Combining Races

[The Amazing Dingo]

A small debate has sprung up in our (soon to be started) game. With only two players, we've decided to up the stakes and run a gestalt game.

Okay...no problem.

One PC wants to run a Runechild (Monte Cook) with the human benefits (skill points and bonus feat) along with the racial benefits of the the maenid race (Expanded Psionics).

He wraps all this together extremely well in terms of role-playing and I really do like the character he's put together. The player has never been one to shirk away from role-playing, which goes in number 1 in my book.

The question comes up, for which we've been debating heavily, about what, if any LA this character should have. The other PC has a straight +2 LA racial adjustment(namely, drow...*boo* *hiss*...but please bear with me). Assuming the game is started at a gestalted level 12, what level should each character start at to make them balanced?

Thanks for any input!

 

[Starglim]

He multiclassed from human to maenad? How does that work? OK, the simplest answer would be that a +0 LA race added on to another race should be treated as +1 LA.

If he is actually using maenad as a gestalt, so he's classed as Runechild/maenad, I'd say he is underpowered compared to other gestalt characters. No doubt I have completely misunderstood, but let's look at that.

It's possible, though I haven't looked at it closely, that class features, class skills, skill point amount and BAB/save favoured status are about half the worth of a class level with the rest being actual gain of hit points, skill points and so on. That would make a non-gestalt character equal to a gestalt character with 75% as many levels.

Perhaps this character should be treated as +1 LA, but only require 75% of the experience to gain a level that his gestalt fellow party members need. Starting with 12 levels, he would get 1 1/3 times the levels then adjust by LA (or maybe the other way around), so he would be a human/maenad Runechild 15. Does that seem balanced with the other player's build?