Multi/switching classes in CARCOSA?

[raritus]

Hiyas!

Have any of your players axed you if it'll be possible to switch or multiclass in Carcosa? How do you handle it?

a)Hell yeah!
b)No way in Hell
c)Yes, but...
d)Something completely different...

?

Thanks!
r

[Mushgnome]

If I ever DM a Carcosa campaign again, I think I will simply eliminate the Sorcerer class, allowing any PC who performs the necessary steps to cast rituals. I have DM'd (non-Carcosa) classless games many times, and it is no problem.

[eaterofkittens]

The ability to kick an ass, ride a dinosaur, perform a ritual, or install a cybernetic arm are all skills. Thats what defines a character.

[geoffrey]

Carcosa has only two classes: fighters and sorcerers. Sorcerers can do everything that fighters can do, and just as well. Sorcerers are basically fighters who can also perform sorcerous rituals (with a mechanical price tag of having to acquire more xp to rise in level). Since the sorcerer class already "contains" the fighter class, there would be no advantage to a multi-classed fighter/sorcerer.

I would not allow a fighter to switch to a sorcerer, because I envision the latter spending 10 to 20 years in meditation and study in order to become a 1st-level sorcerer. I do not imagine sorcery to be something like algebra or Spanish that can merely be picked-up with a bit of study. Rather, the mind must be violently wrenched and molded into an unnatural state in order to become a sorcerer. Sorcery isn't merely a study. It is a way of life.

I would not allow a sorcerer to switch to a fighter, either. How could a sorcerer chose to "forget" two decades' worth of de-humanization and occult knowledge of the ways of the Snake-Men? The only advantage a sorcerer could get from switching to fighter is a lower xp cost to attain higher level. I'd simply tell such a player, "Your sorcerer can of course swear-off performing any more sorcerous rituals. He can become (outwardly) indistinguishable from a fighter. But his brain is too twisted by sorcery to be able to advance in fighting skill as swiftly as a fighter. You lack the relative simple-mindedness of a fighter. You know too much."

That's how I'd do it, anyway.