D&D 5E Mearls Interviews: Hints at the new model

[Mercurius]

Whenever I hear Mearls talk about the larger picture of the game, I always get the sense that I'm glad he's in charge as he really seems to "get it." Now whether the big vision is translated into a dynamic game that actualizes its intended goals remains to be seen, but he definitely seems to have a broad view.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Where did you get the quote from, btw? Is there a transcript somewhere?

It was on the front page of EnWorld.

I also think he means gestalt in the 3e sense and not a balanced system of making a new class out of two existing classes but how you would balance advancing in two classes at once.

It would be interesting to see a 1st edition take on Dual Classing and Multiclassing from back then

I sure hope it isn't the UA version. I'm not sure why they even did that in 3e. What it needs to do is what AD&D did, provide an alternate form of multiclassing based on simultaneous advancement in multiple classes. 3e gestalting basically just gave up trying to balance it and said "Hey, for those of you who liked AD&D multiclassing try this! Uhm...but you have to redo everything to make it balanced, and it won't make any sense, but hey, it's kinda almost, sort of, maybe what you want, right?"

Basically (with apologies to those who have said they would like 3e gestalting) making rules for 3e gestalting is essentially trying to meet a demand that is there for real AD&D-themed multiclassing, by supplying us with 3e gestalt-classing for which there is not a demand. Which is of course entirely missing the point.

 

[Li Shenron]

Yeah! Hopefully we are talking about multiclassing that balances with standard characters and captures that AD&D style, rather than the actual 3e UA "Here is a weird variant you'll never use in any sort of normal campaign."

I do think that whether they call it "gestalt" or something else, they are primarily aiming at re-creating AD&D-style multiclassing.

And I truly hope they make it compatible with single-classed PHB characters (which also means compatible with multi-classed PHB characters) because that was the biggest flaw with 3e gestalt characters. This was NOT an issue with AD&D multiclassed characters, except possibly at some specific levels, particularly the 1st.

The flaw is, that everybody is forced to play a gestalt character. So it's not only that the whole group has to agree on using the module, but those who are interested in playing a single-class PC will be seriously penalized. All have to play a multiclass/gestalt PC in that game. This means much less groups are going to ever use these rules, compared to how many they could be if it would be possible to please a single player and let him play a gestalt, without affecting the other players.

Actually there is one simple way to balance them with regular PHB characters, and that is XP penalties, or (if possible) level adjustment.

The conceptual difference between regular multiclass and gestalt is that in the first case the abilities stacks and in the second case the abilities overlaps. So if you are a Fighter 1/Wizard 1, you get all the stuff from the first level of each class (in 5e however, the proficiency bonus is an exception, and the latest rules have more exceptions related to also which proficiencies). Instead if you are a gestalt Fighter/Wizard 2, you get the best option from the second level of either class.

Because the second way is better, the easiest way to make the 2 systems compatible, is to have characters of the 2 types to level up at different rates. Probably instead of a blanket XP penalty (which generally doesn't feel good), it would be better to offer a separate level/XP progression for gestalt characters compared to PHB characters.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, most of them were more likely to be UNDER-powered, so for certain values of "balance" I guess.

My main gripes with the hybrid system was (a) every class in 4e had to have some special snowflake artisinal hybrid version you could take, or else you it would not blend, and (b) there was weird silo-ing, so that, for isntance, if you had a striker bonus die, it would only apply on your striker-class attacks, so that it was more like you were either one class OR the other, and could swap back and forth, than like you were a true hybrid of both, greater than the sum of your parts.

Gestalt doesn't have a history of worrying about wrapping our games in bubble-wrap to protect their precious little maths. In 3e, it was just straight up awesome (and was "balanced" by just raising the encounter level!), and the old 1e/2e multiclassing it was meant to emulate had a kind of long-term balance.

I'd take the 3e system with some more concrete guidelines on encounter balance with a side of fries and be happy, honestly.

Totally feel you on this, KM, totally, I enjoyed 3E Gestalt, but I don't agree that this is ideal, or even worth having official rules for, because it's incompatible with normal single-class PCs, and if you're going to spend time and space in the DMG on this it should be.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Totally feel you on this, KM, totally, I enjoyed 3E Gestalt, but I don't agree that this is ideal, or even worth having official rules for, because it's incompatible with normal single-class PCs, and if you're going to spend time and space in the DMG on this it should be.

Why is it important to have single-classed characters alongside gestalt?

There's a choice. Either you can make the characters more powerful than a standard single-classed character and just have everyone do it and adjust your challenges to suit, or you can make sure the most powerful combo is no more powerful than a single-classed character and let a host of combos languish as weak-sauce "trap" options.

I find that the former choice is easier, speedier, and tons of fun. The negative is some added complexity and a bit of DM math, but if you're interested in gestalt, then you're interested in a more "advanced" game anyway (you're out of the realm of simple or even reasonably complicated character archetypes). This is not a very big negative, I think, and a large positive.

I find the latter involves more complexity, more analysis paralysis, and less satisfying results unless you're at the top of that power combo curve. The positive is that the DM can allow both at once and doesn't need to change her math at all, but challenge math is soft and squishy and entirely fungible by design already (since challenges vary even without gestalt), this just changes how big the numbers are at any given level. This is not a very large positive, I think, and a big negative.

It's reasonable to disagree on the intensity of those positives and negatives, and that might lead you to favor the latter over the former, but which one WotC decides to go with for 5e is likely going to be consistent with the 5e design philosophy, which favors playability over strict mathematical balance, so my wager would be on the former. Still, perhaps they found that the latter is a better approach!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Why is it important to have single-classed characters alongside gestalt?

Two reasons:

1) People want something that simulates actual MC'ing, as opposed to 3E's plate-stacking. Hybrid produced that, Gestalt kinda did but not really because it was pretty wackily OP.

2) Not all players want the complexity of Gestalt, which would be pretty high in 5E, relative to individual 5E classes (more than double, in some cases).

There's a choice. Either you can make the characters more powerful than a standard single-classed character and just have everyone do it and adjust your challenges to suit, or you can make sure the most powerful combo is no more powerful than a single-classed character and let a host of combos languish as weak-sauce "trap" options.

I find that the former choice is easier, speedier, and tons of fun. The negative is some added complexity and a bit of DM math, but if you're interested in gestalt, then you're interested in a more "advanced" game anyway (you're out of the realm of simple or even reasonably complicated character archetypes). This is not a very big negative, I think, and a large positive.

If everyone in the group is into it, that's lovely, but here's the thing, you barely even need rules for it, to do it the 3E way, do you? Seriously, what do you even really need rules on? Just take the features of both and where both have the same feature, take the better one. Done. No?

I find the latter involves more complexity, more analysis paralysis, and less satisfying results unless you're at the top of that power combo curve. The positive is that the DM can allow both at once and doesn't need to change her math at all, but challenge math is soft and squishy and entirely fungible by design already (since challenges vary even without gestalt), this just changes how big the numbers are at any given level. This is not a very large positive, I think, and a big negative.

I feel like you wildly overstate the negatives and difficulty here. I used several Hybrid PCs in 4E, and I didn't find them consistently under or over powered. They pretty much all seemed easy-to-handle and to work well with the other PCs. If they were "traps", too, half the classes in 5E are "traps", because the power disparities between individual classes in 5E are larger than between these guys and single-class ones.

Did you ever use the 4E Hybrid rules, btw, I mean, for actual PCs in actual games? I did, quite a bit. One of my favourite PCs was a Wizard/Bard.

It's reasonable to disagree on the intensity of those positives and negatives, and that might lead you to favor the latter over the former, but which one WotC decides to go with for 5e is likely going to be consistent with the 5e design philosophy, which favors playability over strict mathematical balance, so my wager would be on the former. Still, perhaps they found that the latter is a better approach!

I'd wager the former too, but not because of that design strategy, but rather because you could write up the whole thing in about a page, if that. That's why I'm saying it doesn't even really need rules.

One other option, I note, would be to strip the sub-classes off Gestalt characters. That would knock their power down a bit and limit their complexity and prevent probably all of the most broken interactions. Plus you'd presumably use rules like the MC rules for casting so that a Cleric/Wizard didn't have all the slots of both (because jesus wept...). If you did that, and say, gave single class characters maybe three free stat boost/Feat choices at L1, well, you wouldn't have parity, but you'd probably have something playable.

Ooooor you could strip the sub-classes, and DUN DUN DUN, bring in a DIFFERENT XP TABLE for Gestalt PCs, one which kept them 2-3 levels behind single-class PCs by L11, say, and we'd be basically rolling 2E-style multiclassing. HMMMM.

There's a lot you could do here.

I hope that if they only do one set of rules, it's for something more balanced than UA-style Gestalt (which as I will endlessly repeated, doesn't even really NEED rules-rules, it's so wacky), but maybe they can do even better.

If they can't and I haven't ceased caring about 5E by the time the DMG hits, maybe I can do better.

 

[Umbran]

If you want to get technical, isn't the PHB the first splat book?

I mean, it's basically a big book of extra race and class and character building options + a physical reference for the rules.

Actually,if you want to get technical, that means it is very much not a splatbook. You could call it a supplement (though, what other "supplements" also contain the fullness of the base rules?), but it isn't a splatbook.

Let us remember the origin of the term, "splatbook". It was used to describe the supplements for White Wolf's original World of Darkness games - each book was focused on a particular faction or character type. There was an Uktena-tribe book, a Tremere-clan book, A Euthanatos-tradition book, and so on. Online, these were referred to collectively as *books, as the asterisk was common notation for a wildcard. And, the asterisk is also known as a "splat".

Thus, a splatbook is a supplement that focuses on a particular class, group, or faction of character. Since the PHB is broad and unfocused, it isn't a splatbook.

Which goes to show you - do not start with the phrase, "if you want to get technical...," if you aren't actually technically correct, as some goober like me will point it out!

 

[Agamon]

Actually,if you want to get technical, that means it is very much not a splatbook. You could call it a supplement (though, what other "supplements" also contain the fullness of the base rules?), but it isn't a splatbook.

Let us remember the origin of the term, "splatbook". It was used to describe the supplements for White Wolf's original World of Darkness games - each book was focused on a particular faction or character type. There was an Uktena-tribe book, a Tremere-clan book, A Euthanatos-tradition book, and so on. Online, these were referred to collectively as *books, as the asterisk was common notation for a wildcard. And, the asterisk is also known as a "splat".

Thus, a splatbook is a supplement that focuses on a particular class, group, or faction of character. Since the PHB is broad and unfocused, it isn't a splatbook.

Which goes to show you - do not start with the phrase, "if you want to get technical...," if you aren't actually technically correct, as some goober like me will point it out!

Good point. And this is exactly the thing 5e should never ever even contemplate. In my opinion.

I'm hoping for a general supplement maybe once a year and various setting supplements a few times a year.

 

[Lalato]

Good point. And this is exactly the thing 5e should never ever even contemplate. In my opinion.

I'm hoping for a general supplement maybe once a year and various setting supplements a few times a year.

This is what I'm hoping for too.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Totally feel you on this, KM, totally, I enjoyed 3E Gestalt, but I don't agree that this is ideal, or even worth having official rules for, because it's incompatible with normal single-class PCs, and if you're going to spend time and space in the DMG on this it should be.

I agree.

I played four characters as 3.5E gestalt for over a hundred sessions total. I would rather have the 5E DMG dedicate space to viable/alternate multiclassing rules that can play alongside "normal" characters.