Tuesday, September 3, 2013

D&D 30day Challenge: Day03 - Favorite Playable Class

My answer: the multi-classed character!

No, it's not quite dodging the question. In AD&D, where the class is separate from the race, I always wanted to multi-class. My choice, was not the ever popular Elven Fighter / Magic-User; it was a Half-Elven Fighter / Thief.

There was a particular type of fighter -- the lightly armored, sneaky, finesse-oriented fighter -- that I wanted to emulate.

I was actually overjoyed by ease of multi-classing in D&D 3E, until the sheer weight of Feats (with all their Pre-requisites) in all the sourcebooks and class expansion rules killed the fun of character creation for me. And as a HERO System gamer that's saying something. The shift to 3.5, followed by 4E killed my interest in the entire D&D line. Ah, but that's another story.

I still toy with the idea of running a very lean, bare minimum 3E rulebook-based campaign some time in the future. But it's not a likely future.

4 comments:

  1. Yeah, multiclassing is the way i went also when I played 3e. It was the only way for me to model characters that I actually wanted to play.

    The two most egregious cases being a character named Hrenex Brocus (name inspired by the phrase "when its broken...") who abused anything I could bend towards monkishness to make a priest of Kord; and Yskos Arendradas who in addition to being heavily multiclassed also abused the Cohort rules to make himself into a one man adventuring party.

    I did 3e for almost 2 years, then converted it to the HERO System (5e) to replace my previous AD&D to HERO 4e conversion, and went back to playing Fantasy HERO.

    3e was fun but so easily broken, and became increasingly absurd in the mid to late teens. And with the accumulation of feats and prestige classes, character creation as the GM to make NPC's became increasingly unmanageable.

    I've been mulling over doing a Pathfinder FATE game, using the Pathfinder setting and materials but FATE: Core for the rules...but I'm waiting for the Toolkit which is supposed to be coming out soon to commit.

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  2. For me, there's a point that you hit too many classes or feats or whatever, and I want to get at the root of building the class that I want -- no issues with having a limited number of character classes, though.

    If it's too broad a selection, then I might as well go with another system...

    That being said, I do like the plethora of professions in WFRP and Tunnels and Trolls. Not sure why

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  3. 3E is good...in moderation. The glut of 3rd party products spoiled it. Mainly because WotC had to follow suit to keep up. That being said, it's great for cherry-picking if you are into the idea of customization. But, it works well with just the PHB.

    I think, though, the multi-classing in 3E+ is the best feature.

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  4. Only ever played D&D, AD&D, and 2nd edition. Respectively, I lean towards fighter, fighter, and fighter.

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That's my side of things. Let me know what you think, my friend.