Because I don't know. I've seen this mentioned often, but can see nothing in the books.
Gestalt is a 3rd party set of rules for D&D, adapted for Pathfinder, for creating characters with abilities of two classes. Unlike with multiclassing, there is no trade-off: a character gets abilities at the same time, and doesn't need to sacrifice progress in one class to get the abilities of another. Because of that, gestalt characters are significantly stronger than normal characters of the same level.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm
Gestalt is a 3rd party set of rules for D&D, adapted for Pathfinder, for creating characters with abilities of two classes. Unlike with multiclassing, there is no trade-off: a character gets abilities at the same time, and doesn't need to sacrifice progress in one class to get the abilities of another. Because of that, gestalt characters are significantly stronger than normal characters of the same level.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm
Thank you, Adjoint!
Not really a good term for rules from 3rd edition that aren't in Pathfinder. It's not really 3rd party or 1st party. Maybe 0th party?
Not really a good term for rules from 3rd edition that aren't in Pathfinder. It's not really 3rd party or 1st party. Maybe 0th party?
Grandmother rules?
It's from an older version, but isn't part of the game by default. Compared to Grandfather rules which are from the older version and are carried over by default until spelt out differently.
Do note that Gestalt aren't that much more powerful than normal characters. They still have the same limits on actions per round.
The main benefit is raw stats and options available. (A Wizard/Fighter will always be better than a Fighter obviously)
Sort of Sorry Sleeping.
The characters have a lot more power than usual, because people will commonly choose to pair martial characters with spell casters. Which means you have the versatility of spells, but the ability to do martial things. They typically end up with at least 2 good saves, maybe all 3, and full BAB.
What they don't do, is make them significantly stronger compared to what the enemy can do because they still only have the same amount of actions in a turn. The main benefit is that gestalt characters can basically do anything because they have huge versatility.
They're definitely not twice as strong because they still only have the regular turn's worth of actions to do stuff, but they are significantly stronger than a regular character.
If you consider a fighter to be 1.0 on an arbitrary scale of ability, then we might consider a wizard to be 1.5 (wizard are especially versatile and strong due to their magic). A fighter wizard gestalt is probably a 1.75 at most. It's definitely stronger, it can do a lot of things a regular fighter couldn't and can do somethings a regular wizard can't. But it's not as good as having two separate characters in the party that are a wizard and fighter separately.
I'd say there are three methods in general that one can approach gestalt (some builds may achieve more than one of these though)
1) Decreasing vulnerability. More good saves, better HD stuff like that. For example, a wizard/ranger where the player is really only interested in the ranger to have the saves and hit points. Plays just like a wizard, but more survivable.
2) Increasing flexibility. More skills, varied powers. A lot of bard or rogue gestalt builds are focused on this.
3) Synergy. Abilities from two classes make them more powerful than either alone. Something like a Slayer/Magus for full bab, spellstrike and sneak attack. There are some really clever builds out there that can accomplish some pretty big numbers.
The last one of course is where the game is more likely to 'break' delivering surprising numbers for the level of character. It is also true that it can be a problem if some of the party is looking at 1 and 2, while others are looking at 3. If my super versatile fighter/bard ends up feeling just like an extra, that might not be fun to me.
Of course, this can be a problem in a regular game, but gestalt increases the possibilities and thus making the difference between the 'floor' and the 'ceiling' of characters greater. Communicating together as a gaming group from the beginning is pretty important to create a gestalt game that everyone will enjoy playing.
Do note that Gestalt aren't that much more powerful than normal characters. They still have the same limits on actions per round.
The main benefit is raw stats and options available. (A Wizard/Fighter will always be better than a Fighter obviously)
Only due to magic which is it's own issue...
but isn't the trade off for Gestalt that you don't get as many Feats as normal? Or am I thinking of Variant Multiclassing which replaces some level feats with abilities from your second class?
Yep, you are thinking of variant multiclassing, Merlin, but the gestalt characters do not gain any extra non class generated feats, so there is some haze there.
There are definitely gestalt builds that are way better than the base you built from, and others that are only more versatile.
It's not that a character is more powerful than normal, so much as an optimized character has 2x the options to pick from. Which, for optimization is 2x+ more powerful.