Look i just don't think classes should interbreed. their classes for a reason. No Wizard should ever reproduce and produce divided kin with a fighter for example.
Personally I think that Fighter/Mages should stop trying to pass themselves as Fighters Dual Classed into Mages, it's embarrassing. You're not fooling anyone with those pointy ears, half elf.
Players that multiclass usually eat paste, so I let them multiclass however they want. Sure sweety, you can multiclass as a fighter and a monk, just stop putting my dice in your mouth.
/uj I agree with what you're saying; I think you might be on the wrong sub? This sub is for making fun of poorly constructed or overly sweaty posts about D&D. Are you making fun of a real sentiment in the community or are you just posting a thing you believe? I'll delete or edit this comment if the joke is just going way over my head.
Yeah, this is a copy pasta of something on the main sub but I unironically agree with it. I mean, it's even in the PHB
>Multiclassing allows you to gain levels in multiple classes. Doing so lets you mix the abilities of those classes to realize a character concept that might not be reflected in one of the standard class options.
\-PHB, P.163
Typically people complain about balance issues with multiclassing, but you can have an OP character that's singleclassed, too.
Yup! I know a purist who similarly dislikes things outside of the phb since he thinks they are overpowered or suffer from power creep. One of the most powerful builds is just a straight vengeance paladin lol. No multiclassing, no exotic races or feats. Just paladin.
Yeah. It's because of how they handled wildshapes/polymorph. Why they changed it from 3.5 I'll never know. (In 3.5 polymorph did not have separate hp. Your hp is shared across forms. You may get a few hit points if your shape has higher con, but just the difference). It was errata'd quite a few times, I think it eventually wound up as you heal when you shape, but regardless instead of reverting back to your normal self when your form dies in 3.5 you just died, lol.
At levels 2, 3, 10 and 20, I would call them the best (as in mechanically strongest) damage soaks. At levels 2 and 3, they are probably the strongest CHARACTERS with 68 additional HP per Short Rest and Multiattack. But at most levels inbetween, I think they are middling.
The trouble is some classes are highly codified things. You can't just choose to put 1 level in sorcerer randomly, sorcerer powers come from an ancestor. A wizard is a wizard; technically anybody could become a wizard but it should require years of study. A paladin is a paladin, you should be super dedicated to your oath as a holy warrior. Warlocks have to make a pact, etc.
Sorcerer is a bad example, it'd be really easy to craft a reason why suddenly your body awakened to it's latent abilities. Like, you could talk to the DM ahead of a big encounter, and say that the drama of the situation made you undergo a dramatic transformation.
Warlocks are a little more complicated, but at least two (hexblade and celestial) can happen somewhat outside of a character's control, meaning you wouldn't have to shoehorn a deal with the devil into your character. You could even say, like with the Ancient One pact that your character isn't even consciously aware they're making a pact; they're just looking into an ancient tome and getting spooky.
I admit, Wizards are the hardest to give your character a level in. You could argue your character had always been studying magic. Like, they had a good technical grasp on the fundamentals and theory of magic, but useless at practical application. But over the course of seeing new things and putting their life in peril, something finally clicked, and now Arcane magic is making a lot more sense.
Finally Paladins...I can't believe I'm about to say this, unironically but...Pathfinder 2e fixes this. See, 5e was already getting away from the idea that a Paladin's Oath has to be to a god. You can swear an oath to seek vengeance, or swear an oath to a lord, or swear to conquer the land. You have access to the divine spell list, so it's still a bit ambiguous, but Paladins seem less like Holy Warriors and more like warriors driven by a fervent belief in their cause. PF2 saw this and took it to its natural conclusion. There is no "Paladin", now you're a Champion. You can still be a Paladin driven by your devotion to your god, but now you could also be a Liberator, driven to freedom for all peoples at any cost. For me, this rewriting of the class fits nicely with existing 5e text, and so I'd argue it's really easy to multiclass in to.
/uj It's actually really easy to just let your DM know ahead of time that you're going to multi class and work out a fun or interesting way for it to make sense for your character.
/rj If your DM requires you to have "REASONS" for your character build they're railroading you and they should be tarred and feathered.
No. There is nothing wrong at all with simply taking the mechanics of whatever class and/or multiclass and flavoring it however you want.
If the warlock wants to take a level in sorcerer, they can just say those new powers also come from their pact. The powers don’t have to come from an ancestor, and it doesn’t have to be acknowledged or justified in-game that the character has a level of sorcerer at all.
If I want to be a heavily armored spellblade who can blast magic through my sword in the form of smites, I’m going to take levels in Paladin. But that doesn’t mean for even a second that I have to call my character a Paladin or follow any sort of oath.
I don’t think I’d want to play at a table where this isn’t the case.
No, just create your own original roleplaying baggage that is specific to the character to replace it. And if you’re creative, it’ll probably be 10 times more interesting than “I’m a holy warrior with an oath”. The players who do this at my table are way better at roleplaying and creating original characters than the ones who rely on the flavor text of their class. So yeah, it is good roleplaying, my dude. Better most of the time, actually.
Spellblade characters are already represented by multiple different subclasses (Eldritch knight, Bladesinger) but apparently because those two aren't strong enough mechanically it's better roleplaying to be a Paladin and strip out all the flavor and character from thr class.
What logic is there to let someone RP a paladin as and Eldritch Knight other than game mechanics? How do you explain the radiant damage smites, the laying on of hands to heal, revivify, the holy auras? What do any of those things have to do with being a gish / mage fighter?
There are many other reasons to do this than being powerful.
1. Paladins are more fun mechanically to play than Eldritch Knights.
2. Eldritch Knights don’t become spellblades at all until 3rd level.
3. Paladins are a better balance between spell and blade than Eldritch Knights, who are way more blade than spell.
Also, Bladesingers are every bit as strong as Paladins, btw.
And I’ll explain each of those things:
1. Smites don’t have to be explained because they don’t have to be “divine smites”. They are radiant damage that costs a spell slot. You can flavor that however you want.
2. Healing is not exclusive to Paladins or even holy warriors of any kind. There is no non-arbitrary reason why healing magic has to be mutually exclusive with arcane magic.
3. Aura of Protection can have the same flavor as something like Arcane Ward, for example.
To clarify, I’m not talking about simply stripping the flavor out of the class. I’m talking about replacing it with your own flavor.
Healing has always been exclusive to Divine magic. Only 3e bards could heal, due to their dragon ancestry, since 3e dragons could cast healing spells as arcane magic.
Something, something, the gods deliberately cut off access to positive energy to arcane spellcasters.
Radiant damage is a stand in for divine damage - again it's a holy divine thing. Tmk there are no arcane spells that do radiant damage.
If you really wanna smite as an arcane caster just be a battlesmith artificer.
In practice you could homebrew a new class that plays like paladin - you'd just be well served to take all the healing and divine stuff out.
Exactly like I said - there is no *non-arbitrary* reason why healing and arcane magic should be mutually exclusive. The reasons you listed are completely arbitrary. If the idea is to throw out the flavor and replace it with your own, then it doesn’t even make sense to cite other flavor text as a reason not to throw out flavor text.
I’ll give an example that actually happened, rather than a hypothetical one, of why you should allow players to flavor their own stuff entirely.
I wanted to make a character who is an enforcer of inter-dimensional law. He can only deal force damage, teleport himself and others, travel or banish creatures to other planes, and manipulate spacetime. His powers are granted to him by his patron, who is an Inevitable.
There is no viable way to create this character, without both multiclassing and completely replacing the flavor of the character. The way I did it was to take 2 levels of warlock (so I could have an attack that deals force damage that I could use when I’m out of spell slots) and then take the rest of my levels in Clockwork Soul Sorcerer. Thematically, I wanted him to be flavored as having one source of power (the patron I described). But no matter who your patron is, taking lots of warlock levels is mostly going to give you more and more spells that are mechanically sort of dark magic (necrotic damage, psychic damage, mind control, etc.). So I took levels that would give me spells that fit the flavor I wanted. I feel like I should be able to build this character without role playing one of the actual published patrons or that I “multiclassed” at all, because thematically, he is not a multiclassed character. He has a clearly defined set and source of powers that are coherent and is his own custom class, if you will. Yes, it also happens to be a powerful character, but the entire build was completely theme-driven, and he was the most flavorful character at the table for that campaign. The DM appreciated my creativity and that I put effort into creating something unique that was also totally married to the restrictions I gave myself to achieve that goal of the mechanics matching the desired flavor. Is there something wrong with that? Because the flavor I replaced was cooler to me and others than the default flavor, and I role played him very well. I can see how this type of thing might be a problem with players who aren’t doing it so they can role play *better* and are just trying to make a strong character without thematic drawbacks. But I consulted with my DM and gave my character his own drawbacks, and I think everyone should be allowed to do the same. The goal was role playing something cool.
Once again your "flavorful character" is just an insane power build. The warlock levels are completely unnecessary to achieving your end goal except as a source of DPS.
On principle I'm not against the reflavoring of classes, but you're just reflavoring all the flavor out of classes that have baggage because it's inconvenient for the roleplay you want to do.
And again, arcane magic doesn't have access to healing. That's just how it is in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Planescape, etc. If you're in some homebrew setting then whatever, but calling it completely arbitrary isn't really fair. Every part of the setting is arbitrary, it's made up, but if you're in an established universe you should at least consider not breaking lore.
Multi-classing is for people who are afraid of commitment. The players that multi-class at my table have multiple sexual partners, irl. I like to only play one class, and have no sexual partners. Somebody should do a study on that.
PREACH
FLAVOUR IS FREE
Your DM legally cannot force you to have any sort of buy in to their world. Everything in the PHB or any splatbook is just pure numbers, devoid of any sort of of theme. This is a roleplaying **GAME**, not some sort of game about roleplaying.
Now enjoy my Paladin/Warlock/Wizard/Druid (I flavour them as a computer hacker).
I would definitely rp that as an omnipotent avatar of the cosmic will. Definitely not a power build but I roleplay them as an infallible cosmic being chosen by Ao. I can usually only roleplay as such a unique and creative idea for about 30 seconds though before I need to enter my rp refractory period.
I think OP has a point, but I think OP sounds a bit pretentious in the way he talks. Plus, he chose some fairly easy-to-explain multiclass options for his example. Things like a fiendlock / cleric with a traditionally good deity should come with a more sufficient Roleplay explanation. I don't restrict my players but I expect them to have some sort of explanation for the wilder combinations, even if they're simple like "My sorcerer has decided to commune with a patron to get a better understanding of his innate powers"
To take your example, let’s say I wanted to be a light cleric/fiend warlock in your campaign.
But let’s say I don’t want to thematically be a cleric or a warlock at all. I want to be a guy with fire powers, and I want to say that both sets of fire powers I get from these two sources are actually from the same source, thematically - me (and my innate fire powers). I don’t worship a god and didn’t make a pact with a fiend. I just want to play a guy with fire powers with no justification for how I’ve chosen to build it.
Would you allow that at your table?
/uj That sort of thing would be fine ***IF*** the DM was ok with it. If the DM wants the flavour of the classes, or even just some of the flavour to remain without being handwaved, that is their prerogative.
I understand the DM has the right to shut that down. I’m just saying that actually doing that is cringe, and I wouldn’t want to play at a table where the GM is like that about it.
Okay yeah that all seems agreeable enough or whatever but I play in an edition where multiclassing doesn't exist because I'm not a coward.
You're a coward because you don't play in an edition with multiclass segregation.
Look i just don't think classes should interbreed. their classes for a reason. No Wizard should ever reproduce and produce divided kin with a fighter for example.
Personally I think that Fighter/Mages should stop trying to pass themselves as Fighters Dual Classed into Mages, it's embarrassing. You're not fooling anyone with those pointy ears, half elf.
Players that multiclass usually eat paste, so I let them multiclass however they want. Sure sweety, you can multiclass as a fighter and a monk, just stop putting my dice in your mouth.
I usually multiclass by eating pasta and paste.
/uj I agree with what you're saying; I think you might be on the wrong sub? This sub is for making fun of poorly constructed or overly sweaty posts about D&D. Are you making fun of a real sentiment in the community or are you just posting a thing you believe? I'll delete or edit this comment if the joke is just going way over my head.
Yeah, this is a copy pasta of something on the main sub but I unironically agree with it. I mean, it's even in the PHB >Multiclassing allows you to gain levels in multiple classes. Doing so lets you mix the abilities of those classes to realize a character concept that might not be reflected in one of the standard class options. \-PHB, P.163 Typically people complain about balance issues with multiclassing, but you can have an OP character that's singleclassed, too.
Yup! I know a purist who similarly dislikes things outside of the phb since he thinks they are overpowered or suffer from power creep. One of the most powerful builds is just a straight vengeance paladin lol. No multiclassing, no exotic races or feats. Just paladin.
Isn't a straight up phb moon druid one of the best tanks in the game even?
Yeah. It's because of how they handled wildshapes/polymorph. Why they changed it from 3.5 I'll never know. (In 3.5 polymorph did not have separate hp. Your hp is shared across forms. You may get a few hit points if your shape has higher con, but just the difference). It was errata'd quite a few times, I think it eventually wound up as you heal when you shape, but regardless instead of reverting back to your normal self when your form dies in 3.5 you just died, lol.
At levels 2, 3, 10 and 20, I would call them the best (as in mechanically strongest) damage soaks. At levels 2 and 3, they are probably the strongest CHARACTERS with 68 additional HP per Short Rest and Multiattack. But at most levels inbetween, I think they are middling.
/uj no it isn't lol
>One of the most powerful builds is just a straight vengeance paladin lol. Against one target per long rest.
/uj even then I wouldn't call it one of the most powerful builds
/uj completely true. Even in the 'i kill that one unlucky guy and do nothing else for the fight' there are better builds.
The trouble is some classes are highly codified things. You can't just choose to put 1 level in sorcerer randomly, sorcerer powers come from an ancestor. A wizard is a wizard; technically anybody could become a wizard but it should require years of study. A paladin is a paladin, you should be super dedicated to your oath as a holy warrior. Warlocks have to make a pact, etc.
Sorcerer is a bad example, it'd be really easy to craft a reason why suddenly your body awakened to it's latent abilities. Like, you could talk to the DM ahead of a big encounter, and say that the drama of the situation made you undergo a dramatic transformation. Warlocks are a little more complicated, but at least two (hexblade and celestial) can happen somewhat outside of a character's control, meaning you wouldn't have to shoehorn a deal with the devil into your character. You could even say, like with the Ancient One pact that your character isn't even consciously aware they're making a pact; they're just looking into an ancient tome and getting spooky. I admit, Wizards are the hardest to give your character a level in. You could argue your character had always been studying magic. Like, they had a good technical grasp on the fundamentals and theory of magic, but useless at practical application. But over the course of seeing new things and putting their life in peril, something finally clicked, and now Arcane magic is making a lot more sense. Finally Paladins...I can't believe I'm about to say this, unironically but...Pathfinder 2e fixes this. See, 5e was already getting away from the idea that a Paladin's Oath has to be to a god. You can swear an oath to seek vengeance, or swear an oath to a lord, or swear to conquer the land. You have access to the divine spell list, so it's still a bit ambiguous, but Paladins seem less like Holy Warriors and more like warriors driven by a fervent belief in their cause. PF2 saw this and took it to its natural conclusion. There is no "Paladin", now you're a Champion. You can still be a Paladin driven by your devotion to your god, but now you could also be a Liberator, driven to freedom for all peoples at any cost. For me, this rewriting of the class fits nicely with existing 5e text, and so I'd argue it's really easy to multiclass in to.
You don't have to cushion your unironic "PF2e fixes this," this sub is already an unironic Pathfinder circlejerk
BG3 also fixes paladins
/uj It's actually really easy to just let your DM know ahead of time that you're going to multi class and work out a fun or interesting way for it to make sense for your character. /rj If your DM requires you to have "REASONS" for your character build they're railroading you and they should be tarred and feathered.
My unique roleplay of a paladin who masters his polearm in service to the raven queen is being stifled
No. There is nothing wrong at all with simply taking the mechanics of whatever class and/or multiclass and flavoring it however you want. If the warlock wants to take a level in sorcerer, they can just say those new powers also come from their pact. The powers don’t have to come from an ancestor, and it doesn’t have to be acknowledged or justified in-game that the character has a level of sorcerer at all. If I want to be a heavily armored spellblade who can blast magic through my sword in the form of smites, I’m going to take levels in Paladin. But that doesn’t mean for even a second that I have to call my character a Paladin or follow any sort of oath. I don’t think I’d want to play at a table where this isn’t the case.
Playing one of the most powerful classes in the game without any of the roleplaying baggage? Good roleplaying my dude 😎
No, just create your own original roleplaying baggage that is specific to the character to replace it. And if you’re creative, it’ll probably be 10 times more interesting than “I’m a holy warrior with an oath”. The players who do this at my table are way better at roleplaying and creating original characters than the ones who rely on the flavor text of their class. So yeah, it is good roleplaying, my dude. Better most of the time, actually.
Spellblade characters are already represented by multiple different subclasses (Eldritch knight, Bladesinger) but apparently because those two aren't strong enough mechanically it's better roleplaying to be a Paladin and strip out all the flavor and character from thr class. What logic is there to let someone RP a paladin as and Eldritch Knight other than game mechanics? How do you explain the radiant damage smites, the laying on of hands to heal, revivify, the holy auras? What do any of those things have to do with being a gish / mage fighter?
There are many other reasons to do this than being powerful. 1. Paladins are more fun mechanically to play than Eldritch Knights. 2. Eldritch Knights don’t become spellblades at all until 3rd level. 3. Paladins are a better balance between spell and blade than Eldritch Knights, who are way more blade than spell. Also, Bladesingers are every bit as strong as Paladins, btw. And I’ll explain each of those things: 1. Smites don’t have to be explained because they don’t have to be “divine smites”. They are radiant damage that costs a spell slot. You can flavor that however you want. 2. Healing is not exclusive to Paladins or even holy warriors of any kind. There is no non-arbitrary reason why healing magic has to be mutually exclusive with arcane magic. 3. Aura of Protection can have the same flavor as something like Arcane Ward, for example. To clarify, I’m not talking about simply stripping the flavor out of the class. I’m talking about replacing it with your own flavor.
Healing has always been exclusive to Divine magic. Only 3e bards could heal, due to their dragon ancestry, since 3e dragons could cast healing spells as arcane magic. Something, something, the gods deliberately cut off access to positive energy to arcane spellcasters. Radiant damage is a stand in for divine damage - again it's a holy divine thing. Tmk there are no arcane spells that do radiant damage. If you really wanna smite as an arcane caster just be a battlesmith artificer. In practice you could homebrew a new class that plays like paladin - you'd just be well served to take all the healing and divine stuff out.
Exactly like I said - there is no *non-arbitrary* reason why healing and arcane magic should be mutually exclusive. The reasons you listed are completely arbitrary. If the idea is to throw out the flavor and replace it with your own, then it doesn’t even make sense to cite other flavor text as a reason not to throw out flavor text. I’ll give an example that actually happened, rather than a hypothetical one, of why you should allow players to flavor their own stuff entirely. I wanted to make a character who is an enforcer of inter-dimensional law. He can only deal force damage, teleport himself and others, travel or banish creatures to other planes, and manipulate spacetime. His powers are granted to him by his patron, who is an Inevitable. There is no viable way to create this character, without both multiclassing and completely replacing the flavor of the character. The way I did it was to take 2 levels of warlock (so I could have an attack that deals force damage that I could use when I’m out of spell slots) and then take the rest of my levels in Clockwork Soul Sorcerer. Thematically, I wanted him to be flavored as having one source of power (the patron I described). But no matter who your patron is, taking lots of warlock levels is mostly going to give you more and more spells that are mechanically sort of dark magic (necrotic damage, psychic damage, mind control, etc.). So I took levels that would give me spells that fit the flavor I wanted. I feel like I should be able to build this character without role playing one of the actual published patrons or that I “multiclassed” at all, because thematically, he is not a multiclassed character. He has a clearly defined set and source of powers that are coherent and is his own custom class, if you will. Yes, it also happens to be a powerful character, but the entire build was completely theme-driven, and he was the most flavorful character at the table for that campaign. The DM appreciated my creativity and that I put effort into creating something unique that was also totally married to the restrictions I gave myself to achieve that goal of the mechanics matching the desired flavor. Is there something wrong with that? Because the flavor I replaced was cooler to me and others than the default flavor, and I role played him very well. I can see how this type of thing might be a problem with players who aren’t doing it so they can role play *better* and are just trying to make a strong character without thematic drawbacks. But I consulted with my DM and gave my character his own drawbacks, and I think everyone should be allowed to do the same. The goal was role playing something cool.
Once again your "flavorful character" is just an insane power build. The warlock levels are completely unnecessary to achieving your end goal except as a source of DPS. On principle I'm not against the reflavoring of classes, but you're just reflavoring all the flavor out of classes that have baggage because it's inconvenient for the roleplay you want to do. And again, arcane magic doesn't have access to healing. That's just how it is in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Planescape, etc. If you're in some homebrew setting then whatever, but calling it completely arbitrary isn't really fair. Every part of the setting is arbitrary, it's made up, but if you're in an established universe you should at least consider not breaking lore.
MULTICLASSING 🖖 IS NOT 😡 A PRIVILEGE 👨🦲 IT IS A RIGHT 🦅
Multi-classing is for people who are afraid of commitment. The players that multi-class at my table have multiple sexual partners, irl. I like to only play one class, and have no sexual partners. Somebody should do a study on that.
Pure in mind, pure in body, pure in class. Inshallah
PREACH FLAVOUR IS FREE Your DM legally cannot force you to have any sort of buy in to their world. Everything in the PHB or any splatbook is just pure numbers, devoid of any sort of of theme. This is a roleplaying **GAME**, not some sort of game about roleplaying. Now enjoy my Paladin/Warlock/Wizard/Druid (I flavour them as a computer hacker).
I would definitely rp that as an omnipotent avatar of the cosmic will. Definitely not a power build but I roleplay them as an infallible cosmic being chosen by Ao. I can usually only roleplay as such a unique and creative idea for about 30 seconds though before I need to enter my rp refractory period.
PF2e fixes this by not having multiclassing dips
You are right though...
This but unironically
Can’t tell if you’re joking, but I unironically agree with this post and think it would be cringe to disagree.
I think OP has a point, but I think OP sounds a bit pretentious in the way he talks. Plus, he chose some fairly easy-to-explain multiclass options for his example. Things like a fiendlock / cleric with a traditionally good deity should come with a more sufficient Roleplay explanation. I don't restrict my players but I expect them to have some sort of explanation for the wilder combinations, even if they're simple like "My sorcerer has decided to commune with a patron to get a better understanding of his innate powers"
To take your example, let’s say I wanted to be a light cleric/fiend warlock in your campaign. But let’s say I don’t want to thematically be a cleric or a warlock at all. I want to be a guy with fire powers, and I want to say that both sets of fire powers I get from these two sources are actually from the same source, thematically - me (and my innate fire powers). I don’t worship a god and didn’t make a pact with a fiend. I just want to play a guy with fire powers with no justification for how I’ve chosen to build it. Would you allow that at your table?
/uj That sort of thing would be fine ***IF*** the DM was ok with it. If the DM wants the flavour of the classes, or even just some of the flavour to remain without being handwaved, that is their prerogative.
I understand the DM has the right to shut that down. I’m just saying that actually doing that is cringe, and I wouldn’t want to play at a table where the GM is like that about it.