Does Gestalt encourage min-maxing?

[ulgulanoth]

I'm planning on running a Gestalt game, and one of my players raised the point that it encourages min-maxing, which i say i disagree but i'd like to know what the rest of you guys think. So does Gestalt games encourage min-maxing?

on a side note does that change when playing with pathfinder rules rather than 3.5?

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

Yes and no..

yes...; Gestalt encouorages looking for Synergy, which can be percieves as min-maxing. Thought it's hard to tell since Gestalt characters are more powerful than normal anyway.

...and no; however Gestalt gives characters a chance to combine things that normally don't go together for flavor purposes, but still not be useless in combat. Bard/monk for example. A good characer, but far less so than a wiz/clr or clr/monk.

[Benicio Del Espada]

Tiny Coffee Golem wrote:

Yes and no..

Exactly! A paladin/sorcerer would get good use from charisma. A dex fighter/rogue would love a high dex.

Some players would like classes that combine all good saves, like a cleric/rogue, or a ranger/wizard.

I played in a 3.5 game that followed the gestalt rules except for one caveat: You had to average your hp from your two classes. The barb/wiz would get 12+4 divided by 2, or 8 starting hp, like in 2e. Seemed fair.

[LazarX]

Indidvidual characters are more powerful with the gestalt option, I would suggest banning PrC's outright or at least those that natually combine characters like Mystic Theurge.

[Dal Selpher]

Gestalt encourages AWESOMENESS - that's what it does.

All my love for gestalt aside, it can get min-maxy/confusing with situations like...

wizard-fighter 5/wizard-arcane archer 2/figher-arcane archer 1

First 5 wizard levels grant a Caster Level of 5

1st level of AA doesn't grant any CL, so the character pairs it with wizard to preserve the caster level

2nd level of AA grants +1 CL, so pair fighter(or anything else really) with it

3rd level of AA doesn't get a CL again, so pair it with wizard once more

Prestige classes make gestalt very headachey. Every time I've run a gestalt campaign, players can gestalt base classes but not prestige classes. If you take a level in a prestige class, you do it without being gestalt. That tended to reign in some of my more ridiculous players who had silly plans to get +1d6 sneak attack at every single level.

YMMV

[Bill Dunn]

I suppose it might if you're doing a relatively low point buy for stats. In order to excel in different classes that may work off different stats, a player may have to think harder about min-maxing the stat buy. Otherwise, min-maxing is more a question of individual play styles.

[ulgulanoth]

well the game was a 25pt build

also I ruled that the highest any caster level your character can have is equal to their current hit dice

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

ulgulanoth wrote:

well the game was a 25pt build

also I ruled that the highest any caster level your character can have is equal to their current hit dice

For the record I love gestalt flavors.