Actually, the text is identical to the multiclass section of the AD&D Player's Handbook, as is the case with a lot of info from the manuals. Probably just went unnoticed by revision.
I still wonder why those multiclasses were left out, though. I'd love for them to be available.
It might be a balance issue, but I really don't know. The tables in the manuals are notoriously inaccurate, and that's something that will (read: should) not be an issue now.
I doubt it was done for balance reasons - it's not like a druid/mage would be more powerful than a cleric/mage. I think it's a technical issue, @Aosaw. A druid is not a separate cleric kit, but a class. If you look at CLASS.IDS in BG1, you have:
That's it for player classes. You have 16 FIGHTER_DRUID but to enable the others, you'd need DRUID_MAGE and FIGHTER_MAGE_DRUID as well. And that wouldn't be the only change, but a number of other files reference these classes. Finally, you'd have to make those classes accessible through the GUI (some of which relates to these files, some of which is hardcoded). It looks almost to me that the devs implemented FIGHTER_DRUID and then ran out of time or something, or maybe wanted to limit the number of class entries (which is odd because they added SORCERER and MONK in BG2).
It would be a balance issue because of the wild shape ability druids get. But I really couldn't speak to the reasons why it was left out. You could be right that it was a time constraint.
druid multi/dual classes could probably be added by BGEE with little effort. Hopefully everything will be externalized so this could be eventually done by datafiles.
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I still wonder why those multiclasses were left out, though. I'd love for them to be available.
Hopefully everything will be externalized so this could be eventually done by datafiles.