Thursday, September 07, 2006

Gestalt Characters

My younger brother just got me Unearthed Arcana for my birthday (thanks for that one bud!). There are a few interesting little variants in this book that I wouldn't mind trying out or implementing as a permanent house rule (*cough*fractional multiclassing*cough*), but there was one in particular that sparked my interest. I bet you'll never guess what that is. What? It's the title of the post? Dammit!

So what's a gestalt character? If you haven't looked through Unearthed Arcana I suggest taking the time to skim through this section of the book. Basically, it allows a character to level in two classes simultaneously.

I can see everyone's heads buzzing now. Let me explain exactly what I meant by that, and why I'm so eager to start a gestalt campaign. In a traditional game, you can dual or multiclass, sure, but you essentially give up higher abilities in order to be more diverse. For instance, if you alternated cleric and wizard classes all the way up to level 20, you would have the spell-casting power of a 10th level cleric and a 10th level wizard. Not very much punch on either end (only 5th level spells available), but you have access to the best offensive and defensive spells in those levels. This can be ameliorated somewhat by prestige classes (like the mystic theurge) that let you focus in an aspect from two classes while neglecting the rest (no increase in undead turning for your cleric part, and no more bonus feats for your wizard part), but with a cleric 5/wizard 5/mystic theurge 10, you now have the spell-casting abilities of a 15th level cleric and 15th level wizard (and up to 8th level spells). Nice bonus.

Now let's talk about gestalt characters. Using the gestalt rules in Unearthed Arcana, you can gain levels as a cleric/wizard. So at level 1, you are a cleric/wizard 1. What this means is that you get a d8 hit die, good fort and will saves, average BAB, the ability to turn or rebuke undead (as your alignment or deity choice requires), spells per day as a level 1 cleric, access to two domains, weapon and armor proficiencies as a cleric, the ability to spontaneously cast cure spells from your divine spells per day, and anything else a cleric gets at level 1. Then, you add all the things wizards get: a familiar, the scribe scroll feat, arcane spells per day, you can specialize if you wish, and so forth. Anything that both classes have (BAB, saves, skill points) don't stack, but you do take the better of the two. Arcane spell failure still applies when wearing armor or carrying a shield, etc. So, using this rule, you can have a level 20 cleric/wizard who not only has the spell casting power of a level 20 cleric and a level 20 wizard, but the ability to turn undead as a level 20 cleric, all the bonus feats of a level 20 wizard, a BAB of +15, fort and will saves of +12, a reflex save of +6, and so on. Yes, this does create overpowered characters, which is why every PC in the campaign needs to be gestalt if you want to use it (if not, the one character who is gestalt is going to far outshine the other characters). So all you need to do is make sure everyone is gestalt and then up the CRs you throw at them.

Unearthed Arcana offers some suggestions for appropriate CRs and even useful combinations of classes. A druid/ranger for instance, has the animal companion of a druid, all good saves, the best BAB, wild shape (for melee), the ranger's combat style (for ranged), two sources of spells per day (druid for healing, combat control, damage, or anything else; and ranger for buffing or just extra healing or summoning). Rock on! That's a character who could solo his way through the temple of elemental evil blindfolded (especially once wild shaped into something with blindsight).

So, that's my rant on gestalt characters. I'll put up more about them once I actually get the chance to see them in action. I'll let you know how it goes (thinking of going favored soul/sorcerer, magic... everywhere... at all times....).

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2 Comments:

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Personally i like Psionic Warrior/Cleric

4/22/2010 08:19:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

rogue//warlock

8/11/2010 11:09:00 PM  

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