How do you stagger your characters?

[Desteplo]

How would you stagger your leveling? What are your examples for certain builds you've tried?
The popular examples being:
-like paladin 5, sorcerer 3, then back to paladin for some features before more sorcerer for metamagic stuff
-or monk 6 before dipping rogue and going back to monk

[ZorroGames]

How would you stagger your leveling? What are your examples for certain builds you've tried?
The popular examples being:
-like paladin 5, sorcerer 3, then back to paladin for some features before more sorcerer for metamagic stuff
-or monk 6 before dipping rogue and going back to monk

Gnomish Ale.

Seriosly, I have yet to MC but it seems logical to look at natural breakpoints where you just received a "new" ability or power boost so you can work on another complementary power. Especially at Tier 2 and above.

[Arcangel4774]

I believe it was petenutbutter that wrote a rather detailed guide on multiclass and breakpoints. You'd likely want to switch over at those breakpoints, with the general goal of having your character concept online between levels 5 and 10

[MrStabby]

Personally I like to get to my character concept as early as possible, rather than going for most powerful at each character level.

For example one of my current characters is a multiclass rogue, cleric ranger. I get a big boost in ranger power at 5th level of ranger, nevertheless I postpone that time till later by taking the levels in the other classes that differentiate my ranger from others. It can feel slow so you have to be prepared to value what these classes give you till you manage to go back and pick up those power abilities in your original class.

[JackPhoenix]

Fighter 1/ Wizard x. I wouldn't exactly call it build, just level 1 dip for proficiencies.
(Lore) Bard 6/Rogue (or Warlock) 2/ Bard x. Built the character, the game never got off the ground, so haven't even got to choose the class (basically, it would depend on RP in the game and if I found another expertise (and Cunning Action) more useful than Disguise Self and Silent Image at will.. the warlock wouldn't be there for Eldritch Blast. After level 6 for first Magical Secrets.
Rogue 2/ (Shadow) Monk 6/ Rogue x. Ninja, started rogue for proficiencies and Cunning Action (which proved itself invaluable), then Shadow Monk until Shadow Step, then back to rogue. Haven't yet got so far to worry about Rogue subclass, torn between Thief and Assassin.

Had more ideas, but they always were mostly theoretical, I'm stuck as eternal GM.

[GlenSmash!]

1 level in the class that has the proficiencies I want (like fighter or Barbarian for the Con Saves), then 5 in the main class for extra attack or 3rd level spell slots(Revise Ranger in my latest case), then typically one more level in the first class if it has goodies (Action Surge, Reckless Attack) then back to the main class until I have all the levels I want (In this case 8 for Fleet of Foot). I've never played a higher level than that so that's about it for me.

[Vaz]

It depends what level I start at. For example, I'm playing a Hexblade/Paladin - but as it's only 3rd level, it doesn't engage properly until 8th level (Paladin 5/Hexblade 3), and I'm only going that deep into Paladin because of the extra Smite slots and 2nd level Paladin spells like Find Steed.

[Tetrasodium]

you need to consider the peaks & troughs of the various classes too. for example moon druid has a gigantic peak early on that lasts till around 10-12ish give or take, it would be stupid not to maximize that if trying to pickup some extra tricks from a splash in some other class by waiting till 6-7ish or later. if you are multiclassing you also need to consider if what you are picking up is valuable any time soon... Take that moon druid, it would really bump up beast forms to have heavy armor & caster capabilities to free up some prep slots by taking a level of life cleric, but if you are level 3, you probably aren't going to be getting plate to wear at any point soon & have just delayed useful features for a hypothetical & bump to secondary role during a phase where one of the largest spike peaks of any class is centered on your primary role.

People get lost focusing on getting an idea "online as soon as possible" & forget about squeezing the most out of things. For example, lets take a hypothetical rogue build that needs two feats & a splash of something. a vHuman could get it as early as level 5, a bugbear could get it as early as level 9 but has 60' darkvision & is doing sneak attacks from 2 squares/10 feet away with a dagger or whatever from level 1 instead of carrying a torch & doing it from the next square 5 feet away. sure a build that takes till level 15+ is going to take an unreasonable length of time to "come online", but somewhere in tier2 is not that bad as long as you are competent & useful to the groupin tier1 & the earlier levels in tier2. In 5e it's a lot harder to make a build that makes the rest of the party say "uhh dude wtf?" over its uselessness than it was in earlier versions like 3.5 so being useless in tier1/tier2 is hard to do without doing it deliberately.