reapersaurus said:
See.. this is what I simply don't understand.
WHY should it be viable?
Turn that back around - why
shouldn't it?
3e was built on the principle that any two characters will be roughly equal, no matter what class(es) they choose to put their levels into. A 20th level fighter ought to be roughly equal to a 20th level wizard, and both ought to be roughly equal to a 20th level multiclass of the two. Spellcaster multiclassing was the one area where it really did not achieve that goal.
Remember, levels are an abstract measure of your character's power - just like points in GURPS or HERO, or dots/freebies/XP in Storyteller. If two characters of the same character level can have such widely differing levels of ability, then it affects the rest of the system, making things like CR and EL even creakier than before.
The reason the way 1e/2e did it was broken was because of the way XP worked in those games - even with splitting your XP across two classes, you were only a level or so behind everyone else. In 3e, you were half the level of everyone else, and unable to pull your weight as a character of your level. (And if you can't do the things a character of your level should be able to do, why are you treated like a character of that level?) In 3.5, you're still effectively 3-4 levels behind (depending on the class)
Effectively, each level of a spellcasting class is worth 'more' than the levels before it (while the fighting classes tend to remain much more even). That means that, say, the first level of cleric is not equal in usefulness to the 15th level of wizard, whereas it might be equal to the 15th level of fighter. So you're not getting 'a level of cleric' and 'a level of wizard', in exchange for 'a level of wizard', you're getting 'the fourth level of cleric' and 'the fourth level of wizard' in exchange for 'the seventh level of wizard or cleric'. You may have depth, but you've paid a tremendous price in power.
You're casting
scorching ray for a whopping 4d6 as the single-classed folks are casting...well, OK, 4th level sucks for damaging spells, but their
fireballs do 7d6 damage. In an area. And it's not even their highest level spell. Or if they want to show you up directly, they toss off an empowered
scorching ray, not only doing half as much damage with a single ray, but getting a second one as well.
Sure, you've got healing - but you've got
cure moderate while the single-classed cleric can toss off a
cure critical. You can throw up a
bull's strength but they've got
divine power. You need a feat just to be in the neighborhood of the other casters for getting through SR.
EDIT: sorry, just kind of trailed off there. Anyway, the point is that 3e multiclassing is built on the assumption that all levels are created equal, while 3e spellcasting is built so that higher levels are worth more than lower levels. That's what causes all the problems, and that's why someone with the casting ability of a Clr5/Wiz5 can be said to be the equal of someone with the casting ability of a Wiz8.
J
There are many engineer/physicist/lawyers - out of my class of 300, at least 20 of them. Where do you think the patent bar comes from? There a scads of biologist/chemist/lawyers.
