Dual-Classing

[HoopleHead]

Just an up-front.... this is meant for once we hit the level 40 cap.

All alignment restrictions should stay in effect.... so you can't dual class a Paladin with a class that can't be lawful good... etc

Essentially, you would do a class as normal, but once you hit 20 you have the opportunity to do a new TR type for taking a 2nd class. Maybe this would be a condition you need to set at the very beginning of the 1st class.. hmmmm

You would only be able to take this option @ 20. It precludes you from going into Epics and is lost once you move past 20.

You would restart back to level 1, stay same race and alignment, but start a new class.

Once you've taken the 1st level of this 2nd class, you can't take any other class in your continued progression back to 20.

Once you hit 20, you get back the previous class, as well as the enhancements & feats you took while in that class. You don't get the option to move into epic levels, nor Legendary. The feats associated WITH and available TO those levels are likewise not available to you.

Essentially you could take 20 Dark Ranger & 20 Rogue and REALLY stack the Sneak Attack die.

Also, you would have twice the enhancement points available to you.

You would not be able to Lesser or Greater TR without losing the work of the 2 lives.... feat swapping would only be possible thru Fred

 

[rabidfox]

It would just pure power bloat and SSG would have to balance around it. Imagine all the people being told "nope, we only take dual spec'd characters in this raid". That's just Monty Hall level bloat.

 

[HoopleHead]

I dunno.... no level 20 to lvl 40 feats, none of the Legendary scaling that comes with them... having the 40 levels would grant you access to the gear, but you couldn't access epic destiny trees or any of those benefits either...

 

[Phoenicis]

No epic destiny points, as you chose to remain heroic.

No epic/legendary feats or abilities.

Max caster level of 20 (plus whatever boosts there are in the heroic trees)

I can't say I LIKE the idea, 160 APs and multiple capstones and T5s does give me pause.

For that reason alone I'd have to go with a no on this idea.

 

[Buddha5440]

It would just pure power bloat and SSG would have to balance around it. Imagine all the people being told "nope, we only take dual spec'd characters in this raid". That's just Monty Hall level bloat.

Yeah...This just reeks of Power Bloat. You would very soon have a few super builds that would outperform any current build and these would be the only ones being run at cap. These builds would also be cookie-cutter builds and not likely rely on player ability.

 

[HoopleHead]

I'm hoping more people will absolutely hate the idea.. thus making it inevitable that staff embrace it with an almost religious fervor and implement it as soon as we hit 40 cap

 

[Natashaelle]

There are complications with these ideas from two old sources -- that AD&D 1E and 2E were very hard to work with up to the extremely high levels (our own game broke down completely IIRC at level 38, though I myself stepped out of it from moving to Paris at about level 36) ; and that the 3E Epic Level Handbook was such a disaster in conception and implementation that it continues to ruin the extremely high level game to this day, and even in DDO.

It's disastrous among other things that 5E which is FAR more amenable to a very high level game than any previous editions, because of its more sensible scaling, still shuns it from those causes.

Some of us have in the past proposed the notion of a core Epic advancement package with some Class-related plug'n'play add-ons, in order to retain some form of Class distinctiveness, within an overall balance towards the "vanilla" epic levels with all of their current perks and peaks.

But of course, in such a system, there'd need to be loss as well as gain, and balanced trade-off.

I don't think it would need to be extraordinarily complicated -- though it would certainly be similarly complex as the ED pass, and would lkely require R&D financing via an expansion or mini-expansion.

If I could make a parallel, it would be akin to creating a number of (implicit) Class advancement trees into the Epics versus the current "vanilla" Epic levels, where some losses from "vanilla" would be compensated by some Class flavour.

Could even be a new source of Epic TR grinding and be monetized that way too !!