Character Creation Guide
Multiclassing
Now typically a character will remain in one class during her entire adventuring career. That is,
if you started her out as a 1st Level Wizard, as she gains levels you will likely choose to always
"level up" the character
to the next higher Wizard level. However, you do not have to do this! You can instead choose to "multiclass" the character.
Multiclassing in Neverwinter Nights, as in 3rd Edition D&D, is in short the ability to broaden your character's
skills, feats and abilities at the expense of focus
(and for those who are familiar only with earlier versions of D&D, ANY character may multiclass, even humans).
In game terms, the ability to multiclass
means that as your character gains levels you can choose a different class for her other than your original class -
in fact, as you gain character levels over the course of play in Neverwinter Nights
you can choose up to three different classes for your character!
For example, if your character started out as a first level
Wizard,
when it was time to level her up to a second level character, you could instead choose
Fighter (for example)
as a second class. Cool, huh? The result would be a character with two Character Levels - one in Wizard, the other in Fighter
(or 1st level Wizard/1st level Fighter in standard D&D terminology) - and thereafter during play the character could
use any of her Wizard abilities or any of her Fighter abilities at any time - with some restrictions, of course.
Now how would such a character be restricted? Well, using our Wizard/Fighter character as an example again,
by looking at the various requirements and penalties of the two classes we see that while taking a level in Fighter
gives her the knowledge of how to use light, medium and heavy types of armor,
we also notice that if she wears armor her arcane Wizard spells
will simply fail a large percentage of the time, with heavier armors causing her spells to fail more than lighter ones.
This is not good! So, the trade off here is that she gets to wear armor and
fight better at hand-to-hand combat, which is good for her armor class but not so good for casting spells. Indeed, perhaps
she might be trying to cast the Magic Missile spell that will kill the monster and save the day, but instead the spells fizzles
because she's wearing armor and the monster eats her face! :)
This is just an example, however,
as each combination of classes will have their own strengths, weaknesses, advantages and restrictions,
and
Despite the difficulty that you will sometimes face on how to best combine the abilities of two or three classes,
multiclassing can be VERY powerful. Again, using our Wizard/Fighter,
it is very possible that you might personally find that the higher Armor Class that wearing armor affords
will more than make up for the possibility of spell failure. Also, think about how nice it might be
for your wizard character to be able to also use a bow effectively, for times when she runs out of spells
but wishes to fight her enemies from afar? Or how nice it would be for a up and front Fighter character
wearing no armor to be able to, for example,
cast Mage Armor and then wade into battle without any armor penalties? These are just a few of
the many advantages that a multiclass Wizard/Fighter character might have - and Wizard/Fighter is not the only option
for multiclassing; indeed, you can choose almost any combination of the 11 classes in the game.
Again, however, there are some restrictions for multiclassing certain classes. For example,
while a Barbarian character must be of any non-Lawful alignment,
a
Monk character must be
of any Lawful alignment. Thus, you would never see a multiclass Barbarian/Monk!
Another thing to consider when multiclassing is that once you have stopped leveling up
in some Classes, such as Monk or Paladin, in order to pursue another Class, you can never return to that original Class again
(though you still retain your abilities in that Class up until the point which you stopped taking that class).
Say, for example, that you were to start a character off as a
Paladin
and then played her enough to
bring her up to a Paladin of 4th Level. But then you decide to multiclass as a Paladin/Wizard, for example.
This combination is perfectly acceptable - but once this is done, while she can gain as many levels in Wizard as she would like
she can never again gain further levels in Paladin (though she can, as stated, still use her Paladin abilities gained up to 4th Level).
There is one last, but important, thing to consider when deciding whether or not to multiclass.
When a character multiclasses, she must maintain a 'balance' between her classes or suffer an Experience Point (XP)
penalty. To maintain balance, all of her class levels must be within one level of each other. For example,
a Fighter/Wizard of levels 3/3 respectively or 3/2 respectively would be in balance;
a Fighter/Wizard of levels 1/3 respectively would not be in balance, and would therefore
take a horrible 20% penalty PER OUT OF BALANCE CLASS
to the number of XPs they gain through combat and quest completion.
The one exception to this multiclass penalty for unbalanced Classes is what is called a Favored Class,
based on the character's Race. In short, the character's Favored Class is literally ignored
when determining if she will take a penalty for having unbalanced Classes. For example, if our Fighter/Wizard is an
elf,
her Favored Class is Wizard. In her case, even if she was of drastically different levels in her two classes,
say a 12th Level Fighter/2nd Level Wizard, she still would NOT incur an XP penalty. However, if she then added a third class,
say Rogue, she would be a 12th Level Fighter/2nd Level Wizard/1st Level Rogue. Still ignoring her Wizard Class,
regarding the XP penalty she has now has Class levels 12/1, and therefore she incurs a 20% penalty due to her new Rogue Class.
This penalty continues until the two classes (Fighter and Rogue, in this case) are brought to within at least one Level of each other.
See Races for information on the Favored Classes for each race.
Next: Conclusion
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