Hey, I have been wondering why so many people seem to be against Gestalt? I get that they're more powerful, but that also means you can throw some bigger monsters at players.
I mean I absolutely don't want to kill players, but it's fun to see throw things at players and make them figure it out.

It has been my experience on RPOL that Pathfinder GMs in general are afraid of anything that makes characters "powerful".  I don't know about D&D because I cannot bring myself to play it now that PF is out.

Because building encounters that are challenging without resulting in TPKs or having to be constantly adjusted on the fly is hard.  Like, really hard.  When you give the PCs more power, you inherently make that balancing act harder.  This is especially true with RPOL where you generally want to minimize the number of combats in your game, making the normal attrition-math-model even more delicate.

I've run and played gestalt before, and it's alright... but Pathfinder fixed a lot of the issues with 3.x that made it so attractive originally.  So, it can be kind of overkill.

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 2):

*nods* My wife started me on Gestalt characters. It's something that I am finding I am quickly falling in love with, as it gives players some power, but it also means I can start chunking powerful things at them. For instance, a pair or 3 of minotaur at level 4 or 5 starts being fun without being too absolutely dangerous to the party.

Hm. What's Gestalt?

It's a mechanic introduced in D&D3.5.  Essentially, you pick two classes at each level and kind of get them both (but not entirely).  It's best used for small groups of players that would otherwise be handicapped in abilities by their number.

You can find the original version here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/vari...estaltCharacters.htm

Each character gets two classes and takes the "best of both worlds" every time they advance a level.

What's the difference between this and normal multiclassing, then?

In reply to Varsovian (msg # 8):

A 2nd level multiclassed fighter-rogue will have the abilities and hit points of a 1st level fighter and a 1st level rogue. Gestalt means you have the abilities of a 2nd level fighter and a 2nd level rogue, with the hit points of a 2nd level fighter.

That's way they call it also Hannah Montana.


At first level you can have only one class normally.
You can't be at the same time a Rogue and a Cleric.
If you start as a Cleric, at 1000 XP you can choose if become Clr2 or Clr1/Rog1.

If you use the Gestalt option, you can fuse two classes.
So, a first level Gestalt Rogue/Cleric character:
- rolls his HPs with a d8 like a Cleric (a Cleric's d8 better than a Rogue's d6)
- gets a +2 on Will and Fortitude like a Cleric and +2 on Reflex like a Rogue (so he has +2/+2/+2 on his Saving Throws)
- has (8+INT)x4 skill points to distribute (a Rogue's 8+INT better than a Cleric's 2+INT)
- has a medium Base Attack Bonus (no difference between Rogue and Cleric)
- his class skills are taken from both Cleric and Rogue class
- has the class features of a 1st level Cleric
- has the class feature of a 1st level Cleric
- has Armor Proficiency like a Cleric (better than Rogue)
- has Weapon Proficiency in Simple Weapons plus the Rogue's weapons (like a rapier, sap, etc.)

This becomes your core class.
That means a 7th level Gestalt Rogue/Cleric will have Sneak attack +4d6, access to 4th level Clerical Spells, +5/+5/+5 on Saving Throws, 7d8 HDs, (8+INT)x10 skill points and so on.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:16, Tue 03 May 2016.

I find it funny how gestalt, in different gaming systems, mean different things.

I really like gestalt, both when a player and a DM.  It allows for a much greater variety of character options, much more capable characters, and it gives the PCs the feel of being something unusual, beyond the norm, which I find I prefer nowadays, after years of normal play.

In reply to gladiusdei (msg # 12):

In perfect agreement. Sure, in any world a 10th level anything is rare. But...if I'm off saving the world (or even just a small part of it) I want to feel like my character isn't just rare...they are unique.
In my opinion a Gestalt character has that feel almost every time. My favorite is an active character of mine named Rodric the Unbowed. He is now a 12th level Fighter/Favored Soul in a 3.5 universe.
He has faced giants head to head, he has slain demons, he has raised the dead, he has...etc. Most characters just can't do that. And that makes them...a bit plain to me. I like the flexibility, but also the need to make decisions about what your doing. A barbarian will always smash. But what about a Barbarian/Druid? Does he smash the enraged Dire Bear, or does he try and calm it down and figure out what's got it so angry?

I like Gestalt characters.  Most gms unfortunately do not have the skills to deal with them.

I don't like the concept. Don't play pathfinder, but the idea of getting best of both worlds sounds abit too much Mary/Marty Sue/Stu building inless it's just compensating for running three people on a six man plot or something.

The whole point of RP for me is having a small skill set I can bring to the table and then working the rest out with me team. If I could do two roles in DH I imagine it would be pretty game breaking as it would allow me to get an inane number of skills.

In reply to Livember (msg # 15):

Eh you wouldn't have an inane number of skills. Sure, you'd probably have a better number of skill points to spend, but you'd have a proportional number of class skills that would be useful or even possibly critical to those characters.

Actually, in DH you have talents and aptitudes that allow you buy talents on the cheap. Usually the class(role) you pick defines most of your aptitudes which usually restricts you to either being good at investigating, social encounters or combat. Two classes could allow you be really good at two, which would also open up a huge arrey of skills that would normally cost 400xp down to 100xp.

What is DH?

In reply to Livember (msg # 17):

That sounds a lot like the 7th Sea stuff, but you'd still only have so many skills you're getting at each level. So, while you may have some things that have inherent benefits to the cost of things, you're not going to be getting more skill points or attribute points gained per level. It's always about how you spend and use what you get.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 18):

Dark Heresy, a different system but the only one I know so I'm relating it back.

In reply to Lord_Johnny (msg # 19):

Yeah, you get the same amount of XP, but when you can effectively buy abilities that normally a class would pay 4X the amount for it can rapidly lead to character getting alot of traits they wouldn't be able to. Kinda game breaking, reduces the need for team work surely?

Then again you can balance by making really ott enemies I guess.

In reply to Livember (msg # 20):

Well, it is a bit easier to get specific things, and get a bit more use of out of them, yes. But you still have X number of things to use. Maximizing your ability to use what is given to you is already part of the system though, so it's not really breaking the system.

And yeah, I said a bit further up that one of the things that it does help is bring in the ability to throw stronger and tougher fights or circumstances at the party.

I don't know that it's a useful comparison because PF is still a level-based system and doesn't really advance the way DH does.  While a level 5 normal PF character might have a lot less breath of ability than a level 5 gestalt PF character, the gestalt character is still going to be limited to the general power level of a level 5 character.  For instance, a level 5 wizard/monk is going to have better defenses, mobility, and hit points than a level 5 wizard, but her spells are no more potent than a regular level 5 wizard, nor can she do more things in a round than she could before (in terms of quantity).

Mostly what gestalt does is give PCs a wider breadth of ability and shore up their weak spots (like low HP, poor saves, or poor mobility).

I think this pretty well summed it up for me. It doesn't change the game mechanics. It simply allows for characters that don't feel like they're just about to fall over if any single thing bumps into them. At least...that's how I feel about it.

Now I'm putting randomness into the reply just so I can actually quote what I want to quote to provide a concise reply of agreement.

I tend to play D&D games that focus a lot more on story, intrigue, and also tend to have an epic scope.  So PCs that are a cut above the board are a lot better fit, as are PCs that have a wider scope of abilities and can handle more situations, instead of having one specific combat role that never deviates (healer, tank, dps, etc)  So gestalt is my preference.  If you are playing a much more straightforward D&D game with defined party roles as they dive into dungeons, then yeah, gestalt may not be a good idea.  it all depends on the game you're playing/running.

My prefered version of gestalt at first level you get everything, but the worst of each.
At second level you have one level of each.

I only played gestalt once, on here, and it was a 20-level arena game. (Literally just combat.) I was an ogre monk were-Megatherium. (That left like...two levels of Fighter or something.)

I only ran gestalt once, in real life. I was running a Planescape campaign and all my players were 5th level at the start. The reason I ran gestalt? So they could be interesting species and yet still have interesting abilities. Because, again, Planescape. (For those that don't know, it's a plane-hopping setting. My game was based in Sigil, a metropolis with gates leading to pretty much every other plane.)

So for example one guy was a half-demon, half-dragon, half-ogre, human. (I allow "half-" templates if you are a quarter-something, any lower than that I demand a weaker template.) I think he had like only one level of Soulknife in the beginning or something.

Another was a Pixie Druid. She ended up dual-classing two different druid prestige classes.

One was a (Human) Ghost Wilder. (I had to fiddle with the cosmology to allow ghosts in a planar campaign, but it was fine.)

One guy...picked two different classes every level. He insisted that by level 17 or so, he was going to be invincible. The campaign didn't last long enough to prove him right. This wasn't my intention, but you get people like this when you say you're going to run a high-power campaign. Oh well.

Every session was basically lots of roleplaying followed by one huge boss battle. I don't remember ever running two battles in one day, because they lasted quite a bit. (Gestalt characters usually have very high saves, so save-or-die spells are nerfed. This means longer fights.)

If you want something like that, gestalt is awesome. If you want a classic "four adventurers meet in an inn, go slay goblins" campaign there is no reason for gestalt. It's just going to throw things out of wack.

I think you make a very good point here. For a more normal campaign, Gestalt would indeed be pretty inappropriate. On the other hand, I would also say that the idea (for me) that hero's have to do heroic things rather than just being competent Johnny's on the spot, means that the party of four may be facing a duo of minataur's...at level 5. I'm not sure I'd be okay throwing that at at players that weren't Gestalt.

The thing to remember is how woefully relative most of these frames of reference are. Because a DM controls all time and space, she decides how powerful the PC's are relative to the game world, whether they're gestalt or not.

A trio of non-optimized, non-gestalt characters with a very low point-buy, very little magical gear, and a lot of restrictions on their class and race choices, can still be heroic and a cut above and more than competent, so long as the DM pitches the game world below them.

And similarly, a party of six, gestalted, fully-kitted out with straight 18's and full access to every bad RAW combo in the book(s) can be a bunch of punks if the DM pitches the game world far above them.

Obviously, the further you move away from the way the game was designed to work the more the cracks show, but the mechanical specifics of the party doesn't control how 'powerful' they are, the DM does. All the time.

And, by and large, gestalted character aren't necessarily more powerful than normal characters, they're just more versatile. A 5th level gestalted character still has 5th level saves (albeit two or three good ones) and still has 5th level HP (although probably a die code or two higher than 'normal') and access to 5th level abilities (just more of them).

But their limited Feat selection needs to serve two masters, so they can never really fully optimize either track, and they still (generally) only get one action per round. So they have all these options, but it gets harder and harder to bring all of those options to bear.

Things can start to break down at higher levels, sure. But people who are good at gaming the system will game the system regardless of whether they're gestalt or not.

I enjoy gestalt because I enjoy noodling with the mechanics as much as I enjoy the role-playing aspect, and there are lots of interesting (not necessarily powerful, or game breaking) options and ideas and concepts that can only really be done in gestalt.

I would have to disagree with this, unless your version of heroic is beating up on one goblin.  I admit that some people like to play those kind of games but wandering around doing things that even an average farmer could do seems less than fun to me.

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 29):

Well that's just it. Everyone's definition of heroic is different. Your average farmer probably couldn't beat up a single goblin.

But it just illustrates that different people play the game in different ways. And gestalt is just one way. Neither worse, nor better. Just a given way to play a given kind of game.

Eh, actually the farmer would have to be pretty low on stats to not be able to bear up a single goblin. From a straight CR standpoint, all the goblins (unmodified) I have ever seen have been CR 1/3, with the most dangerous thing about them being that they are more willing to do violence than your average John Brown Farmer. Not that Farmer John shrinks from a brawl in the offing necessarily, but the goblin loves the violence.
BUT, stat wise, size wise, general ability to defend themselves, the farmer would have a distinct advantage. It's the numbers that make goblins dangerous, not the individuals.

In reply to Lord_Johnny (msg # 31):

From a purely mechanical point of view, the goblin probably has the advantage over a (presumably) 1st level Commoner with something close to all 10's in stats. If only because he has a 15 AC, and a +2 to hit. Remember that a CR of 1/3 means that 3 of them should be a 'reasonable' challenge for four 1st level PC's. That's not peanuts to a near total noncombatant.

But that's all just semantics. My point is that the DM controls how hazardous the game world is, not the players. So any particular set of mechanical circumstances can place the PC's above, at, or below, the 'hero' line depending on the power level of the world around them.

It depends how that one goblin is played....:)  I love playing goblins.  Considering that a first level goblin starts with a +10 to stealth.  As a starting PC they could start out with a 15 if stealth isn't a class skill or 18 if it is.

Which is kind of my point, played correctly a single goblin would pulverize a group of 1st level "A trio of non-optimized, non-gestalt characters with a very low point-buy, very little magical gear, and a lot of restrictions on their class and race choices"  just from the +10 to stealth and it is considered a 1/3 challenge rating creature.

Yeah. Exactly. That's all precisely what I've been saying. It all depends. These value judgments are subjective. There's no one True Way to Play. Etc etc.

Well, "played correctly", a cat can beat up a single 1st level character. Or a mule can easily wipe a whole party.

Is the +10 from Pathfinder? In 3.5 goblins just have a +5.

As a tangent, the webcomic Goblins has goblins "playing smart" and doing all sorts of things.(As one of the subplots anyway.) It's quite good.

So I agree that there isn't a single way to play. That doesn't mean that the others are a true reflection of the game. Goblins are dangerous in the group numbers. Now, while I'm not saying you're wrong, but a CR 1/3 mean 3 creatures are a fight for a party of four? I've NEVER heard that rating before. I'm sorry, but even standard fighters at level 1 are a match for two goblins by themselves. I'm afraid I just can't take the claim you're making about goblins seriously.

I bet you dollars to dimes I can take out a party of "A trio of non-optimized, non-gestalt characters with a very low point-buy, very little magical gear, and a lot of restrictions on their class and race choices" with one goblin....:)

You could do it with 1 kobold, too. Especially one from the infamous Tucker's Kobolds tribe. We're talking a normal party, not the one from Rusty & Co. (a gelatinous cube with bard levels is scary) after all.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 15:57, Thu 12 May 2016.

The nastiest low level challenge? Gremlin, Pugwampi, I almost killed a 3rd level ranger IN his favored terrain with one of those guys, lol.

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 41):

I'm not familiar with Pugwampi. I'll have to look that one up. Tasty Beverage Mimic and Rot Grub are what I'd think of first, for deadly low level monsters (Nilbogs as well, but any campaign where they aren't among the rarest things out there would be scary in and of itself).

I will take up that challenge. I pick a Human fighter, level 1, Pathfinder vs your two, straight from the bestiary goblins.

Well that wasn't exactly the challenge but I will accept just for the fun of it...:)  Where will we be doing this challenge though?  It seems kind of silly to make up a game just for this?

Actually you don't really have much choice, unless you take the challenge off-site.  Games can only be played in privately run boards.

That is the literal meaning of CR.

A monster of CR "N" is an average fight for a party of 4 level "N" characters. As characters can't be less than 1st level, fractional CRs add up. So yes, 3 level 1/3 monsters are an average fight for 4 level 1 characters.

What does "average" mean? That's a little more vague. I don't have my DMG in front of mean, but one such fight is supposed to cost...one fourth? one fifth? something like that of the party's "resources". (HP, spell slots, limited feats, magic items, etc.) Such that if they have five such fights in a row without rest, they have to go rest before having another fight or be screwed.

Or more generally, the fight is not hard but there is SOME risk. For example, one lucky crit by a goblin can take a character into the negatives. Heck, even a regular hit might take out a Wizard. And note that the goblins have bonuses to Hide and Move Silently, they have javelins and they are cowards. Three goblins ambushing the party and flinging javelins can take out someone just in the surprise round. (Ambush doesn't add to the CR/EL.) If even a level 2 party met three goblins, the risk would be much smaller. And there is absolutely zero threat against high level characters, which is why a party of level 9 and up would get 0 xp from this fight. (If the EL is 8 lower than the average level, you get nothing.)

Yes, I'm aware that a single Sleep spell wins this combat and every party with a Wizard will have it. That's not part of the calculation. CRs are calculated for suboptimal (but still decent) parties.

I think every level the DM's supposed to give them one hard fight, a couple of easy fights and a couple of level-appropriate fights. Or something. Haven't looked at the DMG for a long time.

I know the math you're using, but it doesn't work directly for critters below CR 1.  A fight with multiple creatures below CR 1 is always one step higher on the CR chart than you might otherwise think (three CR 1/3 monsters is a CR 2 fight - as is a fight with two CR 1/2 monsters or 4 CR 1/4 monsters).  That math seems to work fine once you get past CR 1/2.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG...k/gamemastering.html

Actually, winning with a sleep spell, at level 1, is a fairly significant portion of the party resources. And at low levels winning initiative is a major thing; so yes, Sleep is taken into account. It's not particularly optimised to have 'Sleep'. Everyone knows about it.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 47):

That might be the case in Pathfinder, but I have the 3.5 DMG open in front of me right now and 3 1/3 creatures are definitely an EL 1 encounter. There's a pretty nice table on page 49.

For CRs of greater than 1, the rule is two monsters of CR "X" add up to "X+2". There is no other rule in 3.5. (Although adding the mixed pair rule and wiggling a bit gives the same results as the table you linked.)

For CRs below 1, it literally says "see table". As far as I can see in the table, it's "multiply CR with number, round to nearest whole", more or less.

As for a single creature, the EL can apparently be CR+/-1.

In reply to Flint_A (msg # 46):

So, I have always heard that CR was to be roughly consistent with 1 player, not 4. However, let me not be unable to admit I was wrong. I fact checked you, and you are right and I am not. I concede this point.

Bah, challenge ratings have always been hit or miss.  Have a howler attack your party if you think they are sacrosanct.  lol.

I was extrapolating from that, though the text doesn't seem to back up my interpretation very well.

Regardless, at that low of a level, the CR system is nearly useless.  It's highly volatile and a "CR 1" encounter can easily result in a TPK if dice go really badly.

In the best of times, it's more of an art than a science.

It is quite true that CRs are almost entirely irrelevant, especially at low levels. Orcs are 1/2. Two orcs can easily slaughter a level 1 party if they get the drop. They do 2d4+4/18-20. Are you kidding me? One crit (15% chance) easily sends a character to -10.

D&D 5E seems to be a lot better at handling monsters, for what it's worth.

The reason you might have thought that CRs are consistent with 1 player is that in most D&D games the heroes are overpowered and the DMs knowingly send stronger than prescribed monsters so that the party will level up faster. At least this has been the case in most games I've played or run. I'm not complaining, the few exceptions I played in weren't very fun.