Partial Gestalt campaign mechanic - help me balance it

[Heliomance]

For a campaign I'm starting up, I'm going to be using a partial gestalt mechanic. Every character will have a non-magical side and a magical side. The magical side will lag behind the non-magical side (I haven't decided how far behind, but they won't have anything like as many levels in it). At any level up, they can choose to focus their efforts on understanding and improving their magic. At that point, the magical side will immediately catch up to the non-magical side, but they will permanently lose the ability to take more gestalt levels. They'll keep the ones they've got, but from that point onwards they'll be single progression.

Thoughts? Advice? How well do you see this working?

[AmberVael]

Thoughts? Advice? How well do you see this working?

Badly. It doesn't balance itself out at all.

Say someone abandons their non magic side early on, and focuses completely on their magic. They'll be the first to get all the good spells and powers, and for a while, they'll reign supreme.

But then say another character after being overshadowed for a while, gets envious, and then switches his character over. Well, suddenly he can do everything the first character can... except since he waited longer, he has far more powers from his other side.

Even supposing that the first character who is magical is more even with the party, he's only going to be even until a more patient person finally makes the switch.


Point is, this mechanic encourages people to take a penalty early on, but if they stick with it, they'll overshadow everyone later. That's not balance at all, and will only lead to vast power gulfs between players- or worse, a competition for power between them which ends up nerfing the whole party for a long time due to your system. At best, you gain balance because no one goes caster, because they're in a cold war esque arms race.

[molten_dragon]

Well, how well it will work kind of depends on how high a level you expect to get to. Because if you're going really high with it, or would consider starting out at a mid to high level, you may get people who decide to put up with being a warblade16//wizard 8 (or whatever) (which would actually make a pretty damn good gish honestly) until they hit level 17, then catch their spellcasting up, and for the high level game end up as basically something close to a full gestalt. So people who choose to do their catch-up later will be at a huge advantage over people who did it early or not at all.

Another issue you may run into is that this can lead to large jumps in power level. In the example I gave above, in one level you would jump from having 4th level spells to having 9th level spells.

The lower the level that the campaign would be played at, the less effect both of these problems would have.

[Andreaz]

It's unnecessarily complicated, the final power potentials are the same, but plain gestalt doesn't bring silliness like the power envy Vael mentioned.

[Heliomance]

Well, how would you suggest I do it? The idea of the campaign is that magic has been universally stamped out, suppressed, and forgotten, due to events in the past which I won't go into. The PCs, therefore, have no idea magic even exists. Unfortunately, magic knows they exist, and they're starting to show the occasional power as magic manifests in them involuntarily.

I want to give them the option of continuing their previous training, or trying to find out more about this mysterious magic stuff, harnessing it, and learning to use it fully. But if they decide not to exploit it, the magic isn't just going to go away.

The game, incidentally, is starting at level 1, and if all goes well and I don't run out of ideas, will hopefully go all the way to 20 and beyond. the setting has enough scope for Epic, and I have some ideas for what will happen if and when they get there.

[Andreaz]

Well, how would you suggest I do it? The idea of the campaign is that magic has been universally stamped out, suppressed, and forgotten, due to events in the past which I won't go into. The PCs, therefore, have no idea magic even exists. Unfortunately, magic knows they exist, and they're starting to show the occasional power as magic manifests in them involuntarily.

I want to give them the option of continuing their previous training, or trying to find out more about this mysterious magic stuff, harnessing it, and learning to use it fully. But if they decide not to exploit it, the magic isn't just going to go away.

The game, incidentally, is starting at level 1, and if all goes well and I don't run out of ideas, will hopefully go all the way to 20 and beyond. the setting has enough scope for Epic, and I have some ideas for what will happen if and when they get there.
Plain gestalt is fine, really. Just don't let them regain spells often until they decide to actually look into that power. And that they do so all at once.
The setting itself contributes enough to the whole "no magic thing". Mr Wiz can't learn more spells if he can't buy scrolls nor knows he can invent them ;)

[molten_dragon]

Well, how would you suggest I do it? The idea of the campaign is that magic has been universally stamped out, suppressed, and forgotten, due to events in the past which I won't go into. The PCs, therefore, have no idea magic even exists. Unfortunately, magic knows they exist, and they're starting to show the occasional power as magic manifests in them involuntarily.

I want to give them the option of continuing their previous training, or trying to find out more about this mysterious magic stuff, harnessing it, and learning to use it fully. But if they decide not to exploit it, the magic isn't just going to go away.

The game, incidentally, is starting at level 1, and if all goes well and I don't run out of ideas, will hopefully go all the way to 20 and beyond. the setting has enough scope for Epic, and I have some ideas for what will happen if and when they get there.

Maybe instead of giving them a partial gestalt, you just have them be normal characters and give them some increasingly powerful spell-like abilities as they level up. Then at some point if they want they can choose to go the full magic route and you can go with one of two options. They can either just start taking spellcasting classes from then on, or they could basically be retrained with some (or all) of their previous levels rewritten with spellcasting levels.

Or do you definitely want to make it a gestalt game?

[Heliomance]

Gestalt made sense to me. Starting out taking spellcasting classes from the point at which they decide to focus on magic will be ludicrously suboptimal, and it makes no sense for them to forget their old abilities if and when they decide this magic stuff is kinda cool.

[AmberVael]

I might suggest this instead-

Have them all start off with single class characters. Gradually introduce each character to a few spell-like or magical abilities, and see how they use them. Do they focus on them, and desire to cultivate more of them? Or do they use them reluctantly, or only to supplement their existing skills as necessary? Make sure you know how your players feel... and then introduce gestalt to all of them, at once.

Each character will have the same number of levels, and will continue to gain access to magic- but the difference will be the way the magic manifests. If a person wants to really sink their teeth into magic, maybe they'll get beguiler, dread necromancer, sorcerer, or favored soul. But if someone is say, a combat type, give him an Incarnum- a passive magic that increases his combative abilities. He's ignored cultivating magic in favor of his other abilities, but that doesn't make it gone- it just means it has become more subtle, less overt. Or perhaps you might give them some more supernatural ToB elements.

[Quietus]

Personally, I'd use the gestalt rules, but then give each side an alternate experience track. So someone focusing strictly on their mundane side will grow powerful in that area, but at the expense of their magic. Later on, they can start funneling experience into their magic, and it will rapidly level up since they're now level 7 and spending 2,000 experience for level 2 Wizard, but their mundane side remains where it is during that period.

[DeAnno]

Personally, I'd use the gestalt rules, but then give each side an alternate experience track. So someone focusing strictly on their mundane side will grow powerful in that area, but at the expense of their magic. Later on, they can start funneling experience into their magic, and it will rapidly level up since they're now level 7 and spending 2,000 experience for level 2 Wizard, but their mundane side remains where it is during that period.

I agree with this mechanic. They simply have two experience tracks, and can always decide where to invest it. This way an entirely focused character will be level 10 while an even gestalt is level 7, or level 20 while an even gestalt is level 14. This is similar enough in power level that certain builds would prefer various amounts of gestalting.

[Heliomance]

That requires using XP, which I've always thought to be an unnecessary bookkeeping faff. I tend to use the "level up at the speed of plot" method of character advancement.

[Gandariel]

Here's my idea:

normally, when you level up you only level up your nonmagical class.
Plus, every other level you get 1 magical class level (gestalted)
so you can be Warblade 10//sorc 5
THEN, after level 10 or something(up to you), they can decide to study more magic, and invert the pattern.
So they begin getting magical class levels normally and 1 level of their "mundane" class every other level

So for example
Warblade 10 // Sorc 5
decides to study more magic
then his levels are
Warblade 10 // Sorc 6
Warblade 11 // Sorc 7
Warblade 11 // Sorc 8
Warblade 12 // Sorc 9
Warblade 12 // Sorc 10
Warblade 13 // Sorc 11
Warblade 13 // Sorc 12
Warblade 14 // Sorc 13
Warblade 14 // Sorc 14
Warblade 15 // Sorc 15
Warblade 15 // Sorc 16 AT LEVEL 20. Not that overpowered.

If they want to keep using their mundane class more they'll get more levels of it and less spellcasting
they can keep their normal class until, say, level 14 and end up with
17 on the Nonmagic side and 13 on the magical side.

What do you think about it?

[DeAnno]

That requires using XP, which I've always thought to be an unnecessary bookkeeping faff. I tend to use the "level up at the speed of plot" method of character advancement.

You could just give them big chunks of XP equal to being at a certain level when you want to level them, and let them distribute that as they will. For example, if you go from "level 9" to "level 10" just give them 9k XP all at once.

[Heliomance]

Making it so that on deciding to study magic every level up you get one HD but two levels of the magic class would solve the issue of the huge power jump, but not the one of being higher power from waiting longer. Or maybe it would - the longer you wait to switch to magic, the longer it takes for your magic to catch up.

None of the players are particularly dedicated optimisers, though. I don't think anyone would nerf themselves for the first 15 levels for Real Ultimate Power later, especially when we don't know how high level they'll get. Just because I've said I'm okay with Epic, doesn't mean the campaign will necessarily get that far. And I'll be encouraging strong roleplay, as well. What I'm hoping will happen is that the players that want to play mages will switch as soon as I let them, and the players that want to play beatsticks will never switch, and just enjoy the minor perks of their slight magical talent. If someone wants to be a gish, they might wait a few levels to switch, and that'll give them a stronger chassis to work with, but given that gish is such a hard archetype to make work anyway, I think I'm okay with that.

Of the suggestions so far, I like Quietus's the best, apart from the hassle of having to use XP.

EDIT: Actually, DeAnno's idea works very well. That's a definite possibility.

[molten_dragon]

That requires using XP, which I've always thought to be an unnecessary bookkeeping faff. I tend to use the "level up at the speed of plot" method of character advancement.

Maybe you can do full gestalt with one side of the gestalt having the occasional dip of a spellcasting class. Then if they choose to focus on their magic at some point you could let them take the same spellcasting class on both sides of their gestalt to level up in it twice as quickly. Once their level in the spellcasting class reaches their character level, then they are limited again to taking that class on only one side of the gestalt.

So for example let's say that you have a character that starts off as a crusader//fighter. Maybe by level 5 he's at crusader 5//fighter 4/cleric 1. At this point he decides that he wants to focus on this newfangled 'magic' thing that he's discovered, and for his 6th character level, he decides to take cleric on both sides of his gestalt. He gets a single new d8 hit die, and good fort and will progression, but he gets his 2nd and 3rd levels of cleric spellcasting. He could continue to do this until his 9th character level, at which point he would be, for the most part, a crusader 5/fighter 4//cleric 9 and then could continue taking cleric levels on one side of the gestalt, and whatever else he wanted to on the other side.

This would still allow people to start out as noncasters and become a full caster on one side of the gestalt, and would allow them to power their magic up faster than normal, but would make it so there would be no huge power disparity between people who focused on their magic early and people who focused on it later (other than the fact that if you wait too late, you may not be able to get full spellcasting by the end of the campaign). And you would also not have the issue of huge power jumps to worry about. A character getting 2 spellcaster levels every time the level up is jumping up in power pretty quickly to be sure, probably more so than a character who has chosen to stick with some other normal gestalt, but it isn't nearly as bad as someone who could go from a level 8 caster to a level 17 caster in a single level.

Edit: This idea is pretty similar to Quietus's.

[Heliomance]

So current thinking is that I'll do the gestalt with separate experience tracking for each side, and give out large packets of experience instead of saying "level up now". Sound good?

[VarianArdell]

Here's my idea:

normally, when you level up you only level up your nonmagical class.
Plus, every other level you get 1 magical class level (gestalted)
so you can be Warblade 10//sorc 5
THEN, after level 10 or something(up to you), they can decide to study more magic, and invert the pattern.
So they begin getting magical class levels normally and 1 level of their "mundane" class every other level

So for example
Warblade 10 // Sorc 5
decides to study more magic
then his levels are
Warblade 10 // Sorc 6
Warblade 11 // Sorc 7
Warblade 11 // Sorc 8
Warblade 12 // Sorc 9
Warblade 12 // Sorc 10
Warblade 13 // Sorc 11
Warblade 13 // Sorc 12
Warblade 14 // Sorc 13
Warblade 14 // Sorc 14
Warblade 15 // Sorc 15
Warblade 15 // Sorc 16 AT LEVEL 20. Not that overpowered.

If they want to keep using their mundane class more they'll get more levels of it and less spellcasting
they can keep their normal class until, say, level 14 and end up with
17 on the Nonmagic side and 13 on the magical side.

What do you think about it?

personally, I think this idea would be the most elegant and easy to manage out of all of them...

[Godskook]

I use a system for gestalt that goes like this, and it runs alongside a few other houserules, so I'm including them:

1.Each week, characters are awarded xp equal to 1/4 the cost to achieve the next level(1k xp per week when you're level 4, for instance).

2.Characters are also awarded a number of build points(bp), determined by complex formulas and arcane rituals. It winds up being about 50-100% of the xp value. Bp is utlized in all the same ways as xp, except that it can not be used to gain new HD levels.

3.You may spend xp/bp in the following ways:
3a.To maximize a HD, at the rate of 250xp times one less than your level(your 11th level HD would cost 2500xp to max).
3b.To increase your point-buy, costing the square of your current point-buy to increase it by one point(so to go from 30 to 31 point-buy would cost 900 xp). Max point-buy is equal to your level+30.
3c.To buy a feat, at the rate of 1kxp for the first, incrementing by 1kxp per feat(so your 5th feat would cost 5kxp). Max of 1 additional feat per 2 HD.
3d.To buy gestalt levels, at the rate of 1kxp for the first, incrementing by 1kxp per gestalt level(so your 7th gestalt level would cost 7kxp).

4.Character stats are always rolled. This is to ensure some randomness and diversity in the stats, since the point-buy rules will prevent anyone from being screwed over by the rolls.

[Yuki Akuma]

I might suggest this instead-

Have them all start off with single class characters. Gradually introduce each character to a few spell-like or magical abilities, and see how they use them. Do they focus on them, and desire to cultivate more of them? Or do they use them reluctantly, or only to supplement their existing skills as necessary? Make sure you know how your players feel... and then introduce gestalt to all of them, at once.

Each character will have the same number of levels, and will continue to gain access to magic- but the difference will be the way the magic manifests. If a person wants to really sink their teeth into magic, maybe they'll get beguiler, dread necromancer, sorcerer, or favored soul. But if someone is say, a combat type, give him an Incarnum- a passive magic that increases his combative abilities. He's ignored cultivating magic in favor of his other abilities, but that doesn't make it gone- it just means it has become more subtle, less overt. Or perhaps you might give them some more supernatural ToB elements.

I like this idea, and may have to steal it.

[AmberVael]

I like this idea, and may have to steal it.

If you want to, go for it.