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Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 3370491" data-attributes="member: 12460">Adventurers have already decided upon their vocations. That is why some of them are as young as 16 and others as old as 27. Some vocations take longer to learn, and some people take longer to settle on one vocation than others. 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.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.I think you mean draconian. There is nothing necessarily dragonlike about disallowing one to learn a new set of skills. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />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.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. 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.And there is nothing wrong with powergaming in and of itself. But when used as an excuse to bastardize elements of a character's background, I groan. 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.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.Maybe my solution should just be to require X number of years before a character can take a level in a brand new class where X = the variable added to a character's base age based on class. That way, multiclassing would be effectively prohibited in all but long-term campaigns.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.</blockquote>

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