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People are going to find combinations that may not have sounded OP initially, but ended up doing things you weren't expecting, such as Sohei-Bolt Ace (flurry with crossbows and dex to damage and attacks resolved as touch), or Monk-Cleric (wisdom has a double advantage of buffing your AC and your primary spellcasting stat... add in a guided amulet of natural attacks and the Blood Crow Strike spell and the character jumps in power).
My suggestion is to work with your players so they can have the freedom to create what they want to play but also keeping in mind that they aren't the only ones at the table (and thus overpowering everyone else).
My group hasn't played gestalt in awhile and we just started a new game with that mindset. My GM is currently banning hybrid classes as gestalt (he has a gut reaction that it might be too much, but he hasn't fully broken it down yet to verify). That said, he's open to discussion on the matter if someone really wants to play a hybrid, possibly instead of doing a gestalt.
To be honest, however, banning fighter/rogue you might as well not play gestalt. Those are two of the most basic character classes, and if you feel that's too much power, then you might be overwhelmed by Wizard/Sage Sorcerers, or Fighter/Monks, or Druid/Barbarians.
Not to sound snarky, but what class combination(s) were you thinking would be fine? I seem to recall in Unearthed Arcana they suggested gestalting with Expert (basically gives most people a broader skill range).
Vivisectionist//Fighter 1, Vivisectionist/Rogue X
Sneak every level.
Off the top of my head an Investigator//Magus (Kensai) Magus//Duelist might be interesting (lots of uses for int) or a Abyssal Bloodline Bloodrager//Scarred Witch Doctor (oodles of CON and witch spells for debuffing targets)
(I'm not used to the // way of indicating gestalt... I typically use hyphens :P )
I guess I should reiterate, unlike people on here who thrive of playing Pathfinder, for many years, My friends and I do it on our spare time. So I'd like my original question looked at again please, because everyone here clearly read what they wanted to read, not the topic. Not to sound "snarky," but we're playing this casually, not crunching numbers to min/max.
Thank you.
I'm sorry that I came across poorly. To be honest, I've played 3 times in the past 3 months, and before that it was...4 or 5 years.
What I've suggested I found either on these boards, or by browsing d20pfsrd casually.
Your original question, I believe, was about combining Gestalt and Standard, with different progressions. This could work, but it might be harder on you. From what I remember, the rules for advancement were that you calculated the Challenge Rating of encounters higher because of gestalt. If some of your players are playing gestalt and some aren't, that would make figuring out the CR a potentially difficult task. If you are just using the progression speeds instead of the CR increase, that may balance that out, but you may also get to the point of a 2-3 level disparity among the group. Combine that with other boons you mentioned (items, feats, etc.) people might start going away from gestalt, unless they are really tied to a specific concept.
But as long as everyone is having fun, that's all that matters, right?
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Completely setting the gestalt business aside for the moment, XP is something of a holy cow in Pathfinder. In 3.5, xp was a currency to be bartered, and dozens of systems revolved around spending it. Pathfinder removed all of them. My personal advice is to keep everyone in the party at the same xp total, no matter what they play (or how many sessions they miss); having PCs at varying levels make encounters difficult to balance, and it can result in the lower level PCs wondering why they're still showing up.
Honestly, I would probably recommend, rather than balancing based on xp, let the non-gestalts pick up a mythic path. You may want to look around the forums and see how other GMs have adjusted the mythic rules to make them more playable (ie, removing the crit buff to Mythic Power Attack). If you don't want to use the mythic system, consider allowing the non-gestalters access to templates or even bestiary monsters as starting races.
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I don't think outlawing any combos should be necessary... If there's a particular mechanic you don't like (like attacking touch AC with a gunslinger), then just outlaw the class/feat/whatever entirely and be done with it. I ran something just like this a while back- you could gestalt on the slow xp track or play a standard character on the fast track. Casters mostly went single class- the earlier access to new spell levels was just too important to them, and extra HD largely made up for not having the extra toughness of gestalt. The melees were kind of split, with some going for the extra BAB/HD and others going for the extra benefits of a second class- their power levels were pretty similar generally speaking. We also started with around 15,000xp (4th or 6th), which probably helped- at 1st level there would be a pretty obvious gap.
You don't Sneak every level with that. Gestalt rules prevent such shenanigans. When two classes grant the same ability, you only get the one with the better progression.Vivisectionist//Fighter 1, Vivisectionist/Rogue X
Sneak every level.
Off the top of my head an Investigator//Magus (Kensai) Magus//Duelist might be interesting (lots of uses for int) or a Abyssal Bloodline Bloodrager//Scarred Witch Doctor (oodles of CON and witch spells for debuffing targets)
(I'm not used to the // way of indicating gestalt... I typically use hyphens :P )
I had a feeling that was pushing it. Oh well. :-) Vivisectionist//Pistolero then? :-D
To the original poster, I'm still curious what class combinations you'd allow. Have your players given you an idea of what they'd like to play?
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I guess I should reiterate, unlike people on here who thrive of playing Pathfinder, for many years, My friends and I do it on our spare time. So I'd like my original question looked at again please, because everyone here clearly read what they wanted to read, not the topic. Not to sound "snarky," but we're playing this casually, not crunching numbers to min/max.
Thank you.
They actually did answer your questions, maybe not the way you wanted but they did. You specifically say something is "OP" in your op so that meant you'll looking at "balance" in regards to class combos. If you are as you say casually playing then unless you specify exactly what is allowed and not allowed no one can really give you advice beyond the no don't do it if you think Fighter/rogue is too strong. Note that fighter/rogue is like the most casual gestalt you can make.
As to playing with people at different levels then no that also doesn't work well at all in pathfinder because to do that you as a gm would have to min/max the encounters to ensure the lowbies aren't massacred while the high levels don't have a cake walk.
I'm also not being snarky but it just seemed you didn't like the answers provided.
People are going to find combinations that may not have sounded OP initially, but ended up doing things you weren't expecting, such as Sohei-Bolt Ace (flurry with crossbows and dex to damage and attacks resolved as touch), or Monk-Cleric (wisdom has a double advantage of buffing your AC and your primary spellcasting stat or make a zen archer monk/cleric ... add in a guided amulet of natural attacks and the Blood Crow Strike spell and the character jumps in power).
My suggestion is to work with your players so they can have the freedom to create what they want to play but also keeping in mind that they aren't the only ones at the table (and thus overpowering everyone else).
My group hasn't played gestalt in awhile and we just started a new game with that mindset. My GM is currently banning hybrid classes as gestalt (he has a gut reaction that it might be too much, but he hasn't fully broken it down yet to verify). That said, he's open to discussion on the matter if someone really wants to play a hybrid, possibly instead of doing a gestalt.
To be honest, however, banning fighter/rogue you might as well not play gestalt. Those are two of the most basic character classes, and if you feel that's too much power, then you might be overwhelmed by Wizard/Sage Sorcerers, or Fighter/Monks, or Druid/Barbarians.
Not to sound snarky, but what class combination(s) were you thinking would be fine? I seem to recall in Unearthed Arcana they suggested gestalting with Expert (basically gives most people a broader skill range).
My current group is doing this now. Our DM dropped point buy from 25 for non gestalt to 15 for gestalt, and 5/6 players went gestalt anyway. Simply tell them you want them to be able to do a lot, without focusing on being overpowering in one area, or taking every role, and leaving players excluded. If you dont think thatworks, or they dont like it, dont gestalt. It's a headache for any DM to track, especially if your players cant conform. Now if they CAN conform, make sure they know you have the final say on builds. I currently have a level 5 dragonrider/cavalier and he is super nasty in melee as a flying targeting death ray, or i can carpet bomb a few guys each turn. What do i do outside of fight? Not much. This lets someone else be the healer, someone else be the face and someone else be the skill monkey. Everyone wins.
If you have reservasions about characters becoming OP. I belive the solution is to go with non gestalt 15 point buy. You will still have characters that can do heroic stuff but they will requier much less costum made challenges since they will be baseline heroes.
If figther//rogue is over powered then most normal classes are.
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It's really hard to make a judgment call. Gestalt produces a lot of very cool character concepts and can be really fun to play. The problem in my experience is that gestalt characters vary wildly in power with some barely better that a standard class and others so great that they will outshine the whole rest of the Gestalt Party. It's really hard to balance around.
As a long time GM my experience tells me that wildly varying power within the party makes the game more math intensive, not less. At least for the GM. You need to make sure that all partly members are appropriately challenged, but challenging a powerful party member can accidentally kill a weaker one very quickly meaning a GM needs to walk a very find line which requires math to find.
I would personally just have everyone use the same XP table and the gestalt divide their XP evenly between two classes, but your idea works out to be about the same.
As far as banning combos, I wouldn't even waste the effort figuring out what you ban. Give the players a warning that Gestalt can break the game if abused and tell them not to intentionally build anything crazy.
Pointing out that Onyxlion has a wonderful post (and it has nothing to do with liking his name). :D
Mostly, I think that what we've got here, is a failure to communicate. (Or, if you prefer. :D)
The entire problem is coming at this from a perspective that makes sense to each other, so the best thing would be to lay out some ground rules and a basic "this is where we start and why" to best be able to help you.
I guess I should reiterate, unlike people on here who thrive of playing Pathfinder, for many years, My friends and I do it on our spare time. So I'd like my original question looked at again please, because everyone here clearly read what they wanted to read, not the topic. Not to sound "snarky," but we're playing this casually, not crunching numbers to min/max.
Thank you.
I'll gladly look at it again - I love gestalt stuff! - but I want to be clear: the people that mentioned possible issues weren't (necessarily) doing so because the "read what they wanted to read", but rather because there was a massive red flag that they felt they should address. Before we start, though,
Just read trough with this forum, I guess it's about chaining sneak attack to everything.Magus//Rogue is on the OP list? Why?
'Cause I'm going to be honest... if that one is, you probably won't like gestalt.
kestral's observations seem pretty accurate, to me. If you don't mind, could you link, or at least provide a url to the discussion you are looking at that helped you arrive at that conclusion? Anything you do to provide more context for why you view things the way you do will help everyone here have a more solid basis for discussion of the situation as you see it rather than from our own biased perspectives. Thanks!
I'm going to be pretty straight too the point on this topic. Looked into Gestalt style campaigns, and I like the concept, so i wanted to introduce the idea to my next campaign, but with a twist.
Certain classes cant be combined to prevent OP play, like magus/rogue or fighter/rogue etc.
If players chose to play as gestalt, they are on the slow level progression track.
If players want to play as standard characters in a gestalt game, their exp progression would be on the easy - medium progression, along with a bonus or two regarding items, feats, loot income, role play elements etc.
Thoughts?
Okay, so, the emphasis/bolding/etc. as well as the "" additions are obviously mine.
First thing's first: I love gestalt! Woo! So much fun!
Now for the notes.
NOTE 0: by stating "Thoughts?" at the end, you open yourself to criticism from all angles of the concept. By definition, when you leave something so short and open-to-interpretation, people are going to interpret it in ways that you might not have intended. This is not a slam or dig or attack - anyone familiar with my own posting history knows I can easily make such oversights m'self - but rather, it's an explanation for why you weren't getting the answers that you were seeking.
Your "reiteration" is good, as it goes a long way toward making your actual question a bit more clear, but I want to point out why people are mentioning things like they are.
NOTE 1: Why do you consider the fighter/rogue over-powered? I'm asking, because I'm not entirely sure what your standard of "not over-powered" is. I understand that you're not into number-crunching - that's fine. I'm just not seeing why you're drawing the line at Fighter/Rogue. Would Sorcerer/Wizard be fine? Why? Ranger/Rogue? Fighter/Ranger? What combinations make sense to you? Are you looking only at the Core classes? Core+ACG? All of the classes? What are you operating out of, design-space-wise?
I ask these things with an understanding that you're not into number crunching, but with a desire to communicate with you. As it stands, you have made a statement about what is OP, creating a standard from which to judge; the problem is that it's a standard that makes it hard to guess what isn't OP, because it hints at a group dynamic that doesn't square with the preponderance of PF experiences.
This is not snark or any kind of dig at you or your play style - my play style is wildly divergent from standard PF!
Instead, it's an attempt at understanding where you guys are coming from to better answer the question within the context of your gaming style.
Maybe list a number of "good" combinations (and why you feel they work for your style), and a number of "bad" combinations (and why you feel they don't work for your style)?
NOTE 2: Nope. No sir, I'm going to shut you down right here, and say "No, this part isn't a good idea."; as to why, let's look at the advancement chart. Everyone starts at first level - so far, so good; you'll get about twenty encounters (though probably less, practically-speaking). Non-gestalt folks'll get to second level at either 2,000 or 1,300 - they will be rocking +1 to attacks and saves, and +1 level of class abilities for either about ten encounters, more or less (though probably a couple less) or about seven (depending on your track.
The gestalt folks'll catch up, it'll become uneven again almost immediately with fast-track XP (two-ish encounters), and uneven in 13.5 encounters with medium-track XP... leaving 16 encounters where the gestalts are behind. They'll be even for about 7.5 encounters (presuming medium progression), before being uneven for 25 encounters... and the gap continues to grow. Beyond that it's impossible to compare both medium and fast to the slow progressions simultaneously, so I'll just break it down as follows:
- FAST v. SLOW: by level five/seven, the non-gestalts are going to be always two levels lower than their non-gestalt brethren, which will sometimes equate to three levels lower, but sometimes not. It will never widen constantly beyond this two-level gap, but it will be an ever-more-frequent three-level-gap the higher in levels you go. This level difference is roughly equivalent to giving the non-gestalt characters about a +4 to all their ability scores (though class abilities usually account for much more power than ability scores).
- MEDIUM v. SLOW: by level three/two you will have a one level gap that will never be closed. You will never get that "always two-levels" gap that you experience with the FAST v. SLOW, but the two-level difference between them does increase in frequency the higher you go in levels. This level difference is roughly equivalent to giving the non-gestalt characters about a +2 to all their ability scores (though, again, class abilities usually account for much more power than ability scores).
1300// level 2 // level 1 // level 1
2000// level 2 // level 2 // level 1
3000// level 2 // level 2 // level 2
3300// level 3 // level 2 // level 2
5000// level 3 // level 3 // level 2
6000// level 4 // level 3 // level 2
7500// level 4 // level 3 // level 3
9000// level 4 // level 4 // level 3
10k // level 5 // level 4 // level 3
14k // level 5 // level 4 // level 4
15k // level 6 // level 5 // level 4
23k // level 7 // level 6 // level 5
34k // level 8 // level 6 // level 5
35k // level 8 // level 7 // level 6
50k // level 9 // level 7 // level 6
51k // level 9 // level 8 // level 6
53k // level 9 // level 8 // level 7
71k // level 10 // level 8 // level 7
75k // level 10 // level 9 // level 7
77k // level 10 // level 9 // level 8
105k// level 11 // level 10 // level 8
115k// level 11 // level 10 // level 9
145k// level 12 // level 10 // level 9
155k// level 12 // level 11 // level 9
160k// level 12 // level 11 // level 10
210k// level 13 // level 11 // level 10
220k// level 13 // level 12 // level 10
235k// level 13 // level 12 // level 11
295k// level 14 // level 12 // level 11
315k// level 14 // level 13 // level 11
330k// level 14 // level 13 // level 12
425k// level 15 // level 13 // level 12
445k// level 15 // level 14 // level 12
475k// level 15 // level 14 // level 13
600k// level 16 // level 14 // level 13
635k// level 16 // level 14 // level 13
665k// level 16 // level 15 // level 14
850k// level 17 // level 15 // level 14
890k// level 17 // level 16 // level 14
955k// level 17 // level 16 // level 15
1.2m// level 18 // level 16 // level 15
1.3m// level 18 // level 17 // level 15
1.35m// level 18 // level 17 // level 16
1.7m// level 19 // level 17 // level 16
1.8m// level 19 // level 18 // level 16
1.9m// level 19 // level 18 // level 17
2.4m// level 20 // level 18 // level 17
Beyond the simple level gap, you have the death-threat issue to consider. At low levels, those occasional one or two levels are going to be a big deal, meaning that their hit points and saves are going to make the more susceptible to effects and less directly relevant, even though those same elements are often higher compared to equal-level contemporaries (such as with a fighter/wizard).
One of the major elements that are often under-appreciated is that gestalts can be extremely MAD: a barbarian-cleric sounds awesome... until you realize you need (nearly?) every ability score in the game, and you get no additional ability score points.
NOTE 4: I... don't know what this means, exactly, as there are several ways of taking the idea.
The items and wealth-intake are very hard to make "work" without "increasing the wealth" of the group as a whole, or introducing very, very specific items, which is difficult, because they tend to get invalidated over time by virtue of the system and its requirements (better loot, etc.). I'd love to hear more concrete ideas before expanding on this one, though see below.
Role play elements are... I don't know. Are you planning on handing out more RP-XP to non-gestalts (I recommend against it), or are you just planning on sidelining the gestalt characters in RP-elements (which seems like a bad fit from what little I understand of how your table functions)? Or is there an interpretation I'm missing somewhere (extremely possible!)?
Feats (or something similar) might be your best suggestion of the options you've mentioned - perhaps give a bonus feat at first level and every three levels thereafter? Add to that maybe a +2 skill points, and two free +2s to ability scores (maybe one on their highest and one on their lowest)? This makes a kind of "demi-gestalt", though it's not as good as a regular gestalt (with, say, a Fighter, for example).
As a final (alternate or combined) idea, you might just want to incorporate the "big six" items into the characters by giving them a +1/3 level [max +5] "Enhancement Bonus" to:
- attack and damage {presuming they use mwk or better weapons}
- saves {presuming mwk or better <insert item here>}
- AC {presuming mwk or better <insert item here>; can use bracers instead of an armor}
- shield {presuming mwk or better shield; can be nAC instead, if amulet is used}
- mental score {choose one; requires a mwk or better circlet}
- physical score {choose one; requires a mwk or better belt}
This might solve most of your "item" problems, depending on how your group handles loot distributions, and it allows for the "gestalt" to narratively "cost" something concrete in-character: they channel their innate magical growth into breadth of abilities.
The use of bracers and amulets allows monks to get their good times (count monk unarmed strike as "mwk"), and you may be set. The non-gestalt'ers would just need a +1 {whatever awesome weapon} here, and they have an awesome weapon with all the bonuses they could want (as they provide the "up to +5" stuff themselves), eliminating any potential item competition. Similarly, an amulet of, say, hidden strength acts as an amulet of natural armor now, as well (as it has to be masterwork to be enchanted...). A belt with a physical bonus can be used as your "focus" for a belt/physical boost, while a circlet with a different mental bonus can be used as your "focus" for a circlet/mental boost.
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It will definitely make your/the GMs life easier to keep everyone on equal footing.
If you want to try something different that opens up more options maybe consider letting everyone take a free variant multi-class from the new unchained book... If you don't charge them any feats for it, it would be like "gestalt-lite" with less opportunity for abuse but still tons of options for unusual/different builds... Players who want to seem 'normal' could choose a second class that's close related to their actual class, and the ones who really like the idea of gestalt could get a little crazier... If you want to take it one step farther you could pick a level to give everyone a free bonus feat for great fortitude, lightning reflexes, or iron will but require it go towards a save that's good for their multiclass...
Another alternative, if you like, is the "simple class templates" - simply layer one onto the characters' current class. You might not like it - it might not mesh your "feel" - but I mention it as another possible idea, in case you'd like to try it. In that manner, you may decide to grant, say, the Advanced or other templates instead of gestalting.
So! Any word on this, OP? How's it working out? Did you choose any of the ideas, or forge ahead with your initial one? Does whatever you ultimately chose seem like it's fun for everyone? Hope your gaming group is doing well!