#multiclassing

TL;DR: Barbarian 1, Druid  2 (Circle of the Stars), Paladin 8 (Oath of the Ancients), and Cleric 9 (Peace Domain). Feats: Squire of Solamnia, Remarkable Recovery, Warcaster, Knight of Crowns, Spelldriver, Tough.

Building Ayden was a joy and a journey. To begin we were told we had 20 levels to work with and stats of 20 across the board. The only thing I knew about Ayden from the session 0 was that he was going to be a Cleric of the Everlight and that I wanted to make him the best support character I could. I also knew that the Dawnfather was aware of the mission briefing and so would have directed his growth to the task at hand. 

Stats of 20 meant multiclassing into any class was possible and that any ability score based bonuses or proficiency based abilities were going to be very good. I figured that with a warlock and a sorcerer we’d have some pretty good counterspelling and 9th level spell access, so I didn’t worry myself about either of those, instead focusing on making sure we all survived. 

The Dawnfather and The Everlight share 2 of 3 Domains. Life and Light. The Everlight’s 3rd domain is Peace. The Peace Domain cleric is an excellent subclass and its 6th level ability, Protective Bond, was something I knew I wanted to build around. The ability to take hits for, and aid, my siblings while teleporting around the battlefield is an excellent support ability and it also lets allies in the bond do the same, fostering sibling unity and cohesion.

With the Dawnfather having Nature as his unique domain separate from the Everlight, and literally sending himself to Exandria to infiltrate a city full of the greatest mages of the age, the Oath of Ancients Paladin seemed like an obvious path. It is the nature Paladin, (his domain) and 7 levels gives you both Aura of Protection and Aura of Warding. This means as Ayden moves through the battlefield with Protective Bond he will be granting allies +5 to saves from his cha as well as resistance to damage from spells. Incredibly good going up against the wizards of Aeor he knew he would encounter. I didn’t want to go to 10 with Paladin because I didn’t want to be immune to frightened. I just felt that fear played too large a role in the reasons the gods were here and although aura of courage is probably my favorite ability going back to 3rd edition, I felt like it wasn’t right for Ayden. He had to fear in order to reinforce his need to hope. 

These two classes were set relatively quickly and then I began looking at how else I was going to build him out. 

I really liked the idea of being able to grant my allies some extra attacks and so I was looking at battle master to get commanders strike and goading attack as well as maneuvering attack to help take hits for and position my allies. Action Surge is also a great ability that could really come in handy if I needed to save someone and needed one extra action to do so. 

I was also looking at the 2nd level Divination Wizard ability Portent. The ability to fully dictate 2 rolls is very powerful in certain circumstances, especially if the numbers are very high or very low.

Both these seemed good but weren’t feeling totally right from a character perspective. They felt too forced.

As I was playing around with these two classes I was also building Aydens backstory. I really liked the idea of him being agriculturally focused, as this aspect of the Dawnfather is actually his youngest. Sun begets days, and thus time and seasons, and as civilization evolves agriculture follows. The fighter levels lent the idea that he has spent some time training under a knight or some such warrior, and I knew that he would eventually find his way to Trist to begin his tutelage and become her cleric. I liked there being these different eras of his life. 

It was around this time that I got an awesome email asking me to describe Ayden visually so that the incredibly talented Hannah Friederichs and Cael Lyons could begin to bring Ayden and the Dawnfather to life. I wanted Ayden to be a simply dressed with a shield he took from his mentor, but no sword for striking. They sent 4 sketches and told me I could mix and match as I desired. Image #1 however was exactly as I had envisioned him. It was the simplest and had this depth to his eyes that told the story of a much older soul in this 15 year old body. It was so perfect that it made me realize I had been going in the totally wrong direction with fighter and wizard. The concepts of nature and agriculture were suddenly staring me in the face. It was not wizard, but druid, and his mentor could have taught him to be a paladin as easily as fighter, but if he is the bringer of agriculture who has he brought it to? A remote tribe still hunting and gathering was the answer. Barbarian therefore replaced fighter. I can’t tell you how influential the sketch I received was. It felt like a bolt of lightning suddenly clarified everything. 

I was for sure cleric 6, Paladin 7 and now looking at druid and barbarian. 

I didn’t know Druid subclasses very well but Circle of the Stars jumped out from the pack just with its name. The Sun after all is a star. When I read its 2nd level abilities Starmap and Starry form it was so obvious. I can cast Guiding Bolt to set up those attacks I wanted to grant, and I can glow instead of wild shape and either heal more or have a massive bonus to maintain the concentration spells I knew I wanted to cast. For the keeper of time to know how to read the stars just felt right. It also feel right that the druids of a tribe that had been hunting and gathering during the tumultuous Calamity would have learned to navigate by the stars, a singular constant in an every changing age. 

Barbarian has a number of interesting subclasses but none felt like they clicked. 1 level of Barbarian though, for a character with 20 dexterity and 20 constitution, catapults your AC to 20 and it also gives you a proficiency in Constitution saving throws if you take it as your first class, again reinforcing those concentration rolls. He was found as a child by this barbarian tribe and his first class is also his first community. Barbarian was the strong foundation I would build upon. 

I was now Cleric 6, Paladin 7, Druid 2, Barbarian 1. Reorganized to be the order Ayden would have taken them in it becomes the following:

Barbarian 1, Druid  2 (Circle of the Stars), Paladin 7 (Oath of the Ancients), and Cleric 6 (Peace Domain)

4 more levels to distribute. As a player who has mostly played 3.5 (I think downfall just about doubled the amount of 5E I have played) feats are my absolute favorite things, so getting to multiples of 4 in class levels to grab some was something I wanted to do (also I didn’t have to worry about ability score increases)! I had already given one feat up by taking barb and druid but I made up for it with the human variant. I also took the Knight of Solamnia background to give me Squire of Solamnia, the prerequisite for Knight of the Crowns which would give me the ability to grant attacks to my allies without needing battle maneuvers. 

So I upped paladin from 7-8 for a feat and then decided to take Cleric from 6-9 because it gave me a feat and access to the spell Dawn. I mean the Dawnfather should be able to cast Dawn after all! 

Now to feats

1) Background: Squire of Solamnia to give me the prerequisite for Knight of the Crowns

2) Human Variant: Remarkable Recovery. I knew I’d be taking extra damage so having 5 extra hp from any healing I get might just be the difference. It also plays into his background. He had to leave the Barbarian tribe he brought agriculture to because his skin could not retain the ceremonial tattoo ink that would have symbolized his initiation into the community. 

3) Cleric 4 Warcaster to get advantage on those concentration checks, that along with proficiency and starry form of the dragon means I need to take 28 damage (56 if it’s a spell) to even have to roll, and when I do I get advantage and proficiency on the check. Getting me to lose concentration is gonna be a task. 

4) Paladin 4 Knight of the Crown getting to grant an attack proficiency times per day combos wonderfully with Starmaps free guiding bolt, conveniently also proficiency times per day. 

5) Cleric 8 Spelldriver I’m gonna be casting a bunch of spells so the ability to cast multiple each turn is going to make my support spells come out much faster. I have a big fam to take care of!

6) Paladin 8 Tough I really went back and forth between this and Inspiring Leader. Granting all my siblings 25 temp hp is amazing but ultimately I decided that as I’d be tanking a bunch of damage I’d need toughness. Toughness gave me 15 more hp than Inspiring leader would have, and I ended up going down to 14 at one point so it was a decision that very much paid off by a single HP! Don’t wanna pop a deathward if you can help it!

Last but not least we were granted 2 magic items. One very rare and one uncommon. For my uncommon I chose a cloak of resistance, a parting gift from the tribe that Ayden could not join. This upped my saves to 11s or 17s and took my AC to 23. For his very rare magic item I took a spellguard shield, inherited from the knight who brought him from the remote tribe to Trist‘s school, giving me advantage on saving throws vs spells and magical effects and inflicting disadvantages on spell effects targeting me. Combine that with resistance to spells from Aura of Warding and that’s a nasty nasty combo v wizards. 

All in all Ayden’s build is an incredibly hard to target tanky support character who can move through the battlefield protecting his allies and being an absolute nightmare for enemy spellcasters. The only thing I really didn’t fully consider was just how much damage he would take from Warding Bond which totally bypasses all those wonderfully crafted defenses. As crazy as it is, I think we barely got to scratch the surface of Aydens full potential and it’s probably good those mages decided to cast spells at everyone else because Ayden was going to be a tough character for a spell caster to crack. The Commanding Rally did get to shine allowing characters who specialized in weapon attacks to get a little extra out of those 20 level commitments. Ayden’s build was crafted to keep his siblings alive and let them shine as bright as possible together. I’m very proud of him!

If you read all this then you’re as nerdy as me and deserve a reward!

No one plays the game like Emily

(art by BryanSyme on DeviantArt)

And so we come to the end of this week and we’re ending off with something that some might not consider a subsystem, but I think it’s worth talking about, and that is, how archetypes work in Pathfinder Second Edition, and consequently, how multiclassing works in Second Edition, because they’ve become one and the same!

The thing about Second Edition is that rather than having a whole lot of core abilities that are customized by archetypes, class feature choices, and feats, pretty much everything aside from the basics of the class is a feat, letting you pick and choose what you want to take. As such, it’s fully possible to play a champion who has never once smote a foe, or a sorcerer that forgoes the mysteries of their bloodline for more general control over their magic, and so on.

And archetypes work the same way. As long as you qualify for the archetype and have a reason to tap into it, you can take the dedication feat for an archetype in exchange for a class feat, which then unlocks the ability to take later feats in the archetype as class feats at later levels.

And that’s where the multiclassing comes in. No longer does taking multiple classes lock you out of the very best things your original class had to offer, since the multiclassing archetypes replace your class feats for the levels you take them, but not abilities you get by default, such as spellcasting.

Typically, these multiclass archetypes grant somewhat lesser forms of the basic abilities granted by the class they represent, since they’re playing second fiddle to your original class. Meanwhile, there are also the basic spellcasting benefits which are universal to all spellcasting archetypes. Essentially, you gain a minor amount of spellcasting when you start with the archetype, and certain archetype feats let you improve this, learning more spells at higher levels which you can use with your minor amount of spell slots compared to taking the casting class as your first option. Some of these multiclass archetypes might even let you take a few feats directly from the list of the other class, depending on it’s nature.

In any case, multiclassing in 2nd edition feels less like a new vocation taking up time in your character’s personal training, and more like something you’ve picked up along the way, much like how other archetypes work in that edition. It helps shape the identity of your character more seamlessly and flexibly than stopping your training as a wizard because you wanted to learn how to punch from your monk ally, so I appreciate that. On the other hand, the way 2E handles archetypes in general, being a thing you usually pick up at second level or later, kinda removes the possibility of characters belonging to a different discipline from the start, such as a vox mesmerist manipulating with their voice instead of their gaze.

savage attacker and tavern brawler feats

Hi! If you haven't read my post on general fighter multiclassing, you can find it here.

From that post, here's what I wrote on a fighter/cleric multiclass:

Cleric is great if you do one thing–you choose a combat-oriented Divine Domain at first level, when you first multiclass. Like bard, you should use your spell slots on bonus-action healing and out-of-combat work, but if you’re War Domain, for instance, you can Attack as a bonus action and at 2nd level use Channel Divinity to add a +10 to an attack roll. This is a great multiclass to use for damage output with a little healing on the side.

All this is advice is modified by one crucial thing: you'll be mostly working from range. Now, there are some excellent spells for clerics that have a range of 60 or more for early-level casters: Guiding Bolt, Healing Word (that bonus-action healing I mentioned above), Sacred Flame, and Toll the Dead. If you did go for the War Domain, your "Divine Favor" spell option is even better, because it causes your weapon attacks to deal additional radiant damage - and the War Priest feature at level 1 lets you make weapon attacks as a bonus action if you already used your action to attack.

Mechanically, cleric is a great option, and the War Domain is an especially strong choice. Still, clerics are an extremely flavor-rich class to take, so I also advise having a good roleplay reason to devote your character to a god's service.

If roleplaying a cleric is not your jam, I'd like to highlight a different option that's just as good at ranged play, if not better: the ever-classic fighter/rogue.

A gunslinger rogue is attacking at range, which gives you all the flexibility of a rogue's cunning actions at second level. And while the sneak attack dice will be low at first level, the Deadeye Shot option for your gunslinger gives you advantage on your target -- which equals automatic Sneak Attack, given that firearms are ranged weapons.