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Over the summer, I'll be running a short few-session campaign for some friends who are coming into town. I want the game to be memorable, something none of the players have ever experienced or will likely again. Now I could write a campaign full of brooding pathos and daunting spectacle, but frankly I'm not that great a writer. I can spin a solid meat and potatoes yarn, but the sort of transcendent storytelling described in the pretentious GM advice sections of White Wolf games is beyond me. Even if I could, it's hard to care about your character in just a few sessions, let alone have any kind of arc.

So how do I make this memorable? Well, gestalt is cool, everyone always talks about wanting to play in a gestalt campaign, but what if I take this one step further? What if I throw all caution and good taste to the wind and let players make gestalts of not two, but three classes? I started getting excited excited just thinking about it. Gunslinger/inquisitor/monk? Wizard/alchemist/barbarian? Summoner/bard/paladin? Not only do all those sound awesome to play mechanically, each already has a distinct identity based on the characteristics of each of the classes they chose. You're a bard? Doesn't tell me much. Now, a summoner/bard/paladin? That's a story I'd like to hear.

So essentially I'm wondering, (1) is this a terrible idea, (2) what level should the game be so that the players have cool powers but aren't swamped with complexity, and (3) how should I modify the challenge rating of encounters? Thanks a bundle.

Is this really a problem? I've never seen a cleric heal his companions unless they're at low hit points, as a player generally doesn't say "Hey, I need healing!" unless they're getting dangerously low.

VikingTopHat wrote:

Also, I'm thinking of doing away with class skills and letting players put ranks into whatever they want. I've never liked that fighters can't be diplomatic or rogues know about religion. I'm worried it might have some unintended consequences though.

That's basically how skills work in PF - everyone buys skills at a 1:1 ratio regardless of whether it's a class skill or not. Having a skill as a class skill just means that you get +3 to it if you have at least one rank in it. When you throw in traits, which can make things class skills, you really do get a situation where anyone can be good at anything. (Plus or minus a little for ability scores.)

Oh, interesting. I read the skill section twice, but somehow I didn't notice the absence of cross-class skills. In that case, I'd just let everyone treat all skills as class skills.

Hmm... maybe I should do /triple/ gestalt! Heh, it's fun to think about but definitely too much.

Uh oh, I'm becoming strangely attracted to the idea.

Because it's the internet. If we had all these conversations face-to-face, you can bet they'd be a hell of a lot move civil and productive

A few extra feats would be fine. For skill points, consider instead letting each character gain an amount equal to half the base points the lower points class would have given.

For example, a Rogue//Barbarian would get 8 +2 +Int mod. skill points. A Ranger//Wizard would get 6 +1 +Int mod. skill points. And so forth.

IMO, that is a fairer way to do it than just blanket increased skill points. Rewards players more if they take two high skill point classes, if that's what they want to be good at.

I like the intention behind the cconcept, but it goes against the idea that class features should overlap, not stack, in gestalt. Why not do the same with hit points or base attack bonus?

I'd start out going with a more normal game. Messing with a system usually necessitates expertise in that particular system to do effectively, and Gestalt in particular gives players a truly ridiculous number of options, which can be confusing and overwhelming for those new to the specific system.

I'm the last one to argue against house rules or alternate rules implementations, but I think they should be worked out once you've gained some serious system familiarity (doable after one or two short campaigns if you're generally good at systems).

Pathfinder works pretty well as-is, use a generous rolling method or high point-buy if you like powerful characters and just go with that for your first time out.

Something like this could be fun...once everyone's gotten used to the regular version.

All the players I have in mind are familiar with the system (or 3.5), but have different power-gaming tendencies.

Also, I'm thinking of doing away with class skills and letting players put ranks into whatever they want. I've never liked that fighters can't be diplomatic or rogues know about religion. I'm worried it might have some unintended consequences though.

I'm thinking about starting up a Pathfinder game after I finish with my 4th edition one, and I was pondering ways to make characters a little sexier. In a nutshell I'm considering using the Unearthed Arcana gestalt rules, giving feats at every level instead of every other, and boosting each skill progression one rank higher (8+int gets skill focus for free). As a player, I love having lots of options for customizing who my character is, both from an optimization and roleplaying standpoint. My only worry is that given so many options, the disparity between power-gamers and casual players can grow even larger. It's tough for the turenamer/factotum who took toughness twice not to feel outshined by the warblade/egoist who shock troopers everything into a fine paste. Pathfinder classes seem more balanced overall (though the summoner does seem a little crazy just based on a read-through), so this might not be an issue. Is this a recipe for disaster, or the ingredients of an intriguing game?

You make a good point. The more I think about it, the more I realize that pathfinder may not be the best system for this game.

I don't want it just to be about 40k, as awesome as it is. I'm thinking the British troops from the revolutionary war will be the cannon fodder, and each platoon will be led by a handful of marines. The PCs will also do battle against a mutated Ben Franklin, who has been seduced by chaos with promises of the presidency he never managed to achieve. Maybe he's a devotee of Slaanesh and has eight voluptuous breasts with toothed maws instead of nipples. I also want them to team up with Jesus Christ at some point. Or possibly fight him. Even God's only son is not immune to the taint of chaos!

Sure he can. But he can’t say my PC is doing *anything* (under his own will, that is- if dominated, etc then that’s different). “Your PC wouldn’t do that, he does this instead” is a hallmark of bad DMing. The Players control their PC’s, the DM controls the environment.

I don't agree in all situations. If a player says, "I rape all the surrendering goblins, the DM is well within his rights to say "Actually... you just don't do that."

Anyway, I was responding to your assertion that the characters are the player's intellectual property. I don't own Captain America, and therefore can't describe -anything- happening to him (in a publishing context).

Legally they are that players intellectual property. Morally too, imho.

I'd be happy to discuss allowing my DM to do this. But he'd have to get my permission.

Yeah, that's why a DM can't describe the characters taking damage, failing a skill check, dying, being jailed, getting stolen from, or having their loved ones die. Just think what would happen if the DM could describe anything they wanted!

If your DM is crazy enough to let you use the Advanced Race Guide rules, you could build your own large-sized race.

Wow

What level game? Epic or are you toneing down the marines?

An artifact to shut off the wh40k tech, it can be worked around but it will slow down chaos. Perhaps one of the gods here is a distant relative to the emporor in the future. Lol that's heresy, IS the emporor in the future. He can Guide you to an artifact of power to protect you from the foreign tech.

I was thinking mid-level. Around tenth level PCs can regularly take on monsters capable of slaughtering whole towns, which is pretty much what chaos space marines are.

I would rather not have anything that shuts down the 40k tech, as that's one of the focal points of the game. I do like the idea of the Emperor being involved somehow. It'd be cool to have a PC or Paladin worshiping the Emperor. Although the "suffer not the witch to live" rhetoric would be hard to enforce in a fantasy setting. Also, all the non-human PC races would fall into the category of xenos filth.

So I'm looking to make a tall brutish half-orc character that wields a giant two-handed greataxe/greatsword.

I totally read that as "tall british half-orc" at first. That would be awesome.

I've been thinking about designing a campaign where the PCs have to defend the material plane from invaders from another reality. The PCs are confronted by William Howard Taft who travels into the material plane in his dimension-shifting flying bathtub. He explains that from its first iteration in George Washington, the presidency was not only leadership position in the United States Government, but in the Freemasons as well. Upon completing their final term, the presidents are retired from public life and granted immortality. They stand eternal vigil over the multiverse and combat any forces that threaten the balance.

He goes on to say that in the 41st millenium, the forces of chaos were waxing strong, so strong that they threatened the survival of mankind itself. Chaos as represented by five gods: Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Malal. While separate entities, they also represented different facets of a unified whole. The Emperor of mankind traveled into the warp and did battle with the least of these gods: Malal. The Emperor triumphed, but Malal was too powerful to be slain outright. So the Emperor used his psychic powers to open a dimensional gateway and travel to the PCs' material plane. He imprisoned Malal deep within the earth, and then traveled back to his dimension. The forces of chaos were dealt a blow from which they never fully recovered, as chaos was now incomplete.

But recently, a chaos space marine champion named Abbadon discovered the secret of Malal's disappearance from the black library. Now chaos space marines are flooding the material plane, bringing with them demons, tanks, and heavy firepower. With the aid of several former presidents they meet along the way, the PCs must do battle with the chaos space marines while shutting down the dimensional portals popping up all over the land. The loyalist tories and British of the American Revolution will also make an appearance.

What do you think would be some engaging setpieces for this game? How would you handle stats for chaos space marines, and the weapons the PCs will surely loot from their corpses?

Great film. It really showed the best of what Sci Fi is capable of. My only beef is that when -spoiler- Dennis Quaide is finally rescued, they don't spend any time on his reintegration into human society. I didn't know if he was grateful to be rescued, skeptical of the cause he once fought for, revealed to finally speak to another human being, or anything else. You can infer some of his attitudes by the actions he makes later on, but I think they missed one of the most important character moments in the film. Particularly jarring as Enemy Mine is basically a character study.

I don't see any way of successfully adapting the books to film. The Dark Tower series just isn't all that coherent. It's an enthralling, meandering fever dream. The only direction I can think of would be the "inspired by" route, which would piss off thousands of die-hard fans. How do you make The Gunslinger into a film (in which even King admits to have not really known was going on), or Wizard and Glass (3/4ths of which is a years-ago flashback featuring only one familiar character)?

Something I would like to see stats for are magic drugs. Heroin with a fantasy name is boring. Glimmerseed, a nut that when chewed in starlight on a moonless night causes you to speak in cryptic prophesy and grow pearly white spider legs from your torso is not. Drugs could even be a focal point of your campaign. Perhaps a villain is helplessly addicted to a powerful narcotic distilled from the tears of widows and dwarven bone marrow. Maybe he started out as a good man, or even helped the PCs earlier, but now the totality of his addiction overrides his moral compass. He's disgusted by his own actions (as many addicts are), but can think only of his next fix. Sound a little more compelling than "I'm blowing up the world cause I'm crazy bwa hah hah"?

I am in a position right now that gives me a pretty good perspective on the nature of addiction. I live in essentially an outpatient psych-ward. My issue is and never has been substances, but for most folks it's the reason why they're here. And of those recovering addicts, the substance most often brought up is marijuana. You can't tell those people weed can't be addictive or debilitating. Some of them stopped going to school, others stole from their parents for drug money, two kids even went into full-blown psychosis (which I realize is controversial, but I trust them). It was a through and through destructive craving that dominated their life. However, there's also people here who are recovering from hard drug dependency; painkillers, heroin, pharmaceutics, even meth. Most of those kids also smoked marijuana at some point in their lives, and they have the perspective that it's an entirely different beast. As one guy told me "I don't really care if I ever smoke weed again, but sometimes I don't know how I'm going to get through life without pills." Marijuana is addictive. Because it's really nice. Just like video games or any other recreational activity. Now you might say "no gamer would drop out of school or steal from his/her parents to play Skyrim". But I knew a kid here who did almost exactly that. He didn't steal from anyone, but while he was here he dropped of all college courses to spend more time on the computer (and Skyrim had just come out). There's a guy here so addicted to pornography that he'll look at it with other people in the room, and hope they just don't notice. The first day after he got his laptop (we have limited computer access at first), he told me he had spent the ENTIRE NIGHT watching porn. There's a guy here who before he came was playing over 80 hours of World of Warcraft a week before his parents cut off his subscription. He then tried to kill himself (or wanted to, his wording was a little vague), and got locked up in a psych ward. So yes, weed can be seriously addictive. But so can a whole host of other activities most of us consider as harmless and engage in on a regular basis.

BUT GETTING BACK TO THE POINT OF THE THREAD, I don't see any need for stats for "soft drugs". If the PCs come back from a long day of gnoll-slaying and head off to the tavern to make merry, it's a rare DM that calls for fortitude saves and record keeping of each drink taken. Quaffing a pint of whiskey every evening isn't good for anyone's health, but if that's how the dwarven barbarian wants to describe his nightcap, why give him a hard time about it? Alcohol consumption is played for roleplaying purposes, unless you're a drunken master. So if the party druid passes up a round of ale and instead pulls out his ironwood bong, just treat it as flavor. As a DM, you might even use this as an adventure hook: "Ah, I see you are a connoisseur of fine smoking herbs as myself. Perhaps you may have heard of the fabled Stash of Archmagus Dolamthor? It has recently come to my attention..."

Above all, make sure everyone at the table is comfortable with the introduction of such substances. Whenever your opinions on legalization or drug use, you should foremost respect the people you're gaming with.