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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 6175168" data-attributes="member: 6701124">Rereading all of Howard's Conan this past year, I'm inclined to go the other way and say Barbarian should be one of the harder classes to get into - unlike magic and sword craft you can't study being the uncivilized other, you have to live it.   But I'm always open to a good story about why the character suddenly got the ability to run faster, rage, dodge, be tougher than people whose entire training is combat, and find traps using a sixth sense.   The character advancing in a single class presumably spent years in an apprenticeship or had vast life experiences developing many of the things that go along with being in that class: a host of weapon/armor proficiencies, +2 bonuses on several saves,  a host of class-skills, and the capability for some self study/improvement.  That different classes take a different amount of this pre-adventure training is acknowledged in the starting age table for the classes.  The self-training idea is explicitly mentioned in the Wizard section on spell-books.   Multi-classing in RAW just hands the character a huge platter of feat-equivalent powers in addition to a level's worth of ability - things that a character advancing in-class doesn't get.I'd like the rules for multi-classing to:* Give the really simple formulas that make the BAB and saves make sense (why do Sorc+Wiz attack worse than just Sorc 2?, why the extra +2s on saves?).  So each class has either a 1/2-per level or 1/3-level in each save with non-stackable +2 bonuses at first level, and gets a BAB per level of either 1/2, 3/4, or 1.* Require some in-game reason why the multi-classing made sense.  If they had a point or two in survival and intimidate, already had a bit of berzerker personality, and mentioned a few sessions before advancement time that they were working towards that, then I'd be inclined to let it slide without some outside or down-time training (it is just a game). Similarly, if no one else at the table strongly objected, I'd probably cave and let them do it if they said - "You know, if I'd thought about it I would have put those skill points back when in intimidate and survival to start barbarizing myself. Can we rewrite space-time as if I had?"   If they have essentially nothing in common with a Barbarian in terms of background or class skills, and want to just pick it up with no training or story beyond wanting some prestige class... then I have a hard time imagining it's for role-playing reasons.  * Limit the number of class-skills, armor/weapon proficiencies, and +2 save bonuses (not stacking) they get from the new class. Maybe 3 or 5 per level of that class taken?  Same for prestige classes.</blockquote>

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