D&D 4E Love It or Leave It: 4E Multiclassing

[katahn]

...You realize that neither of your examples is usable in the slightest without a "PLEASE MAKE THIS WORK" fix of a PrC from a splatbook? It's kind of a shoddy approach to discussing problems with the core multi-classing mechanic given that a 4e Rogue with Arcane Initiate seems to be approximately a bajillion times closer to your character concept than a 3.5 Rogue/Wizard that pokes at people with a flimsy dagger held by his weak girly arms. Seriously, your BAB is typically going to be the same as a Wizard, or potentially worse. (Hooray for Rogue 1/Wizard 1!) Even if you could hit something, your sneak attack stays as unimpressive as your caster level, which puts your damage output at "miserable," improving to "unremarkable" in ideal circumstances. Your HP is going to be halfway between "paper sack" and "wet paper sack."

But at least you've got Trap Sense and Summon Familiar, right?

The characters you describe are catastrophes in the 3E core rulesets. Are they fantastic in the 4e one? Maybe not. But they appear to be workable.

As the "fine" folks on the WoW forums might say.... QFT!

3e multiclassing was beyond broken, it preserved all the power of the core classes that prior versions didn't have and none of the flexibility of them.

Sure you could pick a different class each level. Sure you could take as many different classes as you wanted. But without resorting to prestige classes and splatbooks that came much later in the 3e lifecycle, how many of those combinations really worked worth a wooden nickel in terms of actually being reasonably effective?

I guarantee you nothing that involved arcane spellcasting did, if only because of arcane spell failure while wearing armor. You needed a prestige class and special kinds of armor to work around a limitation that made either your melee levels worthless or your caster levels nearly so.

Even multiclasses involving divine spell casters were more often hosed than not. Saving throws were based on level of spell, and at 20th level a 10/10 multiclass was limited to max level 5 spells; this was the equivilent of enemies getting +4 (9-5=4) to resist your best spells. Because your caster level was maxed out at 10 (without specialized feats) you were at a -10 penalty (20-10=10) to bypass spell resistance. If you were an arcane caster and wanted to cast spells while armored or using a shield you needed the "still spell" feat which meant your 4th level spells were treated as being 5th level for memorization purposes but were still 4th level for purposes of saving throws - your 5th level spells might as well not exist. The additional +1 chance for your enemies to make a save versus your spells added insult to injury.

Fighter/rogue worked ok, multiclasses of X/cleric or X/druid worked decently if you built around the concept of someone who only self-buffed. Any X/paladin multiclass was impossible because once you gave up being a paladin you could never take it up again. Of course the reason fighter/rogue worked was the core rules fighter class was underpowered and you didn't really lose much by not taking levels 11-20 of it.

3e multiclassing rules and "fixing" them sucked up a not-insignificant portion of Unearthed Arcana for a reason, and the explosion of prestige classes as a workaround for the massive brokenness of them. 4e multiclassing may not be great, but please at least be intellectually honest enough to admit that the 3e system was much more of a nightmare.

 

[Kordeth]

Ok, so I'm a little slow, so bear with me.

I pick my class: "I'm a fighter!"
I start picking my feats: "Toughness, Power Attack..."
We have no cleric, so I also pick "Initiate of the Faith"

Now as I level up I can:
- Pick Cleric feats
- Pick Fighter feats
- Get all of the Fighter powers at the appropriate level
- Pick the "Swap Power" feats which let me remove a power I rarely use from Fighter and swap it with a power that a Cleric would be using (of equal or lesser level)
- When I hit 11 and it's time to pick a Paragon Path, I can pick any Cleric or Fighter path

Correct. Also, at level 11, you can choose to multiclass more deeply rather than taking a paragon path--but we don't yet know the mechanics of that.

 

[Mercutio01]

...You realize that neither of your examples is usable in the slightest without a "PLEASE MAKE THIS WORK" fix of a PrC from a splatbook? It's kind of a shoddy approach to discussing problems with the core multi-classing mechanic

So my alternative is what? A problem with the core multi-classing mechanic of the new edition?

given that a 4e Rogue with Arcane Initiate seems to be approximately a bajillion times closer to your character concept than a 3.5 Rogue/Wizard that pokes at people with a flimsy dagger held by his weak girly arms.

Not really. Now he's just a girly rogue who tosses spells. Not at all what I wanted. I didn't want a Rogue/Wizard. I wanted a dagger specialist who assassinates people for money and uses his daggers as magical conduits.

Seriously, your BAB is typically going to be the same as a Wizard, or potentially worse. (Hooray for Rogue 1/Wizard 1!)

That is a problem with 3E that hasn't been rectified in 4E, just dumped and substituted for by weakening the multi-classing even more. There's also fractional BAB, which pretty much solved that problem anyway.

Even if you could hit something, your sneak attack stays as unimpressive as your caster level,

But it would also have shocking grasp or vampiric touch or something similar.

The characters you describe are catastrophes in the 3E core rulesets. Are they fantastic in the 4e one? Maybe not. But they appear to be workable.

You're looking at this from a min-max standpoint, not a fulfillment of a character sketch. I've played both characters I mentioned in games and they didn't play as catastrophes at all. They weren't unstoppable min-maxed munchkins, but they were certainly playable and fun, and fulfilling what I wanted them to do. But I can see that the argument here in general is that classes should be restrictive.

One second note, the most interesting characters in literature are not all powerful, so your assumption that it's a bad thing that a character is not teh uber is off base.

But at least you've got Trap Sense and Summon Familiar, right?

Which is why I was hoping 4E would have a way to trade out unwanted class abilities for others. I don't want a rogue who's a trapmonkey. But it appears that I have to have that wasted ability in 4E too. I don't want a straight point buy system, but I was hoping for something more like Saga with feat trees and not a lame multi-classing system. But I'm putting the cart before the horse because I still don't have all the rules here. I won't make a full decision until I get the books, and I will get the books regardless because I've liked everything else I've seen in 4E so far.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

What multiclassing? I see neither baby nor bathwater, just an empty tub with a card in it.

 

[Voss]

So Mike the Wizard is, in fact, not as powerful a Wizard as he used to be, as he's lost three spells in favor of his new Rogue abilities. The same wouldn't be true of 3.5 Mike the Wizard, who will always have the same Wizard abilities no matter what.

Right. But as he faces more and more powerful foes, those 8 level of wizard become more and more irrelevant. If you're a 3rd edition spellcaster and you stop being level appropriate, you might as well be someone's cohort.

A 4e wizard has less options than a 3e wizard full stop. And while the 11th level Wizard/Rogue will have less wizard powers than the 11th level wizard, both his wizard abilities and his rogue abilities are appropriate for 11th level (if not a little higher, actually, given the rechoose on level up thing). So whatever he's doing, he's acting as a level appropriate character. That was something that never happened in 3e, unless you were careful to choose classes that didn't have anything tied to class level... which essentially just left the fighter.

 

[pawsplay]

I like it. You can do high concept Pulp Fiction meets Bambi things, like "He's a fighter, but he also backstabs." This rolls up a lot of the "dips" from 3.5, along with prestige classes like the Street Fighter, Anima Mage, Pious Templar, and Purple Dragon Knight, no mess no fuss.

It looks like the 4e Mystic Theurge and Eldritch Knight will be done by forgoing your paragon path.

One nice side effect: if you don't want your fighter to turn into Xena or a character from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, just forego your paragon path to pick up warlord, rogue, or ranger abilities.

Criticisms: It's artificial, somewhat limiting, and makes too much explicit mention of choosing and swapping powers as though they were cards. But that's totally in line with 4e, so it's hard to find fault with that. It's probably not difficult to imagine your character as being more homogeous than they appear on your sheet.

No triple-classing... except for a minor cheat for the half-elf. But even they don't get extra skills.

 

[Green Knight]

I didn't want a Rogue/Wizard. I wanted a dagger specialist who assassinates people for money and uses his daggers as magical conduits.

What kind of mechanical representation can one possibly come up with for "killing people for money"? And incidentally, apparently it's possible to make your weapons into implements. So the 4E Rogue/Wizard will be able to channel his magic through his daggers, and benefit from any plus they have on them.

That is a problem with 3E that hasn't been rectified in 4E

1st-level Rogue gets +3 to hit with daggers, and an additional +1 from Rogue Weapon Talent (which only benefits shurikens and daggers), for a total of +4. And that's before taking into account any stat bonuses. A Level 2 Rogue 1/Wizard 1, however, still has +0 to hit. Looks to me like it's the 4E Rogue who's the dagger specialist.

Incidentally, looking at a page with Wizard spells that was released, I found an awesome spell for a Rogue/Wizard assassin type.

Mesmeric Hold [Wizard Attack 13]
You immobilize your foes by commanding them to stand still.
Encounter * Arcane, Charm, Implement, Psychic
Standard Action Ranged 10
Targets: One, two, or three creatures
Attack: Intelligence Vs. Will, one attack per target
Special: If you target only one creature with this power, you gain a +4 power bonus to the attack roll.
Hit: 2d6 + Intelligence modifer psychic damage, and the target is immobilized until the end of your next turn.

Just one example from available information of something such a character could use.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

So far I like it.

 

[Storminator]

The best part of this multiclassing approach is that they started with good class design. No longer will class design have to be subordinate to the "what if they dip one level?" question. Which is good, because 1st level characters in 4e seem to be getting a pretty fair package of goodies.

I'm pretty happy with it on the page, we'll have to see how it is on game night.

PS

 

[keterys]

I'm almost positive the fighter +1 to attack is once per encounter, not a passive result of taking the feat.