Though I love Pathfinder and can see the high quality of the work in such books as the Advanced Players' Guide and Ultimate Magic, I find that they offer little to nothing for the multi-classed character I'm currently playing. Since Paizo's current design mandate precludes producing support material that'd encourage multi-classing it'd seem like a niche crying out to be filled by 3rd party publishers. I'd imagine that the fine folks at Super Genius Games would be up to the task and might see some value in developing such a supplement.
So how's about it? Might a supplement featuring multi-class feats and archetypes be a possibility that others aside from myself would be interested in seeing?
Well super genius already has a host of products that help blend elements of various classes together in the spirit if not letter of multiclassing. For instance the Ultimate Options: Magus Arcana has options of bringing some witch or bard spells into the magus list. In their new sorceror options product they have an arcetype that allow a sorceror to take some witch hexes, and another that increases the combat potential of the sorceror.
I think at this point the game is heavily designed against mutliclassing and instead in favor of using talents and other options to bring other elements into a class. I order to truly support multiclassing I think SGG would have to create products that were pretty solidly opposed to the current pathfinder design philosophy.
I order to truly support multiclassing I think SGG would have to create products that were pretty solidly opposed to the current pathfinder design philosophy.
I disagree. Prestige classes (which necessitate multi-classing) and multi-classing themselves are written into the basic structure of the game. It's just that, being actively discouraged, they're currently unsupported options. That doesn't change the fact that there are some players who do choose to play multi-class and/or prestige characters. So why not throw those players a bone and help bolster a much neglected part of the game? I imagine that it's a significant niche market that SGG could readily service/exploit.
I order to truly support multiclassing I think SGG would have to create products that were pretty solidly opposed to the current pathfinder design philosophy.I disagree. Prestige classes (which necessitate multi-classing) and multi-classing themselves are written into the basic structure of the game. It's just that, being actively discouraged, they're currently unsupported options. That doesn't change the fact that there are some players who do choose to play multi-class and/or prestige characters. So why not throw those players a bone and help bolster a much neglected part of the game? I imagine that it's a significant niche market that SGG could readily service/exploit.
My concern is balance, its hard to balance mutliclassing as it stands because either the character is behind the curver or ahead of it. Base classes, archetypes and other in class options represent something in a closed space. The magus is a self contained entity. You dont have to worry as much about how it interacts with anything else. Its abilities can be balanced as a single package and compared against other existing classes. An archetype applies to a single class and directly trades out abilities for those of a similar value.
Multiclassing on the other hand presents unique problems that I have not seen overcome in the 3.x era, and have become harder in pathfinder. So many abilities are based on and balanced around class level, not character level. Multiclassing throws a wrench in that becasue you have a 7th level character with 3rd or 4th level character abilities (in a 3-4 mix). If the multiclass character could get any of their abilities at full power, it overshadows the single classed character, but if they cant, then they would be less effective at most any single task then the single classed character which causes problems either way.