Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="udalrich" data-source="post: 3955210" data-attributes="member: 53796">LA is difficult to do with gestalt, but requiring it on both sides certainly isn't the correct answer.  Let's consider two non-gestalt characters.  Fred is a Barbarian 10 with a LA +0 race.  George has 5 levels of Barbarian and is a melee-oriented race with a +5 LA.  Both are ECL 10, so they are equally powerful (assuming LA works like it's supposed to).  Now we make them gestalt Barbarian/Clerics.  Fred gets to add 10 levels of cleric.  If George's LA applies on both sides, he gets to add 5 levels of cleric.  I don't see how, if we started with two characters of the same power, adding 10 levels of cleric to one will balance with adding 5 levels of cleric to the other.Just letting one side be the LA is also probably wrong.  A "level" of LA gives things that are good enough to balance 0 skill points, +0 BAB, +0 to all saves and +0 hit points (including the con bonus).  One of the more extreme examples, adding Barbarian to Wizard gives 2 skill points (no int bonus), 0.5 BAB, 0.16 Fort save and (approximately) 1d8 hit points (no con bonus).  Adding Barbarian to LA would give 4+int skill points, +1 BAB, +.5 Fort save, +0.33 Reflex and Will Save and 1d12+con hit points, which is much better.One solution that I've seen are that you have to apply LA to both sides before any other class.  So a 5th level Bard/Barbarian with a LA +3 race would be LA 2/Bard 3 and LA 1/Barbarian 4.I've also seen that a LA +1 uses both sides of a full level, but LA is reduced by one-third or so.  So the 5th level Bard/Barbarian with a LA +3 race would be  LA 2/Bard 3 and LA 2 /Barbarian 3.Another way of thinking about it is that gestalt classes are stronger than non-gestalt classes.  If a race has goodies worth giving up N non-gestalt classes, it's not going to be worthwhile to give up N gestalt classes for the same goodies.If you were ambivalent about playing a LA +0 race or a race with a high LA in a non-gestalt game, would it change your mind if the GM announce that only NPC classes were available?  It's obvious (to a power-gamer) that gaining bonuses worth 5 levels of barbarian (a +5 LA race) is a great trade for 5 levels of warrior.</blockquote>

Verification