D&D Multiclassing Guide

When you gain a level, you can put it into a new class instead of your current one. A “Rogue 3 / Monk 9” character has three rogue levels and nine monk levels; their character level is 12, and their proficiency bonus (+4 at level 12) is set by that total. You keep the hit points, features, and proficiencies of every class you have taken — but with three important catches: there are ability-score requirements, you gain only a reduced set of proficiencies from each new class, and spellcasting uses a special combined rule. The rest of this page is those three things, done correctly.

Blending classes is powerful, but the game charges three structural “taxes” for it. Pay them knowingly and you come out ahead; pay them by accident and you get all the downsides of two classes and the payoff of neither.

• The stat tax. You must meet an ability-score minimum (almost always 13) in both the class you’re leaving and the one you’re joining — full table below.
• The ASI delay. Ability Score Improvements and feats are tied to your class level, not your character level. A Fighter 3 / Rogue 1 is a 4th-level character but gets no ASI, because neither class has reached 4. Every dip pushes your feats further out.
• Extra Attack doesn’t stack. Five levels of Fighter and five of Barbarian still attack twice, not three times — the most common trap for martial multiclasses (more below).

To take a level in a new class — and to keep advancing the one you already have — you must meet the ability-score minimum for both. Almost every prerequisite is a 13 in the class’s key ability:

Note: Monk, Paladin, and Ranger each need two abilities at 13, which makes them the hardest classes to multiclass into on the standard array.

Multiclassing does not give you a new class’s full starting proficiencies. You get a smaller, fixed set — and crucially, no new saving-throw proficiencies (those come only from your first class) and no second set of starting equipment:

The classic trap: multiclassing into Fighter grants light and medium armor, shields, and martial weapons — but not heavy armor. Many a would-be plate-wearing dip is undone by that one missing word.

If you have levels in two or more spellcasting classes, you do not add their slots together. Instead you work out a single combined caster level and read your slots off one table. The combined level is:

• Full the levels in each full caster — Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard.
• Half your levels in each half caster — Paladin and Ranger (rounded; see below).
• None of your Warlock levels — Pact Magic is a separate pool with its own short-rest slots.

Look your combined caster level up in this table (it is the standard full-caster slot progression). The slots you cast them with are still limited by the highest spell level each class can actually learn:

Warlock is the exception. A Warlock 3 / Bard 5, for instance, has a combined caster level of 5 (from the bard) for its normal slots — and, separately, two 2nd-level Pact Magic slots that come back on a short rest. Two pools, tracked independently. Mixing them up is the single most common multiclass mistake. But the pools are not walled off: Pact Magic slots are real spell slots — spend them to cast any spell you know or prepare from your other classes too, and (in the 2014 rules) to fuel a Paladin’s Divine Smite.

Spell slots combine; almost nothing else does. If two of your classes grant Extra Attack, you take the higher one — they never add up, so a Fighter 5 / Ranger 5 still makes two attacks, not three. Beyond that, a handful of rules trip people up every time:

• Per-class features use their own level. A Rogue’s Sneak Attack, a Barbarian’s Rage, a Monk’s Ki and Martial Arts die all scale with that class’s level, never your character total.
• Cantrips use your character level. The exception that surprises everyone — cantrip damage scales with your total level, so a Fighter 18 / Wizard 2 still throws a full 4d10 Fire Bolt.
• Unarmored Defense locks to your first class. You can’t gain it twice; a Barbarian/Monk keeps one AC formula — whichever class came first — for good.
• Sneak Attack needs a finesse or ranged weapon, not Dexterity. Finesse only means you may use Dex; a Barbarian/Rogue can swing a rapier with Strength to trigger Reckless Attack and Sneak Attack at once.
• Hit points and saves are set once. Maximum hit die only at level 1, and saving-throw proficiencies only from your very first class.

Every line above is a real character at a real table getting quietly cheated out of power they were sure they had. Track them and you are not that character — or let the generator key each feature to the right level and never think about it again.

You don’t have to split evenly. A single level in another class — a “dip” — can buy a big, immediate boost for the price of delaying your main class by one level. Two SRD dips earn their keep:

• Fighter 1 — all armor and shields plus a Fighting Style from a single level. Take it as your first class and you also gain Constitution save proficiency (gold for concentration casters); take it later and you keep the armor and style but not the save.
• Cleric 1 — armor and shields, a few prepared cleric spells (Bless, Cure Wounds, Guidance), and a full caster level toward your combined slots. A Wizard or Sorcerer gives up almost nothing on slot progression for a lot of utility.

The cost is always the same: a dip delays your capstone and your next ASI. Worth it for a defining boost, rarely worth it on a whim.

A handful that pull their weight — the character first, then the engine that drives it (all SRD classes):

• Paladin / Sorcerer — the sorcadin. A holy knight so brimming with raw magic it bleeds off his blade as radiant fire. Both run on Charisma, so the sorcerer’s deep slot pool becomes a smite battery: dump those slots into Divine Smite, and Quicken a spell to cast and still swing in the same turn.
• Cleric / Wizard — the answer to everything. A scholar-priest who has both read the spell and prayed for it. Two full casters whose levels stack into a high combined caster level — both spell lists, and a deep pool of high slots to power them.
• Barbarian / Fighter — the wall that hits back. The thing the rest of the party hides behind. Rage soaks the blows, Action Surge doubles the output, and a pure Strength bruiser simply refuses to fall down.
• Fighter / Rogue — the duelist. The fight is over before you have finished drawing your sword. Action Surge lands a brutal opening Sneak Attack, then you skirmish out of reach — a Dexterity build that hits hard and is murder to pin.
• Bard / Warlock — the one who read the wrong contract. All charm on stage, a debt humming underneath. A Charisma caster with bard slots and a separate short-rest Pact Magic pool, so the music never stops.

The trade-off: every level you spend on a second class is a level your main class’s high-end features are delayed. Multiclassing is about earlier breadth, not a free upgrade.

Picture a caster who has turned themselves into a magical machine gun. The “Sorlock” (Warlock / Sorcerer) is the cleanest demonstration of why two spell pools working together is so strong — and it is entirely SRD. The engine has three parts:

• Eldritch Blast — the attack, splitting into more beams as your total character level climbs.
• Agonizing Blast — the Warlock invocation that adds your Charisma modifier to every beam.
• Quickened Spell — Sorcerer metamagic to fire it as a bonus action and cast something else the same turn.

The trick that powers it all day: Pact Magic slots recharge on a short rest, and a Sorcerer can convert spell slots into sorcery points. Refresh the Warlock slots on a short rest, turn them into points, and spend those on Quickened Spell — a Charisma-fueled blaster that rarely runs dry, every piece of it from the SRD. (Whether Pact Magic slots can feed Font of Magic is one of those famously-argued table calls — most groups allow it; clear it with your DM first.)

The rules above are the reason multiclass sheets are so easy to get wrong by hand. So don’t — describe the character in a sentence on the character creator (try “a rogue 3 / monk 9 shadow assassin”) and a deterministic engine builds the full sheet: combined spell slots, each class’s own save DC, Warlock Pact Magic kept in its own pool, Extra Attack taken as the max, and every per-class feature scaled to the right level. The numbers are computed, not guessed — and cross-checked against D&D Beyond. Works on both the 2014 and 2024 (5.5e) rules.

Everything above — and everything this tool builds — comes from the free System Reference Document, a subset of fifth edition. Many of the most-talked-about multiclass builds lean on subclasses, feats, and spells from the paid sourcebooks, which sit outside the SRD. Our generator stays strictly SRD-legal, so it won’t roll these — but here’s what people mean when they search for them, and where the rules live.

• The Hexadin — a famously durable Paladin/Warlock build where a single Charisma score powers both spells and weapon swings. Hinges on the Hexblade patron, which isn’t in the SRD.
• The Gloomstalker Assassin — a Ranger / Rogue / Fighter ambusher built to end fights in the first round. Needs the Gloom Stalker and Assassin subclasses, both outside the SRD (and notably reined in by the 2024 rules).
• The Hexblade Sorlock — the popular Warlock / Sorcerer blaster, usually dipped into Hexblade for weapon attacks and armor; that dip is non-SRD, though a pure SRD Sorcerer / Warlock blaster is still very doable.
• Signature dips — favourites like a Battle Master Fighter dip or an Artificer dip also live beyond the SRD (the SRD Fighter subclass is the Champion, and the Artificer isn’t an SRD class at all).

One bit of legend, for flavour: a famous combo lets a level-1 Halfling stop a city-sized dragon in its tracks with a single opportunity attack — using the Sentinel feat, which (you guessed it) is also outside the SRD.

These options live in the official D&D sourcebooks (and on D&D Beyond) — we don’t reproduce their rules here. The upside of the SRD line we hold: this tool is free, needs no books, and every build it rolls stands on openly-licensed ground.

• Character creator — build any single- or multiclass character, levels 1–20.
• Leveling guide — what you get at every level, 1–20.
• Character sheet — printable, or auto-filled from a build.
• Character ideas — 40+ concepts to build in one click.