Aces and Twos: Multiclassing Ideas for Low Level

[SirBellias]

So I was planning on running a game soon that would start at low levels and probably stay there for a good while, as I like the feel of small scale games and was getting burnt out with the shenanigans that high level parties can pull. As I'm going for 3.5e (and want my PC's to not get accidentally eaten by cats) I felt like level 2 would be a good spot, and my players agreed.

Since it's going to stay pretty low level and not rise very fast, some are taking some... interesting multiclassing. One player for instance is going for one level in that ghost class and another in rogue, and we worked out that he'll die in the prologue.

With that said, I can't wait to see what the others end up doing.

My question for you, fellow Playgrounders, is this: If you knew you were going to be at Level 2 for a fat minute, what would you play?

I myself would probably go Crusader/Rogue. Because that seem silly enough to work out in my favor.

[JNAProductions]

Moon Druid 2. Wildshaping is boss at that level.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Azurin crusader/incarnate, 32pb abilities 16/16/14/14/8/8, Midnight Dodge/Combat Expertise/Combat Reflexes/Karmic Strike feats, Shaky/Vulnerable flaws, Aggressive trait, shape Astral Vambraces (1 essentia) and Therapeutic Mantle (1 essentia). Third level: incarnate 2 and Expanded Soulmeld Capacity.

[Psyren]

What system? I'm assuming 3.5 based on the classes you listed.

Have you tried E6/P6? You and your players get the fun of advancing and gaining new toys, but without the rising power ceiling that leads to shenanigans at high level.

[SirBellias]

What system? I'm assuming 3.5 based on the classes you listed.

Have you tried E6/P6? You and your players get the fun of advancing and gaining new toys, but without the rising power ceiling that leads to shenanigans at high level.

It wasn't really a system specific question, I was just interested in what classes people thought were interesting paired with each other. Which I guess depends on the system. Ah well, any system with multiclassing.

I haven't looked into that much, I always just assumed it was a normal game capped at 6. Is it more unique than that?

[gkathellar]

I haven't looked into that much, I always just assumed it was a normal game capped at 6. Is it more unique than that?

That's half of it. The other half is that you allow for limited continued progression by allowing players to buy feats for XP, including some E6-specific feats. The "E" stands for "Epic," referring to the way that in normal 3.5, character advancement rules change fundamentally after level 20. E6, by the same token, changes character advancement fundamentally after level 6. This works pretty well with some of the game's monster CRs (a lot of suitably mythical creatures by heroic fantasy standards are CR 8-10) and gives players a real taste of power without access to serious shenanigans (barring abuse). It also means players can get 1 level in most PrCs, which ... is good when that first level is actually worth a damn.

Here's a PDF of the original ENWorld thread. A friend of mine wrote this optimization guide for DMs who may occasionally want to have level 4-5 spells show up in NPC hands in an E6 world (without resorting to fiat, that is). On the Homebrew board, Gnorman wrote a set of variant classes, races and other material specifically for E6 - some of its assumptions are very particular, but it may be worth a look.

[Psyren]

Adding to the above, some tables do E8; this gets you additional levels of a PrC, and up to 4th-level spells. Casters start to pull away at this level but are still weaker than in the standard game.

[SirBellias]

Neat! I'm probably going to stick with the standard progression since some of my players already statted out their characters, but I'm definitely going to keep this in mind if I feel like switching the my West Marches game to 3.5e. Thanks, y'all.

[Particle_Man]

3.5 Crusader/Warlock for melee/range goodness without having to worry about running out of anything except hp.