Is anyone else ticked off at "core" splash books?

[Undead Lincoln]

I'm going to differ from what everyone else is saying. You should never accept something you don't want in your game. You should allow him to argue for it, and you might want to give him a prohibationary period. However ultimatly the game is yours to run. As such you should disallow anything you think is too powerful or ruins flavor. If the Cerebromancer is more powerful than the rest of the party don't allow it. Being made by wizards does not garuntee it is balanced for every game. I've played in games where parts of the PHB were not allowed, and it was the right decision.

 

[Saeviomagy]

As I see it, this gives him all the powers of a 7th level wizard and a 7th level psion except for the following.

Has anyone else played with one of these "gestalt" prestige classes? Are they trully as broken as I'm thinking, or am I missing something?

Here's what you're missing. You're playing a 10th level game, right?

Do you think that a 7th level wizard and a 7th level psion together with no specific preparation would be a challenge for your party? Maybe a little weak even (which should be the case - they're CR 9)?

And they've got all the hitpoints of a 7th level wizard AND a 7th level psion, they have to fail two saves versus save-or-die spells, and they get two actions a round!

Don't you think that a 10th level wizard would be more dangerous? Or a 10th level psion?

 

[Ranger REG]

Has anyone else played with one of these "gestalt" prestige classes? Are they trully as broken as I'm thinking, or am I missing something?

Yeah, the other side that felt the multiclassing system is broken because they can't improve their spellcasting abilities when taking a prestige class.

But, hey, prestige class is a VARIANT RULE. So the DM ultimately decide if it is allowed in his or her game. If you're the DM, and you don't like, don't put it in. Wow, that is simple.

 

[Trainz]

Also consider this:

A 10th level Wizard with the leadership feat could have a pet 8th level Psion, which would mean that player can cast TWO spells per round, at a much higher power level then what the OP posted.

And that's two targets instead of one, more hit points.

YMMV

 

[Li Shenron]

Specifically certain prestige classes that allow combine spellcasting classes.

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My main beef is that the character apparently gives up absolutely NOTHING for the benefits of the prestige class. Any wizard who's got the prerequisite 3 levels in cleric or psion or whatever would be INSANE not to take a level of a prestige class over a level in wizard.

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Has anyone else played with one of these "gestalt" prestige classes? Are they trully as broken as I'm thinking, or am I missing something?

To cut it short, despite my early worries about the Mystic Theurge when 3.5 came out, I am not bothered much about how it works in practice. I still think it's more good than bad (I certainly wouldn't call it underpowered) because you can get pretty good synergies from spells of the 2 different classes, but in general I think it's a fair power level for a PrCl.

However there's an underline which saddens me, which is the fact that this PrCl, a few others, and the Practice Spellcaster feat, are clearly attempts at "fixing" something which isn't completely fine within the core multiclassing rules. I wish the WotC designers had been more brave and attempted a more general correction over the multiclassing rules, such as letting caster level or other class features improve when multiclassing into another class. I suppose that would have been more difficult, but it would definitely have been more elegant as well.

 

[Thanee]

Sidenote:

There's such an option in UA (Magic Rating), but it doesn't work too well (caster level increase is so minimal, it doesn't make much of a difference). I've done my own in the House Rules forum (Base Arcane/Divine Caster Level progression for all classes, similar to BAB), which I think would work better.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Li Shenron]

To "fix" multiclassed spellcasters, I somtimes think that even ruling caster level = character level may not be enough.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

If I were DM, I would thank my lucky stars for a PC taking one of those prestige classes. The end result is a character that adds a lot of staying to the power to the party as a whole while being way, way behind the curve in powerful strategy shifting spells. I would call that a win-win for DM sanity.

 

[KerlanRayne]

While the Mystic Thurge has MAD problems, the Cerebremancer has problems with Feats. None of their item creation or metamagic feats cross over, which means they would have to take them twice. That can be a problem.

KerlanRayne

 

[Li Shenron]

If I were DM, I would thank my lucky stars for a PC taking one of those prestige classes. The end result is a character that adds a lot of staying to the power to the party as a whole while being way, way behind the curve in powerful strategy shifting spells. I would call that a win-win for DM sanity.

Strange comment from a DM

Those prestige classes are indeed useful for games with only 2-3 characters for example (as are the Gestalt rules) so that the party overall is able to cover all the basic "functionalities", such as fighting/healing/skills/arcane spells. On the other hand, when the PC are enough in number, it can make the game less interesting if there is nearly nothing the party cannot do.