I am curious about what everyone thinks about hybrid classes in RPGs.

I define a hybrid class as a class that fits these criteria:
1. The class can fill the roles of multiple pure classes.
2, Those abilities are all a major component of the hybrid class's abilities.

For example, the Paladin class from AD&D is not a hybrid, as the spellcasting abilities are minor and could easily be ignored. The Paladin class in the Might and Magic series, however, is, since the class can fight well and cast powerful Cleric spells.

Some of my favorite hybrid classes are:
1. FF1 Red Mage/Wizard: Decent fighter, can cast spells eventually up to 7th level. (8th is the highest spell level) Could have used a healing spell at level 7.
2. FF3 DS Red Mage: lacking mid-game, but becomes good end-game. Can use Excalibur and Break Blade (and Ultima Weapon if you can do the Mognet Side Quests), making this class good at fighting. Can use 5th level magic, most notably including Curaga, allowing the Red Mage to heal while the party Devout is busy doing something else. On the other hand, Red Mages don't get many casts of 5th level magic, so they don't actually replace the Devout class. Does suffer from the fact that Black Magic is rather useless in the end-game however; if the game were better balanced, Blizzaga would be useful on one part of the final boss.
3. FF4 Sage/Lunarian. Can cast both White and Black magic, and can cast powerful spells of both types (even spells more powerful than you would normally expect to have at that part of the game), but has limited MP.

(Yes, I know they're all from the Final Fantasy series; that's just what I can think of. They do exist in other games as well.)

Arcane Warrior in Dragon Age: Origins

I'll just save us both time and tl;dr myself -

If the game is badly balanced with respect to versatility options, hybrid classes are generally either far too powerful, or far too weak. My favorite implementation of a hybrid class is the 3.5th edition AD&D rogue with prestige classes. My second favorite is Mystic Theurge, which is grossly imbalanced in all respects XD

Funny, people say the same thing about me.

Hm, in "Neverwinter Nights" I have one Warrior/Druid (or some like this) hybrid, which is doing very well. I like the idea of mixing classes/skilltrees of different classes. This was also a wonderfull thing in Titan Quest.
In some RPGs, like the Elder Scrolls games, you don`t even have a predefined class, but you rather develope your own class by choosing which skills to use/level up.

In Dragon's Dogma, the Mystic Knight (with some fighter and Warrior Augments, and perhaps some Mage and/or Sorcerer augments if you lean farther to the magical side of things) is a bad ass. the ability to use some fairly good mage spells and his own unique counters as well as a variety of sword and mace skills makes him a wall of power, especially with strength or magic augments.

I don’t know if Titan Quest qualifies. Here, every character gets to choose two different classes and then you have to pick those skills from these classes that work together best. Some combinations are more valid than others of course.

Hah, I ninja`d you!!! :-)

I guess that’s my punishment for only skimming the previous posts. But speaking about Titan Quest – Warfare, Dream Mastery and Nature Mastery are probably the most useful classes, since they synergize well with almost every other class.

Ah yeah, Dream Mastery, that came with the Add-on. :-) Yeah, its a very powerfull skilltree. Interesting concept was, that you had to put points into the skilltree itself, before you were able to put points in certain skills.

In Elder Scrolls I use what I call a "Swashbuckler".

She is a great with small swords, bows, and an excellent lock picker as well as being fast and agile. I ignore all the sneaking and hiding things hoping I can outrun and out jump anyone who catches me.

I suppose it's really just a classic Rogue only with a little more muscle, able to represent in a melee fight.

Well, by playing Oblivion, I came up with the perfect characterclass for me, which I called "Greymage". A mage with some more thiefish and assassin like skills, Bow, Destruction, Sneaking, and some mage stuff. Bow and sneaking can be a very good combination in Oblivion and in Skyrim. In Morrowind, sneaking doesn`t work right, maybe it`s broken.

In Morrowind, I usually combined sneaking and lock picking with bows, swords, light armour, and some utility spells like levitation, water breathing, water walking, faster running, and invisibility.

In the 3.5 edition rules NWN: Bard. Pick up a few levels of FTR and this is an ass-kicking class. If you want total cheese, add Red Dragon Disciple as well.

That's really funny I actually will make this same sort of archetype quite often as well (sans bows, usually a smattering of lockpicking).


I've actually still been having a ton of fun with the Druid in Pillars of Eternity.

It started off terribly overwhelming, as there were a lot of spells introduced early on all with varied effects. Now, however I'm loving the fact that I have an offensive spellcaster that can inflict various status effects AND a potent melee fighter that can jump right into the mix of a battle and tear people apart. VERY fun class to play.