This seems very silly and is kind of broken. It doesn't make sense that if, for example, the character got to level 3 as a thief and now wants to be a magic user, that he suddenly loses all those level 3 thief abilities. I think multi-classing is stupid to begin with, but this makes it even more so.
AD&D was very much a rewrite of OD&D, the concepts of multi-classing were really to satisfy the original Elf Fighter/Magic-User issue, and the concept of dual classing was dragged in as well to detail the ambiguous "changing character class" (Book 1 Page 10). I do have to say the simpler Basic rules of 4 human classes and class-as-race makes it so much easier.
looking at it from 2025 eyes, yes its kind of lame. It was a way to balance things in the early '80s for pre 3e d20 D&D. Once Monte Cook came along and redefined D&D framework for what we use now, and gave classes more abilities, it makes sense. How we handled it, back then, because even I thought it was dumb, was that you still could use things, but you wouldn't get experience for using it.
This seems very silly and is kind of broken. It doesn't make sense that if, for example, the character got to level 3 as a thief and now wants to be a magic user, that he suddenly loses all those level 3 thief abilities. I think multi-classing is stupid to begin with, but this makes it even more so.
AD&D was very much a rewrite of OD&D, the concepts of multi-classing were really to satisfy the original Elf Fighter/Magic-User issue, and the concept of dual classing was dragged in as well to detail the ambiguous "changing character class" (Book 1 Page 10). I do have to say the simpler Basic rules of 4 human classes and class-as-race makes it so much easier.
looking at it from 2025 eyes, yes its kind of lame. It was a way to balance things in the early '80s for pre 3e d20 D&D. Once Monte Cook came along and redefined D&D framework for what we use now, and gave classes more abilities, it makes sense. How we handled it, back then, because even I thought it was dumb, was that you still could use things, but you wouldn't get experience for using it.