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Paganboy28
2010-08-16, 06:26 AM
Would this be overpowering?

If we took the classic roles; fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue

How would you manage this? Would it be better to have an uber roles or to have them cross-over, ie fighter/wizard?


How would you create a party "face"? What classes would be most appropriate?

Loren
2010-08-16, 07:01 AM
Overpowered: sure

Roles: Gesalt was created so that a small group of players could cover all the roles. Since you have enough players you can cover all the roles I'd recommend taking the opprotunity to focus on particular roles. Now, one thing to be cognicent of is what class give a wider range of options and which give improvements to those options. Fighter class, for instance, often gives bonuses to attacks while a swordsage gives different types of attacks. Two classes like this would compliment each other very well. Casters on the other hand have to look further afield to get inherant bonuses to their actions. For instance they can benefit from more damage on their spells from rogue or scout. However, as they should generally minimize the direct damage they are dealing a wider range of spells will be more what they should be looking for. A sorceror/battle mage will have an ungodly number of spells per day while a wizard/archievist will have a massive selection to choose from.

Recommendation: Personally, I like the options for customization a situation like this would provide. What I suggest is giving a tier target for them so that they either need to mix two midrange class or one high with one low. This will (hopefully) help the balance within the party. Then, prepare your encounters to be a fair bit tougher than number. I think the rule of thumb is 1.5x the normal CR. You can also have fun this this as a DM by making gestalt opponents.

playswithfire
2010-08-16, 07:06 AM
Are you restricting it to SRD-only? If so, my gut reaction is:

fighter - Fighter//Druidic Avenger
cleric - Cloistered Cleric//Monk/Ranger
wizard - Wizard//Psion
rogue - Rogue//Soulknife
face - Paladin of Freedom//Bard

mix in some outside core (admittedly mainly ToB)

Fighter - Barbarian//Swordsage or Barbarian//Wildshape Ranger/Master of Many forms
cleric - Cloistered Cleric//Unarmed Swordsage/War Mind
wizard - either still Wizard//Psion, Wizard//Archivist, Wizard//Duskblade
Rogue - Factotum//Warblade
Face - Crusader//Bard

Snake-Aes
2010-08-16, 07:07 AM
Would this be overpowering?

Yes. Gestalt is meant to be more powerful, especially with early availability of resources.


If we took the classic roles; fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue

How would you manage this? Would it be better to have an uber roles or to have them cross-over, ie fighter/wizard?

Synergy is fine and dandy. My current Long Campaign is made of gestalts: psychic warrior/incarnate, paladin/incarnate (gotta love PF), Bard/rogue and wizard/artificer. The core roles are still there: melee guy, skillbitch, caster. The gestalting allowed healing to be pushed to, mostly, off-combat duty.

How would you create a party "face"? What classes would be most appropriate?
Nothing changes on this. No class feature is "lost" or "twisted into something unrecognizable and outside its original intent" by gestalting. Your party face will still be your guy with high charisma and social skills/caster

kestrel404
2010-08-16, 07:22 AM
You would need to scale up your challenges accordingly. If your players are using the gestalt abilities to take their PCs up a tier or 2 in power level (IE Rogue becomes Wizard with sneak attack and lots of skills, or Monk becomes Monk//Druid), then you're going to need challenges that are well above normal CR to challenge the party.

If, on the other hand, they're using the gestalt to maximize role coverage: At least one of your players is not at any given session, not usually the same player, so Fighter//Rogue, Wizard//Cleric, Cleric//Rogue and Wizard//Fighter are there to cover all bases even if one or even 2 PCs go missing for a session. Then you're still going to need to up the CR a bit for when everyone is there, but as more people disappear you can tone down the nastyness to normal levels.

Tengu_temp
2010-08-16, 08:34 AM
There's nothing overpowered about having an all-Gestalt party. Game balance is about balance between party members, not the party and the enemies. You can always crank the monsters up if the enemies are too weak.

Loren
2010-08-16, 09:51 AM
Another thought, how are stats being generated?
point buy will allow the player to focus on one or two abilities, which will lead to characters that heavily utilize those abilities. Rolling tends to spread abilty points more evenly, making characters that can perform in a wide range of roles more viable.

onthetown
2010-08-16, 10:11 AM
Fighter/Ranger, Cleric/Druid, Wizard/Sorcerer, Rogue/Bard.

Fighter/Ranger for more options to be powerful, Cleric/Druid for more spells, Wizard/Sorcerer for more spells, and Rogue/Bard because I can't think of anything else and they seem to go well together.

Alternatively, have a party of 2: Fighter/Wizard and Cleric/Rogue.