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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 7011814" data-attributes="member: 6677017">It's not really a functional thing so much as an aesthetic thing. I like having a unified advancement chart, the same max level correlated with the same total XP gain etc. It's the balance between traditional feel and updated mechanics that I go for.When I was considering that system, one of the things I thought of was having the character level and gain HD at the same rate as everyone else, but just have  a simple chart saying at which level they gain the features of their classes. So the chart would say that at 20th level they gain the 15th level class features from each class. (You could even reduce dead levels by gaining the features of your B class at a different level than those of your A class, but that risks making one class primary and the other secondary, which I like to avoid.) I'm not sure how that interacts with balance issues, since you'll have more HP and occasionally a better proficiency bonus that way. If you aren't stacking ASIs you'll have too few, but if you are stacking them you might have too many. That would be a downside of this system. If you did it old-school and gave them ASIs from both class, they could buy Toughness and Constitution as a feat tax to keep their hp up to par, and still have feats to work with.One of the other things I didn't mention before that also was a bit of an issue for me is the uneven advancement as you level compared to a single class character, skewing towards getting more at lower levels than at higher. (Maybe getting the high-level abilities of two classes at once evens out the fact that you have dead levels up there; I don't know.) It's the same issue I have with trying to get a decent fighter mage by going Eldritch Knight 7/Wizard 13, just from the other side. With the EK/W, you'll not feel very effective for quite a while unless you focus in on one class (probably fighter) until you get it to 5th (or 7th for War Magic), which means your wizard spellcasting is always going to be a rather unimpressive contribution to the party until your last level few levels. If you split evenly, you'll feel ineffective in both classes for most of your progression. No matter how you advance your poor EK/W, he never feels right. (I've done plenty of spreadsheets on that particular one, because it seemed like my best RAW method of representing the character I wanted, but I just wasn't at all satisfied with it.) With the AD&D style, you start off great, and then sort of slow down compared to the rest of the party. It might not be a problem. If WotC comes out with something along those lines, I'll carefully consider whether to adopt it (hopefully it will be better than the versions I've already went through), but I think it's more satisfying to fit it closer to 5e's patterns. If they can somehow combine the vertical split 4e hybrid with the AD&D top chop, and blend it all together to get a pleasing whole, that's probably the best route (and what my current messy version is attempting).</blockquote>

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