Yes...fluff is why they get all of those things. The fluff always drives the answer to why. In every class, in every situation. Why does a wizard get spells? Fluff. Why does a fighter get heavy armor prof? Fluff. The answer is always 'fluff' if the question is why.
Well, then in a discussion about the mechanical requirements for PrCs, we can discount all fluff, since they all have fluff. It's simply not relevant to determine WHY the requirements are what they are. It's relevant to determine what types of requirements there should be.
And many of the 3e prerequisites weren't mechanical requirements. Some of them were. An example would be a PrC that grants increased damage to Sneak Attack. If you don't have Sneak Attack, then it can't grant increased damage, which is why Sneak Attack shows up in the prereqs. That's a mechanical requirement.
Yes. Some were, be a Harper and the like. I'm not sure why you are telling me that, though. I've already said that pages ago. The discussion that I was having with Qmark involved him telling me that the feats and the like that made up the requirements were fluff. Had he just acknowledged that they weren't fluff, it would have saved a lot of time.
The feats Dodge, Endurance, and Toughness in the requirement for the Dwarven Defender PrC are not mechanical requirements. Nothing in the PrC actually requires you to have them in order to function. They're thematic requirements, things in keeping with the fluff of the Dwarven Defender PrC but are completely separable from the actual mechanics that are contained within the PrC.
Only the theme is fluff. The requirement itself is a mechanic. It cannot be anything else. You must have X to get Y is a mechanic. To say otherwise is to say that the requirement that you be a level 5 wizard in 3e to get the bonus feat was fluff. Fluff = reasons why. Mechanic = game rule.
If we continue with your above logic, every ability in the PrC is also fluff. I guarantee you that I can separate out High Arcana from the Archmage if I feel like it, making High Arcana completely separable from the Archmage PrC.
"mechanical requirement" means an actual requirement that the mechanics key off of.
Mechanics are the hard rules that run the game, but even if we stick with your definition above, the PrC keys off of having the pre-requisites, making them a mechanic. No pre-requisite, no PrC. You cannot remove the pre-requisites without a house rule, so they are absolutely a mechanic.
(aside: Any argument based on "Here are some possible requirements; Here are why those requirements are bad;' this proves that having requirements is bad" - is a strawman. It may be hard to avoid since we don't know what kind of requirements they will have - but all that really proves is "these requirements are bad.")
Carl
To my knowledge, nobody has put forth that argument. I never said fluffy requirements were bad. I said I don't want all PrCs to have them. 90% of PrCs (at least in 3e) came at 5-7th level. If every PrC has some sort of fluffy pre-requisite, the situation I describes WILL happen. If you split the requirements between the way they were AND fluffy, then you make the situation I described far less likely.
Yes...fluff is why they get all of those things. The fluff always drives the answer to why. In every class, in every situation. Why does a wizard get spells? Fluff. Why does a fighter get heavy armor prof? Fluff. The answer is always 'fluff' if the question is why.
Well, then in a discussion about the mechanical requirements for PrCs, we can discount all fluff, since they all have fluff. It's simply not relevant to determine WHY the requirements are what they are. It's relevant to determine what types of requirements there should be.
And many of the 3e prerequisites weren't mechanical requirements. Some of them were. An example would be a PrC that grants increased damage to Sneak Attack. If you don't have Sneak Attack, then it can't grant increased damage, which is why Sneak Attack shows up in the prereqs. That's a mechanical requirement.
Yes. Some were, be a Harper and the like. I'm not sure why you are telling me that, though. I've already said that pages ago. The discussion that I was having with Qmark involved him telling me that the feats and the like that made up the requirements were fluff. Had he just acknowledged that they weren't fluff, it would have saved a lot of time.
The feats Dodge, Endurance, and Toughness in the requirement for the Dwarven Defender PrC are not mechanical requirements. Nothing in the PrC actually requires you to have them in order to function. They're thematic requirements, things in keeping with the fluff of the Dwarven Defender PrC but are completely separable from the actual mechanics that are contained within the PrC.
Only the theme is fluff. The requirement itself is a mechanic. It cannot be anything else. You must have X to get Y is a mechanic. To say otherwise is to say that the requirement that you be a level 5 wizard in 3e to get the bonus feat was fluff. Fluff = reasons why. Mechanic = game rule.
If we continue with your above logic, every ability in the PrC is also fluff. I guarantee you that I can separate out High Arcana from the Archmage if I feel like it, making High Arcana completely separable from the Archmage PrC.
"mechanical requirement" means an actual requirement that the mechanics key off of.
Mechanics are the hard rules that run the game, but even if we stick with your definition above, the PrC keys off of having the pre-requisites, making them a mechanic. No pre-requisite, no PrC. You cannot remove the pre-requisites without a house rule, so they are absolutely a mechanic.
Correct - but as I pointed out upstream - you guys are just talking past each other.
He is referring to mechanical requirements which exist only to satisfy reason of fluf and separating that from mechanical requirements which exist because the class abilities actually depend on them being there (i.e. exist to prevent the trap which would occur if a character took the class and later discovered that he couldn't use half of their abilities because he lacked a key feat - for mechanical reasons). He is calling the first category a "fluff requirement" because the reason for the requirement is fluff. You are arguing with him by calling them mechanical requirements because the thing being required is a mechanic.
Ignore the language and address the point and we might be able to get somewhere.
Convoluted PrC-qualifier builds are only a part of the, and not actually a major one.
Here's the problems I see in 3E multiclassing, and suggestions I've offered here and elsewhere to fix those problems:
Frontloading: Classes hand out way too much swag up front, and a little bit too much in the first five or so levels. Solution: Move more abilities into the "if your first class is" block. Spread the goods out over more levels.
Dead Levels: Around level 6 (usually because of frontloading), 3E classes (other than core casters) starting having several levels where nothing was gained but hitpoints and maybe an uptick in a saving throw or BAB. All this did was encourage abandoning that class for something else (up until that class got to level 6 or so) Solution: Spread the goods out over more levels, or just make more class abilities to fill out those levels.
Nonsensical Prestige Class requirements and/or phenomenally awesome PrCs: Having to dance around 1-3 levels of 3-6 classes just to fill up some arbitrary feat requirement just isn't worth it - unless that PrC was godly awesome (which creates its own problems). Solution: No mechanical PrC prereqs, unless that PrC uses that mechanic for something. Just use PrCs as DM-reward prestige, instead of 'More Dakka' classes.
Gross variance in synergy. Some MC builds were synergy-monsters approaching Pan-Pan levels of silly. Most, however, just resulted in a stunted character who increasingly fell behind the rest of the party in usefulness and survivability. Solution: All classes gain HP, but at different rates. Something similar should be done for other incrementing abilities such as Sneak Attack and spell progression, even when a character can't use or has no use for those abilities. Fighter and Rogue's current lack of a "magic attack" value is an example in DDN.
Someone posted earlier that they liked 3e style multiclassing because it allowed them to represent someone who had "a life changing event" such as a rogue getting religion. I admit that IS a great reason to like the 3e type of multiclassing or 2e dual classing (which I like better).
2e dual classing was absolutely horrendous. Not only did you have to have a 15 or higher in every single prime stat of your class, but you had to have 17's in all of the prime stats of the one you were going to. On top of that, you could no long advance as your previous class at all. You geniunely switched to the new class forever. Then, you went back to 1st level, in all respect except for hit dice/hit points. Then, while you still had your previous class abilities, if you so much as used one once in any encounter, you got 0 exp for the encounter and half for the entire adventure. Once you are of a higher level than your previous class, you could use those abilites as you saw fit, but still could not advance in that class again. Utterly horrible method of multi-classing.
The problem I have is a character who has a life changing event so they pick up a level of cleric, then another to pick up a couple levels of fighter, then another for barbarian (for the RAWR factor), then another for prestige class a and yet another for prestige class b.
I haven't read the thread, so I don't know if I'm preaching to the chior or going out on a limb, but:
3e's multi-classing was a quantum leap in character customizeability and a great innovation. As with healing surges & hit dice, though, it looks like 5e is going to try to improve on something good, by averaging it out with something not quite as good. 3e class/levels were like modular building blocks, they quite efficiently and elegantly allowed you to build to concept using bits of each class. What's described here also builds-in some of the 'averaged out' half-classes of classic D&D (you multiclass Fighter, you get half the hps of a fighter of the same level, you don't get the THAC0 of a character of your total exp) and 4e Hybrids. Those worked, in a way, thanks to the complexities of level advancement, but they lacked elegance, consistency, and flexibility.
3e multiclassing was a great idea, but it had a couple of little blind spots in the implementation. Like caster level. BAB increased for every class, even the wizard. Caster level didn't. If caster level had advanced like BAB, with non-casters getting 1/2 progression, hybrid casters like paladins 3/4, and casters full, multi-classing to and among caster classes would have been much more practical. Fixing those would not have been hard. I could have been done with 3.5, but it wasn't. 5e has changed some basic advancement around and has a sort of fetish for disparate sub-systems for each class, so it won't be that simple to just take the 3e aproach and drop it in. Without quasi-uinversal progressions like BAB and Caster Level or an actually universal progression like pre-E's (that is, with bounded accuracy), there's no way to let different classes build on eachother. Instead, MC'ing will give you a collection of unrelated abilities. You'll have a spell from list A and a spell from list B and a CS die and an SA die, and you'll be like a party of 1st level characters sharing a single set of actions.
A better aproach, IMHO, would be to use a common advancement structure, and let multi-class characters pull options from each of their classes at each level. No need to worry about BAB or Caster Level (or the 5e equivalent damage progressions), or make multi-class characters wait multiple levels for the features they want most. Think of 4e Themes and Racial substitution powers. Being multi-classed doesn't need to give you more stuff, just more options. Balance would be moderate: While each ability that might be swapped could be balanced for the level at which it's gained, the potential synergies would be myriad. But, if well-done and assertively errata'd, it could be worth it.
He is referring to mechanical requirements which exist only to satisfy reason of fluf and separating that from mechanical requirements which exist because the class abilities actually depend on them being there.
He is referring to mechanical requirements which exist only to satisfy reason of fluf and separating that from mechanical requirements which exist because the class abilities actually depend on them being there.
I thought that was obvious. Maybe it was not.
You should learn to be more precice. Saying the mechanic IS fluff, is far different from saying the reason the mechanic is there is fluff. You said something that was clearly wrong, so I argued against it.
I haven't read the thread, so I don't know if I'm preaching to the chior or going out on a limb, but:
3e's multi-classing was a quantum leap in character customizeability and a great innovation. As with healing surges & hit dice, though, it looks like 5e is going to try to improve on something good, by averaging it out with something not quite as good. 3e class/levels were like modular building blocks, they quite efficiently and elegantly allowed you to build to concept using bits of each class. What's described here also builds-in some of the 'averaged out' half-classes of classic D&D (you multiclass Fighter, you get half the hps of a fighter of the same level, you don't get the THAC0 of a character of your total exp) and 4e Hybrids. Those worked, in a way, thanks to the complexities of level advancement, but they lacked elegance, consistency, and flexibility.
3e multiclassing was a great idea, but it had a couple of little blind spots in the implementation. Like caster level. BAB increased for every class, even the wizard. Caster level didn't. If caster level had advanced like BAB, with non-casters getting 1/2 progression, hybrid casters like paladins 3/4, and casters full, multi-classing to and among caster classes would have been much more practical. Fixing those would not have been hard. I could have been done with 3.5, but it wasn't. 5e has changed some basic advancement around and has a sort of fetish for disparate sub-systems for each class, so it won't be that simple to just take the 3e aproach and drop it in. Without quasi-uinversal progressions like BAB and Caster Level or an actually universal progression like pre-E's (that is, with bounded accuracy), there's no way to let different classes build on eachother. Instead, MC'ing will give you a collection of unrelated abilities. You'll have a spell from list A and a spell from list B and a CS die and an SA die, and you'll be like a party of 1st level characters sharing a single set of actions.
A better aproach, IMHO, would be to use a common advancement structure, and let multi-class characters pull options from each of their classes at each level. No need to worry about BAB or Caster Level (or the 5e equivalent damage progressions), or make multi-class characters wait multiple levels for the features they want most. Think of 4e Themes and Racial substitution powers. Being multi-classed doesn't need to give you more stuff, just more options. Balance would be moderate: While each ability that might be swapped could be balanced for the level at which it's gained, the potential synergies would be myriad. But, if well-done and assertively errata'd, it could be worth it.
This is the voice of reason IMHO.
As I recall there actually was an attempt to smooth out the BAB issues in the manner you suggest in Unearthed Acrana. There may have even been a similar version of rules for spell-casters but I don't have the book with me to check.
Granted, that was a book explicitly for alternative rules. The horse had most certainly bolted at that stage and I think trying to errata something like that would have been too difficult. Still, the idea was there.
As for Multiclassing in general, I'm intrigued for what they come out with but i'll reserve judgement until I see something in a playtest. I don't see how you can have 3E-style multiclassing when someone (a designer) earlier stated that you could start off with a Multiclass character from level 1.
Well, at this point it doesn't sound like they are talking about something exactly like 3E-style. Close, but with (at least) the pure-class level 1 broken down into several stages that a multiclasser would have to take one level at a time.
Suppose for the sake of argument that they consistently break the pure-class level 1 into 4 stages that are not dependent on each other. Some of these four stages might have options to choose from.
Then they could say that a new character can turn directly to the multiclass versions and pick two of these stages from each of two classes. The pure-class guy gets the equivalent of four multiclass stages, and the multiclass-from-day-1 guy gets the equivalent of four multiclass stages.
(Note: I am not saying that this is the best way to do it, or even necessarily a good way - just that it is one way it could be done.)
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
