So I will be playing in a gestalt campaign soon and was looking for some advice, 1 class has to be pathfinder base and the other has to be 3.5 base, all other gestalt rules apply, so I was thinking wizard/archivist or a psionic warrior/monk, does anyone have anymore advice? It will be a 25 point buy and I can argue for most races and possibly a level adjust. Thanks!
You know when you were growing up, and your parents told you "If you have nothing nice to say, it's better to say nothing at all?"
Well take this as my silence on gestalt games.
Well the other problem is lack of people not just power gaming, instead of running 2 or more characters that's what we are trying.
Well, it depends on what kind of role you want to fill. The archivist/wizard will be pretty awesome--both use Int for spells, so you will eventually have access to all cleric, druid, and sorcerer/wizard spells. And if you ever run out of spells (BIG if!!!), you can use the archivist buffing stuff.
Personally, if I was going to go gestalt, I would either try for full BAB and all good saves, or a cool combo. Paladin//Ninja has all good saves, good Bab, Dex and Wis to AC, with Cha during smites, and enough skill points to dump Int since it's pretty MAD.
Fighter//Scout has a lot of feats, skills, and mobility. Can take Iron Will since you'd get about 26 feats.....
Ranger//Warmage has Full BAB, All Good Saves, can use light armor, has lots of skills, and can tank, strike, blast, stealth, and even heal a bit.
Rogue//Warlock will pretty much do 2d6 damage per 2 levels to a single opponent every single round. Very, very consistent damage.
Swashbuckler//Wizard will synergize Int to damage pretty cool.
Paladin or Ranger//Spellthief might make a real interesting witch hunter or exorcist.
Druid//Scout would be a big time wilderness guy.
Cleric//Ninja could be a combat medic that never gets seen in battle, and could make some devastating melee touch attacks with sudden strike + inflict spells.
Barbarian//Scout would also be a super mobile wilderness striker-tank.
EDIT:
If you are going for flexibilty and versatility in a party of only 2 or 3, I would suggest splitting up the spellcasting between 2 or more PCs, and try to make sure everyone has access to some healing.
For example, a paladin//warmage and a cleric//ninja, or a hexblade//oracle and a spellthief//witch.
Avoid the level adjust like the plague.
Unless EVERYONE is doing the level adjust, and by the same amount, and if the DM is taking that into account.
I'm currently in a campaign where everyone is either a +1 ECL race or has a +1 ECL template. I have a dark (dark creature template from Tome of Magic) whisper gnome ninja and a chaos gnome dragon shaman, there is a feral kobold battle sorcerer and mineral warrior half-orc druid, and a cat folk ranger.
So far, everyone is pretty equal, power-wise, and the party is pretty balanced. The only major obstacle is that the chaos gnome has a speed of 20 and everyone else has a speed of 40!!! And my chaos gnome really likes his Boots of Stomping, so he needs to spend big time money to make them even more magical to up his speed.
Psychic Warrior//Monk for the win, as far as I am concerned, and I would go Kalashtar race (mainly because I like them, adapted to Pathfinder of course).
Other options, Aasimar Sorcerer//Favoured Soul would be one suggestion, an elf Druid//Spirit Shaman would be another that would have some awesome spell-power.
Ranger//Scout is a match made in heaven, as would Monk//Scout get over the monks main issue in using their mobility combining Vital Strike with skirmish ... in fact, monk can bring something to most combinations.
Dual spellcasters, such as an Archivist//Wizard, will break a gestalt game.
Stick with only one full spellcaster class unless you really want to break the game.
Level adjustments also break gestalt (whichever way they're applied -- if they only apply to one side of the gestalt, they're broken overpowered, and if they apply to both, they're broken underpowered).
Gestalt can be plenty fun and balanced, as long as the basic rules of the variant are actually applied and as long as people don't try to break it. I've been playing nothing but gestalt for the last four or five years of face-to-face gaming.
Dual spellcasters, such as an Archivist//Wizard, will break a gestalt game.
Stick with only one full spellcaster class unless you really want to break the game.
Level adjustments also break gestalt (whichever way they're applied -- if they only apply to one side of the gestalt, they're broken overpowered, and if they apply to both, they're broken underpowered).
Gestalt can be plenty fun and balanced, as long as the basic rules of the variant are actually applied and as long as people don't try to break it. I've been playing nothing but gestalt for the last four or five years of face-to-face gaming.
So what are some of your memorable gestalts? Not game breaking just way fun.
Dual spellcasters, such as an Archivist//Wizard, will break a gestalt game.
Actually, not really. An Archivist//Wizard is not far beyond, say, Wizard//Factotum or Artificer//Warblade. You can't cast two sets of spells at the same time, after all, and having to pay for two sets of spellbooks when a good Archivist or Wizard is already spending half their money on a fat spellbook to begin with, making money very tight.
The power of the highest-order casters is the ability to do pretty much anything. The ability to do pretty much anything twice is not a big step forward.
So what are some of your memorable gestalts? Not game breaking just way fun.
Wizard//Factotum is an ultimate do-anything sort.
Summoner//Favored Soul (or something else with good self buffs, preferably charisma-based). You've got a badass holy minion and can share buffs with it to boot.
Artificer//Fighter (or maybe Paladin). Good for a classic dwarven warrior/smith, though stats become problematic.
Ranger//Wizard. The elfiest elf who ever elfed an elf. Any number of classes can fill in for Wizard (Witch, Wu Jen, Psion, Sorcerer, Ardent). Two levels of Arcane Archer split between the Ranger side and the Wizard side to keep up spell progression can help.
Alchemist//Factotum. Perhaps the gnomiest of all gnomes. Alchemist is a firm base and Factotum adds an eclectic mix of everything, for a good support character if you know what you're doing.
Rogue//Shadowcaster. This one actually doesn't work all that well (Shadowcaster is a fairly meh class that doesn't really mesh into Rogue), but it is highly thematic.
Cleric//Incarnate. I am the law! (And gestalt is incarnum's playground.)
Barbarian//Totemist. How much more savage can you get than turning into a frothing monstrosity with six arms for ripping people to shreds? Some of the APG options can help on the Barbarian side. Beast totem gives you (more) claws and pounce.
Dual spellcasters, such as an Archivist//Wizard, will break a gestalt game.Actually, not really. An Archivist//Wizard is not far beyond, say, Wizard//Factotum or Artificer//Warblade. You can't cast two sets of spells at the same time, after all, and having to pay for two sets of spellbooks when a good Archivist or Wizard is already spending half their money on a fat spellbook to begin with, making money very tight.
The power of the highest-order casters is the ability to do pretty much anything. The ability to do pretty much anything twice is not a big step forward.
So what are some of your memorable gestalts? Not game breaking just way fun.Wizard//Factotum is an ultimate do-anything sort.
Summoner//Favored Soul (or something else with good self buffs, preferably charisma-based). You've got a badass holy minion and can share buffs with it to boot.
Artificer//Fighter (or maybe Paladin). Good for a classic dwarven warrior/smith, though stats become problematic.
Ranger//Wizard. The elfiest elf who ever elfed an elf. Any number of classes can fill in for Wizard (Witch, Wu Jen, Psion, Sorcerer, Ardent). Two levels of Arcane Archer split between the Ranger side and the Wizard side to keep up spell progression can help.
Alchemist//Factotum. Perhaps the gnomiest of all gnomes. Alchemist is a firm base and Factotum adds an eclectic mix of everything, for a good support character if you know what you're doing.
Rogue//Shadowcaster. This one actually doesn't work all that well (Shadowcaster is a fairly meh class that doesn't really mesh into Rogue), but it is highly thematic.
Cleric//Incarnate. I am the law! (And gestalt is incarnum's playground.)
Barbarian//Totemist. How much more savage can you get than turning into a frothing monstrosity with six arms for ripping people to shreds? Some of the APG options can help on the Barbarian side. Beast totem gives you (more) claws and pounce.
Actually as it turns out the Factotum is the only class not allowed, I think a player before I joined the group abused it, just for that reason I have never even bothered looking at it.
So what are some of your memorable gestalts? Not game breaking just way fun.
One of the nice thing about gestalt is that it makes some of the more passive classes nicely playable if you combine them with an active class. What I mean by that is, for example, Marshal is a rough class to play single-classed because you really don't have any active decisions to make. However, a Marshal//Sorcerer, Marshall//Oracle, or Marshal//Paladin still works off of Charisma and has a lot more active choices on what to do round-by-round.
Specific characters I've played?
Well, let's just list 'em all.
I may be forgetting one or two more.
Anyway, of those, I probably had the most fun with the Bard//Battle Dancer. That character was decent in melee, had great AC, great party utility, and was fun as hell to RP. The Spellthief//Warlock was fun, too. Actually, almost all of them were fun except for the Archivist//Wizard, who just completely and utterly dominated the table to the point where he pretty much singlehandedly took out a half-fiend great wyrm black dragon, two pit fiends, and a balor at the same time.
Archivist//Wizard (and sorry VV, this was very definitely overpowered)
I've played it, too. The combination of the two isn't what makes it overpowered.
I've played it, too. The combination of the two isn't what makes it overpowered.Archivist//Wizard (and sorry VV, this was very definitely overpowered)
Having twice as many top-level spells is definitely overpowered. One of the few limits on full caster power is that they only have so many max-level spells and have to carefully ration them out. I was able to use my top level spells pretty much at will with the Archivist//Wizard because I had enough of them to do that.