Gestalt Classes + LA + Monster Classes

[Wik]

Here's the situation:

You're playing in a gestalt game, when one of your players wants to play a Goliath (+1 LA).

In standard D&D, this is easy - your 2nd level character is a 1st level X Goliath. But your friends are level 2 X. So, they're a level "up" on you. Easy enough.

In Gestalt D&D, your 2nd level character is a level 1 X/Level 1 X Goliath, while your friends are.... Level 2 X/Level 2 X. Wait, that means they're two levels "up" on you!

So....

Do you use LA's as written, or do you stipulate that each +1 of the LA "Costs" 1 level? Thus, a +1 LA means that, at first level, you choose only one class, instead of 2?

And, most importantly, is this new method somehow more powerful?

***

A related question pertains to monster classes. If I'm taking levels in a monster class, do I still get to take one "other" level in a class of my choice? So, could I simultaneously take levels in centaur and ranger? And, more importantly, is this more powerful?

 

[Crothian]

Rgwt aren't two levels above you. They still only have one more HD, and the better save and BAB but only one level of that. I use LA's as written, but I also do allow the LA to be bought off using those optional rules from UA.

I would say your way is more powerful because the race only gives special abilities, so nothing is lost from the race or the class.

Same with your related question. It would be the medling of two classes that fit together perfectly. The class provides HD, saves, BAB, skills; things that many times the moinster class doesn't.

 

[DarkKestral]

I think most common LA+Gestalt rules generally say one side has to be filled with the monster progression, including LA till it maxes out. Then the other side is filled with a regular PC class. it's certainly more powerful than losing an entire set of 2 classes, but monster as race rules are generally designed to make sure core races, when powergamed to their maximum, are the optimum choices for 9 out of 10 characters. Therefore, it probably won't be too bad, if you say it's OK to have LA take up a single side, but you still get to pick a class for the 'other' side.

Yes, it's more powerful than the RAW interpretation, but Gestalt isn't normal RAW anyway, and it's much less punishing to LA races and can help keep them playable vs. other characters.

 

[Thurbane]

{nevermind, misunderstood the question}

 

[Nifft]

If you do this, disallow templates explicitly, and do it now.

The biggest possible abuse of Gestalt is (templates 20)//Normal Class 20.

Why is this? Because templates -- and + LA races -- give you stuff that boosts your specialty.

A Ftr 1 // Brb 1 is cool -- he has a bonus Feat, and Rage, and maybe Fast Movement. But he can't wear heavy armor and move fast, and he still only has a +1 bonus to attack.

On the other hand, a Goliath 1 // Ftr 1 is better. He "loses" all the Brb goodies, but gains all the Goliath goodies for free -- reach, +4 to grapple, +4 strength, etc. He has a +3 bonus to attack, thanks to his strength bonus.

Templates make this much, much worse. Consider a Ftr 4 // Brb 4 vs. a Ftr 4 // Tiefling 1 / Half-Dragon 3.

Half-Dragon is LA +3. It grants a +8 strength, which gives +4 to attack and damage. Normally, this is at the expense of 3 points of BAB, but in your case, it's just free. Now take a look at the Half-Celestial and Half-Fiend, and the fact that WotC made monster progressions from Aasimar and Tiefling (respectively), and worry.

(The Half-Celestial gives stat boosts and spell-like goodies based on Hit Die. It is balanced by the fact that you will have far fewer hit dice. But in Gestalt, that assumption goes away.)

- - - -

A good way to think about it is that normal gestalt allows you to make more flexible PCs, who are no better at their core "thing" than normal PCs, but who can each cover at least one more area, and who can survive better in general.

On the other hand, LA-on-one-side allows a PC to specialize better. This is key, because it's well known that specialization wins D&D.

- - - -

So, in conclusion, I would just say to the player in question: "Yeah, gestalt kinda sucks for LA races. You can play a Goliath, but you won't be as strong as the rest of the PCs."

Cheers, -- N

 

[Spatzimaus]

The other possibility, which is what we've done in my homebrew, is to remove the concept of LA entirely. The way you do this is by padding with monster HD (which tend to have an ECL of 0.4-0.6 in Soldarin's system, which is primarily what I use for first-pass balance). Effectively, an LA+1 race is switched to having two Racial Levels, each of which provides a Monstrous Humanoid hit die and half the race's bonus abilities. This removes a lot of the balancing headaches common to LA+ races, except for casters. (Since we switched to a skill-based system for spells, that's not a problem any more either.)

Templates and LA+ races, in general, were never balanced well IMO. You could make an ECL 20 character out of a level 1 kobold with templates worth +19 LA or more, but Klixxit there would die to a single magic missile. To me, that's just ridiculous.

 

[Nifft]

The other possibility, which is what we've done in my homebrew, is to remove the concept of LA entirely. The way you do this is by padding with monster HD (which tend to have an ECL of 0.4-0.6 in Soldarin's system, which is primarily what I use for first-pass balance). Effectively, an LA+1 race is switched to having two Racial Levels, each of which provides a Monstrous Humanoid hit die and half the race's bonus abilities.

Interesting. Monstrous Humanoid HD are actually pretty good, though -- they give d8 hp, full BAB, and two good saves (Will and Reflex). Compared to Humanoid HD (d8 hp, 3/4 BAB, one good save), the Monstrous Humanoids are a huge win.

So, under your system, a template-progression like Aasimar -> Half-Celestial would take 10 levels, would give full BAB, and would give half of each level's powers at each hit die.

Hmm. Seems too strong to me.

-- N

 

[Wik]

If you do this, disallow templates explicitly, and do it now.

The biggest possible abuse of Gestalt is (templates 20)//Normal Class 20.

Why is this? Because templates -- and + LA races -- give you stuff that boosts your specialty.

A Ftr 1 // Brb 1 is cool -- he has a bonus Feat, and Rage, and maybe Fast Movement. But he can't wear heavy armor and move fast, and he still only has a +1 bonus to attack.

On the other hand, a Goliath 1 // Ftr 1 is better. He "loses" all the Brb goodies, but gains all the Goliath goodies for free -- reach, +4 to grapple, +4 strength, etc. He has a +3 bonus to attack, thanks to his strength bonus.

Templates make this much, much worse. Consider a Ftr 4 // Brb 4 vs. a Ftr 4 // Tiefling 1 / Half-Dragon 3.

Half-Dragon is LA +3. It grants a +8 strength, which gives +4 to attack and damage. Normally, this is at the expense of 3 points of BAB, but in your case, it's just free. Now take a look at the Half-Celestial and Half-Fiend, and the fact that WotC made monster progressions from Aasimar and Tiefling (respectively), and worry.

(The Half-Celestial gives stat boosts and spell-like goodies based on Hit Die. It is balanced by the fact that you will have far fewer hit dice. But in Gestalt, that assumption goes away.)

- - - -

A good way to think about it is that normal gestalt allows you to make more flexible PCs, who are no better at their core "thing" than normal PCs, but who can each cover at least one more area, and who can survive better in general.

On the other hand, LA-on-one-side allows a PC to specialize better. This is key, because it's well known that specialization wins D&D.

- - - -

So, in conclusion, I would just say to the player in question: "Yeah, gestalt kinda sucks for LA races. You can play a Goliath, but you won't be as strong as the rest of the PCs."

Cheers, -- N

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

I guess I'll drop the idea of this. The problem is, our fourth player (and he's a cleric) in our Savage Tide game has a tendency to just.... not show up. I thought he'd stop doing it when we started playing 3.5E again (he only really likes D&D, not other systems), but he didn't show up last week.

We want to keep on playing without worrying that play will stop when he decides not to attend. Making his char an NPC or player-controlled is not an option (he's the most "rules-heavy" of the group, what with his spell list and all, and it sucks having to spend more time playing someone else's character opposed to your own), so I was going to just switch to Gestalt.

The big problem is, two of the three PCs would have LA levels... I'm trying to figure out the fairest way of doing this.

 

[Nifft]

The big problem is, two of the three PCs would have LA levels... I'm trying to figure out the fairest way of doing this.

Oh, that's easy: just make them all the same LA. Then you can fudge all of them equally.

If you're going to give them silly LA (+3 or higher), start stats as 25 point buy. Explain that their choice of template will affect their stats more than their points anyway. Expect play to be silly, but at least everyone's equally silly.

If you're going to give them a moderate LA (+1-2), do stats normally, and just throw an extra monster or two at them each encounter (don't give XP for the extra monsters).

If one guy wants to play an LA +0 race, give them a "divine gift" (+2 to two stats + resist 10 points of one energy type, or a similarly LA +1 ability). Then everyone is roughly balanced, and you can put them all at the same class level.

Hope that's helpful, -- N

 

[Spatzimaus]

So, under your system, a template-progression like Aasimar -> Half-Celestial would take 10 levels, would give full BAB, and would give half of each level's powers at each hit die.

Not what I meant. First, I oversimplified on the Monstrous Humanoid thing; the goal was to keep this all ECL-neutral. Humanoid, Giant, Fey, Beast, and Aberration HD are ECL +0.5; Monstrous Humanoid, Magical Beast are ECL +0.6, and Outsider or Dragon HD are ECL +0.8. (These numbers are from Soldarin's system, not any sort of official source. Feel free to argue with them, but they're what I use.)

My point was to pick the one closest to what you're intending, and add the HD needed to balance the ECL. That is, if X is the ECL of each HD, the number of dice needed would be LA/(1-X), since each HD gains you (1-X) ECL that can help offset the LA.
So, if you're playing an LA+1 Half-Ogre race, and you wanted to use Giant-like HD to balance it, you'd use 2 HD (1/(1-0.5)). If you had an LA+2 race to be padded with Monstrous Humanoid-like HD, you'd use 5 HD (2/(1-0.6)). These don't have to actually be "Giant" or "Monstrous Humanoid" HD, though; IMC they're treated as if the race were a class. That is, a level 20 character could be playing a Half-Ogre 2/Fighter 18 (although no multiclass penalty applies for Racial levels). So, the HD involved could be as good or bad as you want; the classifications are just price guidelines.
In fact, in our homebrew, every race has unique Racial Levels, and Humans are the ONLY race with only a single racial HD. Most of the others have 2, but a few have more; one has 8, for instance, which drastically reduces the number of class levels that race can take.

The DM decides what sort of dice are appropriate for each template/race, because it's not that exact. Some ECL+1 races barely make +1, some are very close to being +2. So maybe the "weak" +1 gets a slightly better die than the "strong" one. Or maybe the Half-Ogre's HD is lighter on skill points but has a better hit die.

But to stick with the basic MM HD classifications: If you're doing an Aasimar->Half-Celestial template, then you'd be using something closer to Outsider HD than Humanoid, wouldn't you? That'd make it take a LOT more levels, since you'd only be "gaining" 0.2 ECL for each HD to offset the LA. But they don't have to be true Outsider HD, if you don't want them to. You could just as easily say that since a Human is +0.5 and a Celestial is +0.8 that the Aasimar's HD should be something in between (say, +0.6, comparable to the Monstrous Humanoid), regardless of the creature type. Yes, it'll still be an "Outsider" creature type, since the template says so, but that doesn't imply anything about the size of the racial HD; it's like saying a Monk should get the Outsider hit dice as soon as he gets that class ability.

-----------

The end result of this process is that regardless of what LA your templates/races had, you'd have the same number of "levels" as everyone else with the same ECL. This'd mean you'd have the same number of max skill ranks, the same number of Feats, your CON bonus would apply the same number of times, and so on. The downside is that +LA templates/races can take up so many levels that you could reach Epic status before getting a handful of class levels. But, it worked fine for us.