[3.5] Question about Gestalt and Adding Templates

[Thyferra2680]

Alright. I'm kind of a Newbie DM. I've run... something... in the past, and I couldn't keep it together because of conflicts, and I eventually joined another group that played with Gestalt rules, which I thought was kinda cool.

fast forward a semester. I found a small group that was able to show up at the same time (more or less) and I decided, foolishly, to try and run a gestalt game with the point buy system.

Everyone was instantly dissatisfied with their characters, which was an instant source of frustration to everyone, so I allowed them to recreate characters.

So here's the thing that confused me about Templates. There's someone who's playing a Half Celestial Paladin/Cleric... I don't know the levels at the top of my head right now... But when he created the character, we covered the +4 lvl adjustment, so he's "four levels behind" everyone else.

However the crux of the conflict is this. He has Skill points up the wazoo, and I'm thinking that you only get them for that first lvl and then take class lvl skill progression.

Also, does he gain new abilities from his class hit die as racial stuff? IE, according to the template information, he gets Holy Smite and Remove Disease as Supernatural Abilities. Does that mean he gets it when he reaches 7 Paladin/7 Cleric (or whatever his lvls are)?

Thanks for the help, guys!

[Chronos]

Where is he getting skill points up the wazoo? Cleric and paladin are both only 2/level, and he probably doesn't have Int all that high. And in gestalt, you only use whichever side's number of skills is better (2+int mod in either case, here); you don't add them together.

Unless you mean the 8+int mod that outsiders get? That only applies to racial hit dice, of which he has none.

[Salt_Crow]

1. Half-celestial/fiend template ONLY changes skill points from racial HD as specifically stated in the template's description.
SRD: Half-celestial (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/halfCelestial.htm)

Skills

A half-celestial gains skill points as an outsider and has skill points equal to (8 + Int modifier) × (HD +3). Do not include Hit Dice from class levels in this calculation—the half-celestial gains outsider skill points only for its racial Hit Dice, and gains the normal amount of skill points for its class levels. Treat skills from the base creature’s list as class skills, and other skills as cross-class.
Emphasis mine

Skill points derived from class levels are not racial HD. So if he was, say, a gnoll, he'll get 8 skill points + Int per HD for his 2 racial HD but not for any of his class levels.

2. Other template abilities do not specify that it have to be racial HD, so HD derived from class levels count.

[Thyferra2680]

Oh snap. The skill points he was adding were the ones from his "racial" hit dice. I'll be talking to him about that...

But the other thing is the racial supernatural abilities. Where does that play in, does he not get any of those either?

EDIT:
Since this was mostly my fault, I also want to ask if I helped set his character up right, by Gestalt rules?

We started lvl 5, so we went with Half Celestial Template, Cleric 1/Paladin 5

To be honest, I really feel bad, because this was because I was completely stupid about templates...

[tyckspoon]

He does get the spell-likes, since that text references non-specific "Hit Dice". How to manage LAs in gestalt is one of the things the book leaves to the GM; for what it's worth, you've chosen what seems to be the most common interpretation, where it's structured as LA//real class. This weakens the impact of LAs, since you still have an actual class to get features and HP and stuff with. Other versions include full LA//full LA, which makes LAs suck double hard, and half LA//half LA.

[Chronos]

Personally, I would recommend putting the full LA on both sides of the gestalt, because if you only put it on one, there's almost no reason not to take a high LA. But of course, you're the DM, and if you don't mind all of your players playing weird nonhumanoid creatures, you're certainly free to do it some other way if you want.