Note that this does mean a sorcerer-1/paladin-1 has different proficiencies than a paladin-1/sorcerer-1. In particular:
The sorcerer-first build has proficiency in Constitution and Charisma saves. The paladin-first build has proficiency in Wisdom and Charisma saves.
The sorcerer-first build starts with two skills from the sorcerer list. The paladin-first build starts with two skills from the paladin list.
The sorcerer-first build has 12 base hp (6 from sorcerer-1, +6 from paladin+1), the paladin-first build has 14 (10 from paladin-1, +4 from sorcerer +1)
The sorcerer-first build has light/medium/shield, the paladin-first build has proficiency with light/medium/heavy/shield.
The fact that the paladin-first build is straight-up better is one of the flaws of 5e multiclassing.
Agree 100%. Multiclassing should never have been designed as an "optional rule", because its a fundamental core archetype of D&D. Even 4E, which so badly wanted players to stick to a single class and role for their entire career (one of the few criticisms of 4E that I agree it did badly) had multiclassing, so in what universe WotC thought multiclassing was "optional" escapes me. Sticking it in a weird chapter, and the multiclassing proficiencies and requirements not appearing within the class entries themselves, has made the PHB far more difficult to use over the years than it needed to be. And it led to this tension in design philosophy where you can "mess up" your character by taking the wrong class in the wrong order, something that never feels good or like it rewards system mastery for experienced players, only like it presents "gotcha!" moments for new players or those that allow their character to grow organically. Boo, let's hope that 6E learns from that mistake in the future.
In a way, Geann's system would be better, because it would mean every Paladin/Sorcerer and Sorcerer/Paladin would have the same baseline expectations, rather than needing to know about a character's past to fully understand its present.
A lot of the problems with multiclassing would be solved by not starting characters at level 1 -- the problem is that you have to give starting characters enough stuff to be viable characters, and that's really more than one level worth of stuff.
A lot of the problems with multiclassing would be solved by not starting characters at level 1 -- the problem is that you have to give starting characters enough stuff to be viable characters, and that's really more than one level worth of stuff.
How else would it work?
Taking levels in another class has to have a downside. You gain versatility, at the cost of raw linear progression power. Those multiclass 'dips' people take to snag a useful ability isn't really what multiclassing should be about.
A lot of the problems with multiclassing would be solved by not starting characters at level 1 -- the problem is that you have to give starting characters enough stuff to be viable characters, and that's really more than one level worth of stuff.
How else would it work?
Shrug. You take one level that puts you at 'level 0' in the new class, and another for level 1? No-one has ever come up with a great solution to multiclassing, that's why it's worked differently in every version of D&D.
Multiclassing works extremely well in 5e. I did a comparison once of all the class combinations and found that the number of class features when multiclassing actually ends up VERY close together. Like… extremely close.
People that think it wasn’t designed correctly or as an afterthought are quite mistaken… in my opinion. But I’m sure there will be tons of conflicting opinions about this. I’ll debate it for a few posts of course and then give up haha. Then people can at least see the counter-arguments.
I can share the Spreadsheet if someone is really interested. It counted all of the total # of class features for every class combination in the game. I was very surprised how equitable every combination was.
It's largely my fault because I kept going on and on about the Multi-classing rules, but we have drifted away from talking about armor.
I'm going to Steal (I didn't ask first) the Intelligence and Wisdom of BioWizard. He and I have a lot in common. He started way back before I did, when there weren't any hardback books to use, and the rules came in different colored boxes. He went on from there, and we both have played many of the same game systems. In particular, a super-hero game called Champions. We both have a homebrew custom setting based around Ancient Rome no less.
He was talking about terms for different playing styles, and he observed that people talked about the difference between a "Much-Kin" and a "Munchkin" One of those takes the rules and makes a powerful character, the other takes the rules and bends them until they break so they can have the most powerful character in the room.
Multi-classing is a great way to do either of those things. Taking a dip here, a dip there, planning your character out all the way to 20th level...
There's really no problem with Power-gamers, or Much-Kin, that's just a play style. Munchkins are problems, always have been, always will be.
People love the classic image of a Paladin, someone who smites the bad things, tosses around some spells, heals people a bit, runs around in Plate armor and a shield. That's fine. That's a powerful character when used well. Adding in Sorcerer is so good that's it's almost too powerful, they have great synergy. Three levels of Paladin, Three levels of Sorcerer, Three levels of Warlock. Take Hexblade, it's really the only one you really see much when people take a dip into Warlock. Pact of the Blade, take your Longsword and make it a Hex Weapon and your Pact weapon, grab Devil's Sight and Agonizing Blast for your Eldritch Blast. There you go. Heavy armor spellcaster, smites with a Pact of the Blade hex weapon. Use Hex on your target. You tell me what play-style that is.
Now for something on topic.
Half Plate armor and Shield. Dex 15, AC 19, 760 gold 46 pounds Full Plate armor and Shield. Str 15, AC 20 , 1510 gold 71 pounds
It costs 750 more gold, and weighs 25 pounds more to get +1 to AC.
I'd like to make Heavy armor a bit better than that. I propose that Heavy armor gets a base damage reduction of 2 points, and have a feat called Improved Damage Reduction that gives +1 DR per level to a maximum of 20 and they get to add +2 from their Str. Variant Human, with the Improved DR feat at first level. AC 24, in full plate and shield, and 3 points of DR at first level. That's very powerful, but for 1510 gold and 71 pounds of encumbrance, I think it's reasonable enough. The player character would have to be swimming in gold to have that at first level.
I'd like to make Heavy armor a bit better than that. I propose that Heavy armor gets a base damage reduction of 2 points, and have a feat called Improved Damage Reduction that gives +1 DR per level to a maximum of 20 and they get to add +2 from their Str. Variant Human, with the Improved DR feat at first level. AC 24, in full plate and shield, and 3 points of DR at first level. That's very powerful, but for 1510 gold and 71 pounds of encumbrance, I think it's reasonable enough. The player character would have to be swimming in gold to have that at first level.
There have been numerous discussions on here of various ways to homebrew the armor table, based on various criteria, like making more than 4 suits of armor actually matter (studded, breastplate, half plate, and plate are the only suits people will wear if they get to choose). That said, DR that high would be incredibly bad for the game. 3E was very big on giving monsters DR values so high you were better off giving up than trying to drill through it. It was a step forward when that disappeared from the game, even before we start discussing how weird it would be for plate armor to be able to just completely soak even a maximum roll for damage from falling 40 feet. Also, AC 24 is a weirdly arbitrary value. Plate + Shield is AC 20, and with magic bonuses goes to 27 - no idea how or why you settled on 24.
If you want to give heavy armor a buff across the board, let Strength values that overwhelm the Strength requirement - say, Strength of 5 over the minimum or more - let the user move without any clumsiness, so the Stealth disadvantage goes away. That upgrades plate armor and potentially gives chain mail a niche existence for Strength 18 Dexterity 12- people.
If you want to get rid of the stealth penalty, just get a suit of Mithril plate.
And with bound accuracy, anything that significantly boosts AC is powerful. Something that boosted plate's defensive value by more than 50% would be insanely broken.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Base AC 18. +2 with a shield. Rules as written AC 20. I said add Strength bonus to the armor, max of +2. 22. don't know where I got 24. Probably an older version of the idea I was working on. Doesn't matter much. Nobody seems to like the idea of improving heavy armor in any way at all. Yay. +3 Plate, +3 Shield. 26 AC in Tier 4. Half plate 15 +2 for dex. 17. +3, 20. +3 shield, 25.
Base AC 18. +2 with a shield. Rules as written AC 20. I said add Strength bonus to the armor, max of +2. 22. don't know where I got 24. Probably an older version of the idea I was working on. Doesn't matter much. Nobody seems to like the idea of improving heavy armor in any way at all. Yay. +3 Plate, +3 Shield. 26 AC in Tier 4. Half plate 15 +2 for dex. 17. +3, 20. +3 shield, 25.
Might as well remove heavy armor from the game.
There is merit to your idea however I would not make it a straight STR bonus. I would do something like this: for every 2 STR you have above the armor's requirement you may add +1 AC from your DEX modifier (maximum of 2). In my mind the defensive properties from heavy armor comes from the material it is forged from and not the users strength. However the stronger the user is the easier it becomes for them to move in heavy armor hence granting extra AC from DEX to portray them dodging away from some attacks because the are strong enough to move that fast in heavy armor.
I think that this is a really interesting idea. The only drawback I see is that people get even some of the simple rules incorrect and this might give them a headache 😂
"When you gain your first level in a class other than your initial class, you gain only someof new class's starting proficiencies, as shown in the Multiclassing Proficiencies table." It is important to note that they say "some" and not "all".
Paladins have the ability to wear Heavy armor, when they multi-class into Sorcerer, they get to keep Light armor, Medium armor, Shields, Simple weapons, and Martial weapons. Sorcerers can't use any armor at all, so in combination, no matter what order they start out with, they end up unable to wear Heavy armor proficiently. It's as simple as that.
Once again, if you can find where the rules say otherwise, please do feel free to show me them.
If you start as a Paladin and then mc into Sorcerer, is the Paladin your new class?
For the love of God you are still not conceding? Please answer the question.
The major issue why STR is weak in 5e is that beyond STR Builds and Athletics checks its just not something you use a lot.
People mention carry capacity and encumbrance but generally in a party you can shuffle stuff between the group it won't matter...plus there are so many ways to offset that with something as simple as a mule or floating disk or even Artificers can make bags of holding now if really needed.
STR meant something in older editions and stuff like PF2e because it was where your damage came from.
You can use your dex modifier for the attack roll but you only got to add your STR to the damage. This means that melee builds all needed at least some STR to work and would do the best damage if you invested in it.
Now you can safely dump STR in the vast majority of builds.
It made the game more approachable but it did cost STR a lot.
I feel like that argument must be coming from players who’ve never been subjected to save or die athletics checks :)
Grapple monsters, sinking ships, climbing ropes/cliffs…. Low Str can kill you far quicker than low Int or low Cha or even low Dex (damage is rarely instant death), unless you snag athletics!
Yep! A single class Paladin can wear Heavy armor. I never disputed that. What happens when they become a Sorcerer? Can you show me the rule where it says "they get to remain proficient in everything they already had", because I've looked all over for that. I've scoured the PHB. I'd looked over the entire SAC. I've poked around a bit in the DMG. Where is it?
Can you show us where you think it says that you lose proficiencies when you multiclass?
I feel like that argument must be coming from players who’ve never been subjected to save or die athletics checks :)
Grapple monsters, sinking ships, climbing ropes/cliffs…. Low Str can kill you far quicker than low Int or low Cha or even low Dex (damage is rarely instant death), unless you snag athletics!
TBF any single skill check would do that too...Acrobatics insta-kill would kill that High STR paladin who dumped Dex. Forgetting that a creature is immune to your damage (INT check) would mean that you could be killed after doing nothing to it. Failing to see deception and getting backstabbed (Insight/WIS) could be deadly. I could go on but I think you get the point...
Avoiding rocks falling and traps are almost exclusively DEX based if you look at the examples in the DMG so I do not really agree with the STR checks being save or die at all...
In fact if you look at saves in general:
STR saves from creatures almost never produce a "Major" Condition or Status. Hell they even rarely (~10% of the time) even inflict damage.
DEX much more often does damage and CON and WIS a high amount of "Major" status and condition riders on the save.
So by design in the game STR is not really needed most of the time and can even be offset pretty easily. Heck a dex fighter would still have PROF in STR saving throws.
Also my opinion: Insta-kill save or die effects are terrible. Do not use them or if you do VERY VERY infrequently. Even a barbarian who is built to make this insta death check have a small chance of failure then you really do not help anyone but cause more issues. There is a reason they do not exist in 5e very much and even then people generally say take them VERY seriously and only use sparingly.
I agree that insta-kill saves and skill checks are garbage. But here are some examples of situations where a failed athletics check (or, repeated failed checks) will kill you:
A flying monster grapples you and flies away high into the sky, or a swallowing monster swallows you and dives/burrows/flies away
You are climbing a cliff that is high enough to kill you/deal unreasonable damage when you fall
You need to swim for prolonged periods
You need to climb a rope to escape a hazard like a fire or a sinking ship or trap walls closing in
There's lots of situations where a failed skill check might endnager you or cause you to take damage. These are all situations though where inability to consistently pass low- or medium-difficulty checks will just outright kill you, not just put you in a disadvantageous combat position. A couple years back, I lost a really cool character wizard I was looking forward to playing because session 1 involved a fight on a sinking/burning boat. For 5 rounds straight, I could not pass the DC 12 athletics check to climb a rope out of the hold, and just straight up died before the rest of the characters had a chance to realize I was in trouble :)
Failing an acrobatics check while... tightrope walking? That could do the same thing... but its hard to imagine a character will be forced into that situation, while all of the above are situations that any or all of the party may be forced into. Otherwise, it's hard to see what sort of mandatory Acrobatics check would come up at all, let alone in a way that was deadly.
Perception, Stealth, etc.... failing those will never just kill you. It might put you into a combat you don't want to be in, or let a creature attack you from an ambush, but that's combat... you're designed to be in combat, and every character has combat tools. Not every character (most characters) have no tools to help when drowning in the middle of the ocean, falling hundreds of feet, burning to death in a chamber they can't climb out of, etc.
Strength is important. Intelligence and Charisma are never important. Dex, Con, and Wisdom are very important in combat, but only Con and Wisdom are likely to be "save or die" relevant.
Note that this does mean a sorcerer-1/paladin-1 has different proficiencies than a paladin-1/sorcerer-1. In particular:
The fact that the paladin-first build is straight-up better is one of the flaws of 5e multiclassing.
Agree 100%. Multiclassing should never have been designed as an "optional rule", because its a fundamental core archetype of D&D. Even 4E, which so badly wanted players to stick to a single class and role for their entire career (one of the few criticisms of 4E that I agree it did badly) had multiclassing, so in what universe WotC thought multiclassing was "optional" escapes me. Sticking it in a weird chapter, and the multiclassing proficiencies and requirements not appearing within the class entries themselves, has made the PHB far more difficult to use over the years than it needed to be. And it led to this tension in design philosophy where you can "mess up" your character by taking the wrong class in the wrong order, something that never feels good or like it rewards system mastery for experienced players, only like it presents "gotcha!" moments for new players or those that allow their character to grow organically. Boo, let's hope that 6E learns from that mistake in the future.
In a way, Geann's system would be better, because it would mean every Paladin/Sorcerer and Sorcerer/Paladin would have the same baseline expectations, rather than needing to know about a character's past to fully understand its present.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
A lot of the problems with multiclassing would be solved by not starting characters at level 1 -- the problem is that you have to give starting characters enough stuff to be viable characters, and that's really more than one level worth of stuff.
How else would it work?
Taking levels in another class has to have a downside. You gain versatility, at the cost of raw linear progression power. Those multiclass 'dips' people take to snag a useful ability isn't really what multiclassing should be about.
Shrug. You take one level that puts you at 'level 0' in the new class, and another for level 1? No-one has ever come up with a great solution to multiclassing, that's why it's worked differently in every version of D&D.
Multiclassing works extremely well in 5e. I did a comparison once of all the class combinations and found that the number of class features when multiclassing actually ends up VERY close together. Like… extremely close.
People that think it wasn’t designed correctly or as an afterthought are quite mistaken… in my opinion. But I’m sure there will be tons of conflicting opinions about this. I’ll debate it for a few posts of course and then give up haha. Then people can at least see the counter-arguments.
I can share the Spreadsheet if someone is really interested. It counted all of the total # of class features for every class combination in the game. I was very surprised how equitable every combination was.
It's largely my fault because I kept going on and on about the Multi-classing rules, but we have drifted away from talking about armor.
I'm going to Steal (I didn't ask first) the Intelligence and Wisdom of BioWizard. He and I have a lot in common. He started way back before I did, when there weren't any hardback books to use, and the rules came in different colored boxes. He went on from there, and we both have played many of the same game systems. In particular, a super-hero game called Champions. We both have a homebrew custom setting based around Ancient Rome no less.
He was talking about terms for different playing styles, and he observed that people talked about the difference between a "Much-Kin" and a "Munchkin" One of those takes the rules and makes a powerful character, the other takes the rules and bends them until they break so they can have the most powerful character in the room.
Multi-classing is a great way to do either of those things. Taking a dip here, a dip there, planning your character out all the way to 20th level...
There's really no problem with Power-gamers, or Much-Kin, that's just a play style. Munchkins are problems, always have been, always will be.
People love the classic image of a Paladin, someone who smites the bad things, tosses around some spells, heals people a bit, runs around in Plate armor and a shield. That's fine. That's a powerful character when used well. Adding in Sorcerer is so good that's it's almost too powerful, they have great synergy. Three levels of Paladin, Three levels of Sorcerer, Three levels of Warlock. Take Hexblade, it's really the only one you really see much when people take a dip into Warlock. Pact of the Blade, take your Longsword and make it a Hex Weapon and your Pact weapon, grab Devil's Sight and Agonizing Blast for your Eldritch Blast. There you go. Heavy armor spellcaster, smites with a Pact of the Blade hex weapon. Use Hex on your target. You tell me what play-style that is.
Now for something on topic.
Half Plate armor and Shield. Dex 15, AC 19, 760 gold 46 pounds
Full Plate armor and Shield. Str 15, AC 20 , 1510 gold 71 pounds
It costs 750 more gold, and weighs 25 pounds more to get +1 to AC.
I'd like to make Heavy armor a bit better than that. I propose that Heavy armor gets a base damage reduction of 2 points, and have a feat called Improved Damage Reduction that gives +1 DR per level to a maximum of 20 and they get to add +2 from their Str. Variant Human, with the Improved DR feat at first level. AC 24, in full plate and shield, and 3 points of DR at first level. That's very powerful, but for 1510 gold and 71 pounds of encumbrance, I think it's reasonable enough. The player character would have to be swimming in gold to have that at first level.
<Insert clever signature here>
There have been numerous discussions on here of various ways to homebrew the armor table, based on various criteria, like making more than 4 suits of armor actually matter (studded, breastplate, half plate, and plate are the only suits people will wear if they get to choose). That said, DR that high would be incredibly bad for the game. 3E was very big on giving monsters DR values so high you were better off giving up than trying to drill through it. It was a step forward when that disappeared from the game, even before we start discussing how weird it would be for plate armor to be able to just completely soak even a maximum roll for damage from falling 40 feet. Also, AC 24 is a weirdly arbitrary value. Plate + Shield is AC 20, and with magic bonuses goes to 27 - no idea how or why you settled on 24.
If you want to give heavy armor a buff across the board, let Strength values that overwhelm the Strength requirement - say, Strength of 5 over the minimum or more - let the user move without any clumsiness, so the Stealth disadvantage goes away. That upgrades plate armor and potentially gives chain mail a niche existence for Strength 18 Dexterity 12- people.
If you want to get rid of the stealth penalty, just get a suit of Mithril plate.
And with bound accuracy, anything that significantly boosts AC is powerful. Something that boosted plate's defensive value by more than 50% would be insanely broken.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Base AC 18. +2 with a shield. Rules as written AC 20. I said add Strength bonus to the armor, max of +2. 22. don't know where I got 24. Probably an older version of the idea I was working on. Doesn't matter much. Nobody seems to like the idea of improving heavy armor in any way at all. Yay. +3 Plate, +3 Shield. 26 AC in Tier 4. Half plate 15 +2 for dex. 17. +3, 20. +3 shield, 25.
Might as well remove heavy armor from the game.
<Insert clever signature here>
"Might as well remove" the armor that most characters of most classes (unless specifically prohibited by class features) build to use?
OK :)
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
There is merit to your idea however I would not make it a straight STR bonus. I would do something like this: for every 2 STR you have above the armor's requirement you may add +1 AC from your DEX modifier (maximum of 2). In my mind the defensive properties from heavy armor comes from the material it is forged from and not the users strength. However the stronger the user is the easier it becomes for them to move in heavy armor hence granting extra AC from DEX to portray them dodging away from some attacks because the are strong enough to move that fast in heavy armor.
I think that this is a really interesting idea. The only drawback I see is that people get even some of the simple rules incorrect and this might give them a headache 😂
For the love of God you are still not conceding? Please answer the question.
Just let it go, Geann can't really back down now after commiting that deep. I tried it per PM for a bit and made the same points, so just let it go.
I know from a power standpoint it might not be as usefull, but flavorwise STR seems just fine.
The major issue why STR is weak in 5e is that beyond STR Builds and Athletics checks its just not something you use a lot.
People mention carry capacity and encumbrance but generally in a party you can shuffle stuff between the group it won't matter...plus there are so many ways to offset that with something as simple as a mule or floating disk or even Artificers can make bags of holding now if really needed.
STR meant something in older editions and stuff like PF2e because it was where your damage came from.
You can use your dex modifier for the attack roll but you only got to add your STR to the damage. This means that melee builds all needed at least some STR to work and would do the best damage if you invested in it.
Now you can safely dump STR in the vast majority of builds.
It made the game more approachable but it did cost STR a lot.
I feel like that argument must be coming from players who’ve never been subjected to save or die athletics checks :)
Grapple monsters, sinking ships, climbing ropes/cliffs…. Low Str can kill you far quicker than low Int or low Cha or even low Dex (damage is rarely instant death), unless you snag athletics!
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Can you show us where you think it says that you lose proficiencies when you multiclass?
TBF any single skill check would do that too...Acrobatics insta-kill would kill that High STR paladin who dumped Dex. Forgetting that a creature is immune to your damage (INT check) would mean that you could be killed after doing nothing to it. Failing to see deception and getting backstabbed (Insight/WIS) could be deadly. I could go on but I think you get the point...
Avoiding rocks falling and traps are almost exclusively DEX based if you look at the examples in the DMG so I do not really agree with the STR checks being save or die at all...
In fact if you look at saves in general:
STR saves from creatures almost never produce a "Major" Condition or Status. Hell they even rarely (~10% of the time) even inflict damage.
DEX much more often does damage and CON and WIS a high amount of "Major" status and condition riders on the save.
So by design in the game STR is not really needed most of the time and can even be offset pretty easily. Heck a dex fighter would still have PROF in STR saving throws.
Also my opinion: Insta-kill save or die effects are terrible. Do not use them or if you do VERY VERY infrequently. Even a barbarian who is built to make this insta death check have a small chance of failure then you really do not help anyone but cause more issues. There is a reason they do not exist in 5e very much and even then people generally say take them VERY seriously and only use sparingly.
I agree that insta-kill saves and skill checks are garbage. But here are some examples of situations where a failed athletics check (or, repeated failed checks) will kill you:
There's lots of situations where a failed skill check might endnager you or cause you to take damage. These are all situations though where inability to consistently pass low- or medium-difficulty checks will just outright kill you, not just put you in a disadvantageous combat position. A couple years back, I lost a really cool character wizard I was looking forward to playing because session 1 involved a fight on a sinking/burning boat. For 5 rounds straight, I could not pass the DC 12 athletics check to climb a rope out of the hold, and just straight up died before the rest of the characters had a chance to realize I was in trouble :)
Failing an acrobatics check while... tightrope walking? That could do the same thing... but its hard to imagine a character will be forced into that situation, while all of the above are situations that any or all of the party may be forced into. Otherwise, it's hard to see what sort of mandatory Acrobatics check would come up at all, let alone in a way that was deadly.
Perception, Stealth, etc.... failing those will never just kill you. It might put you into a combat you don't want to be in, or let a creature attack you from an ambush, but that's combat... you're designed to be in combat, and every character has combat tools. Not every character (most characters) have no tools to help when drowning in the middle of the ocean, falling hundreds of feet, burning to death in a chamber they can't climb out of, etc.
Strength is important. Intelligence and Charisma are never important. Dex, Con, and Wisdom are very important in combat, but only Con and Wisdom are likely to be "save or die" relevant.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.