Valid but Odd Multiclassing.

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I was wondering if we could get some ideas for very wierd but valid multiclassing options.

I was thinking from both a roleplaying as well as physical stance.

How about Paladin/Rogue?

What wierd combos can you think up? 2,3 or more actual classes? Don't restrict it to ubercharacter powergaming, just valid and odd. (I'm not considering races here)

 

Paladin/Rogue sound pretty much like a fantasy version of a James Bond-esque spy with extra abilities granted by Paladin side's god.

 

Err... is it even possible to have a Paladin/Rogue? I don't think this is a "valid" multiclassing option because of alignment conflicts.

 

No alignment restrictions on rogue for 3rd edition. The only way paladin/rogues would be difficult is because you would only get one spell of advancing as paladin class. If you were to get another level in a class other than paladin or depending on the paladin's diety (i.e. helm - fighter) you would not be able to advance in the paladin class again.
So if you wanted a Rogue(15)/Paladin(15) you would have to gain all 15 paladin levels after each other.

I think a Sorcerer/Wizard would be a wierd class since it would be a complete waste of levels.

 

In some cases, Sorcerer/Wizards make sense. AFAIK, the Simbul and Alustriel have levels in both those classes, although one is predominant, meaning they don't go the classic 2E even division route. And that makes less sense, yeah.

With some micromanagement, one could exploit the combo and find it powerful, but it still looks more or less nonsense. Having over 10 fireballs or sunfires with Spirit of Flame, Spell Focus: Evocation (2), Spell Penetration (2) and great summoning capabilities would be an overkill, but then you wouldn't have those nice high-level spells unless casting them from scrolls.

Paladin/Rogue makes sense for rogues who find a calling some time in their adventures. Perhaps they spend their turbulent youth as rogues and become paladins in mid twenties, when the frenzy is over, or some such. Or they get converted. Or witness a divine intervention... or are the objects of one. Might as well be a noble's younger son whose older brothers die and voila, the rogue has to defend the title and the land. Then you can also have some mysterious heritage popping up later in the story, Artur style. There are many possibilities.

The other way round, stopping advancing as a paladin, while maintaining the paladin status but going on the rogue path seems odd. Very odd. Can't really see it. Fallen, yes. But not an active paladin who only can't advance further as paladin. Unless he's a rogue technically, meaning he is getting rogue levels, but doesn't live the life of a thief. Intelligence agent, perhaps? Renegate noble? Could still think of something.

So far as paladins go, Paladin/Wizard may seem odd as well, even though it was sort of intended by the authors in the Paladin of Mystra subclass. I had one, 50/50 in levels, and it was a supremely interesting experience.

Ranger/Wizard may seem even even more so, but that would be misleading: both classes rely on dexterity and aren't in for big armour. The INT a wizard needs makes more skill points and rangers rely on skill points to some remarkable extent. Certain perceptions of the ranger mystique will go in line with Ranger/Wizard and especially Ranger/Sorcerer combo. Ranger/Bards could also make it - after all, certain characters in Earth's mythologies look a bit like ranger/bard material.

There is a large number of odd combos that don't seem as odd from a different perspective, perhaps that of a different circumstances or a different culture. For example:

Monk/Druid: From a narrow perspective, this seems beyond sense. But looking more deeply into it, both classes are guardians of a certain system - balance, order, whatever. Both are intense on a certain philosophy alien or at least unfamiliar to the rest of the society. Both form secret, secluded groups, have a structure not transparent to outsiders, prefer to operate out of the public's sight and favour discretion even up to the point of secret languages. In combat, both rely on dexterity and have a limited selection of weapons for nature's sake - druids don't use metal, monks are normally even stricter and stick to what nature gave them for most of the time. The Bene Gesserit order from Dune could make an example, if it were D&D.

Barbarian/Bard: Who said a bard has to be a courtier clad in silk or a broken tavern junk? A bard can be a skald or a tribal storyteller as well.

Cleric/Bard: Some cults are intense on chant. It would be reasonable for them to have one such cleric in bigger temples. Important temples of just about any religion may well have a cleric serving as choir director.

Bard/Monk: Much the same as above, with certain differences. Music can be crucial to discipline and martial training for some monasteries.

Paladin/Monk: Although this one will always look odd, the paths are often linked. Paladins fighting without armour would find the training useful (Evasion, WIS bonus to AC). Paladins of certain cultures, especially if there is more emphasis on philosophy than cult, could receive monastic training by default. Certain noble families may have a tradition of providing some martial training to their offspring, involving a certain philosophy and adherence to a certain system (Law, Order). After that, they can take paladin route, and it will be marked by their earlier training. Again, I'm thinking Dune - some of Dune universe's noble houses would likely follow this practice. Paladins might become monks as a result of some experience in life, or a change of focus.

Monk/Ranger: This would fall somewhere between Monk/Druid and Monk/Paladin, with added emphasis on shared class skills and increased emphasis on Dexterity. Absence of armour adds sense to this combo. It isn't odd for an urban ranger variant or for a broadly taken ranger role (scout, guerilla, whatever such), but the classic variant of ranger isn't really expected to follow suit. However, certain monastic orders and philosophies may be more intense on nature than the others.

Paladin/Ranger: Though odd, this one is quite reasonable when it comes to paladins getting low ranger levels or rangers getting low paladin levels. This is especially true for Aragorn-style rangers or something-evil-slaying paladins, like Knigts of the Chalice or undead slaying kits from 2E, or dragon hunters (perhaps Fiend Slayer feat plus dragon as racial enemy in IWD2).

Now something really odd:

Barbarian/Wizard: I can immediately come up with an image of an intelligent young barbarian apprenticed to a tribe's mage and trained in the art rather than discovering an innate sorcerous talent, but that's just one example and not really likely to happen in a game and come accross as natural in a given setting, unless you make it a rule that each tribe has a wizard or some such. Otherwise, this one is very odd.

[ September 03, 2004, 18:59: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Fighter 4/Paladin 3/Monk 3/Rogue X
It's a serious mix of classes, but could be considered that the character starts as a fighter, then, b/c of his/her lawful alignment finds the righteous path of being a fighter and becomes a Paladin. Over time, decides that he/she wants to become enlighted and switches over to Monk. Then while studying in the temples, an attack occurs, leveling the place and leaving him/her destined to find a new calling and perhaps the local town is full of Mercs, thus he/she becomes a Rogue.

I've been considering playing such a character in a two person party, the other person obivously would handle the magic side of things. Finding the right race and stats would be extremely hard, but the thought of him/her exists and I will find a way to create such a character. This would also have to include level squating as to keep from getting nailed with xp penalties, but would probably look at using a Human or a class w/ Rogue as the favored class. Might even consider do something like Fighter 4, Paladin 3, Monk 3, Rogue 10 and then pick up another 10 Monk levels making him/her Monk 13. Of course, that would probably require squatting through most of HOF mode.

 

Can't find the save, but I had a girl like this:

Archentrudis

Aasimar Fighter(4)/Monk(3)/Ranger(3)/Paladin(x)

STR 8
DEX 18
CON 8
INT 12
WIS 20
CHA 14

Later on, I increased her INT to 13 for Expertise and started putting points in CON.

She started as a fighter girl who had little clue. She was deeply rooted in this world - who's more down to earth than a mercenary? - and yet she was not quite there, given the wisdom. It felt different. She led the life of a mercenary fighter, relying on a sixth sense guiding her muscles (my licentia poetica here, great DEX in conjunction with unhuman wisdom giving the effect) rather than strength of which she didn't have much. Being somehow removed also meant she reacted more drastically to such a violent contact with this world as taking wounds. She had a somehow bad constitution although she wouldn't become ill (hint: immunity), and various malicious effects wouldn't affect her (great saves and the like) and even more so as she advanced on her path. That path was contemplative and somewhat silenced, secluded and removed as her character (self-trained monk levels), then at the end of that fragment of her path she got quite external, putting an end to seclusion and removedness, starting a hunt on goblins who raided Targos (class enemy for ranger levels) and whomever stood behind them. Trained in combat, good in heart, lawful in disposition, philosophic in character, she naturally went on the paladin path. Her heritage came into play and big things started happening. Big things gave her a hard time and she gave a hard time to big things (fiendslayer). Her extreme finesse progressed as well (Expertise feat, spells to make up for low STR and other such).

And then I got a new disk and lost the backup data when the backup DVD refused to read

 

Chev. A bard/Monk is invalid due to lawful/unlawful correct?

 

Yup, it has to be.

You could always say the person changed and sought the discipline and order of the monastery, or the other way around, but you can never do this in IWDII.
Perhaps black raven monastery. You start as a bard and continue as one up until the monastery, but then, seeing it all, change your alignment so you can pursue monk profession. Heh, monk profession, what a lame expression .
Alignment would have to be changed in DaleKeeper though, as there's not one alignment-changing in the game AFAIK.

 

You can't change alignments or even Fall in IWD2, no matter what you do, yeah. You would have to do that one with Shadowkeeper. I forgot Bards require not just Neutrality on one axis, but a non-Lawful alignment as well, due to that strange vision of bards D&D that doesn't get along with a Lawful alignment.

 

The idea of a human or half-orc Fighter/Wizard is strange. How would they have the time to develop both warrior and mage skills in their short lifetimes? By the time they have gained both they would be very old and possibly entering the stages of old-man-break-a-hip.

 

I suppose age doesn't come into it <remember Montolio>. If you've read any of the Discworld novels, thing Cohen the Barbarian. Age doesn't neccessarily mean being decrepti

 

Fighter/wizard is the classic of the classic, the rejoice of the geek. Well, really. Oriented on owning in both worlds, but requiring micromanagement of a skilled player for survival. On higher levels mage compensational buffs can be added on top of somewhat retarded fighter abilities in order to exceed whatever a mundane fighter can achieve in melee combat.

Paladin/wizard worked even better for me. Combat felt almost like playing Quake with immortality cheat.

 

Fighter/anything almost always makes sense.
An apprentice thrown into a dangerous blood-thirsty world finds that fitting a sword into your opponent's neck is the most sure-fire way of staying alive. Thus s/he picks up a few fighting techniques from others and from life.

Cleric/Druids make the least amount of sense to me RP wise. A Drow NE Druid/Stormlord of Talos even less. But man she rocks

 

Think of all the Forgotten Realms books you've read though. There aren't many human fighter/mages and those that are, are usually granted immortality by a certain Goddess.

 

Yeah, agreed. And not always from the point of view of sheer power. For example, so long as your WIS is high enough to cast spells, a paladin will be better off without fighter levels. However, an LG fighter becoming a paladin under the influence of the course of events in his life makes sense from the roleplaying point of view

 

I wish there was a Monk order that allowed you to multiclass with a Druid. I think a Druid 15/Monk 15 would be pretty cool. That brings up another thing about this game, I wished the races would have more than one favored class. There is no race, except for Human & Half-Elf that is favored for a Druid or Monk. Same with Ranger. On the alignment front, I wish you could do things that would cause your character's alignment to change or have the ability to change it on level ups. That would be awesome. But I think that it would have to come at a cost. Like if you were a lawfully good Paladin and you behaved badily enough that you dropped down to a neutral or even evil character, then you would lose your paladin abilities. Of course that may be a bit too much, but you should definitely not be able to take any more paladin levels.