What Dungeons & Dragons is and can be

I’ve sometimes found it difficult to explain exactly what D&D means to me to quote-unquote “normal” people, but I decided recently that I want to try to find the words. Many people don’t really understand what it is, or how people can form such strong attachments to their characters. Even my parents, who are open and understanding people by nearly any standard, had trouble understanding just what it meant to us.

I vividly remember losing my first ever character when I was in my late teens. I came home looking despondent and distant, and my mother asked what was wrong. When I told her my character had died, she smiled and responded that “it’s just a game, you can always play again.” I just shook my head at the time, knowing that she didn’t get it. Couldn’t get it. But I’m going to make an attempt to help the rest of you get it now.

With the recent shift in modern television towards more dark and gritty content, I think I am in a better position to make the attempt. Do you remember when your favourite character died in Game of Thrones, or The Walking Dead, or some other television or novel series? That sinking feeling you get when you watch a character you’ve grown attached to and spent a dozen hours of your life watching leave you forever? Multiply that feeling by ten. That’s what it feels like to lose a D&D character, and for good reason. A D&D character isn’t just a fictional character that you become attached to. A D&D character is your character; a character you have guided, controlled, spoken for and cultivated relationships with for a hundred hours of your life or more. Your own tremendous effort, ingenuity, strategy and luck saw that character through innumerable trials and tribulations. That alone would be enough to make them more meaningful than most fictional characters for an individual player, but there’s more to it than that, too. These characters, when they’re done right, when they’re created a certain way, are a reflection of the player who created them. It’s not “them” exactly, but it could be a part of them. It could be the embodiment of their passions or convictions. It could be an exploration of their own morality, or a moral view that troubles them and bears study. It could be a part of themselves they struggle to express, but long to. We speak for them, we decide what they do, and how they feel. For all intents and purposes, they are us. In short, a character in D&D, or in any role-playing game for that matter, can have deep, personal significance to a player.

The relationships cultivated with friends in D&D are unlike anything I have ever experienced, before or since. How many times in your life have you risked yourself to save a friend? How many times have you stood with them against impossible odds, knowing that death is practically assured, because you refused to leave them behind? These sorts of things don’t often happen in our day-to-day lives, but they do in D&D. I know some people might scoff at that; it is just a game after all. Nobody is really losing anything. That’s where you’re very wrong. The average D&D session for us was about 6 hours in length, and we tried to meet every weekend. In high school, we met even more frequently for play sessions, and for longer periods of time. I have probably spent more time with my first D&D character than you have with any fictional character, ever (that campaign ran for over four years). Since characters can have such deeply personal roots and such a long history with us, their sacrifices are genuinely painful for us too. Characters very dear to me have stood between friends and certain death. I knew that I might be trading my character for theirs, and the thought of losing my character hurt profoundly, but it was worth it because theirs meant just as much to them. I had touching arguments with players out-of-game, telling them they had to go, that my own character was a lost cause and there was no point losing everyone, only to have them adamantly refuse.

“I‘m not leaving you behind.”

It’s amazing how much those five words can solidify and strengthen a friendship, even in this context. We refer to characters in those terms: I, you, we, us. Those moments, fictional or not, are meaningful. I knew my friend wasn’t just saying he wouldn’t leave my character behind, he was saying he wouldn’t leave me behind. He was saying he had my back, even when it would be easier for him not to have it, here or in the every-day world.

Of course, not everyone plays for that sort of emotional experience. Some people prefer to keep things light, and engage in some cooperative monster slaying, loot some bodies, and call it a day. There’s nothing wrong with that. My own home group has been moving more in that direction lately, possibly because we have a couple of new people who aren’t entirely comfortable with role-playing yet. That does sadden me, a little bit. But I can, without shame or reservation, say that playing D&D with my best friends in high school helped shape who I am and the relationships I cultivated, and helped me find my confidence. My friends and I stood together against insurmountable odds, carried each other, stuck together through thick and thin. We were more than friends; we were a team.

We should all be so lucky as to be D&D nerds growing up.

– Wes Rowley

Pathfinder Multiclassing and You: A How-to Guide

Multiclassing can be a fun, rewarding way to make a unique and interesting character.  It’s fun coming to the game table and having other players say “you’re a WHAT? Wow, that’s really weird / strange / cool / awesome / h4x0rz.” There are tricks to doing it successfully though, and it’s important to remember them, in order to optimize a character’s effectiveness.

Mind Your Base Attack Bonus (BAB) and / or Spellcasting Progression:

This is the biggest and most important part of multiclassing. First decide whether your character is going to be primarily focused on spellcasting or on combat (ie. melee, unarmed, ranged). It is usually better to pick one or the other instead of trying to be good at both, as usually you’ll end up a wishy-washy mix of “meh” (with a few exceptions).

Base Attack Bonus:

If you aren’t careful, you can run into some major problems even with classes that sound like they’re made to play well together. Let’s take the example of a multiclass Rogue 5 / Assassin 1 / Red Mantis Assassin 1. Sounds good, right? They all have a decent BAB, they’re all sneaky, they all throw sneak attack dice… so what’s the problem, you ask? The problem is that at level 7 you have a +3 BAB; that’s the equivalent of a single-class Wizard of your level! And that same Wizard will STILL be at your BAB NEXT level, too! Not to mention most Red Mantis Assassins are dual-wielding, which hurts your already ailing attack bonus even further. Keep in mind that this problem will get better over time as you take more levels in both of your prestige classes, but that could be a painful process considering how shoddy your BAB is.

I know what you’re thinking… “but Uni, where did I go wrong??” Well my friend, where you went wrong was in not watching your BAB. Let’s look at the progression of a Medium BAB for a moment:

• 1: +0
• 2: +1
• 3: +2
• 4: +3
• 5: +3
• 6: +4
• 7: +5
• 8: +6
• 9: +6
• etc…

Okay… so as you can see, at levels 1, 5, and 9, you’re losing out on a BAB. The problem with the build above is that for every 1 level you throw into another Medium BAB class, your attack bonus (and progression towards another iterative attack) stagnates. Likewise, from a BAB standpoint, you picked the WORST possible time to take a new class on a combat focused character, because you stopped taking levels in your current class just as you lost another BAB. The black bolded levels illustrate the ideal time to multiclass for a combat focused character; the level BEFORE you lose another BAB progression (marked in red). Unfortunately, most prestige classes require that you be at least level 5 to gain entry, so that means unless we want to start hurting our BAB, we have to wait until we have 8 levels of rogue under our belt before we start throwing in levels of Assassin or Red Mantis Assassin.

The previous character was an example of a medium BAB class multiclassing to a different medium BAB class; there are other cases where you can create very powerful multiclass melee characters by taking four or so levels of a medium BAB class to supplement a full BaB class. A multiclass Ninja 4 / Paladin 6 for example, is only losing a single point of BAB while gaining better skill points and skills access, 2d6 Sneak Attack, two ninja tricks and a ki pool that allows them to make extra attacks or go invisible. Plus, he’s a Paladin AND a Ninja! How is that not awesome? He’s practically Batman! If you’d rather not slow down your Paladin progression by that much, two levels of Ninja will still net you 1d6 Sneak Attack, a Ki Pool, better skills and a Ninja Trick.

You can pull a similar trick by throwing 4 levels of Alchemist on your Fighter or Barbarian, giving you a mutagen and some solid self-buffs (and maybe sneak attack if you take the Vivisectionist archetype). Magus can be a great dip as well, though you’ll want to make sure you keep your off-hand free so you can make use of your Spell Combat ability.

Combining multiple full BAB classes is a far simpler process. Want to take a level of Barbarian or Ranger on your Fighter? Go for it! How about some Paladin thrown onto your Cavalier or Samurai? Why not? Because of the way Flurry of Blows scales, a monk could also be considered a full BAB class for most purposes as well. In fact, a monk dip can lead to some very powerful and unique characters indeed.

Spellcasting:

Multiclassing on a primary spellcaster (a character with spells that go up to 9th level and isn’t worried about physical combat) is tricky business. Your greatest strength (arguably your only strength in many cases) is your spell progression and access to spells of ever-increasing power. If you multiclass, you usually lose far more than you gain, unless you take a prestige class that also grants you spell progression. For that reason, certain prestige classes stick out as far better options than others, listed below.

• Bloodmage
• Cyphermage
• Magaambyan Arcanist
• Diabolist
• Veiled Illusionist
• Hellknight Signifer
• Harrower
• Genie Binder
• Loremaster

That’s all the full spellcasting progression prestige classes. There are a few other ones that could be worth playing that you only lose one level of progression for, but any more than that is generally too great a sacrifice. Arcane Archers, Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters are decent prestige classes as well, but they aren’t really fully spellcasting focused per-se, especially in the case of the Arcane Archer.

Additional Factors:

• Look at the skills available to the classes you’re multiclassing into; combining full BAB classes to open up new skills can be quite helpful to some characters
• Think carefully about which class to take levels in first if you’re planning on combining multiple base classes to better meet early feat prerequisites
• Combining multiple base classes can give a great boost to a character’s saving throws, especially in the case of the Monk or Paladin
• Watch for the levels at which you gain important class abilities, and plan accordingly (eg. A level 5 Fighter gets access to Weapon Training, a level 2 Paladin gets Divine Grace, a level 4 Monk gets Ki Pool, etc)
• Take note of the most important ability scores of your primary class, and look for other classes that share that class’s primary scores and strengths (eg. Paladin and Ninja both rely on Charisma, and Strength based Ninjas are not uncommon)

Thus concludes my basic guide to building Pathfinder multiclass characters. Good luck, and happy gaming!

Unithralith