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

[Ximenes088]

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.

You mean, like a rogue with a couple spells he can cast? And that wizard paragon path we've heard mentioned that lets you use a weapon as an arcane Implement? That's the exact concept you are describing. The only thing that it's costing you is 2-4 feats out of the five or six you get by 10th level, which is a hugely lesser investment than 3.5's level and PrC surcharges.

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.

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

Just like any Rogue who spends two feats on wizard classing will have shocking grasp or vampiric touch or something similar. And at 11th level, he'll channel those spells through his daggers. 4e is designed to give you more flexibility within a class. It is not intended that you should need 3+ prestige classes to compass a concept that is reasonable for the game.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I think it is always a mistake to try to justify 4e through a simulationist type argument. I think you need to approach 4e on its own terms.

That's what I've been saying. I think I like this pretty well, but only because I'm not tied to D&D like some seem to be.

The class system is supposed to be a selling point for D&D. Love it or hate it, you get it warts and all.

If I have a character concept I want to play, and I can't make it work with 4e, I'll make the character for GURPS. (Since I don't want to buy 50 books full of different core classes.)

Right now, it looks like I'm going to be running two seperate campaigns. D&D and GURPS will alternate weekends. I've got D&D for fast paced monster bashing, GURPS for more realistic adventuring.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I like it

I like that, you gain aspects of the initial class through the multiclass feat and don't get everything, since that always felt odd to me. It makes much more sense in my eyes for a person to slowly develop their secondary class and only start off with a few things.

I like that you use a feat for the initial multiclass and for gaining new powers. Since this shows it takes more time and effort to learn/train your second class, so you are not able to gain a "feat", this also accounts for the take a power away gain a power. Since the effort to train would account for this as well, it also just cuts down on power-bloat.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I agree with Derren here...

 

[Gundark]

I like it...it's what I'd picture multi classing to be

 

[Dausuul]

I agree with Derren here...

The sad thing is that even though Derren hasn't yet posted in this thread, the above statement is perfectly comprehensible.

 

[drjones]

Yeah that was confusing me too.

For me, I say Ditto Rush!

 

[mach1.9pants]

I am really meh about it. This is the only thing I have seen from 4E so far that I am so. Many of my players, and myself, m-c to get the ideal class combo for character concept. And the 4E m-c seems very light, not deep. However I didn't vote cos I will reserve judgement until I have seen how paragon path m-c works.

 

[keterys]

I think the key really is to just think 'How can I make a new class to fulfill this concept?' rather than trying to monkey wrench the multiclass system into making it work, poorly. I've put in a 'like' vote, after thinking about it for several hours.

This is probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks in 4E so far - it worked _really close_ to how I expected it to, but it's more limited in a couple key ways.

 

[Victim]

Considering we don't know very many feats or powers, it's hard to evaluate the multiclassing system. First of all, we can't compare the costs. Is 4 feats a lot? Well, maybe. It depends on what other feats the character is going want - some characters might not have any trouble operating with fewer feats. Other feat abilities may diminish much of the need for multiclassing anyway - if a character can pick up good weapons and/or armor and get them to work effectively via feats, then those abilities cover much of the traditional need for fighter based multiclassing. Similarly, if rituals require a ritual casting feat and then training in an appropriate skill, that offers another avenue for gaining atypical abilities without using power swapping (of course, the first mc feat probably provides one of the skills needed to use a ritual). Some characters will probably be able to get they want for 2 feats to pick up a utility or encounter power too - having 1 big cross class trick to pull every encounter. If 4 feats is too expensive, then 2 might not be so bad.

Similarly, it's hard to say what exactly the character is gaining. However, some of the wizard encounter powers at level 13 seem pretty sweet for a fighter or rogue. Prismatic Burst -> Blinding until the end of your turn -> Sneak Attack? Or how about Frostburn on a fighter? Slam a group of enemies with it, then move up to the edge of the area. Now the targets are in difficult terrain for movement penalties, will take ongoing damage, AND will be pinned in place by the fighter's opp attack features. One of the powers even used Wisdom instead of INT, reducing MAD.

Since some kind of recharge mechanism has been mentioned for powers, we might want to see that too. If a multiclassed character can keep recovering their off class power, then they'll be using more of their secondary class without necessarily investing more into it.

EDIT: Also, I can't be the only one who has found the table summaries of feats to often be useless or misleading in previous WotC books. While I'd like to hope that things have changed, being suspicious of the summarized feats has paid off in the past. It might be more useful to have the actual text of the feats.