Multiclass-Penalty and Feats

[Jan van Leyden]

iirc Unearthed Arcana has a feat called "Additional Favored Class" or some such in a sidebar.

Yupp! I found it. Looks exactly like the one I had in mind. Thanks for the hint.

Huldvoll

Jan van Leyden

 

[the Jester]

Yupp! I found it. Looks exactly like the one I had in mind. Thanks for the hint.

Huldvoll

Jan van Leyden

Glad to help!

 

[nittanytbone]

If she wants no multiclass penalties, she should have thought ahead a bit when picking her race and class.

Also, PrCs and racial paragon classes don't count towards multiclassing penalties, so she should take a level or two to close up the gap and eliminate the penalty and then jump into the PrC.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

If she wants no multiclass penalties, she should have thought ahead a bit when picking her race and class.

It's not no multiclass penalties, it's one exception to the mulitclass penalty rule paid for with a feat. And you can not plan ahead for every contingency, especially in the first campaign in a new setting. The character concept ist cool and fitting for our campaign, nothing I want to penalize. And it's basically her idea to spend some ressource to get rid of this penalty.

But, hey! This world is large enough to accomodate different tastes.

Huldvoll

Jan van Leyden

 

[nittanytbone]

It's not no multiclass penalties, it's one exception to the mulitclass penalty rule paid for with a feat. And you can not plan ahead for every contingency, especially in the first campaign in a new setting. The character concept ist cool and fitting for our campaign, nothing I want to penalize. And it's basically her idea to spend some ressource to get rid of this penalty.

Fair enough. It might be a "better" trade off to accept the 20% hit for a level until she can even her classes out again, though. Depending on her class, she may not have all that many feats available, and a few hundred XP may be worth a feat.

Sorry, wasn't trying to criticize; I worded things a bit too harshly. Just trying to offer a less painful way out of the multiclass hole.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I think it reall yhelps to look at multiclass penalties in the light of the history of the game. As a mechanic, it is a very clever solution, and a positive one, to the intuitive sense that some races shouldn't be as good at some things, particularly when multiclass, than others.

In 1st ed., there were level caps: half-orcs could only attainn certain levels as clerics, a certain other number as magic users, etc. The level caps forced multiclassing when you were playingoutside of stereotype, and it was limiting.

The multiclass penalties do the reverse: they allow any race to attain expertise inn any field, and allow them to multiclass freely, as long as one of the classes conforms to racial stereotype. The onlything lmitied is when you multiclass in two fields inappropriate for the race.

It's a really good mechanic, that should be seen as an improvement, allowing 20th level halforc wizards if that's what you want to play.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Sorry, wasn't trying to criticize; I worded things a bit too harshly. Just trying to offer a less painful way out of the multiclass hole.

No problem with that, no offense taken! The next time character(s) are rolled I'll use this rule to motivate the players to play humans.

Huldvoll

Jan van Leyden

 

[Jan van Leyden]

The multiclass penalties do the reverse: they allow any race to attain expertise inn any field, and allow them to multiclass freely, as long as one of the classes conforms to racial stereotype. The onlything lmitied is when you multiclass in two fields inappropriate for the race.

It's a really good mechanic, that should be seen as an improvement, allowing 20th level halforc wizards if that's what you want to play.

You're right, it removed a lot of barriers and stereotyping. Also, the differences between multiclassing and dual-classing for humans made no sense whatsoever.

I don't like it from a mechanical point of view because it deviates from the system of building a character from options, adding options as you go. In all other cases, you gain new options when your character advances; here, the advancement incurs a penalty.

Thinking about it I'll probably either drop the rule or at least re-define the favorite classes for each race depending on the campaign to be run.

Perhaps letting each player select a background for her character, which gives an additional favored class for the character according to the selection.

Huldvoll

Jan van Leyden

 

[frankthedm]

I haven't seen such a feat. I'm guessing because then to make it fair you'd have to include another one for the rest of the group.

Really Smart

You are really smart, and learn more from any given experience than others.

Benefit: You gain 20% more experience than normal.

Normal: You gain the standard amount of experience listed in the DMG for figuring out experience rewards.

I mean, that's what such a feat is doing. It's giving the player +20% experience. And your "take multiple times" clause means they can get even more than that, depending on how wildly they decide to multiclass. If I were a non-multiclassing player in such a game, I'd be annoyed that a multiclassing player could take a feat to gain +20% xp, if I couldn't do the same.

I agree. Allowing a feat that gets rid of multiclass penaties penalizes straight-class PCs who are punished enough by the glut of PRC material.

It would be like allowing fractional BAB without fractional saves.

How did the player wind up with the XP penalty? What class combo? Was this a character concept multiclass, or a number crunch multiclassing.

 

[irdeggman]

I'd be careful about a generic style feat that is a one size fits all concept.

The ones from Eberron for monks and paladins, which are the 2 classes in the PHB that do not allow multiclassing, are pretty specific, IIRC, on tying them into organizations and taking the feats at the first (or second for monks IIRC) level of the class.

IMO the feats should be written specifically for each class and tied into some sort of organization that promotes this type of multiclassing and should be taken at (or before) acquiring the first level of the class that is causing the issues.

It shouldn't be a band-aid to retrofit something. Especially since, as you said, it fits the character concept and campaign setting.