I fully expect some criticism for this, but I've never been a fan of the Gestalt rules. I mean, I can kinda see using them if you have a very small group (or even a single player), but it seems like hardly a week goes by here without at least three full-group Gestalt games turning up.

Why is this so popular? What's wrong with using the existing systems?

Some classess, like bard, or hell, samurai, become much more fun when you can pair it with another class. Bards at epic level are AWESOME! Below that...it really takes a careful player to make fun.

As for gestalt versus not. I do both. MY epic game is single class, and I've had my players frequently ask "can we gestalt?!" which was on the table, but not something I wanted to do lightly.

Some classes, like wizard, can even be fun to do, if you aren't playing them at their "full" potential. I have a fighter that is paired with an enchanter, that dualed with dread necromancer. Against Undead, he does okay. Against oozes, constructs, and certain outsider with immunities, my fighter and the sorcerer with AoE have to clean up. I'm sure someone COULD make an enchanter that deal with an ooze or construct, but I doubt it. Especially not with focused casting.

It's all about how you play. If you play only the most powerful classes, with the most powerful abilities/spells then yes, you don't need gestalt.

Then again, you were upset about using charges off a .75k wand of CLW. So I'm not sure where you're coming from. In LG (living greyhawk)  Wands of CLW would be used every other module. lol

Play what you want to play, but that's why people like gestalt. It gives them more options, and MANY if not MOST of us have played it as "existing".  It's nice to change things up. I got a 12th level mage in LG. I did that, and so enjoyed the freedom of gestalt in home groups. It wasn't about power.

As for "existing". You know UA is first party, right? It's AU that was 3rd party.

Players like to be unique. Players, especially from other systems, want to play a concept, not just a class.

Bluntly put, single classes can be boring for some people. Why DON'T you like gestalt?

Anyway, be pro stuff. It really helps.

What are you talking about?

never even pretended try that. I use  D&D  rules  with a bit  of Homebrew rules.. the rest, heck with it, They got enough of  my money of the years  I have played!

I'll pitch since I have a hunch my post was in part what led you to ask this question.  I've played roleplaying games for a long time, and I am fairly tired of the run of the mill characters.  So like V_V said, single class characters seem to be boring.

and like V_V said, I enjoy creating character concepts and go with that.  I don't like running or playing games that feel like a slower version of a video game.  I prefer getting immersed in a story.

a side benefit is that, on average, gestalt characters tend to be a bit more robust and versatile, meaning a party of 4 gestalt can usually handle a LOT wider variety of encounters than a regular group of 4 players, which is helpful when planning campaigns.

Gestalt allows for a much greater diversity and ability to customize a character and create something that feels a lot more my own, and a lot more heroic.  Power is not the central reason for me.  Making a powerful character is great, but with the level of min-maxing and tailored builds online, it basically means everyone would be the same few characters ad nauseum, because they want to be the most powerful.

so I run gestalt to make it more immersive, more heroic, and give players (and myself) a much larger variety.

Oh, there was a game you played with me where you were hellbent to not use a couple charges of a wand.

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Spoiler for the dumb half-orc cleric: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
It was about dragons. You were playing a dumb as rocks half-orc cleric, and I was playing the main tank. I was at <50% HP and I said "Can anyone cure me?" and you're like "suck it up, buttercup" lol it was literally 30 gp to heal me, and you were like "it's a waste". pffft. It's low level, every bit of HP counts.

When I would play LG one of the most common mistakes was people wouldn't fully heal between combats. It happened a lot. It many, many times better to heal, even over heal. Someone drops, you lose not one, but two actions. Always, always better to spend those couple charges.

I was also the tank. I took 70% of the team's damage. Your character took the remaining 30%.

---

I brought up wands, only to orient playstyle. To you, saving charges made sense. You have experience with, I presume, using it in battle or in a pinch, sometimes being without them. The notion of "wasting" a charge seemed too high a cost. That's different playstyle. It helps put things in perspective.

Playstyle affects a lot. Some people think fighters suck. I play them often enough I can keep up with save or die mages. Some people think wizards are OP, and refuse to play with them. Same thing with paladins, or chaotic neutral characters. Many people have their reservation, from isolated events/games.

Case in point, if you expect a cleric to be using his wand for emergencies, you're playing in a different atmosphere than me. Which is fine. Experiences differ. It's good to note those differences. That's just not something that worked in LG, or in the home games I played. I've seen people make that mistake and it was costly. Said person dropped, initiative came, they drooled and bled, one action gone, and then the cleric, druid, ranger, or paladin used a wand to get said person up. A second action wasted. If actions count in combat, you ALWAYS want to reserve in battle spells for offense or defense, not resource management. That should be done in between battle. Especially at low levels, when you have so little to begin with.

With gestalt, if you're used to fighting core MM encounters with roughly EL=PL, then gestalt can be overkill. If you have four person party, and fight EL+4 encounters, and deal with frequent par cor (sp?) environments, and disposable, but challenging encounters, then gestalt can really help take the edge off. Even with a core; wizard, cleric, rogue and fighter; the most basic of groups, you can run into situations you simply don't have the resources to handle.

I can copy and paste some battle plans if you'd like. I have most of the game home games I played, documented round by round. Mostly for my own keepsake, but it's also useful for comparison. It might give you an idea of how gestalt played out in practice, and not just theory. Every game I have on record goes from at most 7th (often lower) all the way to at least 16th (often higher).

GMs who want to put in badass monsters sometimes give the party more magic items. Sometimes they have more player spots. Sometimes they use gestalt. It's all about what the GM has in mind.

@Gladiusdel I actually, now, have the face to face group outvoting me. We have played ONLY gestalt for like nine years. Every time I mention single class, they give me a dirty look "Uh uh!" and I meekly retreat ""okay. It was just an idea" lol. So while I like gestalt more, it mostly ALL I've had to play that goes anywhere. RPoL is fun to MAKE characters, but I rarely get much PLAY out of them. So it would be nice to remember what we are overlooking.

Then again, when I played LG, it was VERY limited. I also played in the "big leagues" with friends who wanted to do meta-regionals,at APL+2 MINIMUM, and Dyver Meta-regionals were brutal as is at APL+0. So making use of very little to do a lot was what I did for a many years BEFORE my face to face group really hit it off. I never thought I would WANT to go bakc to single class back then. I miss it, a little, though

I can confidently say that wasn't me.

Its like you said, different play styles.  The competitive rpg tournaments like that, like shadowrun's missions, or star wars living force, sound horrible to me.  I prefer catering the game to a story for the group.  I don't get a lot of enjoyment out of sticking to the base game and competing with the system.

Then again, I like using cheat codes on video games to make it more enjoyable, instead of trying to beat a game hardcore.

So everyone enjoys different things.

Of note. I haven't played PF enough to level above 4th. I didn't even know they would HAVE gestalt. So that's interesting. It is based on 3.5 after all. I just didn't know that was a thing...I mean unless it's hybrid PF game that uses 3.5 material. In that case, I can understand wanting to use "existing" rules.

I was speaking purely from D&D 3.5.

@LonePaladin: The game is still active...

@gladiussdel It had story, but the groups were very competitive.I was part of the mage's guild, and off record I was the second highest Int character in the region. He was a flamboyant and emotionally flighty mage, so we had fun with that under certain modules. It was certainly quite a game, but any roleplaying, yeah, we made, or the GM ad libbed. The modules were, admittedly, quite dry.

But I digress
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was moot, at 02:16, Tue 26 June 2018.

Gestalt tends to give characters a bigger toolbox from which to draw.  Everyone likes more tools.  What with the action economy generally this isn't near as powerful as having two different characters played by one player, but it is more powerful than one character because if you have a hammer than every problem kind of needs to be bashed.  But if you have a hammer, screwdriver, etc., then you can more easily do different things.

As far as rpol is concerned, it's a combination of the pretty much non-existent level rate and character development.   I'll pick on one of my favorite characters, Ragnar.   Ragnar is my version of Hulk, so he'd ideally a barbarian/monk.    It's much easier to build a character like that when you've got more levels to work with.

As far as wand usage goes: it depends on the GM you're used to really.   Some GMs give consumable magic items (such as wands, potions, etc) out like candy while others pretty much force you to make your own.   There's also the mindset that I've had to deal with where divine caster = healbot.   Which usually isn't the case, in my experience.

The flaws of a class-based RP game system when you're trying to map a concept for something other than an archetype. Some people like class-based systems and that's fine. I played Pathfinder and play 5e. But it is trying to use a hammer to insert a screw. It can be done but...

Classless systems don't have that same issue. Running a Conan game with Modiphius 2d20 and a 1930's Pulp game using Savage Worlds in RPOL and the character concepts generally just map easily in terms of which attributes and skills the character needs to fulfill the concept. Sometimes it requires a bit of thought on how to build the character and sometimes the concept requires far more development than the starting characters in this game but its fairly easy to dial the concept back until the level matches everyone else.

Provide some xp every so often and they can buy some improvements without an arbitrary level mechanism getting in the way, e.g. if they want to specialise in combat to the detriment of everything else they can

As others have pointed out, Gestalt works for certain unique character ideas or for mediums (such as RPoL) where leveling up takes an eternity (for most games). I know I'm not alone in having an idea for a character that I can't make work until level 8, whereas most games die far before that. Gestalt also provides a new and fresh way of playing with the same system you already know and love. I think that accounts for most of why Gestalt is popular.

It's worth noting that it's not equivalent to making every-one super-powered. The base mechanics help limit that, especially through action economy. Sure, a munchkin or power-gamer will have a field-day with some of the combos they can now do. But they can still only do so much in a single round. A good DM can make sure everything is balanced, even against a munchkin.

From my experience it falls into three buckets:

1. As mentioned above, people want to do more with their characters.
   
   
2. Players want to make lower levels deal with more challenging encounters so you take two characters and cram them into one so low levels don't suck as much.
   
   
3. Power gamers.

In my opinion, for Pathfinder, and again just from my observation, it's like 75%+ the 3rd category. #1 can be mostly resolved with the vast array of archetypes or hybrid classes in pathfinder do almost anything a gestalt does better but with a power level balanced against other classes. A magus has cool abilities that merge fighter and wizards together so why do you need to be a full fighter AND a full wizard if not for moar power?

#2 can be resolved a number of other ways that doesn't involve mangling the core game mechanics, namely magic items. You give your players some cool magic items early and they can take on higher level challenges without needing to play two characters in one.

#3 is where it's at. Players want all these neat abilities without having to sacrifice anything. They want to push the boundaries of the system in new ways, mechanically. It's not a bad thing. I know power gaming is sometimes used as a perjorative but it's not. People play RPGs for fun and fun isn't dependent on one person's definition. A game full of mary sue ubermen is FUN!!! so long as everyone is on board (see the vast array of Superhero RPGs). People want to be Conan or Superman or <insert pop culture reference here>. People want to single handedly duel the lich and save the prince(ss) but most game mechanics are designed to limit player power.

Gestalt inherently discourages GMs from sticking with the standard D&D "lots of little encounters with occasional big encounters" paradigm.  The endurance of a gestalt party above 3-4 players is just too much for most GMs to rely on as their normal balancer.  Instead, it pushes GMs toward having fewer, larger encounters that are directly challenging (since the ultimate limiter on gestalt is action economy).

This fits fairly well with the general push of PBP to have fewer, more meaningful combats.  I can get 4-5 small encounters and a large encounter done in a 4 hour face to face session.  Each of those small encounters is going to take at least a week in PBP and, worst of all, it's not really that interesting most of the time.

It's something of a chicken and egg problem, in that regard.

On the downside, gestalt characters take a good deal longer to make, are inherently more complicated to use, and are harder to challenge.

Cause the magus spell list sucks. And the magus abilities, while thematically fighter + magic, are totally wrong for what I want from a fighter/wizard combo.

I'm sure similar thoughts exist for other hybrid/combo classes.

My point exactly: power gaming.

Not power gaming.

To me, a swordmage needs non-combat spells. Things like spiderclimb and alarm.

The entire point of mixing swordplay and magic, is to use weapons and armor for attack and defense so you can focus your magic on tactical flexibility and utility.

Using magic and swords for attack is just plain redundant with the exception of circumventing dr and resistances, for which simply allowing my weapons to deal alternate damage types is preferable to loading up on blasting spells.

Power gaming has negative connotations.  It usually means wanting to be more powerful than your fellow players, or the setting.  That's not really what running a game where all players are gestalt is about.

I run them, and prefer to play them, because the characters are more versatile and more interesting.  It isn't about how many dice I can bring to bear, or how tough the character becomes.

I guess its the same reason why I don't really want to play a world of darkness game where I am an ordinary human.  It isn't interesting to me.  I like playing characters that are more capable and unusual than real life.
This message was last edited by the user at 14:13, Wed 27 June 2018.

That's what dipping and magic items are for. In Pathfinder you can easily build a fighter with decent charisma and ranks into UMD so you can use wands or scrolls at higher levels. If you don't want to deal with UMD then even a single rank in wizard unlocks all those spells lists for the purposes of magic items. The system as designed is quite flexible but you do have to make sacrifices.



Hmmm....



Perhaps the word power gamer is throwing people off. Looking up on urban dictionary it focuses more on min/maxing rather then what I think is written write there in the name gaming the system for more power = power gaming. Taking two different classes and merging them together seems a perfect example of that, having the flexibility of a wizard but the durability of a fighter...how else can that be construed as gaining more power without giving up anything?

You're describing it in terms that sound judgemental.  So does the term power gaming.

Its just a desire to play a different style of game.  I don't enjoy baseline d&d.  Its tedious, repetitive, and too constrained.  I'd rather play a different game. I prefer games that are more dynamic, more heroic, and don't consist of a grind of so and combat.

But I like d&d settings.  I like the fantasy atmosphere.  Gestalt rules allow me to run and play games that are more enjoyable for me, and those that play.  Its really no different than adapting rifts earth to savage world's, or star wars to d20.

like every role playing game book I've ever read says, whatever makes a fame enjoya now for everyone playing it, do it.  So that's what were doing.

Pathfinder is a league better than D&D (though late 4e wasn't half bad for that) for customization.  I largely feel that gestalt is unnecessary in Pathfinder (though there's certainly a case to make for boosting the skill ranks for the 2+int classes) and Mythic is a better supported path if you want to boost the power level a bit.

Why can't I just play and run gestalt if my players and I enjoy it?

Gestalt is a good way to expand the backgrounds of your character's story without detracting from his class. I once played a fighter with a background in alchemy. He carried around metallic sulfur and magnesium shavings in small bags to use as surprise weapons (admittedly I was using my own Chemistry background to craft these weapons), but the ranks I threw into Craft and Profession detracted from what I could put into traditional Fighter skills. This was in 2nd edition, before UA even came out. Gestault would've made the creation and diversity even better.

I don't think I'm being judgemental but I could be wrong. I feel like you are seeing an attack on gestalt that doesn't exist. Hence the quote I keep linking you back towards



All I and others are saying is that from a mechanics perspective it isn't necessary as a game like Pathfinder has plenty of options for customization to fit most niches in fantasy culture people want to fill. However that doesn't mean people can't build their own stuff and have fun with it. You can throw all the rules out the window and nobody can stand there and say "No, not allowed! That is not how you have fun!"

OP asked why gestalt is so common in Wanted-GM and I simply answered that 9 times out of 10 it's because people aren't satisfied with the apparent power of their character. They want to hit as hard as a fighter, sneak as well as a rogue and sling spells as well as a wizard without sacrificing things to multiclassing penalties or the "hybrid" classes that as mentioned give up things. The games systems are inherently built to provide niches because if I'm the rogue, I don't want the wizard being able to out sneak me (ha!) or if I'm the fighter I don't want the bard to be hitting harder than me. The niches are intentionally focused on a specific class and it is designed to be difficult to master them all. You can either specialize or be a "Jack of all trades, master of none" but that doesn't satisfy some people (and that is fine!). They want to be "Jack of all trades and master of some"  or "jack of all trades and master of all". As mentioned if the entire party and GM are on board then that is a-okay. You do you. You have fun your way.

As mentioned though it only becomes an issue when everyone isn't on board and that describes like 99% of problems at the table. If one person is playing a gestalt and stealing the spotlight from everyone else, that's when it becomes a problem. High level wizards and clerics often have this problem because in D&D/Pathfinder you can use spells to bypass the things that other roles are specialized for. Why do you need to be sneaky when you can cast invisibility? Why do you need to be a good fighter when you can summon demons to take the field of battle for you? Why do you need a ranger to track your enemy when you can just scry them from afar.

That is power gaming as a perjorative, when it is detracting from the fun of others. But as I said above, I think power gaming is just using the system to gain more power: literal power gaming.


Anyway I think the reason you see it so often in Wanted-GM is because it is a niche that is hard to fill. As I said you really need everyone (players and GM) on board for a gestalt game and there aren't pre-published gestalt adventures and managing a part of overpowered players is a challenge on top of all the regular DMing challenge. I think the end result is you have a moderate number of people wanting to play gestalt overpowered characters and a very small minority of DMs willing to take on that challenge.

If you follow Wanted-GM you will notice a lot of patterns for:

• High Level Games
• Niche/unknown games
• Solo games
• Gestalt/OP Games
• 3PP friendly games

And the simple economics is that you have more demand than supply. The majority of games on here are "regular by the book games" or close to it. Low-to-moderate level, only core or official materials, popular game systems etc. The stuff you see frequently in the Wanted-Players is and should be very different from Wanted-GM by its very nature.
[/list]

I think it seemed judgemental because terms like Mary sue and power gaming are almost always used as a criticism online.  But as long as we agree on the general idea, I guess it doesn't matter.

Sorry, my point was that Superhero RPGs are chalk full of characters that would otherwise be described as Mary Sue's in a D&D game. Batman is a super wealthy, super intelligent master detective and hand-to-hand-combatant with a contingency plan for everything and gadgets for every situation.

If I tried to submit that character for a D&D game I would be laughed out of the process but if I submit that character to a Superhero RPG they would say "Oh, so Batman?"

All the major super heroes are that way and I don't think anyone would come out and say that Champions or Mutants & Masterminds is a bad way to have fun.

A point I tried to make up-thread is that the inherent nature of PBP pushes encounters to be more meaningful and thus higher powered (the design assumption in D&D is that the party should have about four encounters of level APL per day - which really bogs down PBP if you stick to it in many cases).  It's only natural to players to respond to that trend by pushing for their own power level to be higher to compensate.


I find this list very interesting and accurate.  The common thing I see in it is that all of these game types require a greater amount of GM work-per-player than the more standard, restricted games (or, at least, more "knowing stuff").  In some cases, it's flat-out beyond the ability of many GMs to meet them with a quality game (myself included).

What's 3PP?

Third Party Press. Basically, any material for the game outside of the main publisher.

To me, Gaming the system, minmaxing, and power gaming are pretty much the same thing, focusing on maximizing numerical/mechanical power.

But there is a whole other side to RPGs, the narrative. By their very nature, the above give up narrative plausibility and consistency to achieve their power (and such players often ignore possibilities present in the narrative but not the mechanics. I.E. flipping a table over is often ignored as cover because there is no mechanic for flipping a table over).

D20 has many aspects where numbers translate to narrative, and those parts are set such that no real world person is higher than level 5, but real world people can become more versatile than a level 5 character despite not being more powerful.

Gestalt allows that greater versatility without improving the numerical "cap" at any particular level.

You would be surprised at what has mechanics. Flipping over a table is a move action or a standard action depending on how generous your GM is feeling and how heavy the table is. It would provide soft cover or full cover depending on what it is made of.

In fact many printed modules that take place in dining areas will make mention of using tables as cover. I recall older adventures where it specifically talks about goblins ducking under tables and thus having cover from medium-sized attackers.



So...multi-classing? Again I speak of pathfinder but a single level dip into Rogue or Ranger unlocks almost every skill in the game. You also don't have to put max ranks into skills so a skill-based class like a rogue can easily put a point in every single major skill and pick up a couple of professions/performances by 3rd level.

I have to ask, why are you arguing with him?  This is why it seems like you're trying to convince people they don't need to play gestalt.

Just let people play what they enjoy.  The people that play gestalt have answered the OP.  No reason to convince anyone they shouldn't play it.

In D&D especially, classes can be deeply pigeonholing.  If you're playing a wizard, you're a dude in robes who can't hit the broadside of a barn with a thrown rock. Your skills and abilities are all focused on wizard and wizarding.  Because of the leveling economy of D&D (you have limited resources but are constantly chasing a rising curve of mechanical needs), you simply don't have the ability to invest in anything that isn't wizarding.

Gestalt loosens that straitjacket.  You can Wizard/Rogue if you want to play a streetwise hedge mage.  You can Wizard/Fighter if you want to play an educated sword sage.  And alternately, you can Wizard/Sorcerer if you want to double down and be the best arcanist who ever arcane...d.

Multiclassing, especially for spellcasting characters in 3.x, just isn't an option.  When you are relying on your mechanics to carry you through an encounter, you simply can't afford to fall behind in caster levels or spell access.  Sadly, especially on pure flavor grounds.  A common counter-argument is that you should.  The counter-counter argument is that if you do, you'll probably end up dead for want of a spell slot at some point, if the GM is adequately challenging your group based on well-built characters.

So much this.    I'm sure we've heard at some point: "What do you mean you don't have fireball, you're a wizard and we're 5th level!"

Tell that to sorcerers. They don't seem to mind :P

In reply to praguepride (msg # 36):

Sorcerers miss out for a single level as a penalty for them not needing to prepare spells and not having super-tight limits imposed on some of their slots.

Yeah, but imagine the Rogue 1 / Sorc 6 who is level 7 and JUST got level 3 spells.

Pathfinder shifted away from multiclassing by providing archetypes and later hybrid classes that largely did the same thing without causing weird math problems for progression.  In some ways, magic users have it the worst since their caster level is critical in so many ways (including SR when the levels get up there).

I'm not entirely sure why a sorcerer wouldn't mind multiclassing.  Unless you're doing some sort of gish build where you want to mix it up in close combat as well as with spells.

I don't really have a dog in this race, but I know that sometimes Charm-oriented sorcerers like to multiclass with another "social" class (eg. bard, vigilante, rogue) in order to gain some of their socially-oriented abilities.