|
I'm starting up an E6 Gestalt game, and I'd like a little feedback on the particulars of how I'm planning to do this. First a few notes on the group independent of rules:
1) I've done gestalt games. I've done E6 games. I've yet to do the two in tandem.
2) I am extremely loathe to ever ban things for mechanical reasons. Ideally, the only reason I would ever say a player absolutely cannot play something is because it simply does not exist in the setting. As far as class combinations are concerned, I only intend to ban gestalt full casters that use the same casting stat. And that's just because of how easy I imagine it would be to accidentally break the game in such a case.
3) There are no powergamers in my group. There's one or two what I would call "optimizers", however. The distinction I make is that optimizers do tend to put mechanical consideration to options over fluff, but aren't concerned about making the absolute best character they can.
So basically of this is to say that my concern is more just to minimize the chance of someone accidentally making a game breaking character than purposefully doing so.
So one of the things I'm trying out for the first time is partial advancement to 8th-level. First off, the way I'm doing XP is kind of like in PFS, but instead of 3 XP to advance each level, it costs a number of XP equal to your current level. Then after hitting 6th, you can start using "purchase" feats as normal for E6 at 3 XP per feat, or you can save it up and buy the class features (and improve scaling class features) as if you reached 7th level (this costs 6 and then 7 XP, just as if you were to continue advancing levels normally using my XP system). BAB, hp, saves, etc. do not increase, of course. This also requires that you haven't multiclassed outside of your original gestalt pair.
Anyway, my conundrum is how this class feature-only advancement does mess with the typical balance a little. Fighters, for example, only gain a bonus feat at 8th level, which could be also be acquired with just 3 XP. Granted, it only seems natural that I allow feats that have 8th-level fighter or the like as a requirement to be taken with this bonus feat, but I'm not convinced that's enough to make it worth it, so I'm also considering making it so fighters (and fighters alone) also get to advance to +8 BAB when purchasing 7th and 8th level. Archetypes that swap out the 7th or 8th level class features also take that level's +1 BAB along with them.
The other thing is that I'm hesitant about granting access to 4th level spells... But some classes like the cleric pretty much have an empty level aside from gaining those extra spells. So I'm not quite sure what to do about that...
Honestly I don't think you need to worry too much about gestalting full casters with the same stat. Pretty much it would only give them more spells per day at a high DC. It doesn't give them more powerful spells, or more actions in a round to cast spells. For example, the only advantage a Wizard/Witch would have over a Wizard/Cleric is more spells at the INT DC. Almost always though, their are plenty of spells you are going to want to cast that the DC doesn't matter (cures, buffs etc.) so in your system, if I had to go with the Wizard/Cleric I would use my cleric spells for all of that sort of thing, and have the DC dependent spells be just in my wizard slots.
As far as advancement goes, I had a similar plan for an E6 game that hasn't been tested yet. Basically I was going to get a bonus feat for each quasi-level they got after 6, but they would be able to qualify for feats that they would have been theoretically able to qualify for after normal advancement (i.e. if a feat required a BAB of 8, 6 full bab levels + 2 quasi-levels would count.) I think this would have worked out pretty well, we were using Spheres of Power, so a few could also mean an extra talent (spell.) Several of the more powerful levels in Pathfinder already can be gained for the cost of a feat (like extra Hex) and I think trading 'feat' for just about any class feature that they would theoretically qualify for would probably work out, I can't think of any that would require it, but you might want to say that some might cost two of these bonus feats. The main thing that might be a problem is it being a way to get spells (or spell equivalents) that are normally outside the scope of E6, but making it clear that those won't be allowed up front shouldn't be too difficult (or even letting that be the only way to get some of these more exalted powers would work too.)
|
Like Dave Justus, I'm not sure why you think that gestalt double full casters are likely to accidentally break an E6 game. Caster//Casters tend to gain mostly in versatility rather than in synergy, and at low levels their spellcasting power is relatively limited. In contrast, gestalts involving martials can pretty easily break DPR expectations. Consider a 5th level Unchained Monk//Inquisitor or Urban Barbarian//Unchained Rogue.
I don't think 4th level spells are generally as much of a game-changer as 5th level spells like Raise Dead or Teleport are (or for that matter some 3rd level spells like Fly).
But one option is to give full casters the spell slots from levels 7 and 8 but only allow them to use them for lower-level spells - or metamagic versions of those spells. I think for most casters getting a few extra uses of their highest level spells and the ability to make some use of metamagic would be worth two feats (possible exception of the witch, who might prefer to take Extra Hex until they run out of good hexes).
I'm a bit concerned with the fact that some (but not all) classes would get quite a bit more value than four feats out of levels 7 and 8 combined. For example the druid's 8th level Wild Shape improvement (huge animals and medium elementals) is pretty significant - and that's on top of the extra spell slots. So is the Inquisitor's Second Judgment plus 3rd level spells. I'm not sure if that's going to be a big difference from E6 given that different classes just have strong levels in different places and some of them will stop progression at better spots than others. But it's worth considering.
|
|
Fair point. I didn't really think that through. Just kinda went with a quick intuition call. I should learn to stop trusting those more...
I do plan to play a fair bit of this by ear, based on what sorts of combinations the party has used, but I did want to have an idea of what should be particularly watched out for, or a bad idea.
I think I'll plan for 4th-level slots being open for metamagic only (or perhaps for spells of any lower level), and then reassess to consider opening them up to full spell slots once we get closer to that point.
Also, I intend to limit Extra feats. I'm deciding whether to make that limit one or three.
|
|
For the "Extra" feats, what about limiting it to one per X number of feats (eg one "Extra" feat for every 4 feats the character has)?
Limiting the 4th level spell slots to metamagic only would actually violate the general rule that you can always cast lower-level spells in higher-level slots.
Spell Slots
The various character class tables show how many spells of each level a character can cast per day. These openings for daily spells are called spell slots. a spellcaster always has the option to fill a higher-level spell slot with a lower-level spell. A spellcaster who lacks a high enough ability score to cast spells that would otherwise be his due still gets the slots but must fill them with spells of lower levels.
Not being able to use lower-level spells in 4th level slots would have the interesting effect of increasing the value of metamagic feats for full casters (and thus encourage spending XP on feats instead of 7th and 8th level features) because they would need those feats to make use of the 4th level slots. Conversely, partial casters would get a relative boost because they wouldn't need to spend feats to use 3rd level spells gained as 7th and 8th level features.
|
|
It's not exactly a frequently used rule. I think the only time I've taken advantage of it was when my druid expected to fight a ton of things with the fire subtype and filled up both 3rd and 4th level slots with Quench.