I hadn't bother to look at the Monster Manual yet but I'm loving how all the racial stuff for playable races is grouped together. Yay, for no longer having to hunt all over through the MM and then through the extraneous DM info to find the meaty bits you need to be able to play the race you want. Also, hurray for warforged they'd make decent fighters and probably a passable duel melee ranger. Love that con and those temporary hit points. As well as the extra resist to ongoing damage and death saves.

Wait, did Warforged make it into the Monster Manual!? How did I miss that. I could be playing one right now. -.-
No matter, I'm really the only decent damage-dealer the group has at the moment.

phil_, I'll work on finding a host for the fillable PDF. Or...something. :p

It has its good and bad points, but the one thing that's irritating me so far is how much multiclassing sucks. They might as well not have included it.

Edit: And the character classes seem to railroad you into very specific roles a bit too much. Hopefully that will change with supplements, but I'm skeptical.

I don't think it's that multi-classing sucks so much as WotC is controlling it more. No more crazy ass twinks that aren't meant to be.

Yeah multiclassing went from "Crucial" to "Actually only a little beneficial."

For those who want to know: The only way to multiclass is to take feats that grant you some of the other class' power, specifically stating that it's what it does. This denies you all of the huge bonuses of the class itself gets. So really multiclassing is only worth it if you need a feature or two.

This is a good example of WotC being aware of the twinkism multiclassing munchkin machines that are no doubt searching for the best combo in the game, Red Mage style. I like it alot.

To be fair, it does kind of cripple the munchkins who play out there, and I don't like that. Except I do and I hate them.

But as the DM can't you just cripple this yourself. I would allow multiclassing only if it was a natural progression for the character as is.
But my concern is limiting freedom for people who have a geniune concept that needs multiclassing. Shouldn't the DM be in charge of such power related concerns?

But then people argue towards the DM displaying favoritism towards other who did get their multi-class approved, and/or are generally just unhappy that the character concept they had got shot down.

Especially with the REALLY bad munchkins; I go to a public library for my DnD group, and we've had our fair share of munchkins come and go. As the employee who hosts the group said to us once: "I don't want to alienate people by saying 'No, that's too strong," but at the same time, he made characters so strong that any fight you guys could barely handle as a group he could solo with ease, and anything strong enough to fight him would annihilate you all in a heartbeat."

The group gets a major power rift when a few players are munchkins and the others aren't, or vice versa. It's something that the DM can address, but then he risks alienating the part of the group that got shafted; some DMs, like mine, feel forced to just put up with the group. Either way, it just adds unnecessary pressure on the DM, and takes away from the joy of the game; removing the major power boost multi-classing can provide was a good move, I think.

My only complaint is that you can't pick TWO multi-class feats; the abilities they grant are only so-so, and the only reason I looked at the multi-class feats to begin with is because they're the pre-req for another feat (Novice Power, which lets you exchange one of your class encounter powers for one of your multi-class encounter powers)

Actually I suppose that's all true. I only play with good friends and our group has far more crazy roleplaying than combat (we spent an 8 hour session on a single trip to a restraurant) and everyone has welld eveloped charaters.
Also we have some ridiculous power disparities but no one in our group really cares because they work together nicely. It comes from playing with old friends.
I didn't think that we're not typical I guess.
Though the change still will cause dilemmas.

It's not like you couldn't homebrew some 4e rules for a class anyway, and honestly, I haven't seen the potential behind it enough to be able to say "Hey Multiclassing is weaker/stronger/the same just better".

You can't twink with multiclassing because it's barely present. What they've done is create a few overpowered feats plus a few really shitty feats and that encompasses multiclassing in its entirety. It feels tacked on at the last minute. All of that aside, 3.5 uber-twinks only exist on message boards and in bad campaigns. It's a phantom issue.

See, this is my major problem with the addition thus far: I feel like I'm being parented. Options are being removed so that I can't possibly do too well or too poorly. There's versatility within the options I've been given, but not in the game as a whole.