Preach On, Brother Mearls!
I was reading the 4E excerpt on multiclassing today and this snippet from Mike Mearls really caught my eye:
"In 4th Edition, we strived to make each character option useful. Since D&D lacks a competitive or deck building element, it's silly to hide bad choices in the rules. Multiclassing had to obey this rule in order to justify its existence."
Hell. Yes. The whole 'system mastery' wankery from 3E was one of the most annoying design choices in a system filled with annoying design choices. Making a game that has a clear winner out of character building just encourages the type of min-maxing that most GMs hope their players grow out of as they mature. This is not the kind of thing you want your game to support, let alone brag about.
The fact that this has even been acknowledged makes me feel more optimistic of the way the designers are taking 4E.
"In 4th Edition, we strived to make each character option useful. Since D&D lacks a competitive or deck building element, it's silly to hide bad choices in the rules. Multiclassing had to obey this rule in order to justify its existence."
Hell. Yes. The whole 'system mastery' wankery from 3E was one of the most annoying design choices in a system filled with annoying design choices. Making a game that has a clear winner out of character building just encourages the type of min-maxing that most GMs hope their players grow out of as they mature. This is not the kind of thing you want your game to support, let alone brag about.
The fact that this has even been acknowledged makes me feel more optimistic of the way the designers are taking 4E.