Multiclassed characters yay or nay?

[Aerich]

If you have HoW, a ranger/cleric will only gain access to druid spells at the same rate it would as a ranger. E.g. the R/C will have to wait until lvl 6 to be offered the option of memorizing lvl 1 druid spells and until lvl 9 (iirc) to be offered lvl 2 druid spells. This was not the case in vanilla IWD, which did allow a R/C to have access to druid spells at the same rate as access to cleric spells.

I tend to play on higher difficulty levels (2 HoF games going right now, including one started with lvl 1 characters), so the XP hit for multiclassing doesn't bother me. I'd much rather have each character be able to do 3-4 things quite well than to have characters only be able to do 1-2 things very well.

For those interested, the HoF from scratch party consists of Paladin, Ranger/Cleric, Fighter/Druid, Fighter/Mage, Fighter/Thief, and Bard. All four two-class characters are multiclassed. If you get enough XP, a multiclass will eventually become better than even a relatively high level (10+) dual class in most respects (the exception is melee weapons because a dc fighter can get grandmaster {5 stars} while a multiclass can only get specialization {2 stars}). The bard is strictly a singer and spellcaster.