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