Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Syrsuro" data-source="post: 4411503" data-attributes="member: 58162">Yes, No, Maybe. The earlier editions allowed characters to perform more than one role, and to do both rolls significantly more poorly than a single class in either role (speaking here of 'multi-role multiclassing, not synergistic multiclasses that made a single role stronger). And characters that have more than one role should be gimped.   If you can take on more than one role, and do all roles as well as a character who is specialized in a single role - the rules have a serious imbalance:  You are now making other characters in the game superfluous.  A specialist in a single role (i.e. a character with only one role) ought to be better at that role than a generalist (i.e. a character with multiple roles). And if you assume (as the rules clearly do, and the way the game's been heading for the last couple decades) DMs running one-size-fits-all adventures off the shelf, rather than tailoring the adventures and its obstacles to the parties strengths and weaknesses, then a character who is weaker than expected in a given role is going to be inadequate when the party needs that role filled. So the questions are:  a) should the system make is possible for the players to gimp themselves (take on multiple roles and end up with a character that does neither role well) and b) if the system allows this, should it make it easy for the character to gimp himself. I think the answers to these are Yes and No.  The basic rules - the ones that those who are new to the game or inexperienced with the subtlies of character design will follow should NOT allow accidental gimping.  This was something that 3.x was highly prone to:  There were many many builds that just didn't work.  And, based on limited experience so far, I think that 4E handles this better than any of the prior editions (including AD&D).   But there is no reason not to have an optional set of rules that can allow the character to take on multiple roles, with its optional status making it clear it is for those who are experienced enough to understand the consequences of their decision. What those rules would be in 4E, I don't know.  But I'd be interested in seeing them. Carl</blockquote>

Verification