Blog-It Llama!

By Nick - July 8, 2009

This has got to be the tastiest thing I’ve sunk my teeth into so far with DDI. If you’re a fan of 4th Edition D&D, you know already that they have feats for multi-classing. Personally, I like the new system. 3rd Edition made it so that you could bounce between one class to the next incredibly easily, with penalties that hardly seemed worth noting when you could end up with a character full of so many massive exploits that they weren’t just more powerful than everyone else in the party, they could single-handedly take down a god. It was stupid. The game rewarded hardcore nerds who would buy every book and read every line to find a hole in the system they could use or misinterpret in combination with some other obscurities to make something ridiculous. God help you if your DM wasn’t smarter than this min-maxing deviant.

4th Edition made things right with these feats that would add more limited versions of certain class features and allow you to replace your base class’s powers with those of a different class. The class you chose in the beginning was a career choice, not just the thing that gave you as many front-loaded abilities as possible. Even though I am quite happy with this, I think there are plenty of players out there that missed the feeling of having a class that was a true mixture of a Wizard / Fighter (Just play a Swordmage) or a Paladin / Rogue (Just play an Avenger). In Dragon Magazine # 374, they introduce a new concept that doesn’t replace multi-class feats but instead create a kind of fractional class system used to create new “Hybrid” classes. Technically this is a little misleading for the fact that no individual “Hybrid” class is in fact a mixture of classes but is instead a half-class that you must put together with another half class to make something whole.

I read all about this in the Magazine and they didn’t have every class available, which is fine. Something happened after that. In the first instance of something I really felt as the impact of the players on D&D was the fact that they had an updated version of this new set of rules now featuring all of the classes that are officially available. Each one comes with its own unique restrictions to avoid exploitation. They made all of these changes based on player feedback. I found that really amazing.

Let me walk you through this. Imagine, if you will, that I combine the “Hybrid Fighter” and the “Hybrid Wizard” together. You would choose from one of the “Arcane Implement Mastery” talents from the Wizard and a choice between Combat Superiority, full Fighter Armor Proficiencies, or one Fighter Combat Talent. You would then combine the 1st Level Hit Points from the Hybrid Fighter (7.5 Hit Points) and the Wizard (5 Hit Points) and then round down for a total of 12 Hit Points. It’d work in a similar fashion for HP gained each level (Hybrid Fighter = 3, Hybrid Wizard = 2, Total HP gained per level = 5) and Healing Surges (Hybrid Fighter = 4.5, Hybrid Wizard = 3, Total Healing Surges = 7).

Hybrid Fighters always gain Combat Challenge, which is limited to only affect Fighter Powers, and Hybrid Wizards always gain Cantrips. Weapon proficiencies and Skill options are combined from each class. Armor Proficiencies are limited to whichever hybrid class has the worst armor proficiencies. That’s why the hybrid version of heavily armor dependent classes like the Fighter and Paladin have the option of having their armor proficiencies be the ones that supersede over your other hybrid class.

The biggest attraction to this system is the fact that it lets you choose between either class’s list of powers each level. This may seem ridiculous, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Each class comes with restrictions that seem to avoid exploits (at least so far). The powers between all classes are pretty well balanced, especially after a few books come out to expand their repertoire. You also have to have at least one power from each of your Hybrid Classes in your At-Will, Encounter, and Daily power slots. That last restriction I imagine is more for flavor than balance. You’re a Hybrid class, act like it.

The greatest thing about this new system is that it doesn’t replace what 4th Edition has already laid out. These Hybrid classes can still take Multi-Class feats to become something akin to a triple class (which was a huge undertaking in 2nd edition). It would be hard to recognize what your character really would be at that point.

If someone is really into multi-classing and likes the Bard, they already get so many sick mult-class options that I don’t think this new system would really be worth it to them. For everyone else, this is phenomenal.

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