Anyone on Veeky Forums old enough to remember when D&D had dual-classing? You know...

Anyone on Veeky Forums old enough to remember when D&D had dual-classing? You know, when players would always have their human characters take at least one level in cleric before switching over to the class they actually wanted to play.

I kind of miss all those little intricacies of AD&D that lent themselves to so much casual power-gaming.

Casual powergaming and easy-to-approach intricacies are definitely underappreciated.

It's one of the things that I really like about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e. You can stay in a job as long as you want, or until you get the specific things that you want and then hop into another job.

The way dual-classing worked was so retarded that everybody I knew just pretended it didn't exist.

>The way dual-classing worked was so retarded that everybody I knew just pretended it didn't exist.
This. I tried it a couple times but the XP handicap seemed to make it not worth the effort.

Even multiclassing was retarded up through 3rd edition. Most people just ignored the XP penalties altogether because they were too stupid and non-intuitive to implement.

My group just ignores XP. All level-ups are pretty much plot fueled.

You could only do that if you got a 15 Wis and a 17 in the prime requisite score for the class you wanted to move into.

We rolled 3d6 in order. I think I saw maybe two legit dual-classed characters in a decade of playing 2nd edition.

>half of the base classes aren't viable.

Those first two editions were meat grinders if the DM wasn't fudging rolls.

Dual-classing TO rogue is pretty fast, m8. Their XP tables are short and you could get back to your level in a few.

3rd edition multiclassing actually made sense as a concept. Just the way the whole class system was set up you are doomed to fail, mechanically, if you don't go straight through as one class.

It's been years, I don't remember how it used to be but I remember it being weird as hell.

>You know, when players would always have their human characters take at least one level in cleric before switching over to the class they actually wanted to play.
>I kind of miss all those little intricacies of AD&D that lent themselves to so much casual power-gaming.

I don't miss shit like that. It's gamist cancer, and the people who do it are invariably boring fucks who drone on about their builds for hours.

>cancer
>huge generalizing sweep

/v/ plz leave

>We rolled 3d6 in order. I think I saw maybe two legit dual-classed characters in a decade of playing 2nd edition.

4d6 drop the lowest for AD&D. Word of Gygax, man. 3d6 should be used for OD&D and Basic only.

I guess you could do it that way, but in a longer game what you wanted to do was to go Fighter...gawd. Was it Ftr8 or Ftr9? For the HP right up until you stopped rolling dice, thac0, good saves and weapon specialization. You'd be behind in whatever you wanted to be in, but you'd be damned hard to kill while you were behind and you'd catch up eventually.

What? 3e was all about multiclassing.

In a long running campaign this was the best way to guarantee your Wizard would survive to high levels.

>Old enough
>Mentions mechanics still in play up until 3.x
Please kill yourself, child

Which is why all the best options were full casters right?

Multiclassing was only really useful if you were a martial going into another martial class and even then, you were still weaker than the resident mage.

It's twice the work for a quarter of the returns.

He probably counted prestiges as multiclassing.

Still, most prestige classes in 3.X were garbage anyways.

You have classes that not only require their own prereqs, but also requires you to use the finnicky multiclass rules too?

And most of them were still too weak too compete against a full-casters?

Seriously, what was the fucking point?

3.5 core edition, I have a human fighter. Next level I plan on putting a level into barbarian.

There's no xp penalty for this right? Usually there is, but not if you're a human?

This is a pretty ironic post
The multiclass rules were pretty strait forward in 3rd aside from favored class penalties which were incredibly ignored
There's no penalty for that as a human. I think "favored class any" still only counts as a single favored class, so there's ways you can still have an XP penalty as a human if you multiclass in 3 or more classes, but fuck if I remember exactly how it works. There's good reason most people don't use it

Thank you, that's what I gathered.

I don't want to bother the DM with experience penalty math hell, but I really want that barbarian rage on my fighter. it seemed too good to be true that humans could dip without penalty, so I wanted to verify.

Hot damn, Veeky Forums, I'm going to be a barbarian
>tfw went pure tank
>inb4 you can't tank in D&D
>wiznerds think martial classes are bad when they're actually based as fuck

>Martialfags think that they're hot shit because they can deal/receive more damage.

>Even multiclassing was retarded up through 3rd edition.
What's wrong with 'you have two classes, split the XP evenly among both'?

>implying dealing/receiving more damage isn't the best thing ever
>also receiving the benefits of your wizardry via the NPC who sells me potions

KRUG BUY MAGIC, PUNY WIZARD NO USE.

It was fun but left too much space for exploit. Are prestige classes still a thing btw.? That was something i actually liked a lot

>Krug swings his axe at a monster, which proceeds to rip him apart while he's in melee.
>Malak throws a SoL/SoD spell from a safe distance and retires the monster in one turn.

>Krug buys his magic at inflated prices from local wizards.
>Malak produces his own magic at a discount and sells any extras to the local monarchy.

Don't be Krug kids, Krug is crud.

In 5e, they more or less became advancement options that each class has access to at level 2 or 3.

For example, Fighters can choose to become either a Champion, Battle Master, and Eldritch Knight once they reach level 3.

that sucks, half the fun was meeting the requierments and making over the top, retarded builds

>safe distance

Thank your local Krug for that, ya dick-ass Malak.

Why should I thank you for doing your job?

Besides, now that we're at 5th level, I can just summon random monsters to protect me and probably deal more damage through number advantage to boot.

Remember Krug, you're not all that necessary, so remember your place before you GET replaced.

5e was basically WotC striking a healthy balance between third and fourth edition.

Mages are better but it's not to the point where martials lose their purpose, a lot of SoL/SoD spells were either removed or nerfed, bounded accuracy, (dis)advantage to replace stacking bonuses and penalties, etc.

They're even limiting their releases for player options in order to avoid an overabundance of splats.

Granted, some people love it and some people hate. I think it's good but I can understand why people hate it.

If you're winning through number advantage, aren't you all failing by not just getting a hundred hirelings with crossbows? It seems to me everyone can be replaced by a paymaster, an accountant, a wealthy investor, and a hundred hirelings.

Ooh. I wonder if my group would be interested in playing that.

That's not why they have a slow release schedule. They have a slow release schedule because there's so few people on the D&D team and it's where careers go to die within WotC.

There will come a time where we encounter anti-magic, and the Maleks will look up to the Krugs, shouting "Save us!"

And Krug will look down, and whisper "UNGA BUNGA KRUG SAVE"

oh fuck off, not you again

These guys just sound like a fun party DESU.

The reason why there's so few splatbooks is because the D&D team is about 25-30 people now. There's enough of a player base that they can still make profit from the game by releasing a solid core and very solid additions to it, but barfing out a new splatbook every few months would not be profitable, really.

Times have changed, and everybody is playing cards now.

I prefered multiclassing.

Sometimes I play Cyclopedia, with a few houserules, adding in multuclassing is one of them.

The other two big ones are class kits, and the game being algebra'd into having a unified core mechanic.

Until Krug realizes that his impressive strength is nerfed because of the anti-magic field and Malak can still cast spells that aren't affected by the AMF anyways.

>The reason why there's so few splatbooks is because the D&D team is about 25-30 people now.
I could pick you 25-30 people who work jobs other than making D&D content but who do the latter as a hobby who would put out more and more interesting, if not outright better, content than the D&D team. I doubt it's even that large.

>but barfing out a new splatbook every few months would not be profitable, really.
But it is for Paizo?

Wouldn't it just be an RTS at that point?

The metal cone hat gimmick is one of my favorite 3.x gimmicks of all time.

I was in a group once that used tarot cards in a weird way to determine multiclassing.

Krug is 100% natty.

What kind of spells go through an anti-magic field?

I like the bag of chickens

>Until Krug realizes that his impressive strength is nerfed because of the anti-magic field and Malak can still cast spells that aren't affected by the AMF anyways.
>he doesn't lift Manuals of Gainful Exercise

Wall of Force, Prismatic Sphere.

As a newfag, it sounds like one of those hiccups of game design smoothed out as game designers got more player experience to draw on.

What's the point of "having" to take a level in another class before going on to the one you really want to do? Why not just make those classes incorporate things like that to begin with so there's no need to fiddle with the system in a way it probably didn't foresee?

I'm not dissing the practice. It's perfectly legitimate to enjoy the kind of game that comes from fiddly things like that. And unforeseen interactions of mechanics in nonstandard ways can be a real boon to a system. But it reads to me as clearly the sort of thing that's indicative more of a problem in the fundamental design than a real blessing. Something obviously not intended in it of itself, or it would've been focused on in a different way.

Really its to spice up your pc.
Take one i ran a while ago, was a thief/fighter (adnd2e).
Ran him as a conan, had a drop of thief for the no armour bonuses and some sneaky/backstabbing action.
The system was abusable, this guy was -2 ac at level 1/1 and coulda been -6 if i was an asshat, but not being sperg i dont minmax/rollplay.
If your players are the problem, deal with them.
Rust monster statue inside gelatinous cube, go!

I meant stuff more along the lines of "players would always have their human characters take at least one level in cleric before switching over to the class they actually wanted to play." That sounds way more like a deficiency of the system shining through over something like what you have there, which is combining two different classes to "make use" of traits between them.

If it's something people always did to balance out a class, it sounds more like the class needed another looking at and not something they were doing for spice..

I never personally encountered that, so I can't really speak it to it. AD&D Clerics were quite a bit less capable than their counterparts in later editions though, especially at low levels. Same deal with Thieves.

Why would you want a one level dip in cleric? They didn't even get a spells at first level IIRC.

Dual-classing, and multi-classing was a pain.

I found a neat exploit in some old SSI Dark Sun games. Shattered Lands and Wake of the Ravager.

>When characters would dual class they kept the hit-point, and attack bonus of their old class.
>I would start the game with a bunch of human fighters.
>At second level, or whatever level I was able to dual class I would switch them over to spell-casting classes.

>multi-classing was a pain
Was it? You just had 2 (or 3) classes and you split your XP evenly. Sure you level a little bit slower, but I never really had a problem with that. Might be because when I would multi-class it was often Fighter/Thief.

Yeah, that's a thing. Early D&D was often played in a similar way, with players basically running a mercenary band. You gotta do something when the wilderness tables have like 3-30 orcs appearing at once. Four or five guys will just get surrounded and die before they even reach the dungeon.

Malak no realize Krug is Giant sized Half-Ogre Barbarian with 32 Strength.

>everyone can be replaced by a paymaster, an accountant, a wealthy investor, and a hundred hirelings.
1. You're forgetting the master strategist, who is probably a fighter.

2. It's called conqueror-tier play.

3. At the start of the game, you don't have cash to do that. Characters specialized for running an army all have to survive to the point they can afford hirelings.

4. In games that are good, you can't take an army into the dungeon. Only the most loyal retainers are ever willing to enter a dungeon with you, and those guys demand a cut of the loot in exchange for taking such an extreme risk.

>You gotta do something when the wilderness tables have like 3-30 orcs appearing at once
Like not fighting the orcs? Or if they treat you as kill-on-sight, then hide, run away, or otherwise evade fights that you obviously can't win?

Make sure it's Spirit Lion Totem + Whirling Frenzy Barbarian and not vanilla Barbarian. Pounce is crucial to any martial that wants to matter past level 6.

Don't tell Krug that he's actually just a half-orc, he'll only be upset if he learns the truth.

Oops, I thought OP was talking about 4E's mechanic where you could basically be two classes at once, picking between which features you wanted. I think passive class features were nerfed in half but you could still just mix and match whatever you wanted after that. It was great.
That, and the multiclassing feats that gave you certain proficiencies, as well as an ability from the class, making it obviously ridiculously powerful compared to the normal feats that just gave you those same proficiencies with no extra abilities.

>Like not fighting the orcs? Or if they treat you as kill-on-sight, then hide, run away, or otherwise evade fights that you obviously can't win?

That too. But if you're going to engage the orcs, 5-10 hirelings with pikes will be a big help towards not getting surrounded.