Editing Multiclassing (section)

==Advanced Dungeon & Dragons==
Second Edition offered two different ways to multiclass.  Confusingly, one was called '''multiclassing''', while the other was called '''dual-classing'''.  Both were also class and racial locked, because fuck you, [[Gygax]]'s Asperger's was ''married'' to frustrating and arbitrary restrictions, and he didn't care who knew it!

===Multiclassing===
''Multiclassing'' was limited to different races for different class combinations, as well as the stat, race, and alignment restrictions for both.  Essentially, you had all the advantages and disadvantages of two different classes at once (a fighter/mage, for instance, couldn't cast spells in armor), but had to split all the XP earned up among all the classes you had levels in.  A fighter/mage would split his XP gained between his two classes, a fighter/mage/thief would divide his XP into thirds, a ([[Dark Sun]]-exclusive) [[what|mage/fighter]][[MAD|/cleric/psionicist]] would split his XP into ''quarters'', etc.  And since classes in 2nd Ed. all leveled at different rates this quickly turned into a clusterfuck for the player to manage.  You could have a Level 15/14/17 elven fighter/mage/thief and your character "sheet" would require a binder.

===Dual-classing===
''Dual-classing'' was human-exclusive, because ''of course'' humans [[Mary Sue|have to have the potential to be the best at ''anything'']] - at least, until [[Red Steel]] came out, with [[Lupin]]s, [[Rakasta]]s and [[Aranea]] able to dual-class as well, whilst [[Dark Sun]] would give [[mul]]s the ability to choose to either multiclass or dual-class.  At any point in his or her career, a human could, after gaining a level, decide to ''dual-class'' into another class he or she met the stat requirements for.  Upon doing so, the character would be reset to level one in a second class to keep going from there.  Once they reached one level higher in the second class than they had originally had in the first, the character would ''regain'' all the abilities learned from the first class.  It would never advance again, but he or she would keep on leveling the second class.  Thus, the usual way of doing it was to start as a muscle class (for the early advantage) before becoming a spellcaster (for the late-game scaling).  One small detail, though - before you reached a higher level in your new class you could still use your old class's abilities, but if you did you forfeited ALL experience points gained from that encounter and half of those gained from the rest of the adventure (because you're trying to learn a ''new'' thing rather than old shit), effectively not only stalling out your character's permanent advancement.  This made it a desperation move, done only to save the character's life... and sometimes, depending on GM generosity and death-reversal availability, not even then!

Both were, as was the rule back then, unnecessarily complicated, messy, and a pain to manage; and doing it wrong meant crippling your character permanently, but they could still be very powerful if the players knew what they were doing.

This was a sort of prototype of 3rd edition's Multiclassing style, to the extent that a character picking up "functional levels in" secondary or even tertiary classes did make an appearance in AD&D... though mostly it was reserved for "Creator's Pet" NPCs, like the [[Seven Sisters]].