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.