Gestalt as the only multiclass option

[Lorehead]

Commander, your logic is flawless, but...

I believe that you have confused me for one of my two good twin brothers, who cannot use contractions. It is an easy mistake to make. I am certainly not the five-hundred-year old, undying, demilich-like head of Data in disguise.

You are assuming that the penalty should grow as the same rate as the level for the rule to be acceptable. You prove that LA achieves that and SKR proves that % penalty does not achieve that. But can you prove that achieving that is a good thing?

That depends entirely on how you define "a good thing." I can predict how certain specific proposals would work.

For instance, does this proposal penalize players only while they take gestalt levels? In that case, they will start out at the same level as the rest of the party, and only fall behind for a short time. When that happens, they earn more XP for being lower-level, and catch up to the single-classed party members. There are numerous class combinations where the first few levels of some class contribute much more to a build than later ones: one level of barbarian for a fighter with Extra Rage, four levels of fighter for a monk, two levels of ranger for a Two-Weapon Fighting build.

Will the penalty instead last for the rest of his career? In that case, he may as well keep going gestalt forever. A fractional XP penalty means that he will start out at the same level, stay at the same level much of the time thereafter, but gradually fall further and further behind. If anything, the opposite should happen: gestalt characters tend to outshine standard ones the most at low levels, and less at high levels. An enchanter-sorcerer magic missile machine gun is an incredibly powerful blaster at first level. By high levels, he will miss higher-level spells more than he appreciates his staying power. (My own take on a sor/wiz quasi-gestalt, the unbounded mage, is in another thread.)

SKR has some good point in saying that % has a flaw which LA doesn't have: the fact that most of the time the more powerful PC is not really penalized. But forgets to mention that:
(1) that it is more fair to penalized all the time is his own assumption, a character penalized 30% of the time is still penalized on the average, which is not necessarily worse

No, he correctly pointed out that the character is penalized the least at low levels, when his racial abilities are most significant, and the most at high levels, when his racial abilities are least significant.

(2) LA itself has some a flaw which % doesn't: it makes it extremely difficult to play the character along a party with no LA, when the LA is high compared to the class levels (because of the HP problem)

How, precisely, does percentile avoid this problem? At high levels, it gives the character even fewer HP than he would have with LA. At low levels, it makes the character with LA superior in every way, including HP.

Note that a character with a higher Constitution will always, eventually, end up with more HP past a certain point, no matter what LA you assign.

The point is that LA works very well only as long as it doesn't exceed +2. Higher LA require at least to play a high-level campaign, but still many people hate it. There are in fact attempts to make it hold better (UA optional rule for example).

I basically agree.

ANYWAY I wish to discuss the topic about gestalt classes used in the same game with normal single-class characters. It is not the same as multiclassing, and it is not the same as playing a race with ability bonuses and special powers. It is very different indeed. So what doesn't work with the other two, is not necessarily going to fail with gestalt.

"Necessarily" is such a strong word. But I have my doubts that any system simple enough to use could work in every corner case.

Because you seem to have a much better grasp of math than me I'd definitely appreciate if you'd help calculating what would happen to a gestalt character with either methods, and to estimate if it's possible to devise a fair penalty.

At the moment, the method is not fleshed out enough for me to evaluate. Suppose I want to play the following characters:

• A fighter-ranger archer
• A fighter-barbie with a greatsword
• A fighter-sorcerer who would otherwise be an eldritch knight
• A cleric-wizard who would otherwise be a mystic theurge
• A rogue-wizard who would otherwise be an arcane trickster

Each of these characters has a reasonably balanced analogue in the core rules, which gives us a starting point. How could we generalize this into a gestalt progression without adding dozens of special-case rules? What would doing so achieve?

 

[Pyrex]

Here's one option I considered for a gestalt-as-multiclass variant (it does require a fair amount of bookeeping though)

You XP for each class seperately, with each additional class having a cumulative +1 LA.

Example:

Bob is a 4th level Ftr with 6,000xp.

Bob wants to add a Rogue Gestalt-level to become:

Ftr1 / Rog1
Ftr2
Ftr3
Ftr4

Bob has to dump 1,000xp into 'Rogue' to gestalt his first Rogue level.

He then decides he wants a 2nd & 3rd Rogue level, so his Ftr XP total is now 6,000 and his Rogue total needs to be 6,000 for:

Ftr1 / Rog1
Ftr2 / Rog2
Ftr3 / Rog3
Ftr4

Deciding to branch out further, Bob decides he wants to learn the basics of Sorcery. Since he's already multiclassed once, his first Sor level will cost him 2,000xp (6,000 for Ftr4, + 6,000 for Rog3, + 2,000 for Sor1 for a total of 14,000 xp).

He's now:

Ftr1 / Rog1 / Sor1
Ftr2 / Rog2
Ftr3 / Rog3
Ftr4

HP: Anytime your HD for a given level increases, add +1hp per step (so a Rog multiclassing to Ftr would gain +2hp)

Skills: If your new class has more skills (Ftr to Rog), gain the skills & spend them. If your new class has less skills (i.e. Rog to Ftr) consider allowing swapping a few points around.

 

[Bront]

It's odd, but a minor % penalty without consistant awards will basicly have the character bouncing back and forth between behind and being caught up (In fact, could potentialy swing the character ahead at some point depending on the encounter.)

I guess I see the point of the Geometric advancement.

Ultimately, I think I'd advice against mixing normal and Gestalt multi-classing.

 

[Veritas]

I've done this... changing multiclassing to be gestalt-like. I made some extra rules for it though, to make it more compatible with single-classed characters. You can find the complete rules here: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=153391 but here's the basics...

- xp is divided evenly between the chararcter's classes (or you can use one xp total for both and they must divide their total xp by two and only apply that modified number).
- non-level-dependent xp system from Unearthed Arcana used, OR
- individual xp award system from Forgotten Realms campaign sourcebook used instead of standard DMG version, taking into account that the MC character is lower level than his single-classed fellows (at the same total xp earned, before dividing).
- characters only receieve the better hitdice/saves/BAB from their classes, not everything from both added together. A variant is to average their hit points.

 

[Lorehead]

Since several people have put together complete systems, I'll take the time to discuss them.

Splitting XP between classes is another way of saying "50% XP penalty." It doesn't work in third edition, and it never will. It didn't even work in second edition. The only reason it ever came close is that, at the levels people played demihumans, a 50% XP penalty used to put you a flat one level behind in both classes.

Since that was (and is) too powerful, you really want the gestalt characters to be more like two levels behind. Give them a LA and be done with it. The system won't be as balanced as the one in the core rules, it won't be as flexible, and it won't mesh well with existing CRs and PrCs. But, it will be more like AD&D multi-classing, which seems to be the main design goal.

I guess I see the point of the Geometric advancement.

I wasn't telling you to use a geometric progression, but I see how I could have left that impression. I was saying that, if you've already decided to use a fractional XP penalty come what may, you would have to switch to a geometric progression. In my opinion, that's exactly the reverse of what you should do, but if someone's bound and determined to breathe life back into the astral corpse of that particular sacred cow, that's his best option.

Switching would produce several undesirable side-effects, which include: the importance of XP penalties would decay exponentially, instead of their present inverse proportion to character level, and the formula for XP cost of magic items would need to become much more complicated and wholly different from the GP cost.

If you do want to replace the XP system, I posted an alternative some time ago that simplifies calculations, preserves the meaning of XP costs and represents fixed level gaps as fixed XP penalties.

 

[Veritas]

Since that was (and is) too powerful, you really want the gestalt characters to be more like two levels behind. Give them a LA and be done with it. The system won't be as balanced as the one in the core rules, it won't be as flexible, and it won't mesh well with existing CRs and PrCs. But, it will be more like AD&D multi-classing, which seems to be the main design goal.

If you work out the numbers, my system does put them at an average of two levels behind. At low levels they are only 1 level behind, but starting at around 7-8th level they drop to 2 levels behind and stay that way up to 20th. You're right that in 1st/2nd edition they were only about 1 level behind at all levels, though.

I'd found some problem with just using a straight LA, but I can't recall what it was (I worked up this system almost a year ago, and I can't recall all the issues involved). LA's were considered, but ultimately rejected. I believe it had something to do with the fact that a gestault party can handle CRs of 2 over their level, but LA and CR aren't necessarily equivalent to each other, so imposing an LA doesn't necessarily compensate for the higher CR.

 

[Bront]

I wasn't telling you to use a geometric progression, but I see how I could have left that impression. I was saying that, if you've already decided to use a fractional XP penalty come what may, you would have to switch to a geometric progression.

I know, that was what I ment about seeing your point.