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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9359523" data-attributes="member: 7026594">It's inconsistent.  The general rule of thumb for multiclassed characters is that you get to use all the benefits of all your classes.  ie: Use the best save you have available, use the best weapons, best armor, best attack progression, etc.The obvious hole in your logic here is that Fighter/Clerics have MORE of that issue, because healing and protective spells are more essential than M-U spells....only for your arbitrarily invented "physics" around magic.  Unless you do have a pre-D&D Appendix N fiction reference, maybe? AD&D 1E doesn't present the inability of M-Us to wear armor as an issue of physics, but one of training.Banning multiclassing and replacing it with deliberately designed and balanced hybrid classes is certainly an option, though I understand why it's intimidating.  EDIT: Actually, now that I think longer on it, this is exactly what Hyperborea! (formerly Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea) does.  It removes multiclassing and instead uses new hybrid function sub-classes instead.Clerics, of course, are the original hybrid class, as they are described in OD&D.The Elf class from B/X and BECMI and the RC is such a class, and works pretty well.  Its biggest weakness is of course the slow advancement.  I played an OSE Advanced Half-Elf class for a while in an online campaign during the pandemic, which gets faster advancement but inferior special abilities (I really missed the immunity to Ghoul paralysis a couple of times) and slower spell progression. There were multiple times in that campaign where Lathan would have died if he were a regular Elf, though, because he'd have been lower level and had fewer HP.The balancing factors for 1E F/MUs are reduced HP, slow advancement (worse TH and saves, fewer and lower level spells than your peers with equivalent XP), and the physical inability to do more than one thing at the same time.  If it's an option, having two PCs, a Fighter and an MU, would virtually always be superior to having a single F/MU.It makes exactly as much "sense" as in "common sense" as the 2E restrictions do.  It's totally arbitrary either way.  As with the Fighter/Clerics, who get to use edged weapons.From a game balance perspective I would argue that it makes less sense to arbitrarily penalize one multi-class combo without any compensatory XP discount or something.  From a fiction-emulation perspective it makes less sense to restrict the combination if inspirational characters like Elric or Tolkien's Elves are not so restricted.  Which they're not.The difference with Druid and Thief isn't the "soundness" of their restrictions.The restriction on Thieves is grounded in real-world logic and physics, unlike the others.  Gygax took it too far as usual, but at least he was attempting to simulate that it's tougher to sneak around or to hide or climb in heavy, bulky armor.  That's reality.  There is no reality being simulated when we talk about M-Us or Druids not being able to use armor or metal armor.The restriction on Druids wearing metal armor is just as arbitrary as the M-U restriction on all armor.  It, too, has no grounding in the real world.  But it's explained in the rule book as metallic armor spoiling their powers.Which is a totally different explanation from M-Us, for whom the rules instead explain that "Furthermore, they can wear no armor and have few weapons they can use, for martial training is so foreign to magic-use as to make the two almost mutually exclusive." With that being the basis of the restriction, obviously when a character has such training from another class, that restriction cannot apply.I'd be curious to hear what that alternate system was, and whether that was a fluke or he just didn't understand the math before he implemented it.</blockquote>

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