Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5998306" data-attributes="member: 54877">Brainstorming and running off on tangents from too many recent posts to quote, trying to reverse-engineer from desirable outcomes: 1. Take Stalker's requirement as a starting place - no XP requirement to handle leveling. This assumes something at least passingly 3E-like in progression, with that kind of stacking. 2. Grant that not all class levels are equally valuable to a given character past first. (That is, multiclassing into 1 level of wizard doesn't buy a 10th level cleric very much compared to the 11th level of cleric.) 3. Assume for the sake of argument, however, that given levels of single-class characters are close to equal. A 10th level wizard taking another level of wizard is staying mostly in sync with a 10th level cleric taking another level of cleric. 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. Taking two levels of cleric will do that. However, based on <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=3" target="_blank">#3</a> , taking 10 levels of any other class also should work. This means that taking a single level on this standard character chart (#1) outside your highest class, should provide 5 levels in the lower class, up until the point you equal your highest class.  6. Hmm. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> Using other assumptions on the ratio and scaling, can an alternative structure be made to work? For example, if each single class level is only x1.2 increase in power, instead of x2 every two levels, that drops the scaling considerably. The flat worth for x2 is 1,1.4,2,2.8,4 (roughly). The flat worth for x1.2/level is 1,1.2,1.4,1.7,2, etc. Or x2 power every 5 class levels. This means that a 10th level cleric branching into wizard could take, over his next 5 levels on the main chart, either 5 levels of cleric or 10 levels of wizard, to stay even. Or, as long as his cleric level remains higher, he can take 2 wizard levels for each "character" level gained. It's too late for me to even try thinking about what this would mean for more complicated multiclassing. I do see a couple of gaping problems, though:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If power doubles every five levels, that means a new spell level in a full caster gets picked up every five levels (instead of every two levels). A wizard would need to get to 11th level to get fireball. Aesthetically, I don't see that flying, even though it's just a kind of scaling (that could be adjusted in that main "character" chart). Though that certainly doubles down on Greg K's house rule to slow spell advancement.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The classes are necessarily going to have a lot of "dead" levels at that rate.</li> </ul>However, since the only point of such a character chart is to equalize single-class and multiclass progressions, I suppose it could be pulled out of the direct 1:1 ratio with the actual class levels, and expanded. That is, pick up five "character" levels, and you can take a level in your highest class. Pick up a lesser amount, you can take a level in a multiclass. It's one of those things that might be cleaner in refined application than in theory, but right now it makes my head hurt! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

Verification