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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Gestalt as the only multiclass option
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<blockquote data-quote="Lorehead" data-source="post: 2837345" data-attributes="member: 40086"><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>That depends entirely on how you define "a good thing." I can predict how certain specific proposals would work.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>magic missile</em> 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, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=2814417&postcount=6" target="_blank">the unbounded mage</a>, is in another thread.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I basically agree.</p><p></p><p></p><p>"Necessarily" is such a strong word. But I have my doubts that any system simple enough to use could work in every corner case.</p><p></p><p></p><p>At the moment, the method is not fleshed out enough for me to evaluate. Suppose I want to play the following characters:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A fighter-ranger archer</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A fighter-barbie with a greatsword</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A fighter-sorcerer who would otherwise be an eldritch knight</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A cleric-wizard who would otherwise be a mystic theurge</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A rogue-wizard who would otherwise be an arcane trickster</li> </ul><p>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?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lorehead, post: 2837345, member: 40086"] 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. 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 [i]magic missile[/i] 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, [url=http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=2814417&postcount=6]the unbounded mage[/url], is in another thread.) 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. 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. I basically agree. "Necessarily" is such a strong word. But I have my doubts that any system simple enough to use could work in every corner case. At the moment, the method is not fleshed out enough for me to evaluate. Suppose I want to play the following characters: [list][*]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 [/list] 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? [/QUOTE]
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