Gestalt Villains

[evil-frosty]

What are the risks of having a villain be gestalt when the party is not gestalted? It's just an idea I had to fully realize the concept of one of my villains. I realize that if I had the villain face the party one on one that the action economy would not be nice to my villain. But I was just wondering if this would make the villain overpowered compared to the party? Assuming relatively the same levels of optimization.

[Eonir]

All the BBEGs in my games are gestalts. PCs tend to be able to kill just about anything that isn't, and even then they must still be optimized incredibly.

[FMArthur]

It's not really any worse than a regular monster if you don't go overboard. I personally prefer not to pit the players against things that are impossible for them to use themselves unless they're 1-time gimmick encounters vs monsters; it feels fairer and allows the players to actually be able to relate and compare their own abilities to those of NPCs.

Villains are natural recipients of deliberately inefficient multiclassing in my opinion. A Wizard 6/Cleric 6 has pretty much the same abilities as a gestalt Wizard 6//Cleric 6; it just has more HP padding, better saves and better skills. All of those are desirable for boss characters, so it's useful to do it that way so that it can actually survive encounters with PCs without overwhelming them with the level gap. Just don't think to equate such a thing with a properly constructed character of the same ECL for any other purpose, because then the level of challenge is a whole different ballpark.

[Ravens_cry]

What I like about gestalt is how it exponentially increases build options. Instead of hunting for that one book with that prestige class or synergy feat that lets you make this character concept work, two basic classes gestated together can potentially give you exactly what you want.
That's always nice, even if it isn't as powerful as gestalt can potentially be.

[Wookie-ranger]

I don't DM all that often, but I have done it in one of my campaigns before.

mainly because they could beat the pits out of everything else. it was a standard core only group, (wiz, cleric, rogue, fighter) about a year or two back. The cool thing was, that they always did it with shear luck and amazing roles, not Optimizing. never seen 8 natural 20s in a row by 4 different people before, or again! after they beat the Big Bad in about 3 rounds, (while he was supposed to escape, with a 'fool proof' plan b) i decided that they need something a bit more challenging

over all it worked very well. the average encounter was still the same but everyone could feel why the boss was the boss. it created nice flavor too.

my advice it not to go overboard with optimizing. with gestalt you can get crazy good combos. go for flavor and stick with the 'theme'.
he is 'just' an npc after all.

i don't say that you should make a weak build just that you don't over do it.