Noob question about dual class

fugazi

Can you go back and forth in leveling a class or is it a one way trip?

For example fighter/ mage

If I dual at level 7 to mage can I go dual back to fighter later on to raise it?

Lammas

Nope. If you dual at level 7 your fighter exp will be set to what it was when you made it to level 7, your fighter levels will be disabled until you make your mage to level 8 at which point you get your weapon proficiency pips and fighter thac0 bonuses back. You'll basically be leveling a mage from there on out with the exception of being able to use all weapons and being able to achieve grand mastery (5 pips) in weapons but you'll get pips at the rate mage gets them.

BTW level 9 is a popular point for dual classing. You get more out of your fighter levels that way. To get fighter 9 / mage 10 you need 500k exp which used to be kinda sorta early SOA but with SOD you can actually get there before BG2 because SOD exp cap is exactly 500k.

jsaving

If you're only playing BG1 then 7 is usually the best place to dual a fighter. If not then 9 or (if you have enough patience) 13.

masteraleph

To add one more clarification:

The reason you would wait until Fighter 7 is that Fighters get an extra 1/2 attack per round at that level.

The reason you would wait until Fighter 9 is that Fighters get an additional proficiency pip at 9, allowing you Grand Mastery, and that you have all of your hp dice as 1d10 instead of the mage's 1d4.

The reason you would wait until Fighter 13 is that Fighters get an extra 1/2 attack per round then too.

If you're primarily playing BGEE only, Fighter 7 is probably a good level- it means you lack your Fighter stuff for some of the latter portion of BGEE, but you'll have it back before the end and you'll have it for most of the beginning. If you're planning on SOA, Fighter 9 is nice- you'll be a Fighter for all of BGEE, then lose those tricks for most of SOD, until you hit the xp cap, so you can have them back for the very end. Fighter 13 means that you lack your Fighter tricks from 1.25m xp to 2.75m xp, which is a substantial amount of SOA. It's not quite as bad as it used to be before SOD existed (since you come into the game with an extra 339k xp), but it's still a large chunk. If you're soloing or running with a smaller party than usual it's not too bad, but you may get frustrated if running with a full party.