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That's a good story, yes. In that case the character can be Re-Named, altering the Core Pattern. That would be a true new beginning.

My books are packed now, but I think it's even called the Renaming Ritual, or maybe just Naming Ritual and able to be used for Renaming.

Personally I never saw a problem with the option for multi-disciplines in my campaign. We have not gotten to a point yet where the character's could afford to pay the legend points to take on a second discipline but when the characters were discussed the subject came up.

One of the players wanted a ranger-esk character and was torn between Archer and Scout. He chose Archer but still is playing with an scout's mentality. It would be perfectly fine for him to take on the second discipline because that is his character's mindset. This would not create an overpowered munchkin class.

Another character chose Wizard as his character's discipline but we discussed at length that he wanted to learn all aspects of spell magic. I agreed he could eventually learn other caster disciplines. For the campaign, he is the only caster. They have already encountered others and found grimoires with spells to learn.

Earthdawn is a pay to play system. Every choice made for your character come at a cost. If you want to learn another discipline, it is a very costly matter. Time, money, legend points, etc. Setting a goal in my for your character and working towards it also drives the story telling.

If you don't feel that it should be in your campaign, that's fine too. I'm allowing it. The way I see is that if you have someone who dedicates all of their legend points to improving on discipline and another who paid to learn a second they each did what they wanted for their characters and both are comparatively at the same "power" level. They each paid the price for how they wanted to improve their characters.

Yah, I don't have a problem with multi Discipline characters. I use Talent Crises and enforce them when the character runs afoul of them for one of their Disciplines. I have noticed that since the Talent Options system was implemented, my players don't want to multi-discipline to "get the Talents they want" anymore. They play Humans now for Versatility, or setup MDs as story or ideal character goals.

I allow spellcasters to multi discipline because the concepts are similar between them all

I may allow other disciplines to have a second discipline if they have a very very good reason to do do (a life changing event)

From a mechanical standpoint it becomes very lucrative to pick up a second discipline at higher circles. For the cost of upgrading one talent to rank 8, you can have several circles worth of a second discipline. However, from a lore perspective it really doesn't fit, not even for the spellcasters. I personally would also feel happy if my group abolished it and leaves this kind of things to human versatility, although it hasn't come up often.