I have been having a lot of discussion about multi-classing in 4E D&D lately. Lots of discussion and good points, so I figured I’d post a revised version of the information here for everyone to see.

It’s a whole new ball game
Multi-class is no longer about just trying to beef up your character. It’s more of a versatility thing now, trying to cover your parties weaknesses. If your party is getting hit hard in a lot of encounters, it could be a big help if your ranger or rogue picks up the Initiate of the Faith feat and gains an extra daily healing ability. You do not even have to take all of the feats for multi-classing, sometimes the first is enough.

Is 4 Feats REALLY that much?
For what you can accomplish with it, I don’t really think so. You gain 3 new powers to use that can help your party out. I know that you must replace 3 to get these, but isn’t the only reason your multi-classing because there is another power that you want more than the ones you have? So you can’t really complain.

And Feats are not really that huge of a thing anymore, I have trouble picking out enough of them sometimes when I plan out one of my characters path to greatness (or level 30, whichever comes first ;] ) I often just pick ones that give my character a little boost (like Toughness or Durable) but I could really do without having. It would be easy to drop those for some multi-class feats.

At least in Heroic Tier
Of course all of this is talking from a guy who has only played and watched Heroic Tier characters. Reading over the possibilities for Paragon Level seems like a bit of a different story. If you choose not to take a paragon path it can be quite a knock to your usefulness. You lose your action point abilities and other paragon powers for ones that are lower level. But I have not seen this in action or even read about it, so this is really just an educated guess.

Say No to changes and House Rules
I read all of these forum posts about how people would like to add this to multi-classing, or just allow this extra power to it, etc etc Or maybe some complaint about how you get “penalized” for picking the wrong class to add into.

Really I think that 4E multi-classing has nothing to do with making your character stronger (though you can accomplish that). It is about spreading your character out so he can cover a wider role in the party. 4E is a team game, so play like a team.

And of course you can’t multi-class into whatever you want, that just makes sense. You have to pick a class that actually works with yours, or you ARE going to have some backfire, like needing an implement for a wizard power when you are a 2-H sword fighter. Obviously a character like that shouldn’t be able to use it without some disadvantage, if it could it would be terribly over powered.

People who want this are, to at least some extent, power gamers. They want to have the best combination and most powerful spells and all that. Well I think you are missing out on a large part of D&D if that is how you play. Sure that might be fun sometimes, but most of the time I like to pick a kind of theme to go with my character and choose everything to go with that.

To me at least it is a more rewarding thing to use a character that fits well with the kind of person he/she is, not just some lumber beast who only cares about fighting and magic items. Sometimes it is fun to play the sidekick, and not be the hero. Not everyone can be all the time.

In Summary
Right back to my topic title, I like 4E multi-classing and I am going to use it as is. The people at Wizards made it like that for a reason, and I like the reason.