Multi-classing via Character Themes

[phoffman]

Has there been any published works for utilizing character themes for multi-classing?

I could see several themes for characters that would give some flavor of another class: Warrior, Rogue, Arcane, Divine, ect..

Does anyone know of a previous work?

 

[interwyrm]

Wild talent from Dark Sun? Sorta?

 

[kaomera]

The only themes we've seen so far have been the Dark Sun ones, but they already allow a limited amount of multiclassing - and at least in some ways it's better than standard multis. You aren't required to take a theme that matches the role or power source of your class. And since you can swap in the theme's powers freely (ie: without taking up feat slots) you can have a much more hybridized character. Add in the theme-based feats and paragon paths and I think you've got a pretty close analog of multiclassing. The only real issue is that each theme has only one set of powers, although they do scale pretty well, at least to mid-paragon, as far as I've seen.

 

[fba827]

i could be misunderstanding the question (and apologies if I am)... but spellscared from Forgotten Realms Player's Guide utilized a similar mechanic via multiclassing but is really similar to an arcane theme.

 

[Magil]

Not quite sure what you are referring to, but I'm running a campaign where I allowed the Dark Sun themes to be taken as a multi-class. They got the feature with the entry feat, then could power-swap with the right feats. I did this because I wanted to allow the options to players, but didn't want to significantly increase character power level (and so they came at a cost).

It seems to work well enough so far. The shaman took the elemental priest theme for a feat and uses the feature a lot.

 

[Dice4Hire]

It looks like hte Shade from the new Heroes of Shadow book is gonna have some themish abilities.

 

[AlioTheFool]

There have been a lot of conversations on Twitter and in the blogosphere lately around Theme-based multi-classing. The general speculation is that Themes are the planned future multi-classing option that has been talked about by WotC in articles and at DDXP.

It definitely makes sense. As soon as I read the Themes section in Dark Sun my first thought was "This is what multi-classing should have looked like from the beginning!" Though I'm hopeful you won't be constrained to just one.