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Once he
added knight as a secondary class, Ralsu had to get in close to fight.

Levels, Experience, Talents,
and Attributes

I
left Logar heading south for Pioneer Village (the starting town) as a
level 1 knight/ 1 mage. Even though I had ten levels of mage, the level
my secondary class could not exceed that of my primary class. So, when
I gained a level, I became a 2 knight/ 2 mage; the system scaled the
level of my secondary class automatically.

A quick look at my
skills (talents in RoM) revealed two interesting tidbits. First, I had
a very low pool of talents points (TP), which players spend to raise
the level of their skills. A little like a skill tree in a hack and
slash game, talents in RoM can increase by one point per character
level. Players don’t earn enough TP to level each skill to the max;
that’s where customization comes into play. The reason my TP was so low
is because the TP and XP for each class is completely separate. I had
started over at zero in both columns when I became a knight.

The other thing I discovered was that I had no mage talents
available to put in my hotbar. Some talents are class-specific and
cannot be carried over when that class is set to secondary. Plasma
Arrow and Flame, my staple spells as a mage, are class-specific. It
wasn’t until my knight reached level four (and my mage levels scaled
up) that I had access to Fireball, the first of my mage talents that
could be used with mage set to secondary. Even then, the talent was at
its weakest level. As my levels increased, the power of Fireball
continued to rise until it reached the highest I had developed it,
Fireball +5. I then tried to spend some TP to increase Fireball only to
find I could not spend knight TP on a mage talent—even a talent that
counts when mage is my secondary class. These are important lessons to
remember about dual-classing.

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It's safe
to say that Ralsu "hearts" his character.

Finally, an important aspect of any class is its attributes or
statistics. All characters of the same class start with identical
attributes, and they seem to increase at a fixed rate based on class
with each new level. Customization comes in two forms: tweaking with
gear and the attributes of the secondary class. The Dual Class System
gives a character a bonus of 10% of the secondary class attributes.
Since a naked level one mage has a strength score of 10, setting mage
to the secondary class results in +1 strength.

Putting it All Together and
Making a Wise Pairing

Unless you are a super-casual gamer who enjoys a little chaos
in your character development, I recommend doing some planning before
making a character in RoM. Consider talents, available gear, and
attributes before making a dual classed character. For instance, the
rogue’s stealth talent is class-specific, so you cannot add secondary
levels of rogue to your primary priest to allow him to hide in
dangerous places. Similarly, rogues can wear better armor than priests,
so that pairing will require you to keep a spare set of gear. Finally,
rogues have poor wisdom growth, and wisdom is a key attribute for
priests.

Despite the potential negatives, a rogue could make the
perfect dual class choice for a priest based on some other talents. The
ability to inflict damage over time in the form of bleeding could work
very well for a player who wants a priest who does some melee damage.
One swing adds the bleed effect, and the rest of the time can be
devoted to healing. For the priest who wants to be able to contribute
damage without getting into the fray, the rogue talent to use
projectile weapons could be just the trick.

Some very helpful official forum members compiled  href="http://us-forum.runesofmagic.com/showthread.php?t=123"
target="_blank">a list of secondary skills and an
explanation of the ground rules I explain here, and Ten Ton Hammer will
continue to investigate the Dual Class System in style="font-style: italic;">Runes of Magic to
bring our readers the information they need to make good decisions.