D&D 5E Multiclass in 5E

[The Shadow]

So the next thing is a clean way to parse out the "difference" columns into parts so that our 10th level cleric taking wizard levels gets his 4 wizard levels over a reasonable progression, one at a time.

There is a really easy way to do this, but it does back away from the assumption that you can drop XP-tracking.

Instead of gaining XP, that you then use to look up your character level; instead the whole XP system is rejiggered so that XP translates directly into Power. Maybe every 1000 XP = 1 Power or something. So if you gained 5 points of Power last adventure, you can apply that toward your next level of cleric, or invest it into levels of something else.

(No, this still isn't a point-buy system, because you're still getting levels of classes in lump-sums of power. But it's true you don't have a well-defined "character level" any more. Just a well-defined "character power".)

Add a rule that you can only gain one level per session or something, and you're done. (Me, I'd also only give out XP after each adventure, rather than each session.)

Alternately, if the system wants to have a multiclass penalty of some sort, you can use other things.

It would be dead easy to adjust the table to include a penalty for branching out, if this is desired.

Edit: To really hit it, make the character level be gained first, before the new class starts. Now our 10th level cleric must reach 11th level, where upon he picks up 1 level of Wizard. However, since he is "owed" 3 more wizard levels on the exchange, he can gain these 3 levels at whatever pace the group says is appropriate. He's paid up front, but doesn't get them until the story/group/house rules/DM says he can. Furthermore, he can't effectively buy more wizard levels until these are worked out. (He can buy them with character level, but will still only get them as they play out.) Eventually, it all works out balanced, but the character is radically slowed in the meantime.

This works too.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Another interesting thing about that "power" column is that it maps reasonably close to full casters getting a new level of spells every level, up to 7th level caster getting 4th level spells. But 5th shouldn't come until 10th level caster, and 6th really should be put off until 14th. I think the gap will keep expanding from there.

That means that either spells above 4th level would need to be toned down (at least the good ones), pushing the really powerful effects out past the 9th level spell bracket (or into some alternate "epic" system), or we would need about 36 character levels to accommodate the pattern, or we can compensate non-casters over 7th level with matching "over-powered" ability, comfortable that a multiclasser can only edge into these upper levels anyway.

 

[The Shadow]

Another interesting thing about that "power" column is that it maps reasonably close to full casters getting a new level of spells every level, up to 7th level caster getting 4th level spells. But 5th shouldn't come until 10th level caster, and 6th really should be put off until 14th. I think the gap will keep expanding from there.

I'm not quite clear on how you're seeing this, could you explain? For starters, which chart are you looking at, the first or the second?

EDIT: Wait, are you referring to approximate power doublings in the second table? The whole point of the second table is that power *doesn't* double at a constant rate.

 

[KidSnide]

4. Assume that there is some expected ratio for class effectiveness over levels, such that a character taking N levels is X better than before the levels were taken. (For ease of consideration and historical reasons, think roughly twice as powerful every two levels increase, though the ratio could be any number of things. This is not unlike 3E CR.)

5. Thus if a 10th level cleric gains two new levels, he is supposed to be twice as powerful now.

I don't want to rain on your analysis, but with bounded accuracy, the 3E CR rule of "two levels up, twice as powerful" probably isn't an accurate reflection of D&DN. (Putting aside for the moment the question of whether it was ever true in 3.x...)

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see each class include a special "multi-class" rule (maybe with its own level advancement table or maybe not) that explains how the class changes when it's taken by a multi-class character. I think the lesson from 4e hybrid characters is that you can give out standard character abilities if you keep a sharp eye out for unusually advantageous "splash" classes or abilities that synergize too well (i.e. are significantly more powerful in combination with abilities from other classes than they are in the context of the base class).

-KS

 

[sec_tcpaipm]

Instead of the table

How about - at every character level, for each class you have, you can increase that class by a level or add a new class at the old class level -2. So a 10TH level fighter can go to either F11 or F10C8 at character level 11. At 12th character level she(F10C8) can go to F11C9, F10C9W8 , F11C8W6 or F10C8W8T6. This preserves the CL + CL-2 = CL+1, Like CRs in 3.X. Other power doubling speeds can be handled by changing the level subtraction from a new class. Limits like: cannot add more than one class per character level, cannot raise a class level more than 2 above your first class, etc., might need to be included. We'd also need to be able to forego increasing our highest-levelled class to increase a lowered-level class by more than one level. Just as long as you can add up class levels using the 2CL = CL+2 and CL + CL-2 = CL+1 to get the character level. "Retraining" to decrease a class's level by 1 to free up room for other class's advance could also be incorporated.

 

[sec_tcpaipm]

I don't want to rain on your analysis, but with bounded accuracy, the 3E CR rule of "two levels up, twice as powerful" probably isn't an accurate reflection of D&DN. (Putting aside for the moment the question of whether it was ever true in 3.x...)

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see each class include a special "multi-class" rule (maybe with its own level advancement table or maybe not) that explains how the class changes when it's taken by a multi-class character. I think the lesson from 4e hybrid characters is that you can give out standard character abilities if you keep a sharp eye out for unusually advantageous "splash" classes or abilities that synergize too well (i.e. are significantly more powerful in combination with abilities from other classes than they are in the context of the base class).

-KS

Or the classes could "gestalt" instead of "stack", keeping the accuracy bounded to that of the best class(es), which would be necessarily less than or equal to a single-class character of that character level. Instead of a higher number, they'd get more options.

 

[KidSnide]

Or the classes could "gestalt" instead of "stack", keeping the accuracy bounded to that of the best class(es), which would be necessarily less than or equal to a single-class character of that character level. Instead of a higher number, they'd get more options.

If you mean a 5th level fighter, 6th level cleric gets the class abilities of a 5th level fighter and a 6th level cleric (with the higher magic and weapon attack modifier), then yes, I think that's very likely.

I think the issues mostly come from splashing one level of a class. For example, if you splash cleric as presently written, you can take the war domain to get a load of proficiency bonuses. If you splash the current rogue, you get some fantastic skill abilities. These are the things that might prompt WotC to spread out these abilities in a special multi-class paragraph.

The other issue is how to make spell casters multi-class well. Bounded accuracy (for saving throws) and making spells no longer scale with caster level helps, but I don't have a grasp on whether it helps enough. I speculate that a 5th level wizard / 5th level sorcerer is still going to suck compared with almost any 10th level single-class character. That would be a shame (mixing casting traditions is an interesting choice), but I don't know if the designers will really fix that problem in D&DN.

-KS

 

[sec_tcpaipm]

If you mean a 5th level fighter, 6th level cleric gets the class abilities of a 5th level fighter and a 6th level cleric (with the higher magic and weapon attack modifier), then yes, I think that's very likely.

I think the issues mostly come from splashing one level of a class. For example, if you splash cleric as presently written, you can take the war domain to get a load of proficiency bonuses. If you splash the current rogue, you get some fantastic skill abilities. These are the things that might prompt WotC to spread out these abilities in a special multi-class paragraph.

The other issue is how to make spell casters multi-class well. Bounded accuracy (for saving throws) and making spells no longer scale with caster level helps, but I don't have a grasp on whether it helps enough. I speculate that a 5th level wizard / 5th level sorcerer is still going to suck compared with almost any 10th level single-class character. That would be a shame (mixing casting traditions is an interesting choice), but I don't know if the designers will really fix that problem in D&DN.

-KS

Would it help if a wizard/sorcerer 5/5 is the same character level as a wizard 7 or a sorcerer 7? if it is as difficult(or just slightly less) for a 5th level wizard to become 7th level as it is for a 5th level wizard to become a wizard/sorcerer 5/5?

or in order to get that first rogue level, you must already be 3rd level and take that rogue level instead of that next level of whatever, and then they increase together?

EDIT: OTOH there are some class features that a character should only get if the class is the highest-level class for that character (first class in case of a tie).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm not quite clear on how you're seeing this, could you explain? For starters, which chart are you looking at, the first or the second?

EDIT: Wait, are you referring to approximate power doublings in the second table? The whole point of the second table is that power *doesn't* double at a constant rate.

I'm referring to the way that a wizard, cleric, or other full caster is generally considered to double in power each time he gains a new level of spells. It's fairly inexact, has exceptions (e.g. 7th caster level), and depends on both the higher level spells and the proliferation of lower-level slots. So it might not all apply to Next.

In your chart, the power increase is close enough to this ratio to keep casters getting a new level of spells every level up to 7th level. After that, though, the cumulative effects of how you toned down the power doubling rate begin to become too strong to ignore. So something has to be done to compensate, or casters cannot continue to get standard D&D spells every odd level past that point.

As for KidSnide's point, part of the problem with the non-casters versus full-casters in 3E is that the ratio doesn't hold equally. It does trail off a little for casters at the higher levels, but trails off more and sooner for the non-casters.

That said, rain on my analysis all you want. I'm only throwing it out there to see if it sticks, intrigued by the difficulties of addressing Stalker's requirement in a way that I would find tolerable.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The other issue is how to make spell casters multi-class well. Bounded accuracy (for saving throws) and making spells no longer scale with caster level helps, but I don't have a grasp on whether it helps enough. I speculate that a 5th level wizard / 5th level sorcerer is still going to suck compared with almost any 10th level single-class character. That would be a shame (mixing casting traditions is an interesting choice), but I don't know if the designers will really fix that problem in D&DN.

I don't think 5/5 compared to 10 staight can be resolved with traditional D&D classes. (It might be with the d20M stuff Greg K was discussing. I'm unsure.) Equal to a 10th level wizard is going to be something between 5/5 wiz/sor and 9/9 wiz/sor. Exactly where depends on how you do the classes.

I do think it gets easier to manage if most basic abilities don't stack in such a system. Take your best hit point formula from a single class, whatever that is. Skills and other discrete options are where it gets tricky, as you indicated.