds of cheese (surely there's a lot of "builds" on the internet), but probably the worst ones deserve fixing. I agree with the comment made above that fixing Action Surge would have been enough instead of removing it entirely, but I'm also ok with the fighter having something else (now that it's clear that fighters will have some unique and cool features for maneuvers).
The flip side of the coin for me is that the capstone 20th level ability of some classes are not that appealing (that's true even above level 15-16 for some), so multiclassing is a way to get something more interesting.
It's entirely possible that the basic design of some 5e classes is slanted towards giving specific features early on (otherwise how do you make that class interesting or unique?), but from what we can see in a5e this will be less of an issue. Plus, if they actually worked on more interesting capstones, the temptation to multiclass is surely going to be tempered by those high level abilities.
In 2e classes did one thing: the fighter fought, the rogue (thief back then) stabbed and sneaked, and wizards and clerics cast spells. Multiclassing was a way to generate more hybrid combinations, and it was super fun to do. Balancing was not that much of a thing back then, so you could have extremely op characters or extremely weak ones, although the way XP was split between the classes and the fact that you only had a certain set of combinations restricted those issues a bit (plus the separate XP progression for each class)
In later expansions, kits or subclasses were introduced, to increase the variety of concepts one could play.
3/3.5 allowed much more free multiclassing, excepting some alignment issues. As a "brake", there was the rule of the favorite class that gave penalty for wild multiclassing. We all know how it worked. To muddy things much more, there were Prestige Classes, that were OP classes with special requirements, and kind of did with that single class what some multi class combinations allowed. I really disliked all of this, so happily moved to Traiblazer where things made sense, were balanced, and prestige class were both unnecessary and non existent.
I'll skip 4e, just as I skipped it both as a player and a DM (it just gave me the feeling of being a pen and paper MMO, although I'm sure it has some good features, like monster roles)
Now in o5e/A5E we have both archetypes/subclasses AND multiclasses. Everything is pretty much free, with the very low bar requirement of some minimum ability scores. Alignment is no longer a restriction, and same for races/species etc. This allows one one hand to literally make whatever concept you want, but on the other hand the number of possible permutations (including feats and class features) becomes absurdly high. Playtesting all this requires so much time and effort that is probably not entirely possible, or better, is done by the players themselves in the years after release.
One (alleged) problem of some multiclass combinations in 5e is that they do allow quite a bit of cheesing. That is true and probably not entirely avoidable. I don't know how many people exploit those kinds of cheese (surely there's a lot of "builds" on the internet), but probably the worst ones deserve fixing. I agree with the comment made above that fixing Action Surge would have been enough instead of removing it entirely, but I'm also ok with the fighter having something else (now that it's clear that fighters will have some unique and cool features for maneuvers).
The flip side of the coin for me is that the capstone 20th level ability of some classes are not that appealing (that's true even above level 15-16 for some), so multiclassing is a way to get something more interesting.
It's entirely possible that the basic design of some 5e classes is slanted towards giving specific features early on (otherwise how do you make that class interesting or unique?), but from what we can see in a5e this will be less of an issue. Plus, if they actually worked on more interesting capstones, the temptation to multiclass is surely going to be tempered by those high level abilities.
