No multiclassing penalties?

[Thunderfoot]

Actually Bob the fighter went to magic school. Studied for a while but never succeeded in spellcasting. Still he has the books and when he gets the chance he tries to study them. A few months hanging out with Tom were all it took to turn the theory into practice. One day boom, it all clicked and on that morning he prepared a spell and successfully cast it later that day.

Of course, this means the Bob character sheet should have always had a spellbook and spell component pouch on it. But most people like to plan out their character's progressions so the above at least is plausible.
<SNIP>

And if a player approached me with that during character creation - I would let that fly like a bird - absolutely plausible. My problem is when after four levels of fighter, Bob suddenly wants to sling spells instead of swing swords because that looks cooler and does more damage. Sorry, I don't think so.

 

[Ranger REG]

The more I think about, the more I dislike the fact that 3.5 tried to discourage dipping by giving the classes less at first level. You shouldn't change the classes to fix multiclassing (any more than 3.0 already did). You should change multiclassing instead. (Assuming that you think dipping was a problem in 3.0, of course.)

Wasn't there a discussion about the problem of front-loading class features at low level?

I mean, I don't mind having the ranger's combat style at 1st instead of 2nd class level, or that fighter should be able to specialize at lower than 4th.

 

[RFisher]

And if a player approached me with that during character creation - I would let that fly like a bird - absolutely plausible. My problem is when after four levels of fighter, Bob suddenly wants to sling spells instead of swing swords because that looks cooler and does more damage. Sorry, I don't think so.

Right. Because retconning--even while staying within the rules--so that the player can enjoy his PC more is just wrong. (^_^)

 

[Thunderfoot]

Right. Because retconning--even while staying within the rules--so that the player can enjoy his PC more is just wrong. (^_^)

Yes - it is.... :\

 

[Nail]

People keep having all of this bad-wrong-fun. We've got to put a stop to it!

 

[Voadam]

I think they are a great tool with two main effects. First, they limit min max players who like to "dip" into classes for abilities.

I think a Ranger 2/Fighter 2/Barbarian 2/Rogue 2 is a pretty strong dipping character path for levels 1-8 and can be done by any race without xp penalties. At 9th+ levels they then can qualify for most strong warrior prcs with most any BAB, feat, or skill prereq if they planned for it.

 

[Li Shenron]

Meh. I don't like the idea of penalizing others just to make Humaniti as a PC race look good.

It doesn't penalize the others as much as benefits those 2 races.

 

[Woas]

Arcana Evolved has done away with favored classes and multiclassing penalties completely. Removing those two things is just fine. It works great for the DM just as much as the PC because you can whip up some very interesting BBEG NPC without having to feel bad at breaking the rules in the first place to do it.

The only thing I've noticed that can be a problem is that saves can quickly become a little crazy. But even then the problem only becomes apparent if a character has like 3+ classes and they all share a "Very Good" (+2 at 1st level) save type.

 

[RFisher]

I think a Ranger 2/Fighter 2/Barbarian 2/Rogue 2 is a pretty strong dipping character path for levels 1-8

Cool. Thanks! Now I just need a concept to fit that...

-The Lazy Munchkin

 

[Gabester]

Yes, get rid of those stupid rules. They are arbitrary and usually just get in the way.

However, I selected other. Although these rules are very poor at what they are trying to do I do think that it is good to provide a bit more structure for multiclassing. My general guidelines:

1) Do NOT let players pick any classes they want. Many classes are poorly writt.en and poorly balanced. Also, a lot of classes won't make sense in your game world. Spend the time to vet which base classes and prestige classes you will allow In general multiclassing is very well balanced among the core classes and usually only gets really out of hand when players bring in that crazy-broken class they found in a Dragon article or some sourcebook. If restricted to core classes, multi-classing usually reduces overall power -- taking all your levels in the same class generally is the best min/max approach (not always, and there may be temporary boosts to multiclassing but generally it's pretty balanced).

2) Make your characters create a character concept when they start out and stick them to it (unless they do a good job of roleplaying a change in heart). It can also help to create some general limitations on multiclassing. Good rules for that: your first level class must always make up at least half of your base class levels and you can only take a second prestige class if you have at least 5 levels in your first (or max out the levels if there are less than 5).

3) After the revamp of rangers the biggest abuse in the core multiclassing rules is the ability to pick up armor/weapon feats retroactively by taking a level of fighter. You don't get the 4x skills retroactively and you shouldn't feats either. So don't allow this. Taking a new class should never add feats unless they are granted as 1st level abilities. If you want to get free access to all the fighter weapon/armor feats then you're also going to have to take their crappy skills for your first level. Or take Paladin and get stuck with all of their restrictions.