Well yes, you're right. Clerics actually channel divine power. And by default they do it because a god has chosen them for that. But there are settings in which this is not the case.
It's pointless to ban or restrict multiclassing out of fear of minmaxers. Because minmaxers will minmax. You either build the system with that in mind, or you suddenly, yet inevitably face their meddling. When classes like warlock are optimized through multiclassing, it is painfully obvious that warlocks aren't good enough to stay pure and are in need of a fix. 5e doesn't have the problem of 3.5e, where minmaxing and overabundance of classes and prestige classes led to weird and contrived combinations that trumped everything else. 5e is more streamlined and clean in this regard, and better balanced. If multiclass apocalypse didn't happen in like 8 years, it's not happening anytime soon.
Multiclasses only make sense mechanically. Thematically you can play any character you want in singleclass. Do you want to play a soldier who is also a priest? You just have to make a soldier and play him in such a way that he behaves like a priest (not doing anything to the children, but praying at every opportunity).
So basically you're against Paladin being a class, since that is basically what Paladin is, a soldier who is also a priest, you aren't even arguing against a multi-class but a single class with this one.
But no, having features link to a background can mean something. For example a fighter who sold their soul to the devil, you have some levels in warlock but mostly level fighter, you might have a subplot of trying to get your soul back, these things link to better than just trying to 100% role play it without the character classes and it reflects in what your character can and can not do, that they have made such a pact. It's the same thing as being a soldier who prays every where, picking up paladin instead of being a fighter that just prays a lot, shows the power of that character's devotion and belief of their faith.
No, what I'm saying is that you don't need to be a fighter with dip in cleric for that. And by the way, don't confuse being a priest with having divine powers. Clerics don't have to be priests, paladins don't either. A cleric is someone chosen by a god to channel his power. By concept, it is logical to think that a cleric can be a priest of that god. But it is not a requirement. Absolutely. In 5th edition a paladin channels divine magic through his oaths. I liked the old concept of the paladin better, but today the concept is that. It can be a priest warrior, of course. But in reality what he is is a divine warrior.
You're the one that originally said you were roleplaying him as somebody who prayed everywhere, and I didn't even mention god, I mentioned faith, which is still a requirement for a Cleric without a god, they instead get their power from the devotion of their faith, which essentially doesn't really differ from a Paladin and their Oath.
Neither Paladin or Cleric needs to be devoted to a god, but if a character is getting their power from their "devotion" it is still pulling "divine" powers and they still need a divine spellcasting focus. So a Paladin is still roleplay wise a class that fulfills the whole "warrior of faith" thing.
R3sistance, What exactly are we arguing? Because it seems like all you're trying to do is be right about something, even if it's unrelated. If so: You are right. you can sleep easy. Now let's move on.
Just to be clear what I was saying is you don't need to multiclass from a thematic point of view. It is only necessary if you want to mix mechanics from different classes. The priest soldier thing was just one example. You can make that character in many ways without multiclassing. With a paladin as you propose. With a fighter like I said. Also with a cleric. And you have many other options to do it. But let's move on, this looks like a rat wheel.
Multiclasses only make sense mechanically. Thematically you can play any character you want in singleclass. Do you want to play a soldier who is also a priest? You just have to make a soldier and play him in such a way that he behaves like a priest (not doing anything to the children, but praying at every opportunity).
So basically you're against Paladin being a class, since that is basically what Paladin is, a soldier who is also a priest, you aren't even arguing against a multi-class but a single class with this one.
But no, having features link to a background can mean something. For example a fighter who sold their soul to the devil, you have some levels in warlock but mostly level fighter, you might have a subplot of trying to get your soul back, these things link to better than just trying to 100% role play it without the character classes and it reflects in what your character can and can not do, that they have made such a pact. It's the same thing as being a soldier who prays every where, picking up paladin instead of being a fighter that just prays a lot, shows the power of that character's devotion and belief of their faith.
No, what I'm saying is that you don't need to be a fighter with dip in cleric for that. And by the way, don't confuse being a priest with having divine powers. Clerics don't have to be priests, paladins don't either. A cleric is someone chosen by a god to channel his power. By concept, it is logical to think that a cleric can be a priest of that god. But it is not a requirement. Absolutely. In 5th edition a paladin channels divine magic through his oaths. I liked the old concept of the paladin better, but today the concept is that. It can be a priest warrior, of course. But in reality what he is is a divine warrior.
You're the one that originally said you were roleplaying him as somebody who prayed everywhere, and I didn't even mention god, I mentioned faith, which is still a requirement for a Cleric without a god, they instead get their power from the devotion of their faith, which essentially doesn't really differ from a Paladin and their Oath.
Neither Paladin or Cleric needs to be devoted to a god, but if a character is getting their power from their "devotion" it is still pulling "divine" powers and they still need a divine spellcasting focus. So a Paladin is still roleplay wise a class that fulfills the whole "warrior of faith" thing.
Was my reply to you just ignored or something? I already said that you're basically agreeing with the point Irrelevant has been making.
Multiclasses only make sense mechanically. Thematically you can play any character you want in singleclass.
How about if I want to do a human that has always been a thief who suddenly finds that he has draconic ancestry? A Rogue with a level or so dip in Draconic Sorceror would be ideal. Very thematic. I'm not sure that it's any more powerful than just a straight Rogue.
If you're going to respond with something along the lines with that I should be a Rogue and just roleplay the sorceror bit...then really you're against classes. Just cut all of them back to Fighter, Rogue and Wizard and everyone just roleplay the various archetypes. Works exactly the same, so having a Sorceror is just playing mechanics not theme.
You don't really need a multiclass for that concept. For example, you could represent your draconic ancestry with a feat (Fitzban's are great for that).
Fizban's is really not. Looking at the three Gifts, they don't even seem draconic in nature, apart from like one feature between them.
What I like about a Draconic Sorceror dip that lends to such a character:
- increased health, representing the inner strength of dragons.
- getting scaly skin. The benefit of the AC increase as well is a nice mechanical representation.
- Some low level magic representing the magical abilities of the dragon ancestry.
Those are all thematic elements. Mechanically, I daresay it's suboptimal to do it via multiclass, rather than going for what gets me the best stats, but it fits perfectly with what I envision the development would of a thief who suddenly starts developing manifestations of his draconic ancestry.
But even without a feat, you can describe that draconic ancestry any way you want. Your skin could be draconic looking. Your voice could have a sonority reminiscent of dragons. You could even reskin your sneak attack (for example) to represent an ancient power of your blood that awakens when you need it (perhaps changing the look of your eyes to be dragon-like for a few seconds). Or anything else you can think of.
If we're going down the route of "you don't need X because you can just imagine you have it", I don't need D&D at all. I can just imagine it all. That, upon inspection, is really a silly argument at base. It also harkens back to what I already said - the concept you're arguing against (if we're being generous) also criticises the need for anything other than three base classes. All the rest are just officially sanctioned MCs and reflavours, really.
The reason why I play D&D is because I want mechanical representation of my concepts. It's not to give me permission to use my imagination, I certainly haven't spent hundreds on permission to do that, it's so I can mechanically represent my character and its concepts. Sometimes it is appropriate to just reskin. Various weapons, for example, don't need to be officially represented. However, MCing allows mechanical representations that just aren't possible (or are awkward) to represent otherwise. Can you easily represent 'a thief with draconic ancestry' with reskinning? Sure. But that 'a thief with draconic ancestry' isn't the concept that I had in mind. MCing with a dip in Draconic Sorceror gets me much closer. Is there compromise, both mechanically and conceptually? Sure. But it's a compromise that results in a character much closer to my concept if I MC into Sorceror for one level, than if I try to use multiple feats or "just imagine it's so".
You could also go the other way. Being a sorcerer and giving you a thief background (with skills like Sleight of Hand). You could also choose from your list of spells, spells that reinforce your role as a thief.
You don't need a multiclass at all to do that concept. Not for that one, not for any of them. You can play anything you can think of with a singleclass.
That's not my story, though, is it? And I think that's the problem. You're not respecting my concept. You're trying to force my concept to fit your accepted definition of accepted mechanics, and if my concept doesn't fit that definition (which is, as I've said, actually quite arbitrary), then you're going to shoehorn it in, clip bits off and jam it in, even if it breaks things in the process, just to prove a point - that you can represent a concept using single classes, even if it's not really my concept anymore. I'm not offended by the way, regardless of my language, I'm just being blunt in what's actually happening. It's like promising that you'll publishing my story (which for brevity's sake, we'll say is Lord of the Rings), in your magazine and then publishing Eragon and claiming you fulfilled your promise because both mention dragons, and evil guy and a McGuffin.
The "can"s in your statement are doing an awful lot of heavy lifting.
And by the way, I'm not saying you can't multiclass if your DM allows it (it's an optional rule at the moment). But the idea that should be clear is that it is not necessary to play one or the other concept. It's just a mechanical thing, not thematic.
The distinction between thematic and mechanical is a false dichotomy. The game, when played to it's full potential, has the mechanics represent the theme. That's why we have classes, spells, abilities, levels, and so forth. It's all to provide mechanical representation of the themes of our characters. Sure, some people just get lost in the mechanics and lose sight of the thematic aspects (intentionally or not, if they're happy doing it and the table is happy with them doing it, then there's nothing wrong with it), but when played as intended, the mechanics are merely tools intended to represent thematic aspects of the characters. MCing is just another tool in the toolbox for that purpose.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Honestly, I think you don't know how to distinguish between what are mechanical aspects of the game, and what is narrative. Your entire justification for doing that dip is based on the mechanics, not the narrative (or thematic or whatever you want to call it).
As many in this thread have already said, multiclassing doesn't need a narrative justification. The only justification is that you mechanically want to play something that a singleclass doesn't offer you.
R3sistance, What exactly are we arguing? Because it seems like all you're trying to do is be right about something, even if it's unrelated. If so: You are right. you can sleep easy. Now let's move on.
Just to be clear what I was saying is you don't need to multiclass from a thematic point of view. It is only necessary if you want to mix mechanics from different classes. The priest soldier thing was just one example. You can make that character in many ways without multiclassing. With a paladin as you propose. With a fighter like I said. Also with a cleric. And you have many other options to do it. But let's move on, this looks like a rat wheel.
The point was and remains to be, that classes have features which represent what they are both thematically and mechanically. You are stuck looking at the two things as if they aren't related when in D&D they most definitely are related. You can play a fighter who prays everyday but they are not a religious type of character like a cleric or a paladin, these settings a character's faith is a powerful thing and that is represented in the powers granted to them, generally speaking most characters in Faerun are going to believe in and pray to some type of god but a Paladin or a Cleric who worships a god are beyond that to a level where it's literally a part of their power. So if you wanted to portray a deeply religious character while not taking a level in either Paladin or Cleric, you are lacking things both thematically and mechanically for that.
Paladins and Clerics can cure wounds, purify food and water, and perform other types of divine acts. A fighter can still pray but they aren't thematically pushing the same type of devotion and faith, this is the type of thing multiclassing exists for, multiclassing doesn't exist for optimizers, it's just optimizers looking to take advantage of anything that they can, because they are optimizers, and that in itself isn't inherently a bad thing either but that is a separate discussion and mostly comes down to people judging others for not being optimizers, whom are toxic people to begin with and removing multiclassing wouldn't do anything to stop that toxicity.
Honestly, I think you don't know how to distinguish between what are mechanical aspects of the game, and what is narrative. Your entire justification for doing that dip is based on the mechanics, not the narrative (or thematic or whatever you want to call it).
As many in this thread have already said, multiclassing doesn't need a narrative justification. The only justification is that you mechanically want to play something that a singleclass doesn't offer you.
I think it's you that doesn't understand the relationship properly between narrative and mechanics, given that my hypothetical motivation was the narrative that my hypothetical character found out that he had dragon ancestry. A Dragon Sorceror is literally that - someone who has a dragon heritage. I hypothetically want to play as someone who has a dragon heritage and that has an effect on the character - meaningful and flavourful ones.
Take a Paladin - he takes an Oath and that, thanks to WotC and how they developed 5e, can have mechanical implications. I could just take a Fighter instead and reflavour the stuff a Fighter gets and use feats and come up with something that vaguely like someone who has taken an Oath that has Divine consequences. But why should that be necessary? There is the Paladin class right there. The mechanics of a Paladin allows manifestation of the narrative of taking an Oath. It can do that far better than trying to reflavour a Fighter. Taking a dip into Draconic Sorceror represents a Draconic Heritage far better than reflavouring the features of your current class and taking feats, whatever that might be (with maybe a few exceptions).
The more this thread goes on, the more I'm convinced that people criticising MCers have arrived at a conclusion and are trying justify it by whatever means necessary rather than recognise that we (by which I mean, D&D players in general) often use D&D to mechanically represent character concepts, and some (certainly by no means all, but some) are better represented by a multiclass than a single class.
Almost every concept can be represented by a Fighter, Wizard or Rogue. We have another 10 classes beyond that and who knows how many subclasses so we can further fine tune the mechanical representation of our characters to be closer to their narratives. You want a man who loses control of his emotions and is perpetually on the verge of losing control of his magic? Well, you don't have to be an archer and reflavour arrow shows as magic blasts. Or reskin the missed shots as magic going crazy. We have a Sorceror, and even better the Wild Magic subclass that represents that narrative wonderfully mechanically. On top of all that, we have feats to help further refine the mechanical representation of our narrative concepts.
MCing is just another tool for that fine tuning. One that, like classes, subclasses and feats, has its advantages over the other tools that are not easily replaced.
It was stated earlier than all concepts can be represented in a single class. I repeat that "can", and now add "represented", are both doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.
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Well yes, you're right. Clerics actually channel divine power. And by default they do it because a god has chosen them for that. But there are settings in which this is not the case.
It's pointless to ban or restrict multiclassing out of fear of minmaxers. Because minmaxers will minmax. You either build the system with that in mind, or you suddenly, yet inevitably face their meddling. When classes like warlock are optimized through multiclassing, it is painfully obvious that warlocks aren't good enough to stay pure and are in need of a fix. 5e doesn't have the problem of 3.5e, where minmaxing and overabundance of classes and prestige classes led to weird and contrived combinations that trumped everything else. 5e is more streamlined and clean in this regard, and better balanced. If multiclass apocalypse didn't happen in like 8 years, it's not happening anytime soon.
You're the one that originally said you were roleplaying him as somebody who prayed everywhere, and I didn't even mention god, I mentioned faith, which is still a requirement for a Cleric without a god, they instead get their power from the devotion of their faith, which essentially doesn't really differ from a Paladin and their Oath.
Neither Paladin or Cleric needs to be devoted to a god, but if a character is getting their power from their "devotion" it is still pulling "divine" powers and they still need a divine spellcasting focus. So a Paladin is still roleplay wise a class that fulfills the whole "warrior of faith" thing.
R3sistance, What exactly are we arguing? Because it seems like all you're trying to do is be right about something, even if it's unrelated. If so: You are right. you can sleep easy. Now let's move on.
Just to be clear what I was saying is you don't need to multiclass from a thematic point of view. It is only necessary if you want to mix mechanics from different classes. The priest soldier thing was just one example. You can make that character in many ways without multiclassing. With a paladin as you propose. With a fighter like I said. Also with a cleric. And you have many other options to do it. But let's move on, this looks like a rat wheel.
Was my reply to you just ignored or something? I already said that you're basically agreeing with the point Irrelevant has been making.
Fizban's is really not. Looking at the three Gifts, they don't even seem draconic in nature, apart from like one feature between them.
What I like about a Draconic Sorceror dip that lends to such a character:
- increased health, representing the inner strength of dragons.
- getting scaly skin. The benefit of the AC increase as well is a nice mechanical representation.
- Some low level magic representing the magical abilities of the dragon ancestry.
Those are all thematic elements. Mechanically, I daresay it's suboptimal to do it via multiclass, rather than going for what gets me the best stats, but it fits perfectly with what I envision the development would of a thief who suddenly starts developing manifestations of his draconic ancestry.
If we're going down the route of "you don't need X because you can just imagine you have it", I don't need D&D at all. I can just imagine it all. That, upon inspection, is really a silly argument at base. It also harkens back to what I already said - the concept you're arguing against (if we're being generous) also criticises the need for anything other than three base classes. All the rest are just officially sanctioned MCs and reflavours, really.
The reason why I play D&D is because I want mechanical representation of my concepts. It's not to give me permission to use my imagination, I certainly haven't spent hundreds on permission to do that, it's so I can mechanically represent my character and its concepts. Sometimes it is appropriate to just reskin. Various weapons, for example, don't need to be officially represented. However, MCing allows mechanical representations that just aren't possible (or are awkward) to represent otherwise. Can you easily represent 'a thief with draconic ancestry' with reskinning? Sure. But that 'a thief with draconic ancestry' isn't the concept that I had in mind. MCing with a dip in Draconic Sorceror gets me much closer. Is there compromise, both mechanically and conceptually? Sure. But it's a compromise that results in a character much closer to my concept if I MC into Sorceror for one level, than if I try to use multiple feats or "just imagine it's so".
That's not my story, though, is it? And I think that's the problem. You're not respecting my concept. You're trying to force my concept to fit your accepted definition of accepted mechanics, and if my concept doesn't fit that definition (which is, as I've said, actually quite arbitrary), then you're going to shoehorn it in, clip bits off and jam it in, even if it breaks things in the process, just to prove a point - that you can represent a concept using single classes, even if it's not really my concept anymore. I'm not offended by the way, regardless of my language, I'm just being blunt in what's actually happening. It's like promising that you'll publishing my story (which for brevity's sake, we'll say is Lord of the Rings), in your magazine and then publishing Eragon and claiming you fulfilled your promise because both mention dragons, and evil guy and a McGuffin.
The "can"s in your statement are doing an awful lot of heavy lifting.
The distinction between thematic and mechanical is a false dichotomy. The game, when played to it's full potential, has the mechanics represent the theme. That's why we have classes, spells, abilities, levels, and so forth. It's all to provide mechanical representation of the themes of our characters. Sure, some people just get lost in the mechanics and lose sight of the thematic aspects (intentionally or not, if they're happy doing it and the table is happy with them doing it, then there's nothing wrong with it), but when played as intended, the mechanics are merely tools intended to represent thematic aspects of the characters. MCing is just another tool in the toolbox for that purpose.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Honestly, I think you don't know how to distinguish between what are mechanical aspects of the game, and what is narrative. Your entire justification for doing that dip is based on the mechanics, not the narrative (or thematic or whatever you want to call it).
As many in this thread have already said, multiclassing doesn't need a narrative justification. The only justification is that you mechanically want to play something that a singleclass doesn't offer you.
The point was and remains to be, that classes have features which represent what they are both thematically and mechanically. You are stuck looking at the two things as if they aren't related when in D&D they most definitely are related. You can play a fighter who prays everyday but they are not a religious type of character like a cleric or a paladin, these settings a character's faith is a powerful thing and that is represented in the powers granted to them, generally speaking most characters in Faerun are going to believe in and pray to some type of god but a Paladin or a Cleric who worships a god are beyond that to a level where it's literally a part of their power. So if you wanted to portray a deeply religious character while not taking a level in either Paladin or Cleric, you are lacking things both thematically and mechanically for that.
Paladins and Clerics can cure wounds, purify food and water, and perform other types of divine acts. A fighter can still pray but they aren't thematically pushing the same type of devotion and faith, this is the type of thing multiclassing exists for, multiclassing doesn't exist for optimizers, it's just optimizers looking to take advantage of anything that they can, because they are optimizers, and that in itself isn't inherently a bad thing either but that is a separate discussion and mostly comes down to people judging others for not being optimizers, whom are toxic people to begin with and removing multiclassing wouldn't do anything to stop that toxicity.
I think it's you that doesn't understand the relationship properly between narrative and mechanics, given that my hypothetical motivation was the narrative that my hypothetical character found out that he had dragon ancestry. A Dragon Sorceror is literally that - someone who has a dragon heritage. I hypothetically want to play as someone who has a dragon heritage and that has an effect on the character - meaningful and flavourful ones.
Take a Paladin - he takes an Oath and that, thanks to WotC and how they developed 5e, can have mechanical implications. I could just take a Fighter instead and reflavour the stuff a Fighter gets and use feats and come up with something that vaguely like someone who has taken an Oath that has Divine consequences. But why should that be necessary? There is the Paladin class right there. The mechanics of a Paladin allows manifestation of the narrative of taking an Oath. It can do that far better than trying to reflavour a Fighter. Taking a dip into Draconic Sorceror represents a Draconic Heritage far better than reflavouring the features of your current class and taking feats, whatever that might be (with maybe a few exceptions).
The more this thread goes on, the more I'm convinced that people criticising MCers have arrived at a conclusion and are trying justify it by whatever means necessary rather than recognise that we (by which I mean, D&D players in general) often use D&D to mechanically represent character concepts, and some (certainly by no means all, but some) are better represented by a multiclass than a single class.
Almost every concept can be represented by a Fighter, Wizard or Rogue. We have another 10 classes beyond that and who knows how many subclasses so we can further fine tune the mechanical representation of our characters to be closer to their narratives. You want a man who loses control of his emotions and is perpetually on the verge of losing control of his magic? Well, you don't have to be an archer and reflavour arrow shows as magic blasts. Or reskin the missed shots as magic going crazy. We have a Sorceror, and even better the Wild Magic subclass that represents that narrative wonderfully mechanically. On top of all that, we have feats to help further refine the mechanical representation of our narrative concepts.
MCing is just another tool for that fine tuning. One that, like classes, subclasses and feats, has its advantages over the other tools that are not easily replaced.
It was stated earlier than all concepts can be represented in a single class. I repeat that "can", and now add "represented", are both doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.