Gestalt: What changes for Pathfinder?

[Ezzran]

So my friend is running a small game for a couple of close friends (she's new to GMing and wants to work with a small group). There's only going to be 2 or 3 of us, so we're making Gestalt characters.

So I want to know what changes you'd make from here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm

for a Pathfinder version of Gestalt. If any. I figure something might change, just most PF classes have more features than 3.5 classes.

[ShadowcatX]

I don't think I'd change anything. It is an over powered variant and definitely not something I'd recommend to a new gm, but c'est la vie, so long as she knows what she's in for go for it.

[+5 Toaster]

For a two to three person party its fine, no need to change anything for gestalt anyway. I do recommend a higher point buy as well.

[Orthos]

Yep, it works fine as-is even in PF. I GMed halfway through a Gestaltified Pathfinder Savage Tide without any issues.

[Dasrak]

It works fine; any modifications would be purely based on personal preference. Just be mindful that it does represent a fairly substantial power increase.

[fictionfan]

I personally feel it's best for high power games where the P.C.s command armies or kingdoms, but I might be a bit prejudges.

[Ezzran]

+5 Toaster wrote:

For a two to three person party its fine, no need to change anything for gestalt anyway. I do recommend a higher point buy as well.

Heh, we're kind of chumpy and stuff when we do point buy, anyway. We all like our high-powered characters, so we often end up with a 30 point buy. We'll probably stick with that for Gestalt.

And yeah, we wouldn't be Gestalting if we weren't doing a small group. We're all pretty good at not being jerks to our DM, too, so we can tone ourselves down if it's not very fun because we're too powerful.

[Mortuum]

Not really a pathfinder change as such, but you could try taking the average of hit die size, skill ranks, BAB and saves from each class instead of the highest.

It promotes a wider range of builds and makes you just as versatile as normal gestalt without making you quite so powerful. It also simplifies creation and advancement, because it no longer matters what order you take things.

[Joshua Goudreau]

The only change I recommend is banning prestige classes. Some people like to keep them in the game but I have found that gestalting with prestige classes ramps up the power way more than it needs to. A straight gestalt party in 3.5 I found ran at about one level higher than normal. With a small party they will probably even out, though the increased number of abilities and generally more powerful characters in Pathfinder may ramp that up even more.

[+5 Toaster]

Second the non-prestige rule, heck I treat each gestalt class combo as it's own class. You can multiclass, but say if you start as Fighter/Rogue 1 and you multiclass as Ranger/Rogue at second level, you do NOT get a second level rogue's capabilities, you get the first level abilities twice.

[Dasrak]

Quote:

Some people like to keep them in the game but I have found that gestalting with prestige classes ramps up the power way more than it needs to

I find a more graceful solution is to treat each "side" of your gestalt independently for the purposes of qualifying for classes.

For instance, a Fighter/Wizard will never qualify for Eldritch Knight; he has no spellcasting abilities on his fighter side, and no martial weapon proficiency on his wizard side. Once you've taken a class, it's "locked" to its particularl side, so he can never take a level of Wizard/X. In other words, to qualify for Eldritch Knight he still needs to give up two levels of wizard spellcasting progression.

The point of prestige classes is that you're trading off your primary progression for an alternate ability set. So long as you enforce rules to ensure that players actually make that trade, it's not a problem.

[LazarX]

Ezzran wrote:

So my friend is running a small game for a couple of close friends (she's new to GMing and wants to work with a small group). There's only going to be 2 or 3 of us, so we're making Gestalt characters.

So I want to know what changes you'd make from here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm

for a Pathfinder version of Gestalt. If any. I figure something might change, just most PF classes have more features than 3.5 classes.

For a two person game, you're much better off having each person run two characters. A gestalt can't make up for the action economy of having two separate characters, and also runs into the very real probability of having too many eggs in one basket if that character drops, or gets locked down in a grapple or some SOS effect.

[Epic Meepo]

LazarX wrote:

For a two person game, you're much better off having each person run two characters. A gestalt can't make up for the action economy of having two separate characters...

Unless it's a summoner gestalt...

(Incidentally, I would consider banning the synthesist summoner archetype in a PF gestalt game. That one archetype in particular might be a bit much when combined with the capabilities of a full second class.)