Thiyr
2015-03-17, 12:24 AM
Given that one of my longtime DMs is gonna start giving pathfinder a shot, I've been looking into stuff. And while there's plenty of stuff that I can work with changing for the better/worse, I'm finding that no matter how much I look at it, I'm not a huge fan of how much PF seems to disincentivise multiclassing. I know it was one of their design goals to, depending on perspective, either make it less appealing to become Captain Multiclass the Frontloaded, or make it actually viable to go straight 20 in a class. And that's a perfectly good goal. Just not one that lines up with how I like playing the game. So keep in mind that the following is with the intended design goal of making multiclassing more viable without making straight-classing 20 levels an obsolete choice again.
For any given non-spellcasting class ability which is based upon class level (explicitly or implied), instead scale it by character level. This does not apply to class abilities which scale by being gained multiple times as shown on the class's table (such as sneak attack).
Thus, being a 15th level character with a single level in barbarian gets you 30 rounds of rage (plus 4+con), but you are still only getting a +4 to str/con unless you take more. The size of a monk's ki pool would be based on character level, but they'd still need to have 16 actual monk levels to punch past DR/Adamantine. A summoner's Summon Monster ability would not grow any more potent, but would have an appropriately high duration for their character level
This seems to be a fairly simple to understand/implement change, but obviously my system knowledge for PF is limited. This seems like a nice way to give at least something back to multiclassing without shutting down single classed characters, but maybe this cracks open some previously closed box of cheese? Only thing I can think of is being able to take a level in monk to basically get full BAB on a flurry, but that's about it, and given that this is the realm of houserules, that's not a hard thing to give a specific "no" to. Anything else you can see being terribly flawed, or other opinions?
For any given non-spellcasting class ability which is based upon class level (explicitly or implied), instead scale it by character level. This does not apply to class abilities which scale by being gained multiple times as shown on the class's table (such as sneak attack).
Thus, being a 15th level character with a single level in barbarian gets you 30 rounds of rage (plus 4+con), but you are still only getting a +4 to str/con unless you take more. The size of a monk's ki pool would be based on character level, but they'd still need to have 16 actual monk levels to punch past DR/Adamantine. A summoner's Summon Monster ability would not grow any more potent, but would have an appropriately high duration for their character level
This seems to be a fairly simple to understand/implement change, but obviously my system knowledge for PF is limited. This seems like a nice way to give at least something back to multiclassing without shutting down single classed characters, but maybe this cracks open some previously closed box of cheese? Only thing I can think of is being able to take a level in monk to basically get full BAB on a flurry, but that's about it, and given that this is the realm of houserules, that's not a hard thing to give a specific "no" to. Anything else you can see being terribly flawed, or other opinions?