Multiclassing variant

[Li Shenron]

What about this draft to replace how multiclassing XP penalties and favored classes work?

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- every core class taken past the first gives a cumulative XP penalty of 10%
- every prestige class taken past the first gives a cumuative XP penalty of 10%

exceptions:

- favored classes never give XP penalties
- prestige classes of 5 or less levels never give XP penalties
- ex-classes never give XP penalties

 

[RisnDevil]

I don't like it for one primary reason...many PC are made with the intent of a person requiring one or more classes to qualify for them at an appropriate time. The rule seems to be intended to prevent cherry-picking and powergaming, though this can be easily gotten around by requiring DM approval for addition Classes, core and prestige.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't like it for one primary reason...many PC are made with the intent of a person requiring one or more classes to qualify for them at an appropriate time. The rule seems to be intended to prevent cherry-picking and powergaming, though this can be easily gotten around by requiring DM approval for addition Classes, core and prestige.

I tried to, but I didn't understand what you mean...

How can you "go around" the DM intent to prevent powergaming by asking the DM to let you powergame?

 

[RisnDevil]

You misunderstand. The intent of your rules seems to prevent powergaming. You can get around having to modify the multiclass rules by requiring DM approval to take any additional classes, core or prestige. One of my DMs will not let us take a prestige class unless we announce several levels early we are getting one, and only if we can roleplay training into it. This is the same even for base classes. If the DM does not want you to powergame, then he should simply require you to actually spend game time training into new classes. If he does not want you to take a class because you want to solely to pwoergame, he should just make th training for it unavailable.

 

[Li Shenron]

Ok I thought "you can get around" meant "the player can get around"...

In case it helps to give comments, the intent behind these house rule is multiple:

1) to make it even more simple than in the PHB
2) to allow more combinations of classes

The latter may sound strange, but these HR coming from the fact that I don't see a reason why a combination of classes A and B in the form of A 3/B 1 should have 20% penalty (if none of A or B are favored) while A 2/B 2 doesn't have any penalty.
To say it in another way, normal muticlassing penalties force the players to avoid some combinations where classes are far away in levels, even if the combination is not more powerful to justify the penalty.
Also the reduced penalties should allow for more classes to coexist if someone wants.

These HR however have some new restrictions on another cases (when someone takes 2 classes at same level and none is favourite there is a 10% penalty which there was not in the original rules).

Also to apply penalty to PrCls is done rather to pursue better roleplay than to prevent powergaming, although the latter is considered a nice side-effect.
PrCls with 5 levels or less are typically cherry-picking by themselves and don't hinder roleplaying IMHO.

 

[Li Shenron]

bump

 

[Sir Whiskers]

My experience has been that no player will intentionally take an xp penalty just to multiclass into a particular class. YMMV, but even 10% would stop my players cold.

If your intent is to encourage more multiclassing, consider this:

1) A character may always take levels in its favored class(es) with no penalty.
2) A character's first class becomes an extra favored class.

This would allow players to avoid multiclassing penalties if they focus on their concept at level one. Example:

A dwarf grew up clanless in a large city. He begins with one level in rogue. He later became an enforcer, then a bodyguard. He gains a couple levels in fighter. He struck up a friendship with a cleric he was hired to guard, later taking vows. He now gains levels as a cleric. The rogue level doesn't count (1st-level class is favored). The fighter levels don't count (dwarf favored class). The cleric class is the only one that counts, so no multiclassing penalties.

As for PrC's, other than classes that are just plain broken, the biggest problem (IMO) is a player who takes one level in multiple PrC's, min/maxing to the hilt. If this is a problem, consider imposing a 5% penalty for each PrC a character has, the penalty removed when the character has more than one level in the PrC. Examples:

*Wiz9/Loremaster1 has 5% penalty.
*Wiz9/Lore2 has no penalty.
*Wiz9/Lore1/Deathseeker1 has 10% penalty.

 

[Li Shenron]

Thanks for the suggestions...

I wanted to encourage less but better multiclassing. I still like D&D to be a class-based game rather than a feature-based game, and I think that a character with more than a couple of core classes and/or more than a prestige class becomes difficult to define. For this reason, a player who takes more classes is usually only looking for a powerful combination of abilities.

Nowadays with the core rules I have seen a lot of characters with 3 or more classes, with levels adjusted in a way to prevent those XP. This is not a good rule IMHO - although I have lived with it until now - because on one side it prevents SOME of the combinations even with 2 classes only (when they are fara away in levels) but on the other side it allows OTHERS.

As an example, IMHO a Fighter/Barbarian/Ranger/Rogue with the same level in each class is a lame attempt to get the low-level features of Brb and Ran, plus some bonus skills and feats from the other two. The most interesting multiclass characters are in instead (IMHO again) the ones who have most levels in one class and a couple of levels in another.

For this reason I will first get rid of the dependence on the difference in levels.
This actually added more restriction, and so I lowered the amount of XP penalties.

I suppose that if 10% is already too much, I could make it so that the first TWO core classes don't give the penalty, which starts to play only if the PC has 3 classes.

 

[Li Shenron]

As for PrC's, other than classes that are just plain broken, the biggest problem (IMO) is a player who takes one level in multiple PrC's, min/maxing to the hilt. If this is a problem, consider imposing a 5% penalty for each PrC a character has, the penalty removed when the character has more than one level in the PrC. Examples:

*Wiz9/Loremaster1 has 5% penalty.
*Wiz9/Lore2 has no penalty.
*Wiz9/Lore1/Deathseeker1 has 10% penalty.

Prestige classes are effectively a different subject. I really want to put a penalty to "multiprestigeclassing" which should apply if a PC has TWO or more PrCl. I am perfectly fine with PrCls themselves but I think that they should rarely be taken more than one. They represent a narrow specialization and it is advisable that they are always ties to some organization or equivalent; for these reasons it should be difficult to "untie" your PC to the PrCl once he belongs to it, and most characters would not want to untie themselves, but they would rather pursue more and more specialization in that PrCl.

Again, in my experience when a player takes more PrCls he is just seeking for a powerful combo and very rarely he is following a roleplay concept. That is to say, players are very good in choosing a concept AFTER having chosen the combo, and in making it look like they did it the other way around .

For a while I too thought 5% would be adequate (lower than core classes since PrCls already have a cost in the prerequisites) but then I decided that 10% was still ok.

Some PrCls are an exception to the rules because they are cherry-picking by nature and don't represent going deeper and deeper into one thing. They are those PrCl that don't give a progression of their features but instead they give one feature by choice (among a selected set) every level, for example the Archmage. For those it makes sense that a PC takes one level every now and then, and I thought it's fair they don't give penalties. Anyway I had to find out a defined rule and therefore I choose to apply this to every PrCl "with 5 or less levels" although not all of them are ok (Wayfarer Guide has 3 levels but it isn't of this type; Horizon Walker has 10 levels but it works basically like Archmage), but at least such PrCls don't go epic and therefore shouldn't give XP penalties because early or late you have to stop and level-up in something else.

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BTW, of course a "broken" PrCl just never makes it to the campaign...

 

[bolie]

No penalty

My group uses the "no penalty" method. We've never charged anything for multi-classing. We also have DMs who will say "no" to multi-classing if it doesn't make sense. It works wonderfully.

Bolie IV