Viridian Plague OOC

[Rystil Arden]

Have you gotten a general feel of what the appropriate ECL is for a matchup of a group of your gestalts . . . I was thinking 2 CR's higher. Is that about right?

Yup, 2 levels is just about right. They are hardier and have more bells and whistles, but they are all capped at the same BAB, HP, and spell levels as a normal character of their level. You will find that creatures that rely primarily on saving throws like Medusa are even less of a threat, as well. They do well at endurance runs (most have more HP than a similar character in a normal game, and if they don't have more HP, they probably have metric tons of spells and are an Arcanist or Dragonlord). Depending on how they choose to specialise themselves, they may or may not be able to handle a big boss that is legitimately out of the league by a few CR of a nongestalt group their level (especially depending on whether you give them cash equal to two levels higher, DR can be an issue). Another thing to consider is Point Buy of the stats. One reason my rolling rules allow rerolls more often is because most of these classes have MAD. If you ran these classes with 25 PB, they would be weaker than if you gave extra.

All that said, I usually use 2 as a rule of thumb. These races are stronger than usual too, but you wouldn't have to use them, really.

 

[Keia]

I can see that . . . I've even thought about stat-ing up a couple of test bad guys to get a feel for the combat. Even a medusa with a class level or two of gestalt would be up to snuff I would think

What about gestalt foes (the big bads)? The same +2 CR against a group. I usually follow that unless there are a number of equal or lower CR support bad guys . . .

OOC: MAD ??

 

[Rystil Arden]

I can see that . . . I've even thought about stat-ing up a couple of test bad guys to get a feel for the combat. Even a medusa with a class level or two of gestalt would be up to snuff I would think

What about gestalt foes (the big bads)? The same +2 CR against a group. I usually follow that unless there are a number of equal or lower CR support bad guys . . .

OOC: MAD ??

OOC? Odd choice of terms. MAD is multiple ability dependancy. In the core, Monks have it in spades, and Paladins have it more than Fighters or especially Barbarians. The more different abilities you need to have up to use your abilities, the less chance you have to find a good dump stat.

Yeah, I actually ran these things in general against test baddies (and all of your parties for the games I've playtested in particular as a team). A medusa with two levels in Bounty Hunter who just wants to 'freeze you in carbonite' might be amusing The reason she is easier is that the 'I have an ability that is save or die' monsters are usually pushovers without that ability, which relies on someone to fail the save, whereas these classes almost all have 2 or 3 good saves, so there may not be anyone who will fail it. The Medusa is CR 7 with a DC 15 petrifying gaze. So she would be CR 5 if she was normalised for gestalt characters. But most level 5 characters of these classes are not concerned about a DC 15 Fort save unless they happen to have bad Fort.

Singular big bads just don't work so well against big groups in D&D in general. Even if they are much stronger, the mob of actions the PCs get tends to kill them off. The only thing that gives them a chance is that the PCs are usually out of steam by the time they get to the big bad. Since these characters have more steam, I'd tend to agree with you that +2 for solo big bads, even if the big bad is gestalt too, is a good idea. For normal enemies that fight in groups, like the Rosethornes, the +2 needn't necessarily apply.

 

[Keia]

The current game I'm running are children of the players from another game. They have bloodlines . . . which I'm running completely different that UA has them. So far it is working out rather well. And the PC's are a bit tougher, only a +1 CR adjustment to this point. If course, free bloodline are what is making the difference thus far . . . that and six players.

 

[Rystil Arden]

The current game I'm running are children of the players from another game. They have bloodlines . . . which I'm running completely different that UA has them. So far it is working out rather well. And the PC's are a bit tougher, only a +1 CR adjustment to this point. If course, free bloodline are what is making the difference thus far . . . that and six players.

Yeah, six players is a whole lot more of a deal than the bloodlines would be if they are about the same power as UA. In some ways, 4 gestalt characters are in some ways comparable to 6 nongestalt.

Oh, and I'll add that at very low levels, you may want to up the CR by only 1 for the gestalt classes. They will lack the weaknesses of low-level normal characters and be less likely to lose significant resources from a CR 1 baddie even at level 1, but CR 3 enemies like ogres are still going to tear them up if you make them the standard 'lose a bit of resources' fight.

2 is a good rule of thumb, but it is more like 'sometimes 1, sometimes 2, and maybe 3 if it uses saves'. Also, everything depends on your group. Even with normal PH classes, my opinion is that at high level it is impossible to create CR appropriate fights without extensive playtesting or playing with the characters from the low levels all the way up. I tried to make all the classes able to do at least something interesting in combat (though not all are great at social or other game types, but these can be RPed through), but if you have a group with these gestalt classes and they decide that they all want to play Nymphs with the Nymph class, they probably are not going to be a superior fighting force.

 

[Keia]

For bad guys against a gestalt group, do you reward experience and treasure based on the actual CR or the perceived CR of the group, in a f-t-f game, that is.

 

[Rystil Arden]

For bad guys against a gestalt group, do you reward experience and treasure based on the actual CR or the perceived CR of the group, in a f-t-f game, that is.

Perceived CR--because I don't give the characters LA. You can either give XP based on perceived reduced CR and pretend the characters are normal PH characters (which is much easier, usually) or you can give the characters 2 LA and require more XP to level up and then use the actual CR. By all means, do not just treat them as normal characters and use actual CR for XP unless you want them to level up even faster than 3.5 already does As for treasure, you can do that either way, actually. If you give them treasure as if they were the lower level, you can actually probably safely treat them as ECL +1 instead of +2 in many more cases. Personally, I let the opponents keep standard treasure, which gives the gestalt characters the cash of higher level characters.

 

[Keia]

No worries there . . . My experience point rewards are typically not according to the GM as I favor rping and character interaction to a certain degree.

Usually it's 50% based on xp per combats faced, 40% plot points and character roleplaying and interaction, and 10% journal/record keeping.

 

[Rystil Arden]

No worries there . . . My experience point rewards are typically not according to the GM as I favor rping and character interaction to a certain degree.

Usually it's 50% based on xp per combats faced, 40% plot points and character roleplaying and interaction, and 10% journal/record keeping.

That's about how I do it too. In LEW, I mentioned this and was specifically told that I must give out full encounter XP and then I should just give that other 50% on top of it instead of taking it out of the encounters.

 

[Bront]

One of my LEW adventures gave no RP/Plot XP