Quote Originally Posted by Gnaeus View Post
What kind of terrible lego build only has one color? Your black ship is better with some well selected purple or red highlights. If you WANT a rainbow ship, thats awesome. And you should absolutely do that. But you certainly shouldn't feel the slightest pressure to only use grey bricks if you want to use others.

Class based RPGs are the worst. No one should have an identity like "Fighter" Luckily, 3.PF (or 5e) is not truly a class based RPG. It gives you building blocks so you can have the exact number of fighter pieces and druid pieces and template pieces you want. The best reason that a shapeshifter or oracle should dip monk is because they want the stuff you get from that level of monk. No better reason exists or could exist. Archetypes are fine, but are only actually a substitution if you have an archetype covering every possible combination of every possible class from Monk 1/Druid 9 to Druid 1/Monk 9 with every other single class in the game you may want to throw in for good measure, in case you wanted to be a rogue 1/monk 1/druid 8 or something.
3.PF IS a class based RPG. It's kind of in the name "class." Each of the classes are a complete aesthetic on their own. They are not just a single color. You're oversimplifying the classes for the sake of your argument. Which might be how you actually see them. Though that doesn't mean you aren't. Unearthed Arcana has a generic class variant that would be more supportive of the type of character building you seem to enjoy. Just needs some adaptation.

Quote Originally Posted by Kurald Galain View Post
To be fair, there are thousands of multiclass options and only a very small handful that I'd consider cheesy.

Like, druid 9 / monk 1 is not a "jumbled mess of colors" but is a "black spaceship with an accent". I see nothing wrong with a druid who has trained (in a monastery) to be better at unarmed combat at the expense of spellcasting; and a good GM can tell the difference between an actual reason and a sloppy after-the-fact justification.

Conversely, if you end up with something like paladin 2 / monk 3 / bloodrager 1 / slayer 4 / cleric 1, then that would be a "jumbled mess of colors".
If the player actually wants to play as a druid with monk training, that would also include the fact that they got that training and the necessary mindset to complete it. I'm not against it at all. I'm against the bleaching of what classes represent just because a player wants to powergame.