Racial HD and Gestalt

[Aazenius]

I am preparing to DM a gestalt game using the rules found in Unearthed Arcana. Lately I've found myself wondering if intelligent monsters should have their racial hit die gestalted with a class hit die. For example should I gestalt a Hill Giant's Giant Racial HD with Barbarian HD (its favored class). This would give the Hill Giant 12d12 for HD, it would have a BAB of +12 instead it can then use Greater Rage 4/day adding +6 to Strength and Con further making it even more deadly.

I don't want to kill my group off in the first game, but I dont want certain monsters to be too easy. Should I leave Racial HD alone, and not count them when using the Gestalt rules. I know that the rules say that you should take two standard classes and combine them, but I wonder if that makes Intelligent monsters with just racial HD weaker in the long run.

Any advice on how to handle this would be appreciated.

 

[Aazenius]

mods please delete, this is a double post.

 

[Thanee]

Racial HD are equivalent to class levels pretty much, so you can safely put them up as one side of a Gestalt. LA, however, should shift the whole character level (and therefor account for both sides of the Gestalt).

For example, an Ogre|Barbarian Gestalt would then look like this:

1: LA 1
2: LA 2
3: Ogre 1|Barbarian 1
4: Ogre 2|Barbarian 2
5: Ogre 3|Barbarian 3
6: Ogre 4|Barbarian 4

That said, it's much easier (for you) to just have PCs and some major NPCs with Gestalt levels, not everyone and everything. Just give monsters +1 or +2 CR (depending on level and on how it works out in practice) and be done with it.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Infiniti2000]

Here's another thread on gestalt monsters.

 

[Aazenius]

That thread doesn't really help me. I'm not running a world with monster PC's. Here is my dilema... again using the Hill Giant as an example.

A normal Hill giant has 12d8, BAB +9 (2 attack)
A gestalt Barbarian Hill Giant has 12d12, BAB +12 (3 attacks).

I want to make the game challenging, yet not to hard. A group of 4 level 6 gestalt characters could easily take down the "normal" hill giant. In fact it would hardly present a challenge. Now if you turn that normal Hill Giant into a Barbarian Hill Giant (barbarian is its favored class) Suddenly the Hill Giant has at least +24 extra hit points, +3 to attacks, and an extra attack. Plus if the Barbarian Hill Giant rages it gains those benefits as well.

What I want to know - is a Barbarian Hill Giant an appropriate CR 7 challge for a group of 4 level 6 characters? Or does making the Hill Giant a gestalt actually increase the challenge it presents. Should the Barbarian Hill Giant actually be a CR 8 or 9 Challenge?

 

[Thanee]

Gestalt (very roughly) adds about +2 to the CR in the moderate HD/CR range.

Bye
Thanee