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Jan 26, 2013 -- 10:37PM, Qmark wrote:

Jan 26, 2013 -- 10:32PM, OrKKiller wrote:

I want 5E to turn out to be a 4.75 that is cleaned up and previous edition friendly, but by now we both know that isn't going to happen.

If Mearls can make a "4E, in 2E terms", he's automatically won.

He can't and he's not interested in doing so.  

Anything 4e related must be disguised, neutered, warped and shredded.

From their released playtests and future plans that we've been told about this edition is all about bringing back folks who left because of 4e and to do that they are throwing 4e folks under the bus. 

Salright there's stuff out there for 4e fans to play.
 

Jan 27, 2013 -- 10:32AM, Zardnaar wrote:

Still see what the next packet is about because 2W, 3W etc is apparently coming back.

And extra attacks, right?

I was (am) a 1E/2E player.
I didn't like 3E or 3.5, but eventually switched because most everyone else did. I never really cared for it much, but it got to the point that if I wanted to play D&D, chances are it was going to be 3.X.
 
I had pretty much the same reaction to 4E. Fortunately, when 4E came out, many players (in my area)went back to older editions, including a resurgence of 1E/2E games. I played/DMd 4E many times, but I never took to it much like I never took to 3.X. Many other players jumped on the Pathfinder bandwagon, but I did not join them. By the time DDN was announced, I was back to DMing 2E games on a regular basis.

I see a lot of good in DDN, but I'm refraining from judging it until I get a finished product. I can't say that it is a "desperate and unveiled grab for Pathfinder players", but it certainly does appear to be geared in that direction. I certainly hope that is not the basic reasoning for DDN. It's not good plan. There's a reason people jumped ship and went to Pathfinder. Trying to bring them back into the fold with anything less than a Pathfinder/3.X reprint will probably not work, and only split the fanbase even further. I do wish them luck, though. They're going to have an uphill battle every step of the way.

Jan 23, 2013 -- 4:45PM, Rastapopoulos wrote:

Jan 23, 2013 -- 9:43AM, Failedlegend wrote:

So when a Single-class character is Lvl 20 the 2e style Multiclass is 16/16 (or 14/14/14).  So it doesn't get the super powerful stuff from both classes but the combined mid-range stuff...in theory allows it to be competitive.

Problem is, for a level 10... 15... or even maybe a level 5 character... that 500xp for 1 or 2 levels is nothing.

If MC worked that way in 5ed, you could have, for example, absolutelly everyone at mid/higher levels taking 2 or 3 levels of Wizard just to have spells here and there... 2 or 3 levels of Cleric just to have heals.
And suddenly everyone is a Wizard, a Cleric, etc.

2ed supressed that possibility by imposing a rule that when you Dual-Classed (for humans) you lost access to almost all you had from your 1st class until your 2nd got to a higher level than the 1st. Basically you "forgot" all you knew until your new XP progression caght up with the old one.
That was a very poor system for MC, weird, and which made little sense.

Now, if you consider MC as ONLY leveling 2 or 3 classes at the same time, always!, and by that I mean you can make a level 1 fighter/wizard and level the 2 classes together, but you can never take your level 2 or 5 fighter and suddenly take levels in wizard...
Then, for that specific case, this system of multiclassing would work great.
But that's too limiting a form of MC.

3ed had a much more "free-form" MC that was great in concept, but did have its flaws.
(more on that below)

Jan 23, 2013 -- 9:55AM, Qmark wrote:

 This is the important part.

2E style (or parallel XP) multiclassing lags, but not too badly.  Two evenly-leveled classes means running about 20% behind in each, with three classes about 30% behind.  Unevenly leveled classes (parallel XP) would average about that, with lower-leveled classes quickly catching up when desired.
3E style just lags, badly.   Two evenly-leveled classes are 50% behind in each, three classes are 67% behind, four classes are 75% behind, etc.  This makes encounter balance obscenely difficult when someone in the party is plowing through a single class, and even harder when an optimized super-synergy build gets involved.

Actually a 2ed fighter/wizard would be only level 14/14 by the time a pure fighter hit level 20.
A fighter/mage/thief would be 12/12/12.

A 3ed fighter/wizard 10/10 (total character level 20), however, would be well above the mentioned 50%.
Because you add things up, while in 2ed you took the best of each.
This fighter/wizard 10/10 would have +15 base attack, better than the 2ed's 14 THAC0.
Also, for the 3ed 10/10 Skills could reach up to 20 or 23 ranks (depending on the version: 3.5, Pathfinder, etc), the equivalent of a single class.
Saves wouldn't be too different, since the save of the "worst" class would at least add up to the "better" class for that save.

You can't just compare two very different systems like that and declared 50% or 30% just taking into account how many levels "behind" the multiclass is.



It is also worthy of mention that 2ed was somewhat better for combining 2 very different classes:
fighter/mage
mage/thief

But with 2ed rules a Fighter/Barbarian or Fighter/Paladin, for example. would be terrible. You would lose too much, for what you would gain in the trade. While 3ed's system was excellent for such combinations.
The 14/14 fighter/paladin in 2ed would be 6 levels behind on things like THAC0, while the 3ed one could have his base attack still reach +20. He'd be only mixing abilities from both classes but not losing his "raw" fighting ability.



As a general idea, 3ed's MC system was great.
It just had 2 major problems:

1- Multiclassing a spellcaster was almost always bad. Practically nothing you could gain from other classes was worth losing half you spell progression.
Almost all other combinations of MC in 3ed worked fine and elegantly, but throw in a spellcaster and it kinda sucked.
Even rogue/fighter kind of combinations were fine.

2- There were some problems with "dead levels" and "significant levels" for saves and base attack.
A 1/1/1 wizard/bard/cleric for example would still have +0 Base Attack, but an absurd +6 base will save.



If 5ed adopts the same general rules for MC than 3ed, but fixes theses "bugs", we'll have a great MC system.



The problem with number 1, is that spellcasters worked with a system exclusive of their classes.
While a fighter's feats you could still get outside the class, and a rogue's skill too. You wouldn't have as much of those things as the pure fighter or thief, but it was a worth trade-off for the diversity of MCing.
A caster's spell progression, however, simply could not continue outside the class. Even if you multiclassed to another caster you would have 2 much weaker, independent progressions.

That's why having exclusive abilities for class is great! But exclusive "systems" is bad.

Maybe a more "general-oriented" casting system like the feats and skills of 3ed that weren't dependant on any particular class... would solve that and make MCing casters more viable.
You could still need to have levels on a caster class to be able to cast spells. But the progression need not be entirelly stuck inside the leveling of that class.



So that's about it.
I think if we fix those 2 issues of 3ed's multiclassing we would have a great system.


3ed kinda worked around the problem introducing prestige classes like the "Eldritch Knight", but that's not an elegant solution.
I would rather see the basic system improved.

in 2nd edition you could not multi class with classes from the same school of classes so you couldnt multi class with 2 diffrent fighter classes or 2 types of rogues ect

More I think about it the more I come to feel that the "best" edition of D&D all around was Star Wars Saga Edition.