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Mar 14, 2012 -- 10:14AM, Garkness wrote:

on of the thing i always loved in D&D is the fact that we're not tied to only one class, we could always mix classes together and i'm wondering if 5th will put multiclass in the system.

here is an overview of the old system used up to now:
2nd edition:
character leveled both classes at the same time but divided xp in 2, while the penality looked drastic, the experience chart was exponential and the multiclass characters were usually one level behind others pure class characters meaning that on higher tiered level a multiclass character would usually be overpowered compared to single class.

3.x edition:
Each time a character gain a level, he would have the choice to either continue gaining level in his actual class or opt to get a new class or prestige class (considering he meets the requirements).  This actually gave bigger advantages to pure classes like wizards or cleric since they get their higher spells at a faster pace, but made it fun for other classes like fighter that had more options as they gained levels. but this brought troubles of sometime dump classes like a first level rogue to optimize skill points, two levels of fighters for the extra feats, tools for players that love to take every possible edges.

4th edition:
at the core the multiclass system was crap (sorry but this is entirely a personal view on my part), considering of a couple feats that gave you some limited access to another class abilities.  Later on they took out the ability to make hybrids and mix two classes together, I only saw it on the character builder and was very confused as to why i could take this and not that, but it seemed well made, planned and balanced.

On a personnal matter, i'd love to see multiclass like 3.x back along with prestige classes.  I loved to make characters with a unique feel like my barbarian-druid or my cleric-chameleon.

The purpose of MCing was to allow a bit of variety within basic archetypes by softening the absolute division between them. In this respect the 4e version works really well. It may not appeal a whole lot to min/maxers but it does its job well, better than hybrids do (which BTW are a marginally disfunctional system).

3e MCing sucked. It opened up the game mechanically to all kinds of system mastery issues and was basically a munchkin tool. Thematically characters become 'class soup' and the entire archetype concept is badly undermined.

AD&D MCing actually worked pretty well. In theory perhaps MC characters were 'overpowered', but in practice this was never really a big issue. It could be more of one in a system that allows ANY 2 classes to be combined and removes level limit and race restrictions.

I think 5e should go with a tweaked version of the 4e MC system. It is flexible enough to provide the needed softening of class archetypes, letting you do things like 'gish' effectively if it is done right, and still maintain enough separation to avoid the worst system issues.

Mainly I'm heavily against the whole 3e MCing concept. I don't care how much you fiddle with classes cherry picking and system mastery are going to be inherent in that system. IMHO D&D is NOT about system mastery, it simply should not be a consideration whatsoever in D&D. In this sense AD&D has it right, nothing you can do beyond class/race choice really makes a lot of difference in effectiveness. Later 2e kind of broke that, but later 2e was a train wreck too.