Gestalt pitfalls?

[AddizAbeba]

Hello,

I am going to start DMing again since our current DM is leaving us (bye bye Gaheris Pal6 with cohort Brd4/Pal1).
This also leaves us with only three players. So I thought of using Gestalt.
Other than what is mentioned in UA, do people have any advice DMing a Gestalt campaign?

If this subject has been discussed before, sorry, and a link to the thread would be welcome

 

[Question]

Make sure CRs are set correctly.

 

[XCorvis]

Like Question said, be careful about CRs. If you have 3 gestalt characters, you should probably just use the regular CR for a 4 person party. You'll learn to tweak it a bit, as some creatures are more effective against smaller parties, even if they are more powerful. Watch out for large groups too. A smaller party means fewer actions each round, even if they tend to be more potent.

Another thing to watch out for is that some gestalt combos are not as powerful as others. The Barbarian-Bard sounds interesting, and someone might want it for RP reasons, but it's not a very good combo, especially compared to say, a Sorcerer-Paladin.

One thing some folks like to do is make the whole party pick a shared class, ie everyone must be a gestalt Rogue-Something. That means there's a lot of overlap, but it also lets you have a "Rogues" (or wizards, or whatever) campaign without all being nearly identical.

 

[XCorvis]

Oh, one last thing. When calculating BAB and saves, make sure that you use the PROGRESSION (ie good, fair, poor) not the actual number listed for that class level. That will make sure that all your values are calculated correctly.

(Alternately, use the fractional BAB and save system from UA, with the additional house rule of only allowing the +2 bonus for a good save ONCE for each save. These two methods should give the same value.)

 

[BlueBlackRed]

If you have several caster class PCs, some magic items may become much less valuable, especially at the higher levels.

At the end of the day they may have many spells left unused, so they'll just sell any magic items they'll never get around to using.

I know we did...

And if someone takes a double-caster class, I would strongly suggest that they be spontaneous casters.
I have a 13th level druid/wizard and if I'm not prepared it can sometimes take an hour to choose spells.
Heck, for ease of use all of my 3rd level druid spells are Extended Barkskins and all of my 3nd level druid spells are Mass Snake's Strike. It just saves time to leave them that way.

 

[Malum]

we did same thing XCorvis suggested having the pc's share a common training or class. In our group we were the lawful evil elite trained personal cha followers/guards (hence the gestalt) to a lord. This offered a focused campaign with a direction and kept reigns on the pc's. We decided (voted) not to have any straight spell casters -our way of allowing us to be very strong yet not over the top.

4 Paladin (lawful evil version)/ 6 Hexblade / 2fighter
6 Warlock / 4 Rogue / 2 Fighter
4 Ranger / 6 War mage / 2 Fighter
4 Monk / 6 Psychic Warrior / 2 Fighter

we all have good saves, good feats do to the mandatory 2 levels of fighter training and we are all very different builds. A very fun campaign lots of action and good role playing.