Double Kits
Kithrixx
Member Posts: 215
I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I was wondering if this was going to happen or even discussed before.
Would it be possible to have a multiclassed character with two different Character Kits (for instance, Cleric of Lathander/Berserker)? Currently, you can only have one kit applied to the classes of a Multiclass character, and I've always attributed that fact to hardware limitations. Is there a chance of this happening, or even being possible without a great deal of extra work?
Would it be possible to have a multiclassed character with two different Character Kits (for instance, Cleric of Lathander/Berserker)? Currently, you can only have one kit applied to the classes of a Multiclass character, and I've always attributed that fact to hardware limitations. Is there a chance of this happening, or even being possible without a great deal of extra work?
1
Comments
@LadyRhian I am beginning to think that you are lover of realms lore like myself. Do you ever spend much time with the other experts over at Candlekeep.com?
Hello Fighter (Kensai) / Thief - It's Ninja Time!
In either case, having two kits at once is probably a bad idea. I mean, you can potentially control up to six characters in a party, people. Spread out your twinkage a little.
@LadyRhian I've been playing since this set: http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2zvgwTAwl1qzb1rlo1_500.jpg
But I've been playing the realms since the day it was released (I only have a few of the old Dragon Magazine articles where Ed Greenwood writes as Elminster pre-Grey box set). Do you have anywhere that you feel like a particular expert in? I've been running a Mistledale campaign for years and I feel like I know every inch of that place.
I thought they were doing something with the code for that but i can't remember.
I wanna be able to select one kit though, not two, but one.
I don't know what do you mean about "crazy stuff".
Well, dual-class characters can have one kit, but on the other hand, after dualing they cannot level-up in their "old" class, so I think that can balancing things out. On the other hand, multi-class characters are leveling up in two classes at once. Adding kits would be illogical because "devotion" to certain way of life/training/etc. cannot be paired with other "devotion" on the same time. Not to mention the fact that dual-class characters (humans) would lose their advantage.
Well, I know what do you mean by "crazy stuff" right now. But I don't think that adding more of those just to break the game even further is good idea.
Prestige classes and Class Kits are a higher level of specialization, yes, but that doesn't mean that they're totally and completely devoted to that one thing forever. The Class Kits provide certain ways to build the various classes to replace the availability and allocation of Feats. Nowadays, building a Kensai or Berserker would be as easy as rolling a Fighter and picking the feats and abilities that would craft them into whatever you wish, but it wouldn't lock them into that specific playstyle forever.
Either way, Multi-Class characters are balanced because they have to split the experience between the two classes. A 5/5 Fighter/Thief won't be as effective as a level 10 Fighter at toe-to-toe, and they won't be effective as a level 10 Thief at sneakery. The strength of a Multi-Class is that they can do both to some extent and, through clever play, one can get make do without a full-on Fighter or a full-on Thief.
Dual-Classers wouldn't lose out, because they would still have an entirely different system and are capable of making whatever ratio of experience that they desire rather than being forced to spread it evenly.
And, honestly? I don't see multiple Class Kits breaking the game any further than you can currently. Players would be able to spec their characters to do a wider variety of tasks and/or make them focus even further on a single task than they could before, but not without drawbacks. All classes (and their kits) have cons in addition to their pros, and it opens up many more avenues of gameplay the more options you give the players. One of the major reasons that I love DnD based games is because of the massive amount of choice that I have in playstyles and personalities, and it's why I replay them so often. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for some more options be made readily available, because even with an optimized build, the game will still be a significant challenge on the harder difficulties.
I would also push for all classes be made available to all races so I could run a Dwarven Paladin or a Halfling Monk, but I believe that's a hard-coded restriction that won't be going away any time soon.
I don't want this to get into an editions war, but what I always liked about 2e was that because there were limitations on races and classes, you HAD to role-play to make your character unique. I always thought it seemed lazy when someone tried to come up with same crazy combination to make their character special like "Half-Goblin Bladesinger". I'm not saying my way is right. All I'm saying is that is my preference and why I like 2e (and hence Baldur's Gate). LOL! Looking back that did seem pretty random. What my point was that even some of the game designers and book writers agree with you about there being a limit to things. The author I mentioned felt that some writers had gotten lazy in their writing, looking for gimicks (Elf blade wielding orc) rather than good stories.
The problem with that is there are already breaks in the 2e rule structure. Sorcerors, for instance. While Baldur's Gate is based in 2e, it takes breaks from it often.
I'm fine with 2e PNP, for those very reasons. Pen and paper has its own replay value because you never have to be the same character twice. However, this is a game, and the bottom line is that the dialog choices that are available to me are pre-set, and no matter how I make my choices, someone else is going to end up saying the same things and doing the same quests, so I'd like to see more options available to increase the replay value for all gamers rather than waiting for a mod that does dual kits and is only available to players who mod their games.
I'm certainly fine with agreeing to disagree. After all, you're looking at things from a storyline standpoint, which is completely different from the gameplay standpoint that I'm using.
The more options that the player has available tends to lessen the blow of the hard fact that, no matter what you do, the story cannot be shaped to your will beyond a certain point because it is a video game. In many cases, it is good to limit things from getting to be too out of hand, for the sake of character integrity and also game balance. However, if there is a small thing that can be done that does not require a great deal of effort but opens up many more options to players without disrupting game balance too terribly, I'm going to want to pursue it.
Now, I can't exactly claim to know how difficult it would be. Obviously, if it would be incredibly difficult and/or frustrating to do this, I wouldn't advocate it because that would be unfair to expect that to happen from what is probably an already overworked team a month from the game's launch. However, if it's relatively easy to do, I'd like to see it done, as it would increase the option count roughly tenfold.
And even if it did end up creating some incredibly strong builds (which I'm sure it will, all things considered), the bottom line is that you still start at Level 1 and you still have to make the climb to be truly powerful.
The second class is afterall the class that is advanced the most, wouldn't focusing more on your characters specialist kit make more sense? For example Fighter-Assassin-Fighter/Assassin. Multi class characters with one kit would be interesting but two seems uneven to me, someone already noted that a dual Kensai/Thief backstab is impressive. A Kensai/Assassins backstab would be insane.
I stand by one kit, I'd just like to see a more varied capability in its use.
A Kensai/Assassin backstab would be incredibly painful, yes. However, Assassins take absolutely forever to reach the point where they go beyond the standard 5x backstab cap, and in the meantime, they're kind of crappy at doing other Thief things. I will grant that a Kensai/Assassin would be amazing at that first hit thanks to Backstab + Kai, but beyond that, they're not very useful. They're fragile, forced to melee (unless you give them a returning weapon), and because of the multi-class level chicanery in addition to the skill penalty that Assassins eat, their thief abilities are borderline worthless. At that point, I would suggest just getting a caster, who would have better range, sustainability, flexibility, and fulfill the same purpose of dealing a whole lot of damage to a single target.
Stacking kits would balance itself, because all of the kits have their strengths and weaknesses anyways. Adding two together that naturally mesh will of course make them more powerful in some areas, but it will also make them much weaker in comparison to some others because of the drawbacks that are already present. For instance, the Kensai/Swashbuckler that I am personally dreaming of gets a boost to combat capability and utility, but loses the potentially murderous Backstab to synch Kai with.