D&D 5E Multiclassing discussion

[Majoru Oakheart]

In my experience, the crazy broken x-1/x-1 gestalt you speak of was never more powerful than the single classed character in AD&D. Maybe the spells scaled better. But I remember playing many such "gestalts" and finding it more difficult than single classed players.QUOTE]
We found that multiclassing in 2e was always more powerful. Nearly everyone did it if told we got to start at higher level. The only time we chose not to was when we had to start at 1st level. It sucked to be the guy who was still 1/1 while everyone else was 3rd and had more hitpoints and THAC0 than you. You died too easily.

However, if we were told that we were going to start at 5th level or higher, pretty much everyone multiclassed. If we were told we were starting at 15th level or higher everyone dual classed instead.

However, although we found that multiclassing was more powerful, it wasn't on the same scale as multiclassing in 3e. It was nice to have more hitpoints and a better THAC0 for your Wizard and it defintely made them more powerful. However, the difference between a 20 Wizard and a 19 Wizard/19 Fighter was +13 to hit and around 25-87 hitpoints, and a couple better saves in exchange for losing a couple spell slots. The difference between a Wizard 20 and the right combination of multiclassing in 3e might be +8 to hit, 96 hitpoints, 2 more attacks per round, 8-15 points of AC, about 5 more feats, and better saves in every category in exchange for a couple of spell slots.

If you had the ability to plan in advance, it was always to your advantage to multiclass.

 

[jmucchiello]

We found that multiclassing in 2e was always more powerful.

The party dynamic is what you are forgetting. If you had a F9, W9, and a F8/W8 in the same party, the two single class characters would ALWAYS get the better magic items because it just makes more sense to enhance the pure powerhouse player rather than the guy who can cover his own backside because he has two classes. Who do we give the Ring of Protection +2 to? The W9, the F8/W8 can take the W9's RoP+1 as a hand me down. Who get the +3 sword? The fighter, he can give his +2 weapon to the F8/W8. In almost all cases, the multiclass character is going to get the second string magic items because you don't give the guy with more options even more options.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

However, the difference between a 20 Wizard and a 19 Wizard/19 Fighter

There isn't any way to get a 19/19 character with 20th level XP. Sure, at lower level you're only a level behind, but after 10th level you start really dragging. I think by the time the party average is hitting 20th level, a fighter/mage is closer to 14th level(s).

 

[pemerton]

What purpose(s) do you see D&D's strong archetypes serving?

hooking your imagination into archetypes and keeping a good game mechanical shorthand to talk about characters

I think this is the main reason.

 

[jmucchiello]

There isn't any way to get a 19/19 character with 20th level XP. Sure, at lower level you're only a level behind, but after 10th level you start really dragging. I think by the time the party average is hitting 20th level, a fighter/mage is closer to 14th level(s).

Excellent point. I looked it up:

A 20th level wizard has over 3.75 million xp. The ftr/wiz with 1.875 megaxp in each class would be ftr15/wiz15 actually. Fighter attained 15 at 1,750,001 xp and the wizard hit 15th level at 1,875,001 xp

Maybe this is the different in "experience". We always played at high levels, as I noted before, 10th level the game was just getting interesting. We loved teleporting around and skipping the overland bandit raids. So there was no X < X-1/X-1 stuff because when the pure wizard hits 10th level at 250,001 xp (and the pure ftr hits 9th level at the same time), the split class is just going from ft7/wiz8 to ftr8/wiz8 (at exactly 125,001 xp is ftr8). The X = X-1/X-1 only exists at lower levels.