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<blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 5993228" data-attributes="member: 545">Your thoughts on 3e multiclassing are far more tender than my own regarding 1e/2e multiclassing and dual classing.I would also remind you that there is a 3e &quot;module&quot; called gestalt which has most of the advantages and fewer of the downsides of the 1e/2e style.I would not say I love the 3e multiclass system, but it was a workable framework that was somewhat successful and could easily be improved.&nbsp; Admittedly, the multi-class themed feats and PrCs are an implicit admission that they did not work as well as one might hope.&nbsp; If PCs had a &quot;caster level&quot; for every class equal to the character level (instead of the &quot;class level&quot;), the majority of the problems go away.&nbsp; Then it is mostly small tweaks to figure out which class abilities should be based on &quot;caster level&quot; rather than &quot;class level&quot;.IMO and IME 1e/2e multiclassing rules were hopeless.&nbsp; The single-class and multi-class characters exist on very differently shaped power vs. xp curves.&nbsp; The shaped of those curves varied in detail by both race and class.&nbsp; And the DM was instructed to ignore the problem and hope that by playing long enough the problem would fix itself.&nbsp; Unfortunately the promise of &quot;fix itself&quot; was a bald lie -- the problems did not go away, they just changed into different awkward problems.&nbsp; This is just a tour-de-force of what a game designer should never ever do (but I do not expect Gary to have realized as much at the time, obviously).All editions potentially had serious power balance issues between the single-class and multi-class characters.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ridley's Cohort, post: 5993228, member: 545"] Your thoughts on 3e multiclassing are far more tender than my own regarding 1e/2e multiclassing and dual classing. I would also remind you that there is a 3e "module" called gestalt which has most of the advantages and fewer of the downsides of the 1e/2e style. I would not say I love the 3e multiclass system, but it was a workable framework that was somewhat successful and could easily be improved. Admittedly, the multi-class themed feats and PrCs are an implicit admission that they did not work as well as one might hope. If PCs had a "caster level" for every class equal to the character level (instead of the "class level"), the majority of the problems go away. Then it is mostly small tweaks to figure out which class abilities should be based on "caster level" rather than "class level". IMO and IME 1e/2e multiclassing rules were hopeless. The single-class and multi-class characters exist on very differently shaped power vs. xp curves. The shaped of those curves varied in detail by both race and class. And the DM was instructed to ignore the problem and hope that by playing long enough the problem would fix itself. Unfortunately the promise of "fix itself" was a bald lie -- the problems did not go away, they just changed into different awkward problems. This is just a tour-de-force of what a game designer should never ever do (but I do not expect Gary to have realized as much at the time, obviously). All editions potentially had serious power balance issues between the single-class and multi-class characters. [/QUOTE]

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