MMOnday Blaaaagh! Defiance: the first 13 hours

I got a decent amount of game time in this weekend with Defiance, including several hours on my laptop while teaming up with a friend who recently upgraded his seven year old computer to something more state of the art. Overall a well rounded experience for first impressions.

Defiance is essentially a shooter-based MMO which aims to capture several crowds: the MMOers looking for something different, the Halo dudes looking for something different, the console crowd in general and anyone who'd like to experience a (so far) co-op experience online in a massive multi-player environment. Depending on your level of appreciation for this style of game, this level of story focus in a genre not always well-regarded for its stories, and your tolerance for twitch-based game play your mileage may vary in terms of enjoyment. For me? This was a no-brainer. It hits most of my "like" buttons in fast succession.

If you'd like a chance to explore Defiance's setting before approaching the game, a good place to start is with the Defiance 14 minute pilot preview. It's on Hulu and Xbox Live for free download right now, and offers an excellent glimpse into the look, feel and style of this new multimedia experience. The two lead characters in this preview also happen to show up in the game, which is not unexpected as my understanding is that Defiance will have a lot of crossover between the two, and of course the big gimmick here is that events in the game will influence the TV show.

So based on the thirteen-odd hours I've sunk into Defiance so far, here are my off-hand observations:

Plot and Cinematics

They go hand in hand here. The cinematics are great, and quite entertaining. There's only one starter zone, unfortunately, and everyone essentially drops in as "ark hunters," in the employ of one Van Bach, a  suspiciously shady mad scientist gun merchant type who has a bit of a reputation. The lead-in to the game approaches information dispersal in one of the following two ways, and I haven't decided which its going for: 1. it's being coy about info, expecting you to fill in the gaps throught the TV show and web site, or 2. it's using economy of information to dole out as little front-loaded background as possible, to let the player organically learn about the world as you go. Whichever was intended (my money's on #1) the effect for now is the same: hints of a very big world with very little hard information to go on, and lots of inferred possibilities. It works for me.

I won't go into the plot here because frankly I'm still piecing it together but the short version is: it's Earth, after an alien empire shows up with colony ships and starts terraforming. Earth had some sort of unifying government thanks to a thirteen year warning of the impending alien arrival, but that wasn't enough to do more than make humans a modest underclass presence in a vast galactic empire. Some sort of rebellion hit, and humanity, along with another minor (I'm guessing) race called the Irathient managed to strike a major blow at the Battle of Defiance. Now, thirty three years since the Votar empire arrive there's a steady stream of debris falling from space thanks to a vast graveyard of ancient colony ships and war time debris. This immense field of orbit-decaying junk forms the basis of the arkfalls that happen. A lot.



Quest Giving

The game gives you your own Cortana...called Ego, here....an interactive AI only you can see which also lets you resurrect and (best as I can tell) summons gear and vehicles for you. It's not entirely clear to me how the ego powers work, just that they do. This is a post-Halo, post-Mass Effect, post-Star Wars universe in which the ability to perform weird powers which once might have been labeled psionics is nothing unexpected now. Anyway, Ego is your guide and primary quest giver. When you aren't getting radioed in for a new mission or stumbling across one, Ego is manifesting in key spots to lure you over to talk to her, upon which she will spring another quest on you. It's actually a very effective way of repacking traditional quest delivery into something that feels fresh.

This is a Trion game, however, so the defined quests are the least interesting things to do (albeit much more interesting than any other more traditional MMO). Rather, the arkfall events (reminiscent of rift and invasion events in Rift) and the open-world active instances are the really interesting bits. There's a lot of crazy stuff going on and you can drive around randomly to stumble on all kinds of things. This is one of the reasons I liked Rift so much, and the same core formula serves Defiance equally well.

I don't know if there are traditional "closed" instances in Defiance yet; I haven't found them if there are, but I wouldn't be surprised if they exist somewhere. Time will tell. I guess I could google it? Google seems to suggest as much...and PVP areas too...but still haven't seen either in my playthroughs.

Chat

Defiance suffers in its chat options, which I suspect suffer from a build designed to accomodate consoles. You can't send whispers, you need to find players to group with through the friend mechanic and if you were hoping for casual Barrens chat while marauding through terraformed Earth then you'll be sorely disappointed. They need to work on this, badly, before the traditionally social end of the MMO crowd evaporates.

Gameplay

The game is perfectly functional with a mouse and keyboard (and my wife is playing it this way just fine) but I am using my Xbox controller and finding it a more generally satisfying experience since I can kick back in my chair and not be hunched over the keyboard.

It's run and gun twitch-based shooter mechanics. So far all I've seen in PvE environments, so no idea how the PVP side of the game works (and I'm only assuming from stuff I've read so far that the game has implemented PVP yet), but the gameplay is very solid-feeling. It's a third-person perspective game, but not a cover-based shooter, so you don't worry about sticking to the environment by accident. This is good....it means the world is a bit more organic looking, and you don't see chest high walls to hide behind anywhere.

One huge plus (so far) is that the game's mechanics don't appear to be based on a level mechanic at all. You do raise your rank in EGO power, which gives you more perks to work with your Ego skills, but the vast majority of advancement in this game is the acquisition of guns, mods, gear, outfits and vehicles.

The vehicle mechanics are serviceable and perfectly good for the kind of game this is. You will get annoyed at the static environment...when I hit a flaming barrel I expect it to tip over, not to stop me with the resistance of a 50 ton concrete wall!....but the good news is you can run over bad guys. Players ignore each other in terms of the driving, which is good; if you had to watch out for your fellow man it would get ugly quick...not hitting players in this game right now would be downright impossible.

Vehicles come in all sizes and shapes, and larger ones can carry passengers. Cool.



Grouping

I played for several hours in a group and while it was quite fun, this is where a lot of bugs cropped up. My single player experience has been 99% bug-free, but in a group I found some weird issues, including:

1. My cohort, despite being a tough female machinist would appear on my screen as a big male survivalist
2. On more than one occasion we could see each other on the map but didn't exist in each other's frame of reality. There's a "go to friend" button which was not taking us to each other. We ultimately figured out that somehow my buddy had lost the quest line we were on, and had to eventually backtrack to get him back to it.
3. Quest lines, speaking of which, are a more traditional "grab this and complete it before moving on" style, similar to The Secret World's approach (or any old shooter's approach). So my friend, who is a WoW junkie, was having a hard time kicking the grab-every-quest-everywhere mentality.
4. Even when we got him back on track for a quest line I had now finished, when he ran into the instance area he disappeared and I was experiencing something entirely different from him. Is it phasing, or a glitch? I had no idea, and the game offered no clues to illuminate the situation for us.

The fact that I was playing on my laptop at his house while he played on his big screen made these glitches all the more obvious and amusing. If we'd been playing remotely, it would have been even more frustrating.

Performance

On my decent home rig this game runs great. On my laptop which has a decent icore 5 processor but no dedicated GPU it ran surprisingly well on low and medium performance, but the experience was still lacking. If someone trashes this game on the grounds its got consolitis or poor graphics, be suspect that they are running a suboptimal rig, because I can gaurantee that the difference between a low-performance setting and a max-performance setting in Defiance is huge. That said, if you were stuck with a low-performance PC and understood your computer's limitations but really wanted to experience Defiance anyway, I don't think you'd be too disappointed....it was still fun to play on the laptop, even if it looks noticeably less pretty.

What's it Cost?

This is a one-time purchase to be supported by a "season pass" for the next five expansions and a cash shop. I haven't even bothered to look into the cash shop outside of claiming my special edition items, but most of the shop content seems to be outfits and gear; I've found myself enjoying the game with what it offers and the cash shop experience is extremely non-invasive, highy ignorable (so far).

Verdict

I'm going to keep playing and enjoying it. The game has fun gameplay, controls that feel "right," and a compelling storyline as well as enough variety in the MMO-questing elements to make it click better than prior efforts. This is not another Tabula Rasa, although I really need to see how much content overall the game has. For me it's probably going to last a long, long time. For the insanely dedicated hardcore MMO and shooter crowd? No idea.....time will tell. The game does have a metric ton of repeatable content, though...and the fact that there's no leveling mechanic means you can (best as I can tell so far) wander back to older areas and enjoy the region all over again and still feel a challenge.

I'm still in Mount Tam right now (the area after the tutorial zone) and still slogging my way through on four different characters (you get four character slots). According to the wiki there are five total areas all set in the San Francisco Bay area. Mount Tam is a huge zone, so if the other four are as big, this game should last me a long, long time.

Ploutonion found in Turkey

Discovery has a story on it here. The Ploutonion was a temple to Pluto, alias Plouton, formerly known as Hades and otherwise known as the god of the Roman and Greek Underworld. There were several sites named by Strabo at which Ploutonions could be found, but the most famously derscribed of these temples in Phrygia, known for noxious deadly vapors has never been identified until now. 

Pathfinder Resources

Now located here!

Oh hell yes it's Friday

Been a long week! There was no Magic World this week, too busy. Defiance released this week, but I've have maybe 2 hours free to play it, though I did get some crazy characters up and running in the wilderness of ruined Earth. My Wednesday Pathfinder game went down as planned and the group wrapped up a massive nearly...hmmm...six month long story arc that involved Tiamat, the Chaos God Molabal, time travel the distant past and far future, the end of the world in the future, the destruction of the Far Realm and the rebirth of a new Feywild. If you don't know my campaign, the short version is "a lot of major crap went down, and everything is different."

Needless to say, the players are excited to be returning to their home port to fight simple, happy foes once more, like petty dictators and river pirates!

I don't railroad or plan this stuff, so the changes the players wrought need to be accounted for going forward. I have some ideas, but I'm hoping to spend time this weekend updating the next story arcs to include the effects of those changes. Wiping out the far realm....not that some version of it couldn't return....was pretty huge. It's a tacit acknowledgement on my part that I am well and truly done with 4E, and it gives me some wiggle room to expand into Pathfinderized planar resources (such as the Great Beyond or the impressive Dark Roads & Golden Hells planar book from Open Design.)

The Far Realm actually showed up as an alternate cosmology idea in the 3rd edition Manual of the Planes, and if I reintroduce a Far Realm of some sort in the future I will probably lean on this book. Since I have left the plot with a suggestion that some sort of feywild is returning (in my Chirak setting the entire feywild was a victim of an ancient apocalypse) then I might look at the treatment that realm gets in the 3E Manual of the Planes as well.

Anyway....more next week! Probably more B/X D&D, more Pathfinder, more Magic World and maybe even a early review of Defiance.

Valgos, Slayer of Elves in Pathfinder

Okay, the era of B/X D&D was a time of experimentation and while monsters were often played as characters, you needed to look to the competition (Monsters! Monsters!, Runequest and others) for actual official rules support on how to do it. Today, of course, Pathfinder and D20 in general is built from the ground up to allow for whatever crazy-ass monster characters your GM will suffer with, so it was hard to resist statting Valgos out accordingly. Also, I have to admit I still find it oddly amusing that I pretty much spend 90% of my real world game time running Pathfinder (when not reading other games, and running Magic World) but 90% of my blog time on OSR games, BRP stuff and pretty much anything but Pathfinder. So….here ya go. At the very least it can be fun to see what the same essential build looks like circa 1980 vs. 2013:

Valgos, Slayer of Elves (Pathfinderized)

Orc Fighter level 4, Alignment: Chaotic Evil

STR         23 (+6)                  Fortitude              +5

DEX        12 (+1)                  Reflexes                 +2

CON       16 (+3)                  Will                          0

INT         12 (+1)                  AC                            20                                 

WIS        8 (-1)                     Flat-Footed AC:    19            Touch Attack AC:   11

CHA       13 (+1)                  BAB                      +4 (+10 melee, +5 ranged)

HPs        39          

Languages: common (middle tongue), orcish, abyssal, elvish

Skills: Climb +10, Intimidate +6, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +5,  Ride +5, Survival +5, Swim +10, Linguistics +3

Orc Traits: darkvision, light sensitivity, orcish weapon familiarity

Fighter Traits: Bravery 1, Armor Training 1

Feats: Weapon Focus (great axe), Catch Off-Guard, Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave

Weapons, Armor and Gear:

Great Axe +1, +2 elven (fey) bane (1D12+10 damage; +12 attack; crit X3; Against fey: 1D12+2D6+11 damage; +13 attack (+2 weapon instead of +1) and crit X3)

Heavy Crossbow (1D10 damage; +5 attack; 19-20/X2 crit) with 20 bolts and quiver

Full Plate suit (+9 AB, -5 ACP*, +2 Dex Bonus*)

Helm of Telepathy (detect thoughts at well; send messages at will; suggestion once/day at DC 14)

Bag of 50 GP, ten rubies worth 50 GP each

*due to armor training

The Basic/Expert D&D Project IV: Valgos, Slayer of Elves

And now, an orc villain using the orc racial class rules from yesterday!




Valgos, Slayer of Elves
Orc Level 4; Alignment: Chaotic
STR  18    +3 to hit, damage and opening doors; 10% XP bonus
DEX  12
CON  16    +2 HP/HD
INT   14     Languages: orcish, common (middle tongue), abyssal (chaotic), elvish
WIS   10
CHA   15   +1 reaction (with monsters; -1 humans)
HPs     30   AC 2 (plate mail)
Orc Traits: infravision 120', light blindness (-1 attacks in daylight), -2 reaction modifier in human lands
Weapons: battle axe +1 (1D8+4; THAC0 11), crossbow (1D6; THAC0 15) with 20 bolts
Wealth: bag of 150 gp, 10 rubies worth 50 GP each, and a helm of telepathy

Valgos is a brutal assassin for hire and mercenary dedicate to Baragnagor, the primal creator god worshipped by the orcs of Mitra's Forest. He seeks to slay one thousand elves with his bloody axe, a commitment made to his dark god in his youth in exchange for the enchanted weapon. So far he has worked hard to keep at it, with three hundred kills to date. He collects the ears of elves and strings them on long braids made from the hair of Volgra, the hill giant witch woman who lives in the foothills of the Chaos Mountains, whom he has been courting for better than a year now since she bested him in combat and let him live. He also uses his helm of telepathy, which he acquired from an elf he slew when he snuck into the lake town of Daggerlan during the infamous Hallow's Raid two years back. He has figured out how the helm works and uses it to his advantage to avoid ambushes and in tracking foes.

The Basic/Expert D&D Project III: The Orc Class

Who doesn't love playing an orc on occasion? In B/X D&D they're the second tier cannon fodder in low level adventures, one step up from goblins and kobolds. A chaotic race of barbaric beast men, orcs may or may not be the byproduct of genetic tampering from an alien wizard, or a long-mutated faction of brutal elves who succumbed to their dark magics. They may or may not be simple neanderthal off-shoots struggling against humanity and the rest of the world. They might even be potent invaders from another dimension, soldiers in an army of darkness that long ago were trapped in the human realm when bold heroes slew their demonic overlords and closed the abyssal gates. Orcs can be (and have been)  all of this and more.

In settings where being an orc is not inherently a sign of evil, or where orcish blood is not an immediate indication you must be attacked, then they might be permissable as player characters. In other realms where orcs are clearly the undisputed foes of civlization, humans, elves and dwarves then a DM might like a nice way to make some exceptionally skilled evil orc NPCs with a few levels under their belts. This class serves both purposes.

Orc Racial Class Requirements: Orcs have some minimums and maximums. No orc may have less than 9 constitution or strength. No orc may have greater than a 15 intelligence or wisdom. Orcs can have whatever charisma they like (but see below), and high-charisma orcs tend to manipulate and control henchmen through force of personality, fear and terror. An orc with a strength and constitution of 13 or better gains a 5% XP bonus for prime requisites. An orc with a further 16 in either stat gains a 10% bonus.

Optional Rolling Conventions: If you want to guarantee an orc, roll 2D6+1D3 for wisdom and intelligence. Roll 8+1D10 for strength and constitution.

Class Traits: Orc adventurers have a D8 hit die. They advance as fighters for purposes of level advancement, saving throws and XP requirements, but refer to the monster attack chart for attack rolls (use level in place of hit dice). Like fighters orcs can use any weapons or armor, although they most prefer the conventional swords, spears, axes and clubs. Orcs are not keen on the use of more sophisticated weaponry such as siege weapons and will avoid using such artillery unless their intelligence is 13 or better.

Orcs have infravision to 120 feet and can see exceptionally well in total darkness. They are nocturnal by nature and intensely dislike direct sunlight. An orc fighting in direct sunlight suffers a -1 modifier to attack rolls.

Orcs suffer from violent, surly and combative natures. As orcs are largely a pariah in human lands, they never gain a positive modifier to reaction rolls due to high charisma against non-monstrous creature encounters. They use the normal reaction modifier when interacting with other orcs and monstrous humanoids, however. Additionally, most orcs are at least chaotic, and a few might be neutral. A lawful orc is a true rarity in most cases.

Orcs start with two languages: common and orcish. Alignment languages, if used, allow the orc to start with chaotic as well. A surprising number of smart orcs will also learn elvish, if only to taunt their enemies.

Orcs may advance to 8th level in most circumstances, but the DM can rule that an orc with 16 or better strength and constitution can reach level 12.



Sample Orc PC:

Spraggus Gazpatch'nor, exile of the Wolfgut Clan
Orc adventurer Level 1; Alignment: Neutral
STR  16    +2 to hit, damage and opening doors; 10% XP bonus
DEX  10
CON  13    +1 HP/HD
INT   12    Languages: orcish, common (middle tongue), abyssal (chaotic)
WIS    7    -1 saves vs. Magic
CHA   9
HPs     9   AC 5 (chain)
Orc Traits: infravision 120', light blindness (-1 attacks in daylight), -2 reaction modifier in human lands
Weapons: Sword (1D8+2; THAC0 16), bandolier of 6 throwing daggers (1D6+2; THAC0 18 thrown or 16 melee)

Spraggus Gazpatch'nor (loosely translated as "eater of goblins," an old family name) was exiled after a thew war party he belonged to found out he had spared a basement of human and elvish women and children in a raid on a nearby settlement. When he found the basment of cowering fairfolk something in him snapped, and he could no longer find himself believing in the ways of his people or their dedication to the Necromancer of the Caves. He confessed his shaken confidence to the tribal witch doctor Grome, who cast him out in exile rather than sentence him to death in the arenas, possibly because the witch doctor knew Spraggus was secretly his son from illicit affair, and wished to save him instead. Spraggus now wanders human lands, swathed in thick robes and working as a nameless mercenary for hire.



Variant Orc Racial Classes:

Orc Magus: There are occasional orcs with some sorcerous talent. Such an orc must have an intelligence of 13 or better. He loses all fighter traits and gains all magic user class traits instead, retaining infravision, daylight sensitivity and reaction adjustments from the base class. His advancement is as a wizard, and he can reach level 6 as a mage. The orc magus gains the saves and attack tables of a magic user.

Orc Thug: the thieves of orcish culture are feared by most. The orc loses his fighter traits, replacing them with thief traits instead. An orcish thug has the hit dice, advancement, skills and back stabbing features of the thief in place of the fighting talents he gave up. Such orcs are able to advance to 14th level as thieves. They still advance as monsters for purposes of attack tables, but gain the thief saving throws.

Orcish Witch Doctor: The clerics of orc civilization replace the fighter traits of the base orc, replacing those traits with the cleric. The orc gains the hit dice, attack tables, spell advancement and turning of a cleric, but orcish witch doctors can use any weapon and armor in accordance with the brutal gods of the orcs. Any chaotic witch doctor may use the reverse form of turn undead, control undead, in which a successful turn means that the witch doctor instead gains control of the undead for 1D6 turns, after which they will regain self-control and on a poor reaction roll may attack the witch doctor. On a "D" attempt the control lasts one or more days, and the undead rolls save vs. spells once per day to see if the effect ends.

The Half Orc Option: 

Byproducts of the unfortunate predilection for raping and pillaging among orcish war clans in human and elven territories, it is a rare creature that is born into the world a half orc. Half orcs are treated as humans for purposes of character generation, meaning they pick from the four base classes and go from there. However, half orcs gain the following traits due to their unfortunate heritage:

Half orcs must have at least 9 in strength and constitution. Half orcs may not have more than 16 in charisma, but their human heritage has improved their overall potential intelligence and wisdom.

Half orcs have partial night vision, infravision to 60 feet. They do not suffer from daylight blindness. Half orcs do suffer from the orcish -2 reaction modifier in both polite company and among true orcs, though any community which learns to respect the half orc will not apply the penalty any further. Pure orcish communities may accept a half-breed for his orcish heritage, but still disdains him as a lesser being.

Despite their human heritage, half orcs have trouble making it beyond 12th level as magic users and clerics, and may only do so if their intelligence or wisdom is greater than 16, respectively. They have no such limits when becoming fighters and thieves.

Collecting D&D Modules in PDF

It's kind of addicting, really. I sort of hope WotC has a lot of people doing the same thing, as it would send a good message to them (that message being: more of this stuff, please) that we're buying up lots and lots of these $5 classic adventures.

Aside from my recent obsession with the simple elegance of Basic and Expert D&D I've been trying to snag more modules. I started with Night's Dark Terror (B10) because it seemed to come highly recommended and was one of the many Basic set modules I had never owned. Quick bit of advice: it's worth looking at, the module is surprisingly good and has the makings of a full-on wilderness campaign within. A lot of depth in it.

When dndclassics.com popped up they gave away B1: In Search of the Unknown as a freebie, so I already had that. It's more of an interesting look at how the early days of the game handled introductory modules. A lot of the "DM advice" of the era was basically end-loaded into the modules themselves rather than the rulebooks. I can't recall if I ever owned this module or not, honestly. I know I started with B2: Keep on the Borderlands, but I think B1 escaped me. B3 (Palace of the Silver Princess) was memorable to me as the module I did not run, but actually played in. My sister had it as part of her early collection, back then.

Anyway, I owned few of these Basic edition modules, so they are mostly new to me. I also snagged B5: Horror on the Hill. It sounds fun, and the scan is good. I'll have to read it this week. I then got derailed by the AD&D modules, most of which are much more familiar to me and/or were scenarios I actually ran.

Specifically for my first round I snagged N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God and another old favorite of mine, the Conan "Red Nails" influenced I1: Dwellers in the Forbidden City. Both modules I ran in the early eighties. My hope right now is that I will find some fascinating stuff within each that, much like the Basic and Expert books did, trigger a new level of interest in me as an adult over my childhood memories. I do recall using both modules to put some characters through the ropes, and to this day they both have a "home" somewhere in my old Lingusia campaign. I never ran anything in Greyhawk or FR...I always ported the scenarios to "home turf."

If I snag two or three every pay period I suspect my wife will be lenient on punishment and sooner or later I'll have them all in PDF. Good thing, too! WotC is cranking out a lot of them now.

As an aside, has anyone bought "The Secret of Bone Hill" in PDF yet? One review suggests that this one has a botched scan job, and I don't want to find out the hard way if the reviewer is just obsessively pedantic about these things or there really is an issue with the PDF. All the other purchases I have made at dndclassics have been great so far.



I don't know if I'll get to run these modules again or just enjoy reading them, but I have some ideas. My ideal situation would be to find some willing players keen to explore Basic/Expert D&D with a bit of the LL Advanced Edition Companion mixed in for flavor. A second (likelier) prospect would be to do an official adaptation of these modules to 3rd edition or Pathfinder....this would require a teensy bit of work (by my standards) but is doable. If I decide to tackle these modules in such a fashion, I'll try to stick up the conversion notes/stats on the blog for those interested.

Guild Wars 2 Super Adventure Box Commercial

Awesome:

The Basic/Expert D&D Project II: Multiclassing

The main gripe I have always had with Basic and Expert D&D was the confusion between class and race. Strictly speaking, the game is mechanically offering a set of specific choices that aren't actually out of line with AD&D, by simply limiting each race to one class: an elf is a fighter/mage, while the dwarf and halfling are both fighters, essentially, with a mix of racial features (dwarven saves, halfling sneakiness) that make them distinctly their own thing.

I realized that one could borrow the AD&D multiclassing rules easily enough and apply them to B/X D&D without much fuss. Under this approach you could have such combinations as a dwarven thief or a halfling cleric, so long as the class met all the minimum requirements for all prerequisites. This approach breaks down with the elf, however.

Of the three racial classes, the elf is the one that is hardest to multiclass with because the core book elf is already a fighter/mage with a significant XP penalty to advancement. You could do it, sure...but then you have effectively a triple-classed character. You also would need to decide if you can half an elf/mage or an elf/fighter combo as well. Such a combination would be of great benefit to a elf/mage (doubling magic casting, effectively) and of minimal gain for an elf/fighter (allowing some modest extra hit points and maybe slightly better attack tables). Hardly seems worth offering.

So in the spirit of allowing such combos in any B/X D&D game I might run I have worked out the following B/X multiclass houesrules:

Available Options: Elves may be multiclass elf/clerics or elf/thieves. If an elf wants to be something more distinct, then see the variant racial class option that follows below.

Halfings can multiclass as halfling thieves, halfling clerics and halfling mages.

Dwarves can be multiclassed dwarven mages (at DM's discretion), dwarven thieves and dwarven clerics.

Multiclass Rules: The multiclassed character conslidates both classes as follows:

Experience Gain: Either add the XP requirement for each level together, or track each separately; all XP gained is divided equally between the two in the latter case.

Hit Dice Per Level: Formula when you gain a level is to roll the HD of each class, add CON, then divide by two (round up). So a Dwarven Thief rolls 1D8+1D4+Con Modifier, divides by two, rounds up.

Weapons and Armor Allowed: You get the most restrictive armor but the most liberal weapon proficiency. So a Dwarven thief is limited to his thief armor limits but has acsess to his dwarven weapon skills.

Magic does not Stack or Mix: You can't be an elf mage because elves are already mages, essentially. But an elf cleric is permitted since it's two different kinds of magic, and must be tracked separately (i.e. you can't cast magic user spells with cleric slots).

Humans and Multiclassing: for purist campaigns, this is a big No. You could hijack dual-classing rules for that if you want. For impure modern day postmodernist D&D with a retro origin you could easily allow humans to do the same. The key issue of course would be that humans can only multiclass with nonracial classes (fighter, cleric, thief and magic user).

Elven Variant Racial Classes: This option lets you play an elf straight-up, but by substituting some class features for others, you can create an elf with no magic who is a better thief, fighter or cleric. This is advantageous in that it allows you to play an elf who sacrifices some traits for the benefit of quicker XP advancement. These variant racial classes are as follows:

Elven Variant Classes

Elven Spell Thief

The elven spell thief sacrifices his or her fighting abilities in exchange for a thief’s skills as well as weapon and armor limitations. An elven spell thief has intelligence and dexterity as prime requisites, substituting dexterity for strength.

Spellthief Traits: Hit dice is D4, weapon and armor choices are same as thief, class abilities are the same as a thief (including backstab) and advance at the same rate. The spellthief advances as an elf for XP purposes and is still capped at level 10. Spellthieves gain magic as normal elves do.

Elven Rake

The elven rake is a figher/thief variant with no magical ability. This elf loses spell casting but gains thief abilities and is still a good fighter. Substitute dexterity for intelligence as a prime requisite.

Elven Rake Traits: Lose all spell casting abilities, but gain the thief abilities, including back stab. You retain the elven armor and weapon abilities, and also retain a D6 for hit dice. They may advance to 10^th level as per the elf advancement chart.

Elven Priest

The elven priest is a holy caster, usually of some nature god, giving up a magic user’s advancement in magic for a clerical pursuit instead. Substitute wisdom for intelligence as a prime requisite.

Elven Priest Traits: Hit Dice remains D6, and the elf loses all magic-user traits, instead advancing precisely as a cleric would (so refer to clerical advancement for gaining spells instead of the normal advancement for an elf). Elven priests may gain turn undead, but if so they must adopt the weapon and armor limits of a cleric and lose the elven armor and weapon restrictions instead. If you opt for weapon and armor freedom in lieu of turn undead then you are considered an elven war priest.