I wanted to make the ideal mountain man. And while browsing through my PDFs I came to Races of Stone and on pg 92 I found the Stonechild race. And after reading the fluff I found I really did like this idea of a half-earth elemental wandering the material plane and most notably living in the high mountains being raised by Dwarfs.
So I could see a Stonechild adventurer being a hard drinking hard hitting brawler type guy who maybe isn't all muscles. I mean they do have a +2 Int after all.
Well I wanted to build a level 5 character using the 3.5 Gestalt rules.
I was thinking a Brawler//Arcanist would be really cool though the -2 to Cha would really hurt. I am considering a psionic class such as the psion or the Erudite which might work best if I decide to go armored.
I would take the CR hit on the Brawler side.
So at level five it would be CR 3/Brawler 2//Arcanist(Erudite) 5
Now I am wondering if my CR goes down with the following;
15 Point Buy (Party using 25)
Starting Wealth is based on level 3 starting wealth.
Personally I'd rather have 5 levels on each side than the plan you're going with, so for the same concept I'd play an oread. Oread gem magic would make a fun addition to an arcanist and 5 levels of brawler gets you an extra 2 BAB and a bunch of minor stuff and importantly, next level martial flexibility gives you two feats at a time.