Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
What an odd statement. While I find 'mutually performed critical analysis' to be a tad pretentious, there's nothing about a 'mutually performed critical analysis' that forbids 'our' and 'their' positions. In fact, one would expect there to be emerging positions that are championed and then argued until a gestalt is found in a 'mutually performed critical analysis.' Of course, the flaw there is that no mutual position is required here -- we can all happily walk away from the thread believing that 'our' position is superior to 'their' position.
Another odd statement. A good argument is one that is internally consistent, consistent with it's premises, and achieves it's criteria. My argument does this -- it follows the rules, adheres to itself throughout, and achieves the criteria of illuminating how you properly multiclass. That you can offer a counter position isn't, in and of itself, evidence that my argument is a poor (or even a mere not good one), just that you've also offered an argument. Given that the village idiot can say 'nuh-uh' to any argument, easily even, your assertion means that it's vanishingly difficult to achieve a 'good' argument.
In fact, by your very criteria above, you haven't offered a 'good' argument because I've easily countered it with mine. Given I feel my position to be strong and well based in the rules, I must be correct in my assertion that your arguments are not good, yeah?
Or, and this is novel, we could address the arguments, and not bother with statement of subjective worth.
That would indeed be devastating, if there were any indication of an order with which you gain class features, or even a statement that, while selecting features at a given level, you must pick one at a time and cannot consider future choices or make changes to previous choices once made. That's not evident in the rules, and much of 5e character building relies on being able to consider future choices while making current ones. To make this argument, you're now requiring that all class feature selections be made one at a time during the selection process and can only consider past selections and not future ones. Given that 5e doesn't have a fixed selection order of the class features at any level, including first, and that you could select your starting proficiencies after your other class features for 1st or your starting equipment after, or both, this argument doesn't refute mine.
But, for argument's sake, let's say that your argument did work -- that would mean that you're just as screwed for selecting those proficiencies. Because, no matter how you slice that, if you have to pick those proficiencies first, you'll never be proficient in those weapons because those proficiencies would be selected later. So, both ways it doesn't work -- yours or mine -- to require that starting proficiencies be selected prior to any other class feature.
Which leaves us at the point I stated in my previous post -- your argument requires that we evaluate a class feature as independent chunks of rules and not as a whole. Take, for the example under discussion, the Divine Domain class feature. Your argument requires that we break that class feature down into separate parts -- those that are proficiencies and those that are other things. You then take the proficiency part and consider it as different to the 'other things' part. You apply a different rule to that part of the class feature. My argument is, simply, that you cannot do this. The Divine Domain class feature is a whole package -- it's all of it's parts under one class feature. When you select that class feature, you gain all of it's benefits. You cannot break it into smaller features, 1) because the rules do not say to do this, and, in fact, say not to (under the Class Features heading of the Multiclassing rules); 2) there are no established "sub-class-features" in the rules, so creating them isn't part of the intended rules; and 3) doing so treats some class features as different than other class features, which is, again, not part of the rules.
For your argument to work, you need to address why it's okay to break down a class feature into independent parts and then consider those parts using different rules; you need to address where in the rules it says to do this; and you need to address why it's acceptable to treat some class features differently than others under the multiclassing rules.
Nothing I've said has be uncivil (perhaps a mite pointed, but not uncivil). Further, all of my discussion has been in good faith. Insinuating that I'm not arguing in good faith is the first truly uncivil thing to appear in these arguments.
I do, however, appreciate the artistry in burying an insinuation of bad faith inside a tone argument. If that was intentional, bravo!
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