Bolds mine, obviously.

I like how in the manual they flat out tell you that mixed classes are usually better than single classes instead of even pretending that someone might consider making, say, a straight up fighter because that is easier to imagine someone pursuing than a triple multiclass.

I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around a CLERIC/FIGHTER/MAGE without completely shifting out of believable characterization and totally into straight up number crunching. Consider the following points:

1.) Clerics are devoted to religious belief and faith and as part of this faith in D&D land they aren't allowed to use edged weapons. BUT apparently there's no problem with being both a cleric and a fighter who uses edged weapons. Why is that "okay" but it's not possible for a single-class cleric to grab a steak knife and stab someone in self-defense during a tavern assault?

2.) Mages cannot wear armor in D&D land. If a mage expects that he's going to be jumped coming around a corner by Jason from Friday the 13th he can't put on a chain mail shirt under his robes. BUT he can as long as he claims he has at least 1 level in Fighter.

How can we even begin to justify such a character background in our imaginations? "Well, uh, yeah...Juggly the CLERIC/FIGHTER/MAGE started out studying as a mage. As soon as he became a level 1 mage some red headed bully beat the crap out of him after absorbing Juggly's Magic Missile Spell which rolled poorly and only did 2 points of damage. As a reaction to this Juggly went and trained as a fighter for 1 level. But after he accidentally killed someone in fighter training school he found religion and became a cleric. But he can still bust out the edged weapons when he needs to. Or cast Magic Missile. While wearing armor. And of course he has no problem finding training in clericness, fighterness, or mageness whenever he needs it. Because he's just that popular with so many people."

If one triple-classed character can do all sorts of things which are forbidden to other character classes such as actually wear armor it almost makes the other characters look mentally handicapped. Perhaps the mage, should he attempt to put on armor, immediately lets out a high-pitched whiney noise and falls to the ground with a clatter completely unable to move or gesticulate. Perhaps if you wish to capture an enemy mage you just need to hold him down and pull some armor on him to render him totally helpless.

If I were writing the rules, I'd put a lot of restrictions on a multi-class character. In the first place, if the system allowed for a certain number of maximum levels (eg. level 20, or level 36) I would make the total of all your levels count towards the maximum number of levels. So if 36 were our max the best that a triple class character could be in one area would be level 34 and two level 1 classes, or level 12 in three areas if the levels were spread out evenly. I really don't feel like a triple class character should be "better" than a specialist especially if he's "better" just because he breaks the rules better. A generalist should be a bit more versatile but should always suck in a specific area compared to a specialist.

If a boxer, a specialist, fought in a mixed martial arts venue without modifying his training regime, he would not do well compared to people who train for the mixed martial arts venue. However, someone who trains for mixed martial arts who enters a straight up boxing venue will, all other things being equaled, be out-boxed by the guy who has specialized in boxing his whole life. Just look at the boxing match Leila Ali versus Erin Toughill from a while back. Even though Toughill was a seasoned MMA competitor Leila Ali completely dominated her in the boxing ring because Ali was more appropriately specialized.

The other thing I would do is enforce class restrictions while doing class activities. So if you're a FIGHTER/CLERIC/MAGE, I'd have the following restrictions just in the interest of not completely contradicting previous class rules from before the days of multiclassing:

1.) You cannot cast magic if you're wearing any armor. If you're wearing plate mail and suddenly really feel the need to Fireball you have to rip off your armor in order to do so.

2.) Because clerical spells and abilities essentially come from faith you cannot use any of your cleric abilities (spells or Turn Undead) if you are using edged weapons. You can use your fighter stats with blunt weapons but your cleric spells in memory immediately vanish if you use an edged weapon and you cannot regain your lost cleric abilities until you've done proper atonement for having used edged weapons. The atonement would have to be pretty serious considering that clerics aren't even supposed to use edged weapons when their lives are threatened.

I think that rules like that would go a long way towards having multiclassed characters be a true "jack of all trades but master of none" instead of being stupidly all powerful.

Multi classing just makes my head explode. I'll bet it was created by some whiny player who didn't understand why his mage wasn't allowed to pick up a sword and practice fencing on the weekend and eventually mushroomed into some gigantic game-balance-destroying suspension-of-disbelief-eating monstrosity.

For me, this suggests something of a logical or conceptual flaw with the way EXP levels work.

The reason that the triple multiclass character isn't far behind the singe class character is because of how the EXP required to level up gets bigger and bigger as you go up in levels while the amount of potency you gain from just one level isn't very much, especially if you're a fighter. There's a serious point of diminishing returns as you go up in levels.

Why did they decide to do it that way? There are a few probable reasons. The first reason is reward mechanic. The game is designed to have a continually increasing reward mechanic in terms of numbers of EXPs you gain for overcoming various challenges but in order to prevent levelling from speeding up as character level increases they backdoor-undermine that by making more and more EXPs required for gaining levels as those levels go up. The second reason could be the idea that continual refinements to skill begin to require disproportional amounts of input on the part of the character. So it's harder to go from level 35 to level 36 than it is to go from level 1 to level 5, even though level 1 to level 5 is a much more dramatic difference. This is because the level 35 fighter is just refining the nuances of his craft which is already very refined, and that refinement is simultaneously hard to achieve and also doesn't make that big of a difference in reality.

If we look at EXP requirements that way, though, I would argue that it creates a problem of unused excess capacity for single class characters. If a multi class character can become very good at three disciplines in the time it takes a single class character to go from very good to very good plus one it seems like the single class character is simply not using his time efficiently, especially when we consider that it's possible for a multi class character to have the same level in a given class as a single class character. Under this way of handling multi class characters it seems that single class characters are effectively wasting a lot of time refining a single skill to a small extent instead of picking up a variety of skills and getting good if not excellent at all of them.

In terms of verisimilitude and thinking about the way things work in the real world, someone who works on three disciplines isn't going to end up only slightly worse at one of them than the specialist. All things being equal the specialist should be a lot better if we don't want to have to assume that the specialist is wasting all this time on mostly-academic refinements and has all this excess capacity that he was simply too stupid to put to use like the multi-classer was.

As a mental exercise, then, how would I consider modifying the way D&D works in order to relfect more favorably on someone who chooses to specialize in a way that I feel is more in tune with reality?

I think the easiest way to do this would be to not make levels have a point of diminishing returns in terms of EXP. At the same time, though, EXP should be awared by the GM not on a strict monster-by-monster basis, but rather on the same scale throughout the campaign based on how challenging a situation was for the party. With a flat scale for EXP rewards and non-inflated gaps between the amount of EXP required per level you'd be able to eliminate the situation where as levels increase the triple class character is only one step behind the specialist instead of only 1/3 of where the specialist has attained.

The other thing I might consider is applying a more drastic total level cap to the maximum level a character can attain which gets worse for each additional character class the character adds. This would represent how by spreading his time and energy among multiple disciplines the multi class character can never end up refining things to the degree of perfection of a specialist, since additional refinements upon mastery require the complete and total devotion of the specialist. So for example maybe the maximum level of a specialist would be 36, but the sum total of all the levels for a multiclass character might be only 30 for two classes, and 24 for three classes.


This was just a mental exercise, of course. I realize that the reason why 1st ed rocks is precisely broken mechanics, convoluted rules, huge tables, and ORIENTAL ADVENTURES 1ST EDITION!!!!!!

This is a problem with fighters, no the mechanic.

The underlying problem is this.

Going from level 16 ->17 as a wizard gives you timestop and shapeshift.

Going from levels 16 -> 17 as a fighter gives you +1 to hit.



Frankly a level 10 wizard / 10 fighter in 3rd edition is in no way as powerful as a level 17 wizard. Or, hell, probably even a cheesy level 13 one.

But a level 17 cleric is probably BETTER than a level 17 wizard, so lets do the breakdown there.

A level 17 wizard is much, much, better than a Wizard 11/ Cleric 11. Even the cheesy 13 wizard with 7th level spells may be a valid choice compared to those 11 levels of cleric.

So we can see that those 11 cleric levels are worth considerably less than 5 or 6 wizard levels.

So the sliding XP scale in D&D 1st is actually pretty good, because it does reflect that a wizard 5/cleric 5 is absolute rubbish compared to a wizard 10. Problems with diminishing returns are because fighters are a crap class, not with sliding xps scales.

Where the sliding xps scales are broke are when you can have a level 5 thief and a level 5 fighter together in the same party at the same xps, and a level 6 thief and a level 5 fighter in the same part together.

Err.. how are those two on the same power level again?

Yeah, I remember the ninja class and how you were forced to try and masquerade as another character class. What fun.

Ultimately we never needed 2nd or 3rd edition. 1st edition was completely adequate.

One of my dreams is to be able to play in a first edition Oriental Adventures campaign and go around assaulting people with my chopsitcks that do 1d3 damage.

Imagine you're a thousand-year-old Elf who has been sitting at the level cap for the last eight hundred years. Now you see this human upstart about to pass you after only forty.

A quick word with your thousand-year-old Elf mage buddies, an evening of work, and suddenly there isn't any human upstart anymore.

And that's how you keep a reputation going.

~J

Logically speaking it's interesting that certain character classes were restricted by your randomly generated ability scores (i.e. in order to be a Monk you needed certain minimum ability scores) but that the same logic didn't apply to elves, dwarves, etc even though they were supposed to be relatively rare and humans common.

To be logically consistient maybe the rules should have had you roll up your attributes first, pick species second based on certain minimum entry level restrictions (i.e. no elves with Wisdom 3) and then finally pick your twinked out character class.