Who Uses the Favored Class Rules as Written

[UltimaGabe]

I don't use it for anything mechanically. Just a guideline for the class that a race will generally go for. Never had a problem with players not playing Half-Elves, so its not affected my games at all.

Same here. It's rare enough in all of the games I've seen for characters to multiclass at all, so I figure it's dumb to penalize someone for doing something that's (mechanically) gonna hurt them in the long run anyway. Half-Elves already suck anyway (and getting a bonus that nobody's going to take advantage of anyway isn't a balancing factor), so they haven't been an issue, and I don't see them EVER being an issue.

 

[saucercrab]

Yeah, I also agree with Ankh-Morpork Guard & UltimaGabe.

One thing to add onto what UltimaGabe said: prestige classes are one of the most common reasons to multiclass, & they ignore the multiclassing penalty entirely, so my group just ignores the whole sitch'.

We also ignore the monk/paladin bit about not being able to return to that respective class (& that goes for most PrC's with similar restrictions, like sacred fist).

 

[Andre]

As a GM, I never use them, because as a player I hated choosing my next class level based on the favored class rules, rather than the direction I want to take with the character. I have no problem if someone wants to play a non-stereotypical character, like a ftr/barb gnome or a half-orc monk/cleric or whatever. If a player tries to munchkinize a character with too many classes, I'll just talk to him/her, but once you remove most of the prestige classes, you quickly find that too many classes usually results in a weak character.

One idea I noticed on another thread is to eliminate the penalty, but give a bonus to characters who stay with their favored class. Some extra xp, or a minor boost, just to encourage playing to type. I like this idea much better than penalizing a player's character just for not sticking with the game designers' stereotypes.

 

[Whimsical]

One variant is to have the races with a favored class instead be able to multiclass like a human, and have humans and half elves have no multiclass restrictions whatsoever.

Another variant is to cut down the number of racial abilities that the non-human/halfelf races have, and have the removed racial abilities available as feats for that race only.

In Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, no one has multiclass penalties and the nonhumans have around three racial abilities.

 

[Bad Paper]

use them as written, but we ignore WotC's absurd ruling that reincarnation changes a character's favored class. What is favored class if not a product of a character's culture and not his body?

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I've mucked around a little with the favoured class rules. Tried 2 main variants:

1) Ignore them altogether. Gave Half Elves +1 skill point per level.

2) Get +1 skill point per level of favoured class. For Humans/Half Elves, it's their basic or prestige class they've got the most levels in. Other races also get the bonus in any appropriate PrC.

Think I prefer option 1.

Also removed multiclassing xp loss - don't find it adds anything to my game. If someone really want's to make strange mixes of 4 classes, then more power to them.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

We get rid of the XP penalty for multiclassing as we see that multiclassing is a penalty itself. You're giving up the power of a single class for wanting to diversify.

 

[Gez]

For now, I'm using it as-is.


But I'm thinking about changing it for my next campaign.

 

[MonsterMash]

I've only house ruled which classes races have as favoured, still using the XP penalty as normal though.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'd been using it as written until very recently. Then I read a thread which seemed to say that characters in Conan get additonal feats for being in their favored class.

I currently use it as-is, but in a future D&D campaign I would use the Conan option - encouraging that race to be the best at class x (rather than encouraging them all to dabble in class x as the current system "does")

Cheers