Author Topic: darthstabber's handy gestalt handbook {under construction}  (Read 5852 times)

Offline darth stabber

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darthstabber's handy gestalt handbook {under construction}
« on: July 13, 2013, 09:55:48 PM »
Due to my laptop being on the fritz, my ability to continue work is hindered for the time being..  I will resume work when I get it fixed.  I tried working on this on my phone, but it's not eactly conducive.

Gestalt Handbook

So gestalt is a very popular rules variant presented in both Unearthed Arcana and the SRD.  Despite this popularity I have not seen a handbook for it, at least not a complete one (whether or not this one ends up completed is anyone's guess).  So pooling information taken from this forum, Giant in the Playground (which houses the original version), and my own musings and thoughts.  I am committing these thoughts into a form more durable than my own memory: 1s and 0s on a server that i couldn't locate if you had a gun to my head. 

If you are new to gestalt here's a quick rundown.
(click to show/hide)

So now that we have the basics down we can move on to optimization.

Chassis

First off lets talk chassis (ie those features every class has).  We have an opportunity to get all those things on the better side.  That's not always possible, but lets look at what should be a reasonable expectation (specific builds/concepts might fall short of these and still be awesome this is a generalization)
(click to show/hide)
All and all chassis maximization is only a very small part of gestalt optimization, so don't focus on it too much.

Attribute Dependence

Generally you can only get so many good stats, whether point buy or rolled stats.  Wizard//Cleric requires a good Wis and Int, whereas Wizard//Archivist is all Int.  This has been covered by a large number of people in a large number of settings, and given that it is a concern with or without this variant, it is a little beyond my scope.

Feat Support

Most classes have a number of feats that it needs to do it's job well.  Fighters need a lot of feat support to do their job, whereas a druid needs very little.  Other than bonus feats given by classes, a gestalt character has the same number of feats that a normal character has, but the ones you get are pulling double duty as far as class feature support.  If you are a Barbarian//Wizard, you have to split your feats between combat feats (Power Attack, cleave, leap attack, ect), and caster feats (spell focus, metamagic, ect).  This is part of the reason why most gestalt builds tend to focus both halves on one specialty, as opposed to doing two different things, the bottom line is that if you split your focus you will be okay at two things as opposed to being really good at one thing.  As most people on D&D boards will tell you, It's usually better to be good at one thing, jacks of all trades, tend to be bad at lots of things.  So you want to focus on your shtick, and to that end you want both sets of class features to complement, and work together in such a way that you only need the one set of feats, and this weirdly leads to my next point.

Action Economy

The biggest advice for going gestalt I can think to tell you is to remember action economy.  If you are a wizard//sorcerer with 10,000 spell slots, you still only have 1 standard action per turn.  In general, you want 1 class that uses your standard action and one that doesn't.  Example: Wizard is a very active class, factotum has a number of abilities that don't really require your standard action.  Wizard//Factotum is a strong combination due to their almost single minded Int focus and factotum supporting the wizard's action options with non-actions and passive bonuses.  A Swordsage uses standard actions almost every turn for it's maneuvers, pairing it with Incarnate matches up Wis focus and most of the incarnate's class features are passive bonuses.

So what truly constitutes an active or passive class.  The difference isn't always straight forward.  In general full spellcasters, psionic manifesters, and martial adepts are active classes, their primary class abilities (spells, psionic powers, manuevers) are generally standard actions.  Thus they use your standard actions, and having two active classes means that you are held back by action economy since you can only use the abilities of one class each turn.  There are exceptions of course.  For example a DMM Persist Cleric uses his spells at the beginning of the day and then proceeds to use his combat actions to hit people, as opposed to casting spells at them.  If a Cleric//Swordsage has Divine metamagic and Persist spell, he isn't using his standard actions on spells, and thus has them free for swordsage maneuvers (which are now extra scary thanks to the massive buffs he has up).  This will be covered in greater depth in the base class section.

Dipping Classes

In normal D&D dipping essentially amounts to spending levels on gaining the early level abilities of a class, at the expense of advancing the class features of the class you left.  This has much less consequence in gestalt.  You can focus on the features of 1 class, using the other class(es) abilities to augment the primary features.  You can build your character around following 1 class and dipping anything that seems interesting/helpful alongside it, and you wouldn't have that bad a build.  Sorcerer8//Paladin2/battledancer2/cleric2/incarnate2/ect is already off to a good start.

Prestige Classes
The general rule in gestalt is that you are only allowed to take one prestige class at a time.  There is some contention on this point as the rules read more like a warning than a hard limit, but for the purposes of this guide we are going to consider it a hard limit, and given the higher power level of the variant I think you'll survive.  This limit poses an interesting constraint that requires you to evaluate prcs and base classes slightly differently.  A class that is good from 1-20 is very valuable to have as it frees up you other side for prestigious options.  Druid, for example, is not only good all the way through, but is actually made worse by most prcs it would qualify for, so you could some sort of swordsage/warblade/master of 9/act shenanigans up the other side with little issue.  Sorcerer OTOH is notoriously devoid of class features after level 1, and you PRC out into anything that gives full progression as fast as possible, meaning that the other half will most probably be comprised of base classes.  This isn't such a huge sticking point, but it's worth keeping in mind.  Weirdly this is a bigger issue for non-casters, as they tend to be fairly uncomfortable in base classes after a certain point.

The other important PRC issue is dual progression classes, by a conservative reading they are prohibited, but the case could be made to allow them.  What follows is primarily my personal opinion/interpretation as a GM, and as such is not RAW, probably not even RAI, just my own solution trying to balance giving players options, while maintaining some level of game balance.  There are a few different ways you could try to set this up. 

Option 1, the version I would have no qualms with, factotum10//wizard3/archivist3/mystic theurge4.  This variant is like gestalting a regular mystic the urge with something else.  As far as I am concerned this is fine, most theurge characters tend to be a little underpowered, so this is not a big deal.  You should still be mindful of early entry shenanigans, but no more so than in a normal game.  I would not give players carte blanche to do this but it's a fine guideline.

Option 2, I wouldn't allow this.  Wizard3/factotum7//archivist3/mystic theurge7.  This I believe is the reason that theurge classes were called out.  You are basically turning gestalt into tristalt.

Option 3, Have you no decency?  Wizard10//archivist3/mystic theurge7.  Theoretically this would net you 17th level wizard casting at 10th level.  Even if it only gave caster levels and not spell slots it would be obscene.  This probably doesn't work even if allowed, but this is bad MKAY.

The other question is what constitutes a theurge class?  Mystic theurge, anima mage, tenebrous apostate, cerebramancer, soul caster, ultimate magus, ect obviously qualify since they advance two sets of class features explicitly.  Arcane trickster OTOH does not explicitly advance rogue features, so there is a little bit of a judgment call there.  Then you have cases like illithid slayer which is even more subtle.  As a player tread carefully, and as a gm be watchful and unafraid to say no.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2014, 11:40:48 PM by darth stabber »

Offline darth stabber

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Re: darthstabber's handy gestalt handbook {under construction}
« Reply #1 on: July 13, 2013, 09:56:21 PM »
Base Classes
(click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: January 02, 2014, 10:33:47 PM by darth stabber »

Offline darth stabber

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Re: darthstabber's handy gestalt handbook {under construction}
« Reply #2 on: July 13, 2013, 09:56:49 PM »
Second reserved post

Offline darth stabber

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Re: darthstabber's handy gestalt handbook {under construction}
« Reply #3 on: July 13, 2013, 09:57:12 PM »
3rd reserved post

Offline darth stabber

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Re: darthstabber's handy gestalt handbook {under construction}
« Reply #4 on: July 13, 2013, 09:57:46 PM »
Final reserved post.