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Having the order in which you take different classes just needlessly makes the game more complicated.  Everyone who's arguing otherwise seems to be forgetting an important part: once you choose to multiclass, you can still gain levels in your original class (this isn't the old-school human-only Dual Class rules).  Examples:

• Albert takes 5 levels of Fighter and then 5 levels Wizard.
• Burtrom takes 5 levels of Wizard and then 5 levels of Fighter.
• Charles takes 1 level of either Fighter or Wizard, and alternates between the two until he has 5 of each.

All of these characters have put the same amount of effort into each class.  They should all have the same amount of "fighterness" and "wizardness".

If you say Albert should be more of a fighter than a wizard, then I ask you "Why? He hasn't been working on fighting as much recently, so shouldn't he more wizardy?".  If you say he should be more wizardy that fightery, then I ask you "Why?  After 5 levels of fighting, do you think he'd forget how to weild a sword?".  And what about Charles?  If I create Charles at an even level, then he doesn't really have an "initial class".  What's the benefit of forcing one on him?

Something about a "formative class" makes sense to my brain. The reality of how people develop skills isn't in any way represented by character classes anyway, but the idea that someone started with a certain perspective and that shapes their development as a character is a strong narrative statement that's easy to latch onto and turn into a story.

I would also argue that by class level 5 the characters would probably have gained most if not all the things a new character would gain at level 1. A big part of the continuity problems multiclassing 3e style presents is that level 1 is considered to be preceded by a period of training we never see. Occasionally someone will roleplay out preludes or scenes where a character completes their training or comes of age or whatever, but usually we all just assume that's done with.

If multiclassing can happen on the campaign trail, you get into this situation where a guy can level up, to go bed, and suddenly have mastered a bunch of stuff that nobody's seen him do before. In terms of the story, it's a weird convention. Mechanically, it's a nightmare.

I do agree that probably by 5/5, the character's figured out how to be a fighter with some magical help AND a wizard that can use a sword. Maybe a little later than 5/5, but probably not a lot later.

Nov 20, 2012 -- 1:37PM, Rory wrote:

Nov 20, 2012 -- 6:25AM, Aesurtiel wrote:

MULTICLASS WIZARD

A wizard gets 1 spell slot per level.  The highest level spell he can cast is half his character level.

Wizard 10: 2 2 2 2 2
Wizard 7/Fighter 3: 2 2 1 1 1
Wizard 3/ Fighter 7: 1 1 1 0 0

Cool? 

  

Why give the Wizard 3/ Fighter 7 an advantage? You are giving fireball two levels ahead as a reward for also knowing how to fight. That will outshine single class. Its not like I have a much better solution. Actually I have a similar solution. Mix in a few levels of Swordmage to bump the Wiz slots, and rebalance magic so its not so top heavy.

The wizard 3/Fighter 7 has spent VASTLY more XP on those 3 levels of wizard than a single classed wizard 3. He's not getting an advantage, it's still a disadvantage.

A level 10 character needs to be doing level 10 STUFF. I don't care if the stuff is casting spells, or swinging a sword, or backstabing with a dagger, or turning undead. His actions need to be appropriate for a level 10 character.

You can go with AD&D like buying levels in different classes with different XP pools, or you can go with 4th edition dipping a couple of level appropriate powers, but the actions need to be level appropriate, and that means not asking a fighter to give up his expertise dice progression to be able to cast a couple of level 1 spells.

Adding a class like swordmage to do what 3.x multiclassing is SUPPOSED TO DO ON ITS OWN, that is, allow a fighter/magic user, is an open admission that the multiclassing system has FAILED. And even in 3.x where there were 50 or so caster/non-caster or caster/caster hybrid prestige classes the universal judgement was that such builds were STILL too weak unless you were advancing a prestige class casting like UrPriest.

D&DNext low level spells are SUPPOSED to stay somewhat relevant. If so then this may not be as big a problem. But asking someone to give up levels 8-10 of one class to have levels 1-3 of another class simply does not work, because you only get one action per turn, and that action needs to be level appropriate.

A Fighter20/Wizard1 for example is obviously a dabler in magic, but he's an EPIC dabbler, his dabbling should either produce better results than Joe the apprentice gets or have only a negilgable cost to his fighter abilities.