trying something different

[Ultimate_Tracke]

hello everyone. havent posted on her in a long time but i am about to start a new campaign in which im dm'ing and there are a few things i would like to do but would like some opinions on them

ok what im doing is sort of like a gestalt type campaign, but rather then taking a class on each side of gestalt one side would be class the other side would be a mix of templates and racial hd and lvl adj.

now to counter the enormous amount of abilities gained from the template side what im doing is this: first all stats before everything is added on start at 10 except 1 which will start at 18 (our group is not really big on munchkining) no full casters, but spell like, su and ex abilities that that mimic them are fine. the major drawback to this is no magic items as well.

the premise of the campaign is that the pc's will be the last of their kind (were creatures vampires and so on)which at some point in time during the height of their powers were taken away from this world. 3000 years later the age of technology is at it pinnacle when gateways to the demon underworld start to open couple years pass humans struggle to exist at which point (havent gotten everything down yet) the pc's are released

any and all critisism would be appreciated

[Kadarai]

1st of all even with no munchkins a 5x10, 1x18 stat block pushes towards heavy optimization and imediately throws MAD classes out of use. You can't depend on templates to cover all needed stats. I, personally am a fun of 1x10, 5x14 stat block before racials. It's not optimum but allows more complete characters, no matter what you play.

Secondly, i am no fun of the gestalt system as it rips away the fun of building a consept. (no fun in being a Bladesinger u you are full wizardANDfighter) But from what i understand you wanna just give away some free level adjustments. 1st of all it would be better to determine what you want to give away, cause when you see that half-mummy, half-golem, necropolitan pixie paladin coming your way it will be too late. or that half-vampiric-half-troll-lycantropic snail from OotS. Better give the payers some options and let them roleplay or create somehting around those concepts, or be prepared for true monstrocities.

Also think how many templates you wanna allow per character. A lycanthrope rogue is good. A vampire beguiler is sneakily beautiful. A Lycantropic Half-golem Dhampir Bladesiger of Corellon is not that concordant with my sense of a good character

So better create clans (Lycans, Vampires, mosnter-hunters, mutants, anything) and present them as starting optiosn to your PCs, and let tehm build on from there. This way it seems more fun to me, and may allow for better interaction and gameplay

[Ultimate_Tracke]

oh believe me im not just letting them add every awesome template they can think of on this, they choose a template such as a were creature, vampire and such and stick with that role (this is also pathfinder so no huge lvl adj) as they advance they can take other templates that suit or i gave them the option to do a savage progression of a monster so they wouldnt have to keep finding new templates (which as i already stated above would be hard to do when trying to keep it to a certain type of monster)

i was even planning on going 6x10 stats and just having them rely on the stats that they gained from the templates, the only prob i saw with this is since they dont optimize some stats just wont be very high which wouldnt be all that bad and the obvious answer to this is if you want to be this class dont be that creature but i hate limiting my pc's. with the 1 stat 18, heck it could be 16 or 14 doesnt matter, it allows them the option to be whatever class they wish

all in all i know its going to be a high powered campaign im just hoping by limiting magic, magic items and starting stats that it will hopefully bring them down to a managable lvl. im only taking this stuff aways from them not the bad guys.

[Ultimate_Tracke]

wow nevermind just saw in pathfinder srd how to add monsters and templates on and get a sort of buy off so im thinking ill go that way.