Rixx
2011-06-19, 01:36 AM
I may be running a new Pathfinder campaign or two soon, and was interested in allowing player characters the option of being "gestalt" at the cost of half their experience points (the rationale being they're splitting their training between two professions). This is inspired by the original AD&D method of multiclassing, which also works this way.
By my calculations on the medium PF experience track, a character who earns half as much experience as a normal character will be one level behind for the first few levels, and around two levels behind forever after. I would, of course, start the characters off at a higher level than 1, just so that the gestalt characters start off at a lower level. (The method I've used when experimenting with this technique is having normal characters start at 3, and gestalt characters start at 2.)
Traditional multiclassing or PrC-ing as a gestalt character will not be allowed.
With gestalt characters being two levels behind the normal ones, do you think that this is a relatively balanced approach to allowing "dual-classed" characters (assuming my players are not optimizers)?
Another approach to boosting the potential of multiclassing I've read is to allow half the levels of all your other classes contribute as levels of a normal class, up to a maximum of 1.5 levels of that class - so, if you had three levels in rogue, and two levels in fighter, you'd get the class features of a fourth level rogue as well. If you split two classes evenly for 20 levels, you get the class features of 15 levels in each class (instead of 10, as you normally would). This is potentially more balanced, but maybe a bit complicated.
By my calculations on the medium PF experience track, a character who earns half as much experience as a normal character will be one level behind for the first few levels, and around two levels behind forever after. I would, of course, start the characters off at a higher level than 1, just so that the gestalt characters start off at a lower level. (The method I've used when experimenting with this technique is having normal characters start at 3, and gestalt characters start at 2.)
Traditional multiclassing or PrC-ing as a gestalt character will not be allowed.
With gestalt characters being two levels behind the normal ones, do you think that this is a relatively balanced approach to allowing "dual-classed" characters (assuming my players are not optimizers)?
Another approach to boosting the potential of multiclassing I've read is to allow half the levels of all your other classes contribute as levels of a normal class, up to a maximum of 1.5 levels of that class - so, if you had three levels in rogue, and two levels in fighter, you'd get the class features of a fourth level rogue as well. If you split two classes evenly for 20 levels, you get the class features of 15 levels in each class (instead of 10, as you normally would). This is potentially more balanced, but maybe a bit complicated.