Thank you all for the help. My sincere appreciation.
Consider something, though ...
Let's say that characters were like Star Fleet Battle ships.
In Star Fleet Battles, the Federation and Klingons and Kzinti and Hydrans and all the others concentrated on efficiency. Efficiency was the key, because the shipyards could only produce so many ships, and in wartime they had to get the best out of each and every ship they produced (ala the General War, Y169 - Y182.)
So, the Klingon D7 have 4 Disruptors, 3 forward Phaser-IIs, and 4 wing Phaser-IIs. The Klingons did not, as a rule, attempt to upgrade the Phasers to Phaser-Is (the heavier Federation type Phasers) because of the cost. They did not attempt to upgrade the disruptors to plasma torpedoes, for the good reason it would have required they rebuild much of the ship to withstand the shock of firing plasma torpedoes, and the power systems would have had to be completely rearranged. It would have been cost prohibitive.
Only a few, experimental ships had Phaser-Is, much less plasma torpedoes.
To overcome their defective weaponry, the Klingons built bigger and bigger ships, with more and more Phaser-IIs and Disruptors, until they created the Battleship known as the B10. This was the efficient thing to do: the expedient thing to do.
Now, consider a D&D character. In the 3.5 rules, he can gain a certain number of skills, Feats, hit points, improvements to BAB and saves, and special skills, by the time he reaches 10th level.
Depending on the class, he may gain different types of skills and feats, and different kinds of special abilities, but there are ONLY SO MANY THINGS he can gain by 10th level.
Let's say that the various D&D races, have created classes (which are, indeed, Prestige Classes) to allow for maximum gain of skills, feats, hit points, improvements to BAB and saves, and special skills, by the time their characters gain 10th level.
In other words, doing In Character what Min/Maxing players do out of character.
Why would they do this?
Because they are at war with the other races, other nations, and because they feel like it in general!
These classes, then, would focus on efficiency, on expediency, on maximum gain per level, on compromises that allowed the most gain with the least loss (ala the Eldritch Knight, for example.)
Thus, we have Elven Bladesingers, Dwarven Battleragers, and a host of other specialist classes (if I had all the 3.5 books in front of me, I'm sure I could go on for pages concerning these classes, but I don't.)
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Gelstalt cuts the feet out from under this concept, if what I am correctly interpreting what I am reading.
This is because the compromises in question are no longer needed. The character's money (experience points) buys far more goods and services.
But that does not mean the warring races would settle with that. They wouldn't.
Armed with gelstalt, they would focus on expediency and efficiency once again, only this time from a prospective of each point buys 2 points of gain.
Thus, all the Prestige Classes and multiclass options would be different. And if all of those are different, everyone's expectation of what's out there changes, and the whole campaign world changes.
In Star Fleet Battles, they called this process ... well, it came about with the development of X-ships. Armed with superior technology, these ships got the Klingons and others far more ship for the money.
Klingon X-ships had Phaser-Is that could do all sorts of neat and unusual things, and Disruptors that could aim far more accurately, and there was far more power to overload the Disruptors with, and more power to electronic warfare to ensure hits, and bigger shields to take enemy photon torpedo hits, and lightning fast drones with huge warheads, and so on.
After that, no Klingon shipyard ever again built a D7. They build D7Xs. Why would they build an antiquated, out of date ship, which could not possibly win against a Federation Heavy Cruiser-X?
Well, why would anyone go with the standard classes and Prestige Classes, in a world of Gelstalt?
Why, when they could create Gelstalt Prestige Classes instead?
So yes, you create an Alternate Reality with Gelstalt, I hypothesize.
I guess you could introduce Gelstalt into the standard campaign, but it will mark the beginning of a massive alteration in the campaign world, just as X-ships marked an end to all the old ships in Star Fleet Battles that had once been used.
Just commenting.
Edena_of_Neith
