Paragon Multiclassing vs. Paragon Path

[CubeKnight]

I don't think the 7/11, 10/12, and 19/20 swaps are that bad. Certainly, they're not quite as good as a power of the appropriate level, but my reading of the paragon paths makes me think the paragon powers are more focused than general powers, so it may be a matter of trading potence for utility. Closer balance (if desired) might be as easy as granting an additional at-will, rather than a swap.

Another idea, that would only have taken up about one more page, would be to grant an additional class ability from the new class. Multi-class fighters get the weapon bonus, clerics get channel (once, not twice, per day), rogues get sneak attack (at ten levels lower), etc. There's probably some numbers that would need to be run and playtested, but I don't see why the basic idea wouldn't work.

It seems to me that the only reason paragon multiclassing is less powerful than paragon pathing is an imposed flavor, like 3e paladins and monks not being able to multiclass effectively.

One idea I had was something along the lines of:

Multiclass Action: When you spend an action point, you gain all the class abilities for the class you multiclassed on for the action granted by the AP.

To replace the * Action class feature almost all PPs have.

The idea of granting them a class feature as if they were 10 levels lower all the time isn't that bad, but would cause some problems with level-independent class features, such as Combat Superiority

 

[Plane Sailing]

Am I misinterpreting the rules, or is paragon multiclassing just plain useless? Can anyone think of a scenario where it's preferable to take paragon multiclassing over a paragon path?

Personally I think it is severely underpowered. They should have gone to the effort of at least moving over appropriate class features at appropriate levels. As it is, it feels like a last minute kludge rather than something designed in.

Personally, I've revamped the multiclassing rules slightly for my purposes (I've got a thread about it in the house rules section).