So issues with Multiclass Dabbler are actually what brought me to this forum in the first place. I hope it doesn't seem presumptuous to come out of left field and post in this thread, but it seemed odd to me that nobody's mentioned what strikes me as the biggest problem with Multiclass Dabbler and spellcasting.

Someone said earlier in the thread that it's ridiculous to take something called "dabbler" at level 9 and assume it'll be powerful, and implied that people who have a problem with the way multiclass spellcasting works are basing it on this. The issue is that for almost every other move in the game, that is exactly how it works! Almost no moves other than spellcasting scale directly to your level. Someone who takes Ritual or Shapeshifter through Multiclass Dabbler at level 9 is every bit as good at rituals or shapeshifting as someone who took it at level 2. Multiclass Dabbler is, indeed, that powerful - just not for spellcasting.

This leads to a special situation when you have a character class that can take more than one multiclass move. (It's not entirely coincidental that I'm playing a bard with an eye towards the arcane in an upcoming game. :) ) Consider the somewhat extreme case of a bard who takes Cast A Spell at level 2 via Multiclass Dabbler and Ritual at level 6 via Multiclass Initiate, vs. the same bard taking those two moves in the reverse order. At level 6, the two characters are exactly the same in their abilities and choices - except that one casts like a level 1 wizard and one casts like a level 5 wizard, with no other tradeoff. In other words, one choice is explicitly "better" than the other, rather than being simply "different". That's something that Dungeon World is otherwise extremely good about avoiding (I can't think of any other similar cases that don't involve Cast A Spell) and that's what makes it a "glaring flaw" as someone else put it - not one that cripples the system, but one that stands out because it's so unlike how the rest of the system is designed.

At the same time, I don't have a good solution for it - the system obviously should allow for the "fighter who's studied a little bit of magic" because that's a genre staple, but at the same time it feels wrong that it arbitrarily punishes the "bard who's also a dab hand with sorcery" if you take the associated moves in the "wrong" order.

On a vaguely related note - what's up with the Thief being the only class that can't pick up Cast A Spell somehow? The Gray Mouser was a wizard's student, after all. :)

Anyhow, to get back to more concrete issues after that long post about Cast A Spell, I had another rules question about Multiclass Dabbler. It was posted earlier in the thread that someone who picks up a move that's interdependent with another move gets both moves, which is fine. What about more complex dependencies? I'm thinking of druid moves here specifically. Shapeshifter and Spirit Speech are each dependent on either Born Of The Soil or Studied Essence to do anything meaningful, but not technically both (since either way you get a "library" of shapes to change into or creatures to talk to). If you take Shapeshifter, do you get one, the other, or both? Likewise, Born Of The Soil is dependent on either of those moves to give it something to do. Which moves do you get if you take Born Of The Soil? Or can you not take a "library" move except as an appendage to an "active" move?


Edit: A partial solution to the bard situation just struck me: count the character's level in that class starting from the level that the character first learned a move from that class. You still have the situation of Cast A Spell not working the same way as any other move, but at least you don't get arbitrary bonuses or penalties based on whether you took Ritual before Cast A Spell or vice versa.