Remember the one rule of D&D everybody forgets, no matter how much Gygax emphasized it: if you don’t like a rule, don’t use it in your campaign. In my game I allow any and all combinations of classes. I might even allow a Paladin/Assassin, but the player would have to come up with a really good in-world rationale for it.
FR. My Battle Smith Artificer can suddenly learn the Wizarding arts and summon a spell book mid-dungeon crawl despite most wizards spending their life learning those things. But despite being able to harness the weave into mundane objects, including armor, to enhance them, or create magic items wholecloth, and even create a living construct, I cannot actually create a magic suit of armor and become an armorer artificer, no matter how much I try.
Pathfinder 2.0 sidestepped this issue by having class-specific feats instead of subclasses. Just pick which features you want dude, no need to be silly about it. And you get a new choice of class specific feats often.
Mutants and Masterminds (and I think GURPS) sidesteps it entirely by having point buy with all the abilities and stats. You don’t even have classes.
Sometimes restrictions breed creativity, though.
Or Savage Worlds where you literally build your “class” from the ground up
Warlock: I promised my soul in exchange for great power.
Rogue: To which great power?
Warlock: All of them. Let them fight over it when I am dead.
Rogue: Waitasec, how many boons do you have?!
Warlock: I dunno, a bunch. I lost count.
I knew a wizard that had traded his soul for favors so many times he was effectively immortal. He never went adventuring any more, just oversaw research in our flying screened tower. Since old age was the only feasible way he was going to die, which would cause a war between all the outer planes over ownership of his soul, no one would cause his death. He was 218 when I met him, and he was over 5000 years old, and a demigod of secrets, when I met him again, because of a mixup we had while inventing portal magic. We ended up 5000 years in the past and I went back to the present, but he stayed behind. Pagiathrakatos was an interesting dude. Got a compliment from a dwarf on his impressive beard.
Do you happen to read Brust? This reads very Brust.
I haven’t. The DM that created him might have.
Why does this sound so familiar?
I have talked about Pagy, and Katherine Du’Cithrael on many other sites.
Do you watch D20? Somewhat similar situation in Unsleeping City season 1.
Ahh, an Elder Scrolls protagonist
Hide out in Sovngarde
Big John Constantine energy.
Fiend: Look, I’ll take what I can get. Can I get the legs? I’ll take the legs. She can have the top part.
Archfey: Did you just call the head the “top part”? That is so fucked up.
Great Old One: wait its not called the top part? What do you call the tentacles at the end of the bigger tentacles?
I’m gonna respect to 1/1/1/1/1 fighter/fighter/fighter/fighter/fighter so I can action surge 5 times in a round.
Your fighter is gonna be very disappointed when they find out which level they get action surge at
Didn’t say they were good at math
Unfortunately the DMG says that if a character somehow acquires the same feature more than once, only one counts.
The joke’s on you: thanks to min-maxing, the fighter can’t count in the first place!
“That’s great news! That means all your actions and damage don’t count!” - The DM
“Yeah, but neither does the damage I take!” *proceeds to do nothing but play on his phone for the session* - The Hypothetical Fighter I Now Hate
Also, you have an incredibly appropriate username for this conversation. Have you taken steps along the Path of the Muscle Wizard?
(Swipe typing autocorrect turned “steps” into “steroids” three times in a row. I think my phone is becoming sentient.)
No steroids, only muscle magic 💪🧙🤜
Took me longer than it should have to realize this was about D&D, not programming.
No I want to see a programming language with multiclassing. Not just inheritance or Interfaces, but properly being able to make an object from any two classes.
I thought it was about programming and was wondering why the words only half seemed to mean something.
The short answer is the game wasn’t balanced around it.
I feel like Rogues (sneak attack) and Wizards (spell sculpting) in particular could abuse this heavily. Also any class that gets their subclass at level 1 or 2.
Also any class that gets their subclass at level 1 or 2.
To be fair those are also troublesome for regular multiclassing, or at least they are if you’re not using the 2024 “definitely not 5.5E” classes. The paladin with one level in warlock or sorcerer is a perennial favourite for a reason.
I’ll always love a paladin rouge multi even if it’s not the “best”. there’s just so many interesting story possibilities there.
Multiclassing because it’s fun even if it doesn’t work that well will always have a place in my heart. I’m currently playing a barely-functional monk/druid. I think I can get him to work, but right now his tiger wildshape is more of the paper variety
I’ve done monk/druid before. The mechanics are bad for it, but I love the story flavor of the two most likely to be utterly unarmed classes joining together to make someone whose body IS the weapon, in all of its forms.
This is the anwer. You could always homebrew your own game and try to balance it, and you’d start to find where the game breaks. Play 10,000 games like that, and patterns will emerge. Game developers spend a lot of time playtesting, and they still miss things. Just thinking of a new twist and asking why it doesn’t work is like asking why cars don’t have six wheels.
Why don’t cars have six wheels though.
You don’t need that much traction on a high gravity planet and the two extra wheels become unnecessary.
On the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else where the gravitational acceleration is below 5 m/s², you want six wheels, because at least two of them will always not contact the ground due to poor traction and movement over uneven terrain.
More wheels is also good on low traction surfaces, or to reduce ground pressure. An extra axel can also reduce the chance of beaching on rough terrain.
Big trucks also want more surface area against the road on their tires, both to reduce wear per tire and to get more traction, which is why some have extra wheels
Is the earth considered a high gravity planet?
The game isn’t balanced around multiclassing, either. If it were, everyone and there dog wouldn’t have difficult to explain backgrounds that involve blood magic, mysterious patrons, and devout faith in something.
Shit, I thought this is an anti-marxist meme then I read the community. It’s good to see lemmy gaining popularity. :'D
(Assuming D&D 5E here)
I wonder what the best way to go about it would be? It can’t just work the same way as regular multiclassing since you’d effectively get no base class features for your second subclass
Pretty simple, just treat it like spellcaster multiclassing. Wizard/sorcerer/cleric/ 1/1/1 translates to a level 3 spellcaster for the sake of spell slots. Rogue 3/3 translates to class features level 6 and archetype feature level 3/3
That doesn’t work.
A Spellcaster multiclassing always gets something on level up, be it a feature, more spell slots, or higher level slots.
A rogue multiclassing into rogue and splitting the levels would have dead levels at each subclass level.
To explain what I mean: a Rogue gets its subclass features at 3rd, 9th, 13th and 17th level. By going with your math, a 9th level rogue would classify as a 4/4 rogue (by rounding down) as far as the subclass is concerned, which means that the rogue gets nothing at 9th level.
Not only that. A 50/50 split for the multiclass progression would imply that a multiclassed rogue is precluded from getting any subclass feature higher than the 9th level one. By comparison, a Wizard/Sorcerer/Cleric multiclassed character can absolutely attain 9th level spell slots (although not 9th level spells, confusingly enough).That still sounds balanced-ish. If anything, it’s too front-loaded. A 9th level rogue would still have its typical kit of sneakiness, skill proficiencies, and sneak attack at 9th level, but it wouldn’t have a 9th level bump via archetype because it received a 6th level bump via archetype.
A more typical example- a level 3 fighter/level 2 paladin wouldn’t get a second attack despite being a level 5 martial character, and they have to live with that mechanically poor decision. But they can instead choose to play until they become a level 5 fighter and then branch out instead, if they care to min/max.
And what gives you the impression it has to be 50/50? A sportsman can be great at throwing or hitting a ball, but it’s vastly different between one sport and another. You can be an incredible baseball pitcher and a garbage basketball player. Level 3 arcane trickster/level 17 assassin makes perfect sense to me.
Level 3 arcane trickster/level 17 assassin makes perfect sense to me.
That’s not a multiclass as intended in 5e rules. That’s just a 20th level rogue that got all the features from one subclass and the first feature of a second subclass for free.
If you know anyone who has actually reached 20th level in a campaign, it might make a difference. I’ll put you in my will if I hit the lottery.
I ran a campaign that lasted several years and everyone went to 20. Technically past 20, though we never did any of the epic stuff.
It was 3.5 though
I’ve never touched anything beyond level 20. I thought that’s what the epic stuff was? Are there regular class features and such published for those levels too, or were you homebrewing by then?
I’ve actually done it! I started at level 4, so I didn’t quite do the full 1-20 journey, but I did indeed go to 20 on xp per enemy killed and not milestone levelling
How long did that take you?? The highest we’ve ever gone is level 11, and that took a couple of years.
I suppose an approach that takes the general intention of your design but is a bit omre mechanically rigorous could be to separate out subclass levels? You level up in one class as always, and every few levels the thing you get on levelling up is a subclass level. Subclasses then only get four or so levels, so you could be a warlock 11 (archfey 1 / fiend 2)
The difference is pretty minor either way. I’ve never had more issues balancing this than I have with sorcerer burst damage or creation bards collapsing economies.
I have actually personally done a subclass multiclass for a player in a game I run, but it was a very ad-hoc “okay it makes sense for your character to do this, so you’re just getting the level 3 feature from that subclass and the level 7 from this one, and this is how they interact” deal
I suppose I’m trying to think of how I would present it for games that I’m not involved in or don’t know the other players in. Something worded cleanly enough to stand up (at least a little) to situations when you can’t necessarily fall back on trust between the people at the table
laughs in WFRP profession progression
Thought: Homebrew where you pick two subclasses instead of one and both evolve normally. No multiclasses cause it’d be kinda nuts as is
It’s like a toned-down gestalt. I’m going oathbreaker/vengeance paladin both because it’d do silly damage and because I can say that I broke my old oath in order to take vengeance on someone
Well you see, one time an evil wizard cast a spell on the whole world…
I bet some obsessive nerd has converted DND to point buy (like wod, gurps, etc) instead of class and level based.
You get XP for stuff, and you can spend that as you like on all the stuff you’d get from leveling. Follow the recommended route and get a standard looking fighter. Or go crazy and buy nothing but hit dice. Or make a glass cannon by buying all the sneak attack dice and second attack (in case you miss) and nothing else.
Or, per this meme, buy superiority dice and maneuvers, and then also buy extended crit from champion.
It would be a mess. I think part of why dnd is popular is its comparably small decision space. There’s just not a lot of room to fuck up your character
Or just play one of those systems. GURPS is great.
I have a hard enough time finding people and a schedule for mainstream games. Where the hell am I going to find people who want to GURP with me?
Online I guess if you’re into VTT. You could maybe poke around at a game shop, I’ve even seen bulletin boards in some where you can post flyers, some people use that to find a group.
Yeah, I mostly play Fate or nWoD. But a lot of people are really emotionally invested in D&D, so sometimes I think of ways to try to trick them into playing something different while they think they’re still playing D&D.
I suppose I’m lucky enough to have enough friends into ttrpgs to build a group of players open to the system I like. I lost some who were emotionally invested in D&D, but frankly they were the least fun ones to play with (min-max munchkins and rules lawyers undercut by an unfamiliar system), so I’m not too upset about it. Plus I’ve been empowered with many more options for creative play, and blessed with players interested in creative play.
that is one way of making people try out other gamea
Because 5e is a simple game made for adolescents. It’s easy to pick up, easy to build a character, and easy to run. The problem is once you start trying to do anything particularly interesting, it crumbles. It foists basically all mechanic decisions that aren’t directly related to combat onto DM adjudication, and provides very little guidance. I mean, last I checked you have the option to be proficient with various sets of craft tools, but the system doesn’t actually explain what that actually does mechanically.
If you want to make interesting character builds, you have to transition to a more detailed system. I’m partial to GURPS myself, but Pathfinder 2e is a nice middle ground of detail while still being fairly familiar to someone used to D&D.
I mean, last I checked you have the option to be proficient with various sets of craft tools, but the system doesn’t actually explain what that actually does mechanically.
Chapter 8, “Between Adventures,” “Downtime,” “Crafting.” Page 187 in the 2014 version of the Player’s Handbook. It tells you exactly how long it takes and how much it costs to create items using artisans’ tools. I concede that it’s pretty generic and would benefit from some refinement, but it does explain what you can do, mechanically, with your proficiency in artisans’ tools.
(If the 2024 version of the Player’s Handbook removed this guidance then I’m not sure what to say, except that I don’t personally consider that version to be “5e.”)
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything also has an extensive section in Chapter 2, beginning on page 78, that does a great job fleshing out each type of tool proficiency and providing novel ways to use them. I highly recommend that if you’re interested in crafting.
I concede that it’s pretty generic and would benefit from some refinement
That’s my point. A couple paragraphs on one page, and an addendum in another book to consider giving the player advantage and maybe an “added benefit”, again left entirely up to the DM. The Xanathar’s content is nice, if again a bit vague, assuming your DM uses it. But that’s still buried in an appendant text.
And that’s just one example. Called shots are another good example. Anything outside the narrow scope of the written rules is left up to the DM. That’s not fundamentally problematic in a ttrpg, the game master always has the final say anyway, but it’s lazy game design, and it’s only getting worse with each release. I said elsewhere that I quit D&D after buying the 5e Spelljammer set, which dumped all mechanical decisions onto individual DM decision. I don’t buy rulebooks to get permission to run my game how I want. I buy rulebooks for playtested rules.
I agree 100% with your sentiment about the quality and depth of supplemental books having sharply dropped off! I don’t know exactly where the turning point was for me… sometime around Tasha’s Cauldron and its variant rules for racial traits, maybe… but I definitely lost interest in anything new that they put out. I saw how thin Spelljammer and Fizban’s Treasury were, and thought… “that’s it?!”
If you don’t mind indulging me, could you elaborate on what you like better about GURPS? I tried to get into it, but was quickly put off by its extreme granularity. Character creation boiled down to (and I’m paraphrasing),
You can be literally anyone or anything!!! …as long as you meet the budget for points. However, this is a setting-agnostic system, so make sure you check in with your game master to see if your concept is actually allowed in their game. Also the primary attributes, skills, and point values of various traits could all be quite different than the default presented here because, again, they might not make sense for the setting of your game. So maybe your game master should hold your hand through character creation. But anyways, here’s a three-mile-long list of things you can spend your points on, go nuts!
The foreword also said something along the lines of, “here’s the most important rules, you can ignore the rest of this book and still play GURPS just fine” …but that sounds like the same thing you’re complaining about with D&D? That it leaves SO MUCH up to the game master to decide.
In D&D 5e, personally I appreciated having only the basic rules in the PHB. I felt that combat was complex enough without having called shots, flanking, speed factor, and lingering injuries presented as the default. But when we were ready to increase the complexity, we were quite glad to have all of those additional rules written up in the DMG in a modular format.
Likewise, when 95% of the game is focused on combat, social interaction, and exploring dungeon-like environments, I don’t see any need for the basic rules to include a fine-tuned granular system for downtime activities. “You can create 5gp worth of any item per day using the appropriate set of tools, given that you are proficient, and it costs you half that much in raw materials.” Boom, that’s super simple and it gets the job done for the majority of players who are interested in crafting during their downtime in between the actual adventures. For those hardcore outliers who desire a more fleshed-out set of rules for tools, Xanathar’s includes DC’s for a range of tasks to do with each tool, a list of specific components that are included in each kind of tool kit, and at least three examples per tool for how you can apply it in conjunction with a skill OR use the tool in a special way. It’s a lot more detailed than just “consider giving the player advantage and maybe an added benefit IDK.”
I know you’re frustrated that it’s buried in a supplemental text rather than the core rulebook, but I don’t know. Should the PHB also have the specific rules for large-scale army battles? Maritime navigation? How to play dragon chess? There’s only so much you can fit into the basic rulebook…
Edit to add: I hope I’m not coming across as combative. Your criticisms are definitely valid, and I think it’s a case of different players valuing different aspects of the game. I am genuinely interested to hear from someone who’s played GURPS and stuck with it; there has to be an elegance to the system that I haven’t had the opportunity to see, and I’d love to hear your take on it.
If you don’t mind indulging me, could you elaborate on what you like better about GURPS? I tried to get into it, but was quickly put off by its extreme granularity.
Gladly, any chance I can get, tbh. The base system is very simple: for anything you’re trying to do, the GM determines what the relevant skill is, and what situational modifiers make that attempt easier or more difficult, roll 3d6 ≤ skill level ± modifiers. With the exception of rolling damage and a handful of other situational things (Reaction, Self Control, etc.), basically everything you do mechanically will be that same Success Roll (3d6 ≤ Skill Level ± Modifiers). All the granularity comes down to determining your Skill Level and relevant Modifiers.
The point buy character creation is awesome, it’s really it’s own mini-game. You have total control over what you’re able to do, and good at (within the confines of your specific setting). I got fed up with trying to build a character concepts within the D&D creation options. It got to where I was cobbling together races and classes and subclasses and feats and multiclass dips to try to approximate an idea, picking up all sorts of baggage I was never going to use and only halfway getting to what I envisioned, and even then only by the grace of a tolerant DM.
I like making exactly the character I want, and not worrying that it’s going to be some half-baked novelty or an overpowered munchkin. I got bored making D&D characters after like 7 or 8; they’re all either the same basic mechanic build with a personality swap, or basically useless in play outside very specific conditions.
The foreword also said something along the lines of, “here’s the most important rules, you can ignore the rest of this book and still play GURPS just fine” …but that sounds like the same thing you’re complaining about with D&D?
The difference is: D&D touches vaguely on a subject, or doesn’t touch on it at all, and tells you to fill in the rest ; GURPS gives you more options than you can ever use, and tells you to pick and choose whatever helps you in your story and setting. When considering value as a game system, I much prefer being given a selection to choose from than bare bones that I’m forced to expand on.
Again, it comes down to design, balance, and playtesting. GURPS gives you balanced mechanics to incorporate as you please, D&D forces you to come up with adjudication on the spot and pray that it doesn’t break anything. It’s the difference between being handed a tub of Lego, and a tub of clay.
I know you’re frustrated that it’s buried in a supplemental text rather than the core rulebook, but I don’t know. Should the PHB also have the specific rules for large-scale army battles? Maritime navigation? How to play dragon chess? There’s only so much you can fit into the basic rulebook…
Where do you find those rules in D&D? A bit in Xanathar, a bit in Tasha, a bit in Volo, a bit in Saltmarsh, a bit in SCAG, more bits sprinkled around.
GURPS has plenty of supplementals, but the organization and density of content is miles better. In GURPS, the basic stuff to build most characters, and the core mechanics are in Basic Set Characters. The advanced mechanics are in Basic Set Campaigns. The advanced rules for magic are in Magic. The advanced rules for melee combat are in Martial Arts. The rules for space stuff are in Space. The rules for sci-fi technology are in Hi-Tech. There are dozens of short supplementals for Mass Combat or Social Engineering or Psionic Powers. Everything is modular, indexed, and extensively cross-referenced.
If I want to use a special mechanic, I don’t have to guess where it is and go digging. I go to the book that makes sense and check the contents or index, and I can find an obscure rule within a minute. If a mechanic interacts with another, it’ll tell me.
Personally, I love the granularity. For as much as D&D focuses on combat, it’s so boring. Roll to attack, miss AC. Roll to attack, hit AC, roll damage. Some classes sprinkle some extra damage for certain conditions, and wizards get a little more creative utility, but otherwise that’s it. GURPS has superior mechanics for defense, grappling, targeted shots, tactical maneuvers, martial arts techniques, shock, wounds. All optional, but you do have options, and you can use that options creatively.
The main problem OP cited, not being able to multi-subclass, can’t happen because there are no classes. Choose whatever abilities and attributes suit your character concept, campaign setting, and budget. The only time it restricts you from doing something is when you try to take things that contradict each other (like being Wealthy and Dead Broke), or break the balance (like adding over 80% Limitations on a Trait to make it super cheap).
Oh yeah, Enhancements and Limitations, another awesome level or granularity that let’s you further fine tune your Traits to align exactly with your concept. Honestly, I could gush about this system all day. I could never imagine going back to 5e.
It’s really something that comes down to personal taste. I’ve played 5e for 6 years, and I’ve been playing a GURPS campaign for about 7 months.
It’s Apple vs. Android. Some people just want to pick it up and play. Some people need that level of customization or the experience isn’t enjoyable.
D&D is much easier to pick up. The book says pick a race (species now I guess), class, and background. It even suggests a background and starting gear. If you want, you can customize these two things as much as you like, and picking variant human means picking up a feat at 1 for further refinement. Plus you likely also have some spells or race/class traits to pick from. That’s a fair amount of customization at level 1.
Compared to GURPS, you have an OCEAN of options right off the bat. Even if you only have 40 character points, you could spend them in more ways than is possible to experience in a lifetime. The Basic Set alone is massive, and the system has more supplemental material than even D&D 3.5. You can pick some skills and not realize you’re missing very fundamental things like ‘will my strong fighter guy fail every jump attempt he tries’ or ‘can I even use any weapon besides a sword’ because I didn’t invest in that.
I love both systems, and neither one is perfect. Working around the limitations of 5E is actually a lot of fun, but so is making a mutant extra-dimensional spellsword ogre with color blindness, universal digestion, an honest face, and coitophobia.
Very true. If you want to just plug and play, and get going in 15 minutes without thinking about it too much, D&D is fine. When you start bumping against its limitations, like wanting to take multiple subclasses, it’s time to consider a system with more freedom.
I just want to point out, with GURPS templates, players can absolutely get a character ready to go pretty quickly without missing crucial skills or abilities. GURPS’s Dungeon Fantasy line comes with a set of templates that mirror D&D’s character classes; you follow the guide for your preferred archetype and put together a character that has what you want. If you want to mix and match between them, you just invest the points and pick it up; it even has some guidance on what likely will and won’t synergize well.
And if that’s still too granular, the Delvers to Grow add-on lets you just select “packs” of upgrades, worth 25 character points each, and tailored to specific templates. This lets you roll up basic characters in about 20 minutes (10 if you know what you’re doing!)
It foists basically all mechanic decisions that aren’t directly related to combat onto DM adjudication, and provides very little guidance.
The idea here is that the D&D ruleset is supposed to be permissive, not restrictive:
- permissive - anything not explicitly prohibited is allowed
- restrictive - anything not explicitly allowed is prohibited
The gameplay experience depends greatly on which of these directions you interpret rules from. So, when you say that it “provides very little guidance”, that’s intentional, because it allows the DM and the players to use the basic structure of the game to support and inspire having fun and being creative. It should be a foundation, not a cage.
D&D was always intended to be an open framework for actual roleplaying. The munchkin concept of gaming the rules for min-maxing stats came later.
Rules lawyers, be they DM or player, make playing less fun.
No, the idea is that 4e basically imploded the brand, so they pushed some unfinished stuff out the door before the axe came down and suddenly and unexpectedly they discovered that the brand was printing money.
Rules aren’t restrictive, because every rule is optional. A lack of guidance is WotC asking you to do their work for them.
I don’t need to buy a set of books to give me permission to use my imagination, and I don’t need it’s permission to disregard rules that don’t serve my campaign, or homebrew my own. Every ruleset of every tabletop game is optional. Sure, ignoring some rules can unravel the system, but every table is free to make that choice.
I buy a set of books because I want an exhaustive set of balanced and playtested rules. I am under no obligation to use every rule, but I want to have them so I know if I choose to use them, I’m not going to break the balance.
For instance, I’ve fully moved to GURPS. It has a reputation for being complicated because there are lots of mechanics available. I ignore the vast majority of them most of the time, but when a player wants to do something out of the ordinary, I can count on having a balanced mechanic available for guidance. I don’t have to worry about being too strict, or too lenient, or inconsistent the next time the same situation arises.
5e isn’t “permissive”, it’s lazy game design. I quit after buying the Spelljammer set, which provided basically zero guidance for any of the actual spell jamming stuff. When the answer to every question is "The DM can decide to do it however they want :)”, you’re not actually releasing a game system.
Again, I don’t need to buy a book to have permission to use my imagination however I want. I buy a book to give me balanced and playtested mechanics. WotC doesn’t seem particularly interested in that.
I think it’s better to think of all the add-ons and supplements as GM inspiration, rather than hard and fast rules. Most everything in GURPS is set up to arrive at a skill roll or attribute modifier; so even if you don’t remember a particular rule for a particular edge case, you can generally eyeball it and come up with a modifier pretty close to what’s in the books. The books give a lot of guidance on how to reach that modifier, though; and give you enough information to feel comfortable coming up with your own modifiers outside of what they outline. I feel like that’s a lot of what GURPS brings to the table - a simple system, with an internally consistent set of guides about how easy or hard a given action might be.
Exactly. I usually eyeball modifiers.
