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herrhauptmann
2010-11-26, 08:16 PM
I've got a question with how Prestige Classes work in Gestalt games.
I know that
a) You can't take a PrC in both sides of your progression in a given level (without houserules)
b) Dual progression PrC's tend to get banned. Mystic Theurge, Ultimate magus etc.

But what about if you have a PrC, which can advance either side of character's progression?
Say, Cleric (celerity/travel domain) // Wizard. Either class grants entry into Swiftblade. Though swiftblade doesn't advance cleric casting. So assuming I have the requisite feats, I could make a character which was Cleric16//Wizard6/Swift10. OR Cleric 6/Swift10 // Wizard 16.

So my question for the playground, would it be possible to use swiftblade on either side of my build if both sides provide entry to swiftblade?
Say at level 10, Wiz6/Swift4 // Cleric 10 (casting: Wiz8, Cleric10).
And then for the next 6 levels, to put swiftblade on the divine side of my build? So Wiz12/Swift 4 // Cleric 10 / Swift (levels 5-10), giving me the casting of Wiz 14, and Cleric 10, while having all ten levels worth of swiftblade class abilities.

Urpriest
2010-11-26, 08:28 PM
The sides are just an abstraction. Qualifying for a prestige class happens as a result of your stats as a whole, not the stats of your "sides", so you can enter as long as your class features combined allow you to, and can gestalt the prestige class with any base class you want.

herrhauptmann
2010-11-26, 09:20 PM
So my little scheme to get swiftblade 10, AND 9th level casting is perfectly legit?

Truth to tell, it's not cleric I was looking at using in the gestalt build; but a divine homebrew class. One that gets limited casting, but cooler class features than a cleric.

Salanmander
2010-11-26, 09:35 PM
Yeah, that should work just fine. You don't even need the cleric levels. You could be a wizard 6//commoner 6 (EDIT: or wizard 5//fighter 5 for that matter), and then start advancing as a wizard//swiftblade to get, essentially, a swiftblade with full caster level progression.

It would also probably make sense to take something other than wizard on the levels where swiftblade advances caster progression, so you can pack more extra goodies (bonus feats, ToB stuff, maybe some natural attacks as a totemist...) into the build. RAW it won't slow down your caster progression at all, although I think it would be well within RAMS for a DM to invent fractional caster ability progression. =P

Godskook
2010-11-26, 09:47 PM
Actually 90% of prestige classes are banned in RAW gestalt. The definition given in UA is "hybrid", and arcane trickster is an example. I'd recommend coming up with a more "fair-use" rule for how to use any prestige class as opposed to trying to use RAW, cause RAW, in this case, is garbage.

My personal version is that you can't 'overclock' features through prestige-abuse in gestalt. Also, either 'track' must be relatively self-dependent, except when it comes to 'basics'(such as BAB, Saves, and feats).