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Chapter 2: Character Creation / Leveling Up

Multiclassing

Source Starfinder Core Rulebook pg. 26
Most characters continue to advance in their chosen classes for their entire careers, gaining ever more impressive abilities. Sometimes, however, you might want your character to cross-train and pick up some of the abilities of a different class. When such a character levels up, instead of gaining the next level of his existing class, he can add a level of a new class, adding all the 1st-level class features of that class to his existing class features. This is referred to as “multiclassing.”

For example, let’s say a 5th-level soldier decides to dabble in the magical arts and adds 1 level of technomancer when he next advances in level (such a combination of levels is commonly written “soldier 5/technomancer 1”). Such a character retains the class features and abilities of a 5th-level soldier—his bonus feats, style techniques, armor and weapon proficiencies, and other class features—but also gains the class features and abilities of a 1st-level technomancer, such as the ability to cast 1st-level technomancer spells and the technomancer’s spell cache class feature. He adds all of the Hit Points, Stamina Points, base attack bonuses, and saving throw bonuses from the 1st-level technomancer on top of those gained from being a 5th-level soldier, and is still considered a 6thlevel character (his character level is 6th.)

It’s important to keep track of which effects and prerequisites rely on a character level versus class level. For example, feats might require a minimum class level or character level, while almost all class features are based on the character’s level in the class that grants that feature. Casting spells is an exception—when determining caster level, a character adds together his levels from different spellcasting classes (such as mystic and technomancer).

A multiclassed character can have more than one key ability score. For each class, your key ability score remains the same as normal for that class (and for the class features that rely on that score). For any key ability score calculation not tied to class, such as determining your maximum Resolve Points, use whichever key ability score has the highest value (and therefore the highest modifier).

You can take as many levels of as many different classes as you want, but while it might seem tempting to be a dilettante, spreading yourself thin comes with a cost. Since you always start at the ground floor with a new class, it’s easy to end up with a bunch of low-level abilities that can’t compete with the higher-level abilities of a single-class character of the same level. For instance, an envoy 3/soldier 4/technomancer 3 may be well-rounded, but she’s going to get stomped into pudding by a 10th-level soldier, and she will be consistently outperformed by the other 10th-level characters in her party.

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Multiclassing