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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anax" data-source="post: 1980648" data-attributes="member: 19868">To a certain degree, it kind of depends how you want to look at it--and, of course, paladins should probably be on the list as well, probably alongside druids and rangers.My take on it is that multiclassing into one of these *ought* to be predicated on some sort of access to appropriate training, with the possible exception of Barbarian.Barbarian: The name screams "savage from the frozen wastes", but really, this is all about a much more direct fighting style.  The barbarian is essentially a model for "fighting with raw power".  The chaotic alignment requirement could, in my opinion, also be dropped--I can easily believe in a very very disciplined person using willpower alone to enter a sort of frenzied state.  In any case, this does not particularly require that you have a barbaric background.  Some examples of reasons a person might enter this class: 1) Experience in war--wars are nasty nasty things and can brink out a kind of berserker rage in a person, 2) Living desperately--same sort of deal here: the character no longer has time to think about the best way to fight--he fights however he has to to survive, 3) Intentional training--in this case, think about someone training at wrestling in an urban setting--focusing on releasing all of his strength in a frenzy, rather than fighting smart.  So you can also think of this class as a tactical choice.  A fighter must give up his normal focus (gaining techniques) in order to focus on raw power.Monk: This is something that certainly ought to be available at later stages in a character's career.  My current monk is a rogue 3/monk 8.  She was living on the streets when she tried to mug the wrong person--a high level monk.  The monk was impressed by her agility, and she was impressed by him as well, and he managed to convince her to accept training at a monastery.  We have another monk in the party as well, a half orc who learned the rudiments of unarmed fighting by observing his captors before escaping from them.  He is largely self-trained and fights in ways atypical for a monk.  I do think that a certain access to training (whether written, in person, or in a monastery) is appropriate here, but it's really up to the player and the GM how to set this up.  And in a world where there are well known monks, it could be simpler than that.Paladin: To be honest, I think this is one of the iffier cases--I've always felt that paladins should need to have a serious calling, and serious training.  We play with core rules paladins, but I'd be more comfortable with prestige class paladins.  In any case, this is somewhat similar to the case of monks in that intensive training in a martial religious order makes sense for character development--but there are ways around that.  Perhaps the character just feels a calling and prays.  The same could be said of clerics.  When gods can inspire in dreams (not to mention in direct action), anything is possible.Druids and rangers: Similar sort of thing to clerics and paladins, although, of course, there's a certain amount of "likes nature" that has to be dealt with in contrast to the "likes a deity" for paladins and clerics.  There's no reason not to allow access to these classes to anyone who has a good concept of what their character should be like.So that's my take on it--I think *anything* ought to go as long as the player has a good character concept to go with it.  (If anything, I think that the existing class restrictions in the RAW are too binding.)  In a looser less-RP-oriented gaming group, even a reasonable concept of what the character's classes represent isn't super important.  After all, there's a difference between the abilities that a character has and the character itself.  So best to treat all the "core" classes as reasonable choices for any character at any time, and save the special restrictions for prestige classes.</blockquote>

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