The forces of Hell and the Abyss have discovered an exotic opportunity to seize control of the Material Plane. For the next two years, the planes are more closely aligned than normal. If either the Archdevils or Demon Lords can obtain enough control over the Material Plane, they can drag it into their realm to become a new layer of Hell or the Abyss. To gain said control, they must possess enough lodestones, magical points that massive swathes of the Material Plane are connected to. A few mortals have gotten swept up in an attempt to prevent the end of their world.
Setting: Forgotten Realms. So far, the party spent time in and around Waterdeep, sailed to Chult, then sailed back up to the extreme north. Now they're in the mountains in the middle of nowhere.
Game platform: Discord for gameplay and roll20 for maps.
Expectations: A flavorful character with good backstory and good RP. You'll also need the mechanical prowess to keep up with gestalt's complexity for your build, what your teammates can do, and the correspondingly tricky challenges I throw at the party. Due to player attrition and other life reasons, play has slowed down some but the goal is for the game to proceed at the pace of 1 post/weekday and 1 post/weekend.
Submission: The game will be played on Discord so I just want a text submission formatted reasonably (in terms of text in blocks or on lines) that contains a good backstory, description of the character, and statblock. We can then copy it into the discord channel that will store your sheet. A choice of photo would be nice too (doesn't have to be a Paizo-allowed photo).
The party has an artificer/rogue that shoots things with his guns,
a wizard/fighter that focuses on his reach weapon and a little battlefield control spells,
a paladin/warlock that smites things a lot and heals a little,
and a rogue/bard that buffs, skills, spells, and heals a little. So don't overlap with one of those too much.
1. Currently, the party is in a monastery occupied by monks who are mostly, aesthetically, vikings but very calm and disinclined toward violence. You could play a monk who has decided to journey with the party and help them in their bid to keep the material plane safe.
2. The monastery is located on a mountainside a little above a small, poor, rustic village. The villagers are mostly suspicious of the monks and the monastery, partially because the monastery only seems to be there sometimes and is gone at other times. The party will be conversing with these villagers soon. You could play a villager who, for one reason or another, has the skills, courage, and drive to join the party.
3. Not my favorite option but you could be some sort of adventurer who ends up with the party due to a magical mishap or other exotic adventure.
Ask me if you want more information/ideas on any of these options.
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dotting. Unsure about a Discord PbP, I've done a hybrid in it before, but the PbP aspect felt off. Still, dotting for interest.
Looks like you could use a cleric/something or a more dedicated caster of sorts. I'll see what I can think of. A cleric/sorcerer may be interesting to play.
Anything in particular as far as mechanical side of things the party seems to lack? Magic damage? front liner? Ranged damage?
what skills are lacking? I doubt very many, considering two rogues and gestalt but just figured I'd ask.
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Well, one game i was in died down again and i'm certainly interested in a 5e gestalt game!
Seems you have a pretty diverse group already. The only roles that seemingly are not already someone's specialisation are blaster and healer. Perhaps control caster alongside this. Tentatively, i would make a sorceror on one end of the gestalt with the bloodline that allows divine and arcane spells to be selected, mixed with something that supports this.
Or just a sorceror/life cleric, perhaps?
I'll go and look over potential builds tonight. 5e gestalts are new territory for me.
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@rorek ah, i see now, yes. I should probably have read your post first :)
Which college is the bard, if i might ask, and is multiclassing allowed on either half of tbe gestalt?
For the main healer role along with blaster, i'm going back and forth between bard/divine soul sorceror and paladin/divine soul sorceror. Depending on college the bard is either lore for access to pretty much any support or healing spell or eloquence foor good party buffing. The paladin is just an absolute tank who would be very hard to take down, focussing his spells on healing with metamagic. An arcane knight hospitaler, if you will.
One other concept i had and has strong fluff is a mercy monk/twillight cleric. This character would be flavored after Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. His spells and attacks wouls be reflavored around manipulating ki in himself, his party members and his allies. Mercy monk and twillight cleric fit the flavor well as they have both reasonably strong healing and damaging features. He's cool, but probably not as powerful as a paladin/divine sorc. Still, it would have no class overlap with the party. Are you looking for a more powerfull character or a more flavorful one? What style does the party have here?
I'd also be interested, but I'm curious to see the answers to rorek and Trevor's questions as well! I noticed that grappling in 5e is way simpler than PF, and a gestalt grappler would probably do quite well for themselves, but I'm by no means sold on that!
The build that I'm currently looking at is Loremaster wizard, mixed with Tempest Cleric for some pretty gnarly lightning bolts, but nothing is really set in stone!
Sorry for my slow responses. Because this isn't linked to a paizo game, I don't get notifications so I kept forgetting to check. :P
Yes the party is a little light on healing, blasting, and maybe a tad light on battlefield control casting.
The bard is college of lore.
No multiclassing on either side of the gestalt. Just helps keep things manageable.
The party does already had a paladin, btw. The party is semi-optimized but I wouldn't say that they're completely optimized or anything. Nor are they particularly cheesy. So I think a flavorful character would be great as long as they still have a solid contribution they bring to the table. Personally, I would get tired of playing a flavorful character that rarely got to shine in their role but that's just me.
Yes grappling is easier in 5e. Loremaster and tempest cleric would obviously be pretty cool. I threw one of those at the party as an enemy and the maximized lightning fireballs really threw them for a loop.
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Currently looking into the possibility of an avatar mystic gestalted to something else. Avatar mystic recaptures the feel of my favorite D&d class ever, the warlord. They have really good healing abilities as well as great party buffing abilities, and the class also has access to debuffing. I'm unsure what it would gestalt best with.
Before I dive deeper into that, is mystic allowed as a class, even though i believe it is still playtest material?
@Rorek, I absolutely don't want to step on anyone's toes, do you wanna ride the lightning, or should I? Or we both could for some truly epic lightshows!
I feel like going death cleric/monk for some wicked punching. A dark fellow who likes quiet walks in grave yards and protecting the world from those things that spurn or make mockery of death.
Yeah I'd allow mystic as long as it was flavored/RPed appropriately. If it turns out to be broken in practice, we can re-negotiate the balance a little.
I'm only looking for one replacement character right now so, on my end, there's nothing wrong with similar applications.
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All right, cool. I'm working out the Mystic/Divine soul sorceror gestalt now. The basic idea is that it's a Nuker/healer with good support capacity. It has access to empowered healing, twin spell and empower spell from the sorceror side, cleric aoe healing spells from divine soul and twinnable single target big heals and nukes from the ardent. Ardent class features offer medium armor proficiency and shield, some extra healing on psychic spells, a passive +2 initiative for all party members and the ardent support spells. One of the better ones grants everyone an additional action for a round, but it's concentration, lasts a max of one round and is expensive on points.
At higher level the combo will take spells like Heal and Disintegrate and switch to nuking/healing as sorceror with Ardent probably mostly on support.
Any chance you could tell us slightly more about the town, the monastary or the exact region the mountains are in, by PM if you want to avoid spoilers? It's a bit harder to make a good background story if I have no idea in which region we are. Also, how much of the situation surrounding the Lodestones is known to the world at large? Is it logical for a PC specifically to search out the party to assist them or is the problem unknown except for a select few?
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All right, have the mechanical side completed. I ran into one issue though, with the sorceror's twin spell metamagic. This ability costs a number of metamagic points equal to the spell level of the spell that will be duplicated ontyo a second target.
Mystic spells, however, are unique in that they have no level. Each spell costs a different amount of psi points to activate. The more power spells you want to use, the more psi points they use and the less of them you can cast each day.
So, with mystic spells not having a level, what happens in a gestalt game? Is the metamagic point cost a portion of the amount of psy points used? Are they treated like a set level of normal spells?
Will post up a picture and backstory today!
PMing Trevor more details about the town/monastery to avoid spoilers for my current players.
No, people in general do not know what's going on with the Lodestones. The monks are figuring it out very quickly, though, as is the party.
Trevor is PMing me questions and ideas for his submission. If others have ideas/submissions/questions, let me know either in this thread or via PM.
Right, this is Trevor86's finished submission! I tried to make Bo's backstory along the general line we discussed. All his Mystic abilities including all disciplines are in the profile for ease of viewing pleasure.
I didn't include his gear yet since I'm unsure what the rules on that were, but that's an easy fix if he were to be selected. Oh, and it's also true that I don't know if he already had a surname and if he had a specific appearance already described to the party. I kinda liked this one myself, while browsing through the Paizo portraits. Any of these can of course easily be added or edited for the sake of continuity as well.
Good luck on your submissions, everyone!
Loot for level 6 replacement character will be three points worth of magic items and 500 gp worth of gear. An uncommon magic item is one point and a rare one is two points. So you can get three uncommon or one uncommon and one rare.
All right! Guess I'll go for a shield +1, a cloak of protection and a headband of intellect to help out the MAD nature of the build, and just buy a normal splint mail for the armor. Unsure what to spend the rest of the gold on. Think I'll buy a caligraphy set, a climber's kit and some other basic gear I suppose.
Will probably also change one of his disciplines to Mastery of Force for that extra medieval jedi/monk feel.
Thanks for applying. I have chosen Bo Barrendale as my replacement player.