airwalkrr said:
Now, it is worth pointing out that you are a human, and humans have the ability to pick up a new class later. Demihumans do not. Why people cannot grasp the latter, I fail to understand. You would think since this is a fantasy world, one could imagine that humans retain a distinct advantage of adaptability, but no, everyone seems to think a dwarf or an elf thinks, acts, and matures just like a human. I think such a prospect is silly. Elves are not just humans with pointy ears who live a long time. Dwarves are not just short, stocky humans with beards. Halflings are not just furry-footed midgets. They are races with their own traditions, beliefs, practices, abilities, and skills.
Quite right, but I think because humans are so diverse and flexible we immediately tend to make other races "more simple" in contrast to ourselves. The fact is there are no other races with distinctly human abilities (like advanced language, advanced tool-making, culture and history). We can only speculate what 'demihumans' would be like. According to 2e, demihumans really were these narrowminded species that were rigid and stuck to a few classes. Not so in 3e. And really, how you flavor them is entirely up to you.
Think of it like this, the default rule is that no creature is adaptable enough to be able to learn an entirely new set of skills after reaching maturation/adulthood. Humans have a unique racial trait called "adaptability" that allows them to learn an entirely new set of skills after reaching adulthood.
The only problem I have with that is its narrow-minded 2e flavor. 2e had things like racial classes, racial level caps, and differing exp tables to balance the various characters. In 3e adventurers have a unique adventuring trait called "adaptability" that allows them to learn an entirely new set of skills whenever they want and barring some alignment restriction, everyone can be everything.
I think you mean draconian. There is nothing necessarily dragonlike about disallowing one to learn a new set of skills.
Quite right
And for the record, most people who learn a trade or develop a skill do that or some variation thereof for the rest of their lives. At 27, you are still pretty young. However, at 37, the prospect of changing careers again will probably seem distasteful to you. Lots of people hold several different jobs in their lifetime before they are 40. But most people stick to the same kind of work regardless of who employs them. It is because of the relative inability of human adults to learn new things relative to human children. Those who don't do the same kind of work most of their lives are the exception, not the rule.
I only want to know whether adventurers constitute the exception or the rule in your campaign. I'm fine with 90% of the people in a given campaign being boring and relatively not-multiclassed (or heck, classed with PHB classes at all). However, the whole point of playing a role-playing game is to take on a role and play it for fun. The rules and numbers just provide a system in which to adjucate various situations.
You see, this is exactly where the powergamer comes out. First of all, I doubt you were really never casting spells unless this was a world where magic was rare or frowned upon. But if that was the case, why was the DM letting you play a mage anyway.
OK, you weren't there. You're free to guess at however you think the game went, but when I say I didn't cast many spells, I mean in a given day I didn't have to memorize new spells because I usually only cast 1 spell a day (Mage Armor). In social situations I tried to be funny. I was playing a Chaotic Neutral character with a bunch of friends that were also playing somewhat a-typical heroes. We were rather mercenary about going about our adventuring, usually insisting on some form of payment up front. My character in particular was maddening about his contributions - after he dealt with 1/4 of the problems (mostly in combat) he would provide minimal effort to help the party (unless things were going badly).
And 1st level wizards dont get that many spells at 1st level anyway. I didn't take a familiar, planning on getting improved familiar at some point (we were playing with the then-just-released Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting).
Second of all, the reason you took rogue levels instead of putting cross-class ranks into Hide and Move Silently is because you were powergaming, either subconsciously or consciously. You decided that Hide and Move Silently were valuable skills so you decided you had to max them out. Getting sneak attack, a boost to Reflex, and an extra hp or two probably didn't hurt the decision either. Being a wizard who knows how to use those skills doesn't make you any less a wizard, but neither does it make you a rogue. From your description, there is no good reason you couldn't have simply taken cross-class ranks other than powergaming. Did your wizard join a thieves guild and spend several years developing his talent at stealth? The rogue did, what makes your wizard so special that he can just pick up a new class without training? If I go spend all night sneaking around your house I would be rolling a lot of Hide/Move Silently checks, but that would not mean I was suddenly better at doing so. I would have to study up on it, either by reading or learning from masters. And then I would have to put it in practice against many individuals. I doubt your wizards, who most likely rolled 5-10 such checks before taking a rogue level, have anything resembling the type of training a rogue went through. What you describe is not a viable excuse for taking rogue levels, it is a good reason to consider putting a few ranks in Hide and Move Silently. That, along with investing in a good Dex and some beneficial magic items will make you almost as good as a rogue, but then again, you weren't supposed to be just as good as a rogue in the first place. You spent years of your life training to be a wizard, not a rogue.
Whoa, thats a giant paragraph. First, I don't appreciate being called a power-gamer. I consider myself a smart-gamer, but I play for the joy of playing a role, not the joy of getting the highest numbers. My elven wizard at level 1 bought a monk's outfit and did not go around advertising he was a wizard. He wasn't particularly proud of it and had left his elven wizard college, family, and friends to go adventuring. He shaved his head and learned to get by in the wild, and managed to craft his own clothing.
As I said earlier, my characters often grow organically. The party at that time did not have a rogue (especially one that spent years and years practicing before he got level 1). My character was often hiding in shadows and generally slinking about. I was using my bow more often than my magic. I had a decent dexterity and had been thinking of taking Point Blank Shot as my third-level feat. The DM suggested I look into taking a level of rogue, based on my character's actions he felt it would be appropriate. In fact, he thought I wasn't practicing my wizard skill set enough to reasonably advance as a wizard, seeing as I wasn't interested in acquiring new spellbooks (in fact, over the course of the character's career 1-8, I didn't learn a single spell except by advancing as a wizard). I also never ended up maxing hide and move silently, eventually feeling he had reached a reasonable level of skulking - good enough to fool saps, not good enough to get by without spells. Eventually the character ended up eschewing all weapons save magic (another radical shift from his archery days).
Now, based on how the character was turning out in-game, I decided to take the rogue levels. As I've said, if I wanted to make a rogue-wizard, it would have behooved me to take the rogue level first. But I didnt know what my character was going to do when I rolled some dice and came up with a backstory. All I knew is I wanted to play an elven male with a high intelligence who had come from a family line steeped in wizardry. And he was good at wizardry, but he didn't particularly care that he was good at it. It was just that kind of character.
If you took rogue levels after several levels of taking cross-class ranks in sneaky skills, roleplayed joining a thieves guild, and did several in-character training missions with them, I would be less inclined to decry your multiclassing as pure powergaming. But since you indicated nothing of the sort as your reason, rather stating the reason was because you were using Hide and Move Silently, it can then be inferred that your choice was motivated primarily by the desire to be more powerful regarding stealth. Besides all that, the more rational decision for a wizard who wants to be stealthy is to craft a pair of boots of elvenkind and cast invisibility on himself.
As I said, I had taken hide and move silently cross-classed at 1st level. Combined with a decent dexterity score and the nature of low-level adventuring, I wasn't getting seen too often. Had there been a feat called "Sneaky" I likely would have taken that. I never joined a thieve's guild. Being an intelligent elf, I simply got a few simple traps and a thieve's kit (which did require a side-mission) and taught myself. My desire, as a player, was to correctly project my character, which was acting like a rogue. Why then, could my multiclassing be considered powergaming? Or, a better question, how does ANYONE multiclass? The fact that we can both agree that waiting for more wizard levels, learning Invisibility and getting some Boots of Elvenkind is a better choice makes it seem more metagamey, and thus more power-gamey than what I did.
And this brings up one more thing that I want to address. As I've said before, most classes are front-loaded. Take a level of wizard and get a full spellbook plus Scribe Scroll and +2 to your Will saves! Take a level of rogue and get lots of skill points, +1d6 sneak attack, +2 to Reflex, and the ability to spot traps, not to mention weapon and armor proficiencies. Take a level of barbarian and get rage, fast movement, weapon proficiencies, a decent number of skills for a fighting class, +2 Fort and great hp. How could any fighter or ranger pass up just one level of barbarian? The reason it is assumed your character spent several years developing this front-loaded abilities is because it should take several years to learn this kind of stuff. I actually have little problem letting a player play a gestalt character with an XP penalty to keep him a few levels lower than everyone else if the player wants to play a multiclass character since it makes sense that the character spent those formative years studying his vocations. But it does not make sense that a barbarian who spent his life in the wild suddenly discovers not only how to read and write, but masters 1st level magical spells.
Fair enough. I don't think multiclassing should be allowed with no questions asked or anything (barbarian toxa wizard, for emple, would require quite a bit of explaining. But honestly, upon just a few moments of reflection, seems like a very interesting character to role-play - along the lines of Martin Eden, if you're familiar with Jack London, who went from a happy-go-lucky sailor to a tormented scholar). However I'm against being put in a box with my characters. I've played monks who acted like bards (obviously without numerical bonuses) and most recently a druid who acts like a monk. Since my character isnt walking around in-game with a sheet of statistics strapped to his forehead, I dont appreciate anyone referring to them by class names. Call me by my character's name, not 'hey wizard'.
Here's some hard data for you. A fighter 4/barbarian 1 is superior to a fighter 5 in EVERY way. Go figure that one out. Most classes have arguably similar situations.
Yes, evaluated in a vaccum. But at 6th level the fighter gets an extra feat the hybrid fighter/barb doesnt (and does the hybrid get another level of bard for the +10 movement? After all, it only applies when lightly armored...). And the fighter/barb can only rage 1/day, and is winded afterwards. If he doesnt time the rage correctly it could be a distinct disadvantage in a prolonged encounter (or an encounter in which the enemy has reinforcements). As I pointed out, the rifts become larger the higher level you evaluate them (which is assuming you are actually playing d&d, not just doing numbers-speculation). At 8th level the fighter can get Greater Weapon Focus and thus have a higher-chance to hit than the hybrid (when he's not in his one rage per day). You could point out the differing saves as levels increase (for instance, our Fighter 6 has a base 5/2/2 compared to the Ftr4/Brb2's 7/1/1). Eventually the barbarian catches up in saving throws, and always has a fortitude advantage, but its not really something to change the game about, imo.
Especially concerning multiclassing spellcasters I think you would be hard put to find an example using core rules in which a multiclassed spellcaster has a distinct advantage over the single-class version.
