Multiclassing.

[Khaalis]

Originally Posted by neceros:
"This is not a role, it's two roles. That is my point. Why would you want to mix heavy armor and a light armor? What is the end purpose of the character?"

To play someone who is not purely a heavily armoured tank or a fragile striker, but a blend of both.

The example I believe you are looking for would be something akin to in WoW - a Fury Spec Warrior in Berserk Stance. Heavy armored warrior taking on the DPS role even though the class by definition is a defender.

 

[HeinorNY]

I for one hate the clunky, metagamy idea that the players use entirely different rules from everyone else, even other human wizards, simply because they're controlled by the players. But that's a discussion for another thread. I digress.

The rules are there to be played by the players so they can interact with the gameworld, not to represent how things work or how people do their stuff in the gameworld.

 

[Imp]

I think you could modify your concept pretty powerfully in 3.5, too- if there were no feat chains, no prerequisites beyond class, race, and level bracket, class prerequisites could be bypassed with a feat, and you got twice as many feats as you normally did.

You know, having played with variants of 3.5 that do this, it's really only the last thing, number of feats. Prereqs for concept feats can be worked around any number of ways, mainly by making more feats available (that support similar concepts with different mechanics, possibly). It works.

 

[Green Knight]

Anyway, on the subject of multiclassing, can't say I'm all to pleased with what we got. There're two things that I'm especially disappointed about.

1) The level limits on your Feats. I really don't see why I have to wait til 10th-level to get a Daily Power. Would it really matter if one got it, sooner?

2) I was hoping to be able to spend any number of Feats on multiclassing. But from appearances, there's nothing to indicate that you can take the Novice Power, Acolyte Power, or Adept Power Feats more then once. I hope I'm wrong on that, but it's a shame if you can only have one of each.

A couple other things are bothering me, though.

Is exchanging a Paragon Path the only way to further multiclass beyond level 10? Are there no multiclass Feats for the Paragon Tier? Same goes for the Epic Tier. Are there any multiclass Feats for that, or does one have to substitute their Epic Destiny for further multiclassing?

Also pretty disappointing that you can't take an At-Will Power from another class as an At-Will Power. I really wanted to give a Paladin character a power like Tide of Iron, or Lance of Faith. Oh well.

Pretty interesting, though. If one gets all four Feats, then a 10th-level character will derive one-third of his power from his secondary class, and the other two-thirds from his primary class. And assuming trading in a Paragon Path to further multiclass works the way I think it does, then a 20th-level character will derive half his power from his primary class, and half from his secondary.

Just wish we'd gotten some info on how exactly exchanging a Paragon Path for multiclassing works. Here's the list of powers that you get for a Paragon Path.

11th: Paragon path feature
11th: Paragon path action point feature
11th: Paragon path encounter power
12th: Paragon path utility power
16th: Paragon path feature
20th: Paragon path daily power

My hope is this. That at 11th level, you can choose a class feature from the class you're multiclassing in. Let's assume Cleric. So I'm thinking at 11th level you get a class feature. Like Healing Word, and that it works just as it does for the Cleric (twice per encounter). At 11th-level you gain a Cleric Encounter Power. At 12th-level you gain a Cleric Utility Power. At 16th-level you gain another Class Feature (like Channel Divinity). And at 20th-level you gain a Cleric Daily Power.

That's how I'm thinking that works. In which case you will have very nearly created a character who's truly half-and-half. The only question is, what do you get for the Paragon Path Action Point Feature? Speaking for myself, I think an At-Will Power which works as an At-Will Power for that would be fantastic.

 

[neceros]

The example I believe you are looking for would be something akin to in WoW - a Fury Spec Warrior in Berserk Stance. Heavy armored warrior taking on the DPS role even though the class by definition is a defender.

Forgive me of my lack of knowledge of Wow, I stopped after playing EQ for 8 years.

I see nothing wrong with a two wielding dps heavy tanker, for a time, at least. I dont think one should be able to go around all day dishing out damage and being tanked up. If the character loses AC for being reckless, as a rage, or some other trade off to keep the DPs balanced there's no problem.

Multiclassing should be to expand your abilities, not give you more power.

 

[Imp]

You want someone to switch between the two styles? Like say "Today, I'll leave my plate mail at home and wear leather armor, since we need to sneak a lot..."

Or do you want a Heavily Armoured Tank Striker?

For gods sakes he wants a fighter/rogue straight out of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd edition, is it that hard to divine. A concept that all of those handled more or less well and was neither broken nor unviable in any of them.

 

[Cirex]

I want to see the limitations on the powers you can pick before I give my final opinion, but it looks decent so far.

EDIT : Doh, posted at the wrong one.

 

[neceros]

For gods sakes he wants a fighter/rogue straight out of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd edition, is it that hard to divine. A concept that all of those handled more or less well and was neither broken nor unviable in any of them.

That's my bloody point. With Multiclassing as we see it he doesn't need to switch between Rogue and Fighter in 4th. Everyone needs to rewire themselves to understand the mechanics of 4e. Eventually.

 

[Sammael]

The rules are there to be played by the players so they can interact with the gameworld, not to represent how things work or how people do their stuff in the gameworld.

Will you concede that this is the first time ever this has been the core assumption in D&D, and that 4E is one of the very few PnP role-playing games which make that assumption?

As for multiclassing via feats, I very much doubt it will be feasible. If it were so feasible, Rich Baker wouldn't have had to write a new "Swordmage" class to cover the fighter/mage concept. I predict that we will see a whole bunch of new classes, since the new multiclassing rules will be woefully inadequate to cover a great number of concepts which were easily doable in previous editions. And people will inevitably want to re-create their favorite characters from the past in 4E.

 

[Khaalis]

Forgive me of my lack of knowledge of Wow, I stopped after playing EQ for 8 years.

I see nothing wrong with a two wielding dps heavy tanker, for a time, at least. I dont think one should be able to go around all day dishing out damage and being tanked up. If the character loses AC for being reckless, as a rage, or some other trade off to keep the DPs balanced there's no problem.

Multiclassing should be to expand your abilities, not give you more power.

Unfortunately there is no equivalent EQ analogy as you didn't have differing paths for your class. In WoW you have 3 paths per class. In the case of the Warrior its Arms (primarily specialization in 2H weapons), Fury (primarily 2 weapon DPS), and Protection (tanking). You also have 3 different stances - Battle (generic balance of protection and offense), Defense (increase ability to take damage and reduce DPS) and Berserk (reduce ability to take damage but deal more DPS).

In WOW, you have specifically defined roles with Warriors being defenders and Rogues being DPS. However, with the right "build" you can make a Warrior that is as good or even better than a Rogue at dishing out DPS AND they have better defenses with the use of heavy armor and defender based abilities. You CANT however make a rogue into any semblance of a defender.

This is kind of what we are talking about with a Fighter / Rogue in D&D and its almost the same settup. A Fighter with some rogue is a defender with better DPS ability than normal. However, a Rogue that takes some Fighter doesn't become a better defender.

I think what we will end up seeing is more "Hybrid" classes. They said all along that the Fighter/Wizard GISH was going to be a viable option. This hasn't really been true with what we have seen in the Multiclass rules to date, and in fact apparently WotC agreed in that they already wrote a Hybrid Fighter/Wizard - the Swordmage. For a Fighter/Rogue Hybrid, I think we will see something along the line of a Swashbuckler (from 3.5) where they are light armored Fighter with some defender abilities that increase their AC, include things like Marking but will focus more on dealing damage than soaking it up.

JMHO.