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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Akrasia" data-source="post: 1839621" data-attributes="member: 23012">How one answers the question "which version of multi-classing is best?" depends on how one understands the concept of "class".In 1E (and, for that matter, every pre-3E version of D&D), a "class" was a comprehensive concept.  Your character spent years and years training to be a fighter, magic-user, or whatever.  It was you "life mission", and it represented a complete set of skills, special abilities, and so forth.  By the time you started your career as a cleric, you were pretty set in your ways.  By analogy, a class was like an "advanced degree" -- a PhD, MD, or JD.  Once someone finishes a PhD in mathematical logic or zoology, they have acquired set of skills and an outlook on life that is unlikely to be changed.  So a multi-class character in 1E acquires both "advanced degrees" as part of one "joint degree" package (in a sense, a multi-class character, e.g. a fighter-mage, is really just a character with a class that combines elements of two other classes), and advances from that point onwards.  1E opposed freely switching from one class to another for this reason.  Switching from being a zoologist to a lawyer is a radical change.  Hence "dual class" characters had to meet certain stringent requirements, and could never advance in their original class again.In contrast, d20 Modern (I'll get to 3E D&D in a moment) appears to view classes like university "term courses", rather than advanced degrees.  So for one "term" or "semester", your character focuses her studies on "fast hero" courses, but might switch to "smart hero" courses next term.  Instead of a 'comprehensive' way of life, a class is just a 'lego brick' that can be combined with other bricks to build whatever kind of character you want.Now, IMO 3E D&D is 'neither fish nor foul' -- i.e. the class descriptions for 3E seem to evoke the "comprehensive approach" of 1E classes, but also try to capture the limited "course-for-credit" approach of d20 modern classes.  The result is an incoherent approach to multi-class characters (IMO).  Not that I have any suggestions for 'fixing' 3E multi-classing, mind you, except to try to keep it "within reason" as a DM.  Within the context of my campaign, I make sure that players "justify" in role-playing terms any multi-classing that takes place. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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