"Playtest PH3 Dual Classing"

[Runestar]

Well to be fair, multiclassing was still horridly overpowered in 3E as well

All it actually did was to allow non-casters to close the gap between them and casters (but they still came nowhere close to matching them). It is hard to claim that multiclassing was broken, when the most powerful builds came from core and involved only 1 class (druid20 with natural spell, cleric20 or wiz20).

 

[Dice4Hire]

All that the multi-classing rules really showed in 3.x was that spellcasting was the be all and end all. If you multi-ed melee classes, or sneaky classes, you could get some fun abilities, a nice mix of possibilities, and have a lot of run. But if you started going for caster/Whatever, you got hurt and hurt bad.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, in my FTF we are using our own gestalt rules and it is a lot of fun. We only have 3 characters, so it is pretty necessary, but being able to choose from two classes is great.

Our first character is a fighter/cleric who is about 80% fighter.
The second is a wizard/fighter now wizard/cleric who is about 95% wizard ( I don't htin he used a fighter power from level 6-12, if i remember correctly.
I have changed my character several times and found some good synergies (rogue/FEylock, and some poor combos (Ranger/cleric)

I see little problem with taking the same load of powers and choosing form two classes, and using feats to grab the last class. Lots of hard choices, but fun.

I'm looking forward to the hybrid stuff.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

All it actually did was to allow non-casters to close the gap between them and casters (but they still came nowhere close to matching them). It is hard to claim that multiclassing was broken, when the most powerful builds came from core and involved only 1 class (druid20 with natural spell, cleric20 or wiz20).

I don't know about that. The most powerful character I made was a multiclass build who was 20th level that had the spellcasting ability of a 18th level warmage while having a 17 BAB, the ability to wear full plate while casting spells with no spell failure, proficiency in all martial weapons, more hitpoints than a 20th level wizard, and the ability to channel spell slots into my attacks in order to do more damage. I was easily more powerful than any 20th level wizard or 20th level fighter with no multiclassing.

Also, most 20th level wizards had at least 1 or 2 PrC. It made them much better than a single class wizard. Any character you can make with with 20 levels of a core class, I can make better with infinite access to PrC and multiclassing.

The problem comes from the ability to pick and choose abilities. If the next level of your PrC gives you no new spellcasting and no new abilities, then don't go up another level in that PrC. Instead go up the first level of another PrC that gives you new spellcasting AND something else. Do that each and every level you go up.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I was easily more powerful than any 20th level wizard or 20th level fighter with no multiclassing.

You were more versatile, but good luck hitting CR20+ baddies with either your sword or your spell. Like a monk using flurry of blows, or a bard, you just had that many more ways in which your character could suck.

Versatility isn't the same thing as power. Breadth and Depth. 3e (and most games) considers breadth to be something, but not as much as depth. That "something" meant that instead of rocking at several different things, you could access several different things, and suck at them all.

I wouldn't say an E6 character with 100 feats is more powerful than any other level 6-8 character, but they can do a lot more stuff.

Not that your swiss-army-knife character couldn't accomplish a lot above and beyond simple monster slaying (teleports, scries, buffs, etc., all could help you solve an adventure quickly), just that at monster slaying, he would suck.

4e limits how broad your character can be, because it won't let you pay the price in "depth." This is to avoid that whole problem of "I can suck in 20 different ways!" that 3e had with multiclass characters -- your character always has a minimum amount of power in an area, and can't equal that power in any other area.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

You were more versatile, but good luck hitting CR20+ baddies with either your sword or your spell. Like a monk using flurry of blows, or a bard, you just had that many more ways in which your character could suck.

Not really. I know the difference, I've seen a lot of characters who managed to multiclass their way into breadth without any depth at all. My character had both. I could cast 9th level spells. I had the same DCs on my spells as did the wizard in our group. Due to my spells, I had the same(or within 1) attack bonus as the fighter in our group. I had the same number of attacks, since I had a 17 BAB.

I think my only thing I actually lost out on compared to either a pure classed fighter or a pure classed caster was maybe a couple of spells per day(the most important of which was one less 9th level spell) and a +1 or so bonus to hit. Both of which were made up for easily by the damage I did.

I wouldn't say an E6 character with 100 feats is more powerful than any other level 6-8 character, but they can do a lot more stuff.

Depends on what those feats do. If 25 of them add pluses to hit that stack with each other, 25 of them add pluses to AC that stack, and the other 50 add pluses to damage that stack with each others, that character will certainly be a lot more powerful than any other 6-8 character. Obviously, that's impossible. But it was possible using all the published books to find a bonus with almost every feat if you looked hard enough.

Not that your swiss-army-knife character couldn't accomplish a lot above and beyond simple monster slaying (teleports, scries, buffs, etc., all could help you solve an adventure quickly), just that at monster slaying, he would suck.

I am aware of those characters and I've harped on some of my friends for playing those characters. The guy who thought he was awesome because he was a scout/warmage and he could move and fire a spell off and add 2d6 damage with the spell. Meanwhile, he was casting 2nd level spells at 8th level.

My general rule is that if your highest level spell is more than 1 level below a wizard of your level or you get more than 3 BAB away from a fighter of your level, then you are disadvantaged in either spellcasting or fighting. (Which, of course, means that you shouldn't be fighting in melee with a single classed Rogue at 20th level, BTW) If you remain with those guidelines, you are still a legitimate melee character or caster.

It took a lot of work and a lot of careful multiclassing, but I managed to create a character who had both. Mostly to prove it could be done. I don't think I sucked at combat. I actually caused both the fighter and wizard in our group to ask the DM to let them roll up new characters. They both felt useless in the group because of how much I overshadowed them in combat(as a warmage, my out of combat magic was very limited).

I learned a lesson about when to draw the line in terms of power gaming. The DM wasn't happy with me and devised a way to kill me off(an improved invisibility'd dragon who grappled me with a bonus so impossibly high that there was no escape, used that spell that I'm forgetting the name of that makes all his attacks touch attacks for one round and then Power Attacked full for a couple of rounds straight. It could have killed anyone in the party that way, powergamed or not. In fact, it killed 3 of us before the rest took it down. I just died first because the DM had it ignore everyone else in order to take me down). Plus, the other players in the group weren't happy about quite the level I had taken my character. I apologized and wrote up a normal strength character to replace him.

4e limits how broad your character can be, because it won't let you pay the price in "depth." This is to avoid that whole problem of "I can suck in 20 different ways!" that 3e had with multiclass characters -- your character always has a minimum amount of power in an area, and can't equal that power in any other area.

This is true. Because it was much easier to create a sucky character than it was a good one using multiclassing. But it was certainly possible to use certain multiclasses to be better than a single class character. Nearly any fighter with at least 1 level of barbarian was significantly more powerful than one without that level. I've seen fighter X/sorcerer 1 multiclasses with carefully chosen 1st level spells that made them much better than single class fighters.

But for every one of these insights I saw, I saw at least five characters that were 2 Cleric/5 Bard/1 Fighter/1 Rogue mixes.

 

[lutecius]

I don't know about that [...] Any character you can make with with 20 levels of a core class, I can make better with infinite access to PrC and multiclassing

The problem isn't with multiclassing per se, it comes from prestige classes being unbalanced and new classes like warmage being themselves more efficient than any fighter/wizard combination in terms of raw power.

 

[SpydersWebbing]

3E underpowered? Not when you take a warlock, a binder, and a hellforged warlock, shake (not stir), and put in eldritch glaive. That particular 16th level character beat epic level creatures without sweating.

I don't like 4th's multiclassing system all that much, but it's far preferable to the BS that was 3rd Edition's multiclassing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

My character had both. I could cast 9th level spells. I had the same DCs on my spells as did the wizard in our group. Due to my spells, I had the same(or within 1) attack bonus as the fighter in our group. I had the same number of attacks, since I had a 17 BAB.

But, especially at high levels in 3e, monsters are engineered in a very binary fashion. The whole "fighter can't be hit, the rogue can't be missed" issue. Three points of BAB means missing in one round that your entire party is hit with a wail of the banshee. Three points of caster level when going up against things with insane SR means you're a pussycat. MAD sapping your saving throw DC's means that even if you hit, the critter shrugs it off.

Against a whole party where, as a group, they have full everything, the binary monsters are an "appropriate challenge" (ish).

Against someone who is three points behind in everything, the binary monsters crush you.

You can do as much as anyone else on paper, but that slight lag in stats is VERY significant when hitting that upper echelon of monsters, who are designed to be very difficult to people with significantly better ability.

I mean, a monk's flurry of whiffs is only -2. No one ever hits with their second or third or fourth (ha!) attacks. Just because you're a one-man party doesn't mean you can take on the enemies that a party could take on.

Sixteen attacks at -5 is not the same as one attack at +5, especially when, in order to hit the thing, you need an 18 or better even at +5.

But it was possible using all the published books to find a bonus with almost every feat if you looked hard enough.

At that point, you're just making up for lost time, though. The monsters assume that the pure fighter took those same feats, so their AC is still all that much harder for you to hit.

My general rule is that if your highest level spell is more than 1 level below a wizard of your level or you get more than 3 BAB away from a fighter of your level, then you are disadvantaged in either spellcasting or fighting. (Which, of course, means that you shouldn't be fighting in melee with a single classed Rogue at 20th level, BTW) If you remain with those guidelines, you are still a legitimate melee character or caster.

The anecdotal evidence there is a bit fiddly, because there's a lot of variables aside from your character that aren't really accounted for. There are campaigns where a straight cleric will be grossly overpowered compared to the rest of the party. I'm not sure I'd use that as a place to launch my "clerics are overpowered" speech.

Because it was much easier to create a sucky character than it was a good one using multiclassing. But it was certainly possible to use certain multiclasses to be better than a single class character.

The trade-offs weren't always equal, right. And we agree on the first point -- the bigger multiclassing risk was to make a character that wasn't very effective at the things he was supposed to be doing. Someone with a good head for numbers probably could squeak out the system while limiting the things he gave up, especially once they could consider the campaign, the other party members, the monster tastes of the DM, and other things.

Though I think the broader message of this convo is that 3e had a mess of issues with multiclassing that 4e is trying to solve, and that you aren't likely to see the return of old-school multiclassing (in a 3e or 2e or 1e sense) any time soon.

Which raises the question of what, exactly, dual-classing will do.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

So the new Hybrid Class article is up, but those of us who don't subscribe to DDI of course can't see it. Would anyone be so kinda as to give the short version?

 

[CardinalXimenes]

In brief, the idea is that each class is stripped down to a "hybrid version", containing part of their skill list/HP/surges and one or two keynote class features, often weakened- such as the leader hybrids being only able to heal once per encounter. A player then simply glues two of these hybrid classes together and adds them all up.

You pick one at-will from either class, and choose your encounter and daily from either. If you've got two or more powers of a given encounter/daily/utility type, at least one must be from each class- so if you've got 2 encounter powers, at least one must be from each class.

You can also burn a feat to gain a class feature from either of your classes... but you can't gain the "full" version of hybrid features you already have. And since the hybrid features are precisely those qualities that are most iconic, such as healing word/sneak attack/hunter's quarry, you're obliged to pick up the little tricks not covered.

It's worth noting that you get no slack cut for MAD. If you're a fighter-wizard, you better buy up Strength and Intelligence both, because your class power abilities don't change.

The general idea is that while a multiclass PC is always functional in his main role and sometimes usable in his secondary, a hybrid PC is always sorta usable in both roles, but unable to really substitute for either. The article is quite open about admitting that you can make some really crippled characters with these rules, and I'm not sure what sort of charops wizardry you'd have to do to fill in for wimpy class features with synergized power picks.