Multiclassing

[FireLance]

Also, there is a great gulf between the character who is born with something special ( a sorceror), someone whose culture is the source of his class (barbarian), someone who must learn or die (the street urchin rogue) and the PC adventurer who is often not in these situations and has to find another believable way to learn what these types of people know naturally. PCs can discover their sorcerous nature so that is a different circumstance.

This is not a bad approach, but it is campaign-specific. An alternative perspective is that all class abilities can be explained in terms of natural talent.

 

[Xath]

As far as training goes, I've taken a tip from OotS. According to D&D rules, you can't justify an equal timetable for a human and an elf training to be wizards. The human would learn a heck of alot faster. Requiring people to set aside training time in-game would be unfair to the races that don't learn as quickly.

Thus, I mostly ignore it as long as it doesn't disrupt the story.

 

[Agback]

Clerics are called perhaps but then they are trained in ritual, prayer, meditation, spellcraft, theology, metaphysics, etc. There is much, much more than simply praying to a god to be a cleric.

That is an assumption aboutthe way the world works. It need not be true in every game world.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Tell me: do you insist that characters display a desire to learn something outside their known fields and actively try to learn before acquiring a completely new ability through a choice of feat? Before learning a new skill with the skill points their class gives them? Before acquiring a completely new ability as a class feature in an existing class?

If not, why not?

Yes. I look at it this way: if a player wants to have their character go a new route and makes choices based on the characters new interests, they will earn what they are seeking to do. Trial and error is a way of learning. When the charater decides to gain a new skill, feat, or level in a different class, I expect the player to know what, if any, prereqs there are for it. In the case of skill, they must be attempting to use it untrained before putting ranks in it.

When it comes to feats, the character must be studying how to properly apply the effect (benefit) it has and when the it is acceptable to gain fthe benefit of it. Some feats however, I find are better off as character traits, or as the application of furthering the limits of what they can do. For example, if a player wanted to gain Skill Focus, I would expect the character to be studying tomes of how the skill has been applied in history and how it is currently being used to shape the future of sentient beings as a whole.

When a player desires their character to gain a level in a class they don't already have, I expect the xharacter to be going through the motions of being taught tricks of the new trade, or through a manner of self taught. A player thatr decides that their character is teaching themselves must be actively training in the use of any weapons skills that may be gained. For armors, the character must spend time in them, learning how it affects their every choice, this means spending countless hours doing what they normally do (including using weapons) and how they are affected by the choice made.

Spellcasting is handled a little differently. When a character gains a new level (either in an existing spellcasting class or a new one), they must be studying how their spells affect their environment and how the environment effects their spells (testing the new limits of what can be done). Magic is wondrous thing, using it blindly is like encountering a wild beast and not knowing what it will do next. The character must constantly be learning, experiencing and documenting how the force they use affects every future choice made. A spellcater that is a smart and wise individual thinks before using the power they have and carefully makes a choice on the proper tool (spell) for the situation.

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I hope this helps to answer your questions.

 

[wingsandsword]

Another unusual situation that is not the norm.

Player characters aren't the norm. They are exceptional, unique, special. It's even canonical in an official D&D setting that you could become a Cleric by divine guidance, Goldmoon from Dragonlance (the default Cleric PC in the original modules) became a Cleric by pretty much having a vision and suddenly finding out she could pray for spells and recieve them, and just by reading the Disks of Mishakal (that were effectively holy scriptures engraved on metal discs) characters could become clerics after a period of reading the discs and meditating on them. A cleric is just a character who prays to a god and the god answers directly, everything else is a setting presumption.

Some kind? Well martial arts certainly requires some intense training and if mages in the game have to be half as well informed as earthly members of occult orders ie. The Golden Dawn, Thelema, Aurum Solis, etc. (read some studies on esoteric Qabala sometime to see what esoteric training would be like) then they are certainly apprentices for years before becoming real wizards.

This is D&D, not anything "real", practitioners of real-world occult traditions spending years to master the teachings of their order has absolutely squat to do with D&D. If you want to make becoming a 1st level wizard take many years of study, go right ahead, but that is another setting-specific consideration, not innate to the game. To others having a wizard show them the basics for a week or two and many hours of practice could suffice (at least "well enough").

1st level Wizard doesn't mean they are deeply versed in the arcane and occult traditions of their world, it means they know the most basic principles of the class, how to begin learning on their own (with XP) and perform the most basic tasks of their class (like casting spells). It isn't even a third edition conceit that you can learn to be a D&D wizard that quickly. The old AD&D "Treasure Hunt" module (TSR 9185) even includes an explanation of this: the module is about normal people who survive a shipwreck and gain their 1st PC class level surviving on an island, and you can become a Wizard by spending several hours reading and experimenting with some spellbooks and wizardly acoutriments that survived the crash. Not a master certainly, but enough to pull off a Magic Missile and call for a Familiar (i.e. 1st level).

IMO the idea that classes can be picked up with a minimum to no training at all must mean that in these settings there are no apprentice mages, acolyte clerics, novice martial artists who are older than adolecents or perhaps only the inept need to apprentice at anything at all.

A young student who wants to learn to be a monk could spend 5 or 10 years in a monastery learning the intricacies of philosophy and many days in simple labor punctuated with lessons in martial arts and spiritual training, or an old master could find a talented new student on the eve of a great war and give him a crash course in the fundamentals of their fighting style and doctrine, which he gets to put to lots of practical use in battle and become a 1st level monk when he levels up. Condensing loads of training into a short cinematic period where they learn to be a skilled warrior happens all the time in movies, all those training montages. Many DM's run D&D as a cinematic game, where training montages are more important than long tedious months or years spent in Wizarding school or Fighter Academy so you can multiclass when you level up.

The campaign world isn't built around game mechanics and people getting the fastest method of getting the minimal method of gaining a class. It is possible to learn a skill set quickly through on-the-job training, but it is often preferable (in ways not easily reflected in game mechanics) to learn it over more time in a more structured environment.

Or, to use another d20 game, think about Star Wars. Luke Skywalker multiclassed into Jedi Guardian not after being trained from infancy at the Jedi Temple, but after several hours of instruction from Obi-Wan on the flight between Tatooine and Alderaan. It was clear from what Yoda said later (and reiterated in the Expanded Universe) that Lukes training was incomplete and had serious gaps, but from a game-mechanic standpoint it was enough for him to multiclass to Jedi. In the later novels, Luke spends years filling in the gaps in his initial training, tracking down what he can to find the teachings that Obi-Wan and Yoda didn't have the time to pass on to him.

Gaining a Wizard or Monk level after a few days of practice is just like that, you are gaining the absolute rudiments of the class enough to be represented by that in rules purposes, but for roleplaying purposes you are seriously lacking in many elements of your training.

 

[Shellman]

In the 3 campaigns I've played in (as a PC), I've seen one PC do this. A barbarian took 3rd and 4th character levels in fighter. The DM said the two classes were close enough that special training between the two wasn't necessary.Quasqueton

Whoa!

I've never had a DM allow that nor would I ever allow it as a DM! The whole concept of allowing a character to take two levels of a secondary or tertiary class without completing the prerequisite levels is completely unbalancing. It specifically undermines the concept of characters advancing in a specific class.

 

[Agback]

When a player desires their character to gain a level in a class they don't already have, I expect the xharacter to be going through the motions of being taught tricks of the new trade, or through a manner of self taught.

<snip>

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I hope this helps to answer your questions.

I think so. A short summary would be that you insist (on grounds of realism) that all characters either get training or spend a lot of effort on trial-and-error self-training to acquire a new class level that either:

1) gives them a new class,

2) gives them a new feat,

3) lets them purchase a new skill,

4) gives them a new class ability, or

5) gives them access to a new level of spells.

I would have thought that in practise this meant that pretty much any new class level that a character took would require training. So gaining first level in a new class would be no different from gaining an extra level in an existing class, most of the time.

 

[Sanackranib]

some times thats the only way to build the character that you want so ya Im totally for it

 

[Psychic Warrior]

In my experience it never occurs to people to make big jumps (fighter to psion, wizard to monk) without in game explanation. Simple transitions, monk to fighter, don't usually require explanation beyond "I'm focusing more on martial ability than enlightenment due to all my recent combat experiences that are the sole reason I'm getting a level in the first place" (I should mention that in my games we don't use the "leave monk or paladin and you can never return" variant. Monte Cook has explained that there is no mechanical justification but playtesters insisted it be put in for flavor. As it's not a flavor I like in my games it's been cut).

In the few instances there have been big jump the only reason it's occurred to hte player to make the jump is because of the in-game reasons. A wizard, for example, spent several months infiltrating a military academy. Consequently he received training in weapons and spent several months practicing with them so the level was pre-determined before he even got the experience points for it.

Yup - this is how it is for my game as well. A couple of players seem to be angling towards multiclassing to cleric (One is a Fighter/Monk the other a Fighter/Rogue) and they are well aware that they will have to make some effort to RP this out (they both have decent character backgrounds that support this kind of move - the F/R less so but he has had some stuff happen recently that coudl result in a paradim shift like this). As well stuff like the magic casting classes need to have some kind of training just to maintain a sense of 'realism' to the game world. I basically have a list of classes that can be multi classed to without the need for extensive training (but still so RP reasons are needed) as well as some that do need training and other considerations.

 

[genshou]

Generally speaking, the opportunity is available enough in my games that this is not an issue. But sometimes a PC will hold off on training (in any game that doesn't require an "unrealistic" level advancement pacing, I use training rules) just so they can gain their next level in a certain class.