Multiclass Shenanigans

[Frank Trollman]

When you begin a character at 6th level, it is fundamentally unimportant whether the character advanced Rogue, Rogue, Rogue, Bard, Bard, Bard; or Bard, Bard, Bard, Rogue, Rogue, Rogue; or Bard, Rogue, Bard, Rogue, Bard, Rogue; or whatever. You're making a Bard 3/ Rogue 3 from scratch. And so it is trivially easy to see that having different level orders make the difference between a character be "better" or "worse" is bad design.

So the first level skill thing? That's bad design. It makes people who take a level of Rogue before their other levels get 2-6 bonus skills over characters who take a level of something else and then move on to Rogue.

If you must have Rogues retain their status as the class with "more skills" it should be ingrained as class features into the class - a character who takes their levels of Rogue should get the same number of bonus skills no matter what order those levels were actually taken in.

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While we're at it, any starting hit point scheme which rewards starting in a class with a bigger hit die is an inherently unbalanced and poor choice. If a Barbarian/Fighter is strictly superior to a Fighter/Barbarian, you have a very obvious balance problem. A problem which has no actual excuse for existing.

-Frank

[Spyderz]

I like the ability to add class skills as you go up...but unfortunately the system as written will promote multiclassing solely as a means to gain more class skills since all class skills are used as if they were all maxed in the skill point system. In some games...where skills aren't that important this won't come up as much...but if you run a game where your players are called upon to roll a bunch of different skills often...they're going to do it...especially if this also affects their hp noticeably or other cool benefits. To this end...I'd like to see the skill system adjusted so you can still get to add new class skills..as you go up...and even be able to improve your existing ones some while putting points in the new ones...but I don't like the all skills maxed option.