Gestalt Villian Options?

[ShroudedInLight]

Hey folks, I'm currently running a campaign where there is a conspiracy/organization of villians working together to become more powerful. As a result of their experiments, they've managed to become Gestalt characters with the full benefit of 2 classes. There are some other things too, but the point is that I'm trying to make a group of gestalt characters to act as my game's villains.

Now, I have ideas for some of these characters but I'd like to get some folks opinions on fun Gestalt Characters. For instance, one of them is a Gestalt Scaled Fist Monk/Enigma Mesmersist who serves as an assassin. Its ok if they use a weird build or weird strategy, they are the Villians after all and have no need to play fair.

So, especially with the new Occult classes and various archetypes that change casting stats, can anyone suggest some fun gestalt ideas?

[avr]

Inspired blade swashbuckler // battle host occultist. Legacy weapon to buff up their rapier, aegis to buff their armor. The parry and some more focus powers protect them as well, and maybe mirror image if they have time. Offence is mainly just stabbing people but twilight knife may help.

Battle scion skald // impossible bloodline sorcerer. Lots of constructs and all the buffs possible on them. Which constructs depends on the level, which you haven't mentioned - anything from poppets to angelic guardians to tiberoliths.

Since you mentioned changing casting stats in particular - seducer witch // metamagic rager id rager (pride) bloodrager, with the mad magic feat of course. For standard actions they can cast spells, use hexes or even swing a sword, quickened actions will burn thru tremendous amounts of rage rounds to cast quickened spells or else be telling vainglorious lies as per the pride phantom. They'll want to sleep around with allies or enemies alike to give them the bonuses/penalties.

[R'Vox]

You can do a lot of funny things with the occult classes. The first thing that came to my mind is a build that utilizes the antipaladin aura of cowardice and the despair ability from the sorrow psychic discipline. In this way you can inflict massive penalities to saves against fear and with the psychic spell list you have a lot of option for your spells (fear, phantasmal killer, feast on fear...) and you can use overpowering mind to make the saves even more difficult. So you have a resilient and manipulative evil spellcaster that focuses on mind control with good saves (sorrow discipline utilizes charisma for the phrenic pool ability) that can cast in full plate and can bypass immunity to fear. Just imagine how many ways this villain has to mess with the party out of combat too, charming people to oppose the party or simply setting complicate schemes behind the scenes.

[Meirril]

Serious question here: As a GM, why would you bother? Making a monster a custom gestalt character is going to make it difficult to rate the CR of the creature and the encounter. If you want the monster to have certain abilities, just give them the abilities and adjust the CR!

One example of something that is 'gestalt' but doesn't say it is the Lamia Matriarch. Not only does it have a lot of SU and spell-like abilities, it is also a Sorcerer that has full access to Cleric spells! Sure it doesn't channel or have a Domain...but so what? It has a slew of other special abilities that are quite frankly more powerful.

Seriously though, what is the CR of a Cleric/Fighter gestalt? Is it the same as a Fighter/Wizard? Is it the same as a Cleric/Druid? Or is Rogue/Monk easier to handle? Barbarian/Kinetisist? Some of these combinations have some real synergy while others (especially fighter/wizard) have some sever conflicts that make them nearly useless.

A level 10 gestalt Fighter/Cleric is...cr 1/3 + 10 fighter +10 cleric+1 = CR21? Or is it CR 11? CR 9? This isn't a question when its the players, but its a serious problem for monster creation. And you can't just follow a formula because it really could be overpowered (or under) when compared to other monsters of the assigned CR. Gestalt really throws off the expectations of the formulas used to calculate monster CR when you add class levels.

[Heather 540]

I haven't had a chance to play them, but I have a couple of gestalts. One is a Sorcerer/Scaled Fist Monk and the other is a Barbarian/Cleric. The feat Mad Magic will let the Cleric cast spells even when raging.

[Shiroi]

If they all got their powers the same way, it makes sense for their new abilities (one side of their gestalt) to be linked thematically.

One way to do this is to say the martial side of the build is the part they gained, the experiment ripping their muscles and cranking their reaction times. If you go this route, physical symptoms would be an excellent way to make the link more transparent and thought out, such as obvious tiger-stripe like stretch marks where their body clearly increased in size faster than their skin could keep up.

If you instead believe the experiment would give them magical or pseudo-magical abilities, theme these talents in some way for best effect. A team of */Kineticists, or */occultist, or */arcane sponcaster, or */divine caster.

This does limit the field a small amount on their choices, but saying the experiment strongly linked them to the raw elemental energy of the planes or gave them the stolen powers of a god would make the whole thing very cinematic and add consistency to the plot.

Personally, I love Kineticists as a class and twice as much for villains. They have crowd control, damage output, defensive abilities, and battlefield manipulation. They're beatable in combat by a party but a mid level Geo or Aero can take on armies of level 3 and below without breaking a sweat which makes them incredible for a violent strike force making a name for itself as a conquering new king, even without a large following (which they'll quickly gain after destroying an army of 300 in a pass somewhere).

Having the same */ side, you'll get a very different feel if you instead have the linked side be a mix of spiritualists and synthesist summoners. They now have access to a bonded entity beyond mortal knowledge, which aids them in strange ways when called upon by the magic of the experiment. The common factor is relying on an outsider to provide their power boost, and it can be dangerously hard to tell them apart from a normal person in a court setting - until they break out the eidolon suits and tentacles, and become insanely powerful in an instant.

[Reksew_Trebla]

Monk of the Four Winds 12//Mobile Fighter 12 with one of these feats and their prerequisites:

Djinni Spin
Efreeti Touch
Marid Coldsnap
Shaitan Earthblast

For 6 ki points and their swift action, they get a move action and 3 standard actions that can’t combine into full round actions, nor can they be used for spells. Mobile Fighter at 11th level gains an ability to do a full attack action when taking a move action. The 3 standard actions afterwords can all be used to use one of the listed feats.

If you take this to 20th level though, keep in mind that the Mobile Fighter’s capstone ability is the ability to do a full attack action as a standard action, meaning when moving and using the 6 ki points, that’s 4 flurry of blows. But level 20 gestalt is supposed to be broken, so it’s all good.

[SheepishEidolon]

What's the goal? Having fun building them or creating memorable foes for your players? Because depending on the answer, the villains might be very different.

I assume the second, memorable foes. Players often only get a very superficial impression of their opponents, so I'd go for one very visible ability from the first class and another one from the second. Random examples:

Monk + cleric: Moves around at amazing speed, casts divine spells then. They could cast a touch spell while still around the corner, move to the PCs, bypass the martials and touch a more fragile target.

Barbarian + druid: Activates wildshape, then manifests totem powers and some elemental rage powers. Fear the burning tiger with the gore attack!

Rogue + bard: Casts vanish, sneak attacks, runs away, taunts the pursuer with music.

[yukongil]

Magus + any other spellcaster with Broad Study makes for some pretty fun stuff. Attacking + casting a Cleric's more powerful buff spells in the same turn can be pretty frightening.

[Weirdo]

A linking theme for one side sounds like a good idea, even if it's as simple as "they all got psychic powers so one side is a psychic class."

I've got a partially complete gestalt guide if you want to check out options for using some classes in gestalt (occultist is pretty well detailed and I have at least the basics for kineticist down).

Here's a colourful selection involving both an occult class and a casting stat change:

Spiritualist (Fractured Mind & Ectoplasmatist) // Swashbuckler

Full BAB, d10, all saves, 4 skills, 6-level casting, Dex Cha

Oddly enough the Ectoplasmatist makes one of the best gestalt swashbucklers. The lash can be a one-handed slashing weapon, and thus a valid choice for Slashing Grace. You can pick up Combat Reflexes at level 3 or 5 when your weapon develops reach and control the battlefield like a whip swashbuckler but with better damage and fewer feat requirements. With Fractured Mind your stats are simple, and you get all good saves and some support casting.

[Reksew_Trebla]

I made a mistake with the Monk of the Four Winds//Mobile Fighter build idea. Slow Time can use the 3 standard actions as move actions, so with Mobile Fighter’s 11th level ability, and Slow Time, they can make 4 flurry of blows while taking 4 move actions, and enemies can’t AoO them due to Slow Time preventing that. So that might be too powerful at 12th level as an enemy, but I’m definitely using it next time I’m a player in a gestalt game.

[Phntm888]

It could be a bit MAD, and I only theory-crafted it, so I can't say what it's like in actual play, but a Kinetic Knight Kineticist//Shieldbearer Warpriest could be fun. The Shieldbearer changes Sacred Weapon so that the damage increase only applies to your shield. If you give yourself enough Dex to qualify for Two-Weapon Fighting, you could be quite terrifying with a kinetic blade in one hand the shield in the other. Since I don't think you can apply Sacred Weapon to Kinetic Blast anyway, you don't lose anything with your main weapon.

[ShroudedInLight]

Hey folks, thanks for the ideas thus far. Since a few of you asked some excellent questions, I'm going to do my best to answer them thus far. In regards to your suggestions, all of them are under consideration. I'm aiming for about 13 of these guys, so keep suggestions coming!

Meirril:
I pretty much sideline CR when designing villains and bosses, because they are meant to be intense fights. That doesn't mean that I ignore it completely, but I am fine with throwing my party into a CR+4 encounter if that is what the story demands. I've had enough of my bosses one-rounded to know that action economy speaks louder than CR. My campaign setting is on the high-fantasy side, heck we've got steam power in the game world too. So I give my players large rewards but also expect them to conquer great challenges.

Anyway, the reason I'm specifically making these characters as similar to the PCs as possible is because the PCs are capable of using this method themselves. Should they discover the method, they will be able to become gestalt characters as well. If they are willing to undergo the experiments and risk death. After all, its only fair.

Shiroi:
Having a unifying element is a fantastic idea, and it gives me room to adapt this group of villains in interesting ways. I suppose I should provide some more information at this point, the Experiments involve some custom rules I made up involving cybernetics in a universe that is currently in the Steampunk era of technology. All of their new powers come from a unique blend of magic, minor artifacts (that act as collectible mcguffins in my homebrew), and technology.

I guess in a way you could say that my theme is Mind over Matter, so combinations of classes that combine physical and mental attributes are probably the best options available. The idea being that these people chose to attempt the experimental modifications for some manner of gain, to get something they otherwise could not. A martial gaining casting or a casting being able to achieve physical accomplishments fits that bill well. Now, that isn't to say that pure casters or martials would be unwelcome as suggestions. Just that they would need to do something special, or have some kind of element to them that would intrigue my players beyond hitting things really hard or casting the strongest fireballs in the land.

Sheepish Eidolon:
Memorable encounters for sure, above all else I am a story teller as a GM. I want my players to have moments where they can go "Do you remember that one time..." Honestly, as much fun as I have with character building it can also be exhausting and so that is part of the reason I was looking for suggestions here. This game has so many fantastic possibilities that it would be a shame to let choice paralysis keep me from making intriguing characters.

Weirdo:
Thank you for the guide link, I'll give it a look over. Thank you also for the suggestion, I like it.

As for everyone else, thank you for your suggestions and I welcome any others that come along. I appreciate the time you've taken to write up these ideas as it helps me do a better job for my players.