What's Your Experience With Gestalt Characters?

[Readerbreeder]

Hello all,

Here's the story -- I've been DM'ing a group of 5 guys for about two years now (currently D&D 3.5E). The campaign's been going fine up until a few months ago, when it began to stall out because three of the players have been working at jobs with bizarre, impossible-to-predict-ahead-of-time schedules (a firefighter and police officer being two of them). For those of you into math, this leaves me with two players out of five much of the time.
Rather than scrapping the campaign and penalizing players who aren't responsible for their predicament, the two remaining players and I are considering beginning a side campaign when it's just the three of us, and running the main campaign when everyone's in one place.
I like the idea of gestalt characters from UA, which might give me half a chance at running published adventures with only two characters, but I worry that without all classes being able to act in a single round or turn (as opposed to all characters ), my guys will still be overwhelmed by a normalized encounter without serious adventure tweaking (or dice fudging).
My question -- Is there anyone out there who has experience with running/playing gestalt characters who can tell me how they stack up with adventures geared for "normal" characters?

 

[Corsair]

I'm impressed. You're one of the few people who realized right off the bat why gestalt isn't nearly as super powerful as many people make it out to be. Two gestalt characters still aren't as good as 4 normal characters because they still only act twice a round instead of 4 times, and have half as many HP. They have more options than a standard 2 or 3 person party, but in combat they tend to not have as big an edge as you'd expect, depending on the classes chosen.

 

[Abisashi]

Gestalt characters with very good stats should do pretty well. I also advise rolling both hit dice at each level, and taking the total result (sometimes your Barbarian/sorcerer will take that d4.) This should work rather well. You can always tweak them by giving them an extra feat or better hit points (if either die rolls below average, reroll it.)

Also, while characters are generally weaker than one character because of less actions, there are lots of advantages they have that don't depend on actions. Their BABs will often be maximum and they will have several good saves. Certain class abilities stack very well (Sneak attack with full BAB and lots of feats to hit even more often, etc.)

 

[DaveMage]

I've been playing in a gestalt game for a few months now, and it's been a hoot.

We have three characters, a psion/fighter, a rogue/sorcerer (me), and a monk/wizard.

We started at level 10, and are now level 19.

I can tell you this. From levels 10-16 it was pretty much like normal D&D, although a typical challenge for us was about +2 to +3 CR above normal. However, all of that changed once our wizard/monk learned shapechange...

Since he retains all of his monk abilitites while in humanoid forms, he is now exceedingly deadly while shapechanged. He can shapechange into a pit fiend, and gain many of the benefits thereof. His AC (while in this form) jumped to over 60, and we were able to defeat a colossal red dragon (CR 26) and its gated-in balor because of it.

So, the bottom line is, depending on the class combo, at a certain point, play balance can suddenly become completely thrown to the wind. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. )

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I've been dying to run a one-shot where everyone has a gesalt class of monk. I was thinking of calling the game "The Simulation" where the PCs were really modern characters trapped in a virtual reality fantasy world.

I mean, the jokes write themselves....

"Do you really think that's a spell you're casting?"
"Remember, there is no battleaxe."
"You hear that, dragon? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound....of your death. "

and of course, the ever popular, "Whoa."

 

[Readerbreeder]

Thank you, gentlemen, for the tips, and DaveMage, for the first-hand experience. It sounds like things can get pretty goofy after a while (an AC of 60+... ...), but since one of the players in this campaign likes tinkering with supercharged, munchkinized, uber-character builds, this should be right up his alley.

Are there any class combinations that I should possibly forbid as being too powerful (if there is such a thing in a gestalt campaign)? What is it about the monk class that makes it such a powerful add as a part of gestalt?

 

[DaveMage]

Thank you, gentlemen, for the tips, and DaveMage, for the first-hand experience. It sounds like things can get pretty goofy after a while (an AC of 60+... ...), but since one of the players in this campaign likes tinkering with supercharged, munchkinized, uber-character builds, this should be right up his alley.

Are there any class combinations that I should possibly forbid as being too powerful (if there is such a thing in a gestalt campaign)? What is it about the monk class that makes it such a powerful add as a part of gestalt?

The monk has several benefits, especially at higher levels:

1) All good saves
2) Increased movement
3) AC bonus (including wisdom and dex bonuses, which, with the appropriate magic items enhancing these scores can make this bonus very, very high)
4) Eventual improved evasion
5) Eventual Healing ability
6) Eventual Spell resistance (current level +10)

 

[Vigwyn the Unruly]

You might consider allowing them to play two regular PCs each. Instant party of four. That's what I do when i DM for my two sons, and it seems to work pretty well. All of the balance assumptions in the game stay the same.

 

[sfedi]

Instead of Gestalt, I'd give each two more levels.

 

[Emirikol]

My x.p. with gestalt characters has been good, however we limited magical item access. Once you open up the 'magic shop' to the PC's, the game get's really unbalanced. Even with 'only one action per round' if you have an AC of 45 and +22 to all saves, the PC's are essentially getting 'extra rounds' in which to do stuff anyways because nothing is hitting them in the meantime.

The 'one action per round' argument goes out the window when AC, HP"s, and Saves become munchkinized.

jh