Heyo guys, I recently stumbled across the Gastalt rules, and they made me think about mixed parties.
How would one run a party of characters when some characters are gastalts, some are non-gastalt, and some are only using NPC classes? Just talking options and theory crafting.
My initial instinct is based on XP progression:
Gastalt—slow progression.
Normal—normal progression.
NPC classes only—fast progression.
My other idea was to adjust pointbuy, but class levels is just plain better (or worse) while not being crippling.
Another idea was to give gastalts the Advanced template in reverse (-4 to all attributes) and give the advanced template to NPC class only characters.
I suppose there could be a Gastalt NPC classes only character that would advance at the same rate as a normal character since -1 from NPC classes only and +1 for Gastalt.
What are you guys' ideas?
I'd suggest probably not doing g this
NPC classs aren't designed to be played, they're not fun.
Typically differing exp tracks don't really achieve balance they just make massive swings in pc power,
Roughly speaking the slow progression takes 50% more XP than medium to go up levels, fast takes 25% less. That puts fast about a level ahead of medium, slow about a level behind.
That's not even close to enough. You can make monsters with gestalt. An extra level won't make NPC classes equal to normal classes - compare a fighter 6 to a warrior 7. Gestalted NPC classes can't really compete either, a warrior 6 // expert 6 won't match a ranger 6.
A negative advanced template might work, might not, but I suspect there's some odd SAD gestalts who could work around it and still be monsters. Again, I don't think it'd be enough for NPC classes.
There is the gestalt by tier option which has been suggested a time or two. Say full casters can't gestalt, partial casters can gestalt with weaker classes (maybe the NPC classes) and non-casters can gestalt with each other or with NPC classes. That's a slightly simplified version of something I've seen around the internet.