Quote Originally Posted by Corran View Post
Yet, what seems like bloat to you might not necessarily seem bloat to me. I started playing dnd with 3e
Yeah, our frame of reference differs; but to be fair, a lot of us gobbled up the early bloat like Halloween candy. We wanted to try all kinds of different cool ideas, and balance for its own sake wasn't that big of a concern since the RAW fetish that seemed to come with the 3e hadn't developed at that point. DM tweaking of bloaty things was expected and common. Every game was a custom game, to a certain extent.
And if or when multiclassing breaks balance, then I agree that it's a good reason to ban it. I don't think that multiclassing is the source of any serious imbalance, but that's personal opinion and beside the point. The point is that I agree that if multiclassing causes balance issues then it's a very good decision to ban it.
Seems a rational position; I am not a "ban MC" sort; I like what 5e has tried to do with it. My core objection the 5e (and 3e for that matter) is Charisma based casters, and for 5e Warlocks should be int based casters, but that horse left the barn a long time ago.
Having a good idea about how you want your character to grow is ok by me. If you have a good idea about how you will mechanically support that, that's fine too as far as I am concerned. Granted, I have never played a character that wasn't influenced at least to a small extent by the campain itself, whether it's the story or the other players.
I totally like that way of character development plays out (italicized bit). The character grows with the adventures ...

Something I don't try to do in D&D is take a character from a movie, book, tv show, what have you, and try to make it for D&D. I am not sure how to explain this, but to me and for me, every D&D character I have ever made was, and is, organic to being a D&D character. If it resembles a different kind of character from another genre, fine, but that's never been a character goal of mine.