I think it’s pretty reasonable that Paragon paths aren’t completely compatible with multiclassing, if you’re primarily a fighter but multi into Ranger, it doesn’t make a ton of sense that you’d be able to become a Paragon of archers among rangers. This is a bit disappointing though, and I’ll have to look into how restrictive other paragon paths are.

Essentially everything that you considered “useful” was moved to the PHB or is on hold for later books, so you should probably just be happy that you’re such a good DM you don’t have to buy the DMG and don’t need any of the excellent/useful advice that it contains.

1) Multiclassing is fundamentally broken in 4ed, which is to say, it doesn’t really work. You can take a power from another class, but because you don’t count as an artful dodge or star pact warlock or something, the power doesn’t really work for you.

2) Paragon paths are fundamentally incompatible with multiclassing. None of the Ranger paths can be taken by multiclass characters, and most of the other ones have issues, too.

3) The 4ed DMG is worthless. It’s 200 pages about who should bring the nachos to the game table. It might have some value to a new DM, but for experienced gamers, it’s a waste of space. For the first time (since 1ed) I’m going to play D&D without buying the DMG, since there’s no benefit to having it.

Next month and co-designed by Mearls look to be correct!

EDIT: And it’s out!
http://www.wizards.com/download.asp?filename=365_Artificer.pdf

That panel was a lot of fun. Mike is a really nice guy and he showed a lot of grace when I asked about Pathfinder. I’m much closer to investing in 4e now because of that panel.

Also, thanks for the transcription. This makes it a lot easier to remember what all went down there.

One addition I would make is that, when asked if the Artificer was being dropped, Mike’s response was, “If that was true, I would have had a lot more free time a month and a half ago.” This seemed to me to mean that Mike himself is involved in the design and testing of the Artificer.

Comments regarding the “no one-class power sources” also indicate that Artificers will be Arcane this time around. This is something that may cause a minor stir among Eberron fans.

They add a bit of spice to the concepts, but that seems to be the only difference between a Divine Defender and a Marital Defender. Paladins and Fighters have some flavor differnces, but the power source is pretty low key all told.

Personally, I really LIKE that.

Sultan: I think part of the idea is to launch first in the magazines, get feedback, and then print the final versions in a book.

My only concern is that a lot of the stuff that didn’t make it in that will be coming out later will appear in magazines as opposed to new books. We will see I suppose.

Agree entirely about the reasoning behind limiting Action Points, and he explains it well. Also, it’s good to see that the system was built from the ground up to be modular from the start. Hopefully this will mean that later supplements and future Core books will gel better than their 3e counterparts.

Thanks again