Archon said:
My problem with 3.5's prestige-multiclass system is that it went too far in enabling players to customize their characters beyond what the genre should support.
I guess the questions are, what is the genre supposed to support? And who is supposed to decide this? You? Should I only play the archetypes or characters that you deem appropriate?
I just always looked at 3.x d&d more as a "sandbox" type of framework: if you want to, it can be this really basic, simple rpg type of game. If the only books you use are the players handbook, dmg, and mm, you have a very simple basic game. If you want to multiclass a bit, cool, you still have a basic simple rpg game where you can play your cleric, rogue, wizard, fighter etc.
But if you want to start incorporating all these other sourcebooks, you can. If you want to get into elaborate min/maxing and powergaming, you can. And there is nothing stopping the DM from either using the tools of the power gamers against them via min/maxed munchkin power build monsters, or placing whatever restrictions they deem is necessary to regulate the power of one character or another.
But in enabling unlimited multiclassing, with "dips" in to a class to scoop particular powers, and endless variations of prestige classes, characters went from too bland ('a fighter') to too spicy ('a half-ogre fighter/barbarian/ranger/templar/dervish') and missed the sweet spot. The characters that are created don't feel like the fantasy heroes of myth, legend, and fiction. They feel, at best, like the wierd quirky side character that shows up in one chapter and interacts with the real hero.
A character feels a certain way because of the combination of race and classes and not the personality?
The root cause of the problem is the irregular distribution of benefits from leveling. Simply put, some levels of some classes are not worth as much as some levels of other classes. As a result the min-maxing player will switch out of classes when they are no longer optimally beneficial and find a new class that provides better benefits for his intended purpose. The net result is that a character who skims through a bunch of different classes is far mor effective than one who levels up consistently as a fighter or thief.
You have a good point, but imo this can be a pro or a con depending on how you view it. If instead of having vast options like in 3.x we have very limited options and very limited roles, then the character building side of the game becomes boring. With limited options once you have played a fighter, you have played a fighter. There is no real point to playing another fighter, you don't have enough options to make a fighter that is really all that different from the last one.
So while the fewer options makes for an easier game for anyone to pick up and play, people will just get bored of it. Games like WoW get around this by implementing VAST amounts of levels and super time consuming to obtain uber gear. But d&d isn't supposed to be a game you play for 500 hours to get to lvl 80, if you remove the character complexity you just have a game that's cool to play once or twice and them forget about.
This is, of course, the opposite of the real world, where specialists trump generalists in most fields of endeavor. Gold medalists in track don't switch to swimming in between the summer games. Chess grandmasters don't play Starcraft to tighten up their openings.
I don't think truly effective multiclass characters are generalists. They take levels in various classes that synergize in order to make a more effective specialist than another route. The fun is in having multiple ways to accomplish various goals (I can think of dozens of ways to make a "offensive nuker" guy or a "tank" etc)
If you stop looking at classes as some overarching defining element of a character and start looking them as things that you use to build a class that otherwise doesn't exist, the whole game takes on a different complexion.
With neither narrative feel nor realism to support the hybrid class character generation, the system is inherently going to lend itself to min-maxing.
You sure aren't playing a Svirfneblin Red Dragon Disciple because of a character concept.
Hey, nobody is putting a gun to anyones head and forcing them to take those 4 levels of rdd or what have you. If you and your friends don't want to min/max, then don't.
At the end of the day, 3.x allows people to play the game in any number of ways. This as opposed to 4.0 which as far as I can tell *forces* people to play the game *one* way. Time will tell which version of d&d lasts longer, maybe the simplicity of 4.0 will win in the end because people don't want to have to think when they make characters, they prefer the mmo style of "pick between elf, dwarf, and human, then pick between healer, tank, or nuker, then press play".
Personally, I like games that give me the freedom to play how I please.
Peace.
