Gestalt, LA, and Templates - Oh No, I've Gone Cross-Eyed

[NadrojOfTheMad]

Taking a cue from a friend, I thought I'd post a quandry of mine on here and get the opinions of the community on the best way of resolving it.

I'm tinkering with a gestalt survival horror game (the details of which are largely irrelevant) that features vampires and lycanthropes as principle antagonists. But in designing major NPCs (oldest vampire, biggest werewolf, etc) I hit upon a problem not well addressed in the books I've read. When applying a template to a gestalt NPC, what is the best way to do it? Examples are good, so here's two:

Say I'm building a 10th level gestalt NPC (let's say Monk/Rogue, because there are fewer letters to type) who is a vampire. Vampire has a +8 LA and a +2 CR adjustment. Would the build be broken down as Monk 10//Rogue 2/Vampire 8 with a CR of 10, or a Monk 10//Rogue 10 with a CR of 12?

Even more complicated, let's say the NPC (same class) is a 12th level natural werewolf lord. That's a CR bump of +4, 6 dire wolf HD, and a +3 LA. Is this NPC a Monk 12//Rogue 3/Dire Wolf 6/Lycanthrope 3 with a CR of 12, or a Monk 12//Rogue 12 that has 6 bonus HD and a CR of 16?

Which is cleaner/more balanced? Is switching between the models ok (particularly for low level lycanthropes, who would have to be at least level 3-4 depending on natural/afflicted for the model mentioned first)? What are your thoughts? Any feedback is welcome, insofar as it's constructive.

[Urpriest]

First of all, LA should never be used for NPCs, period. It represents something completely different.

Where to put the CR adjustment is a tougher question, but here are some ways to think about it:
First, I assume you aren't gestalting non-NPCs (i.e., if the players ran into a pack of wolves, they would just be wolves, not wolf|warblades). If so, are you leaving non-NPC CRs as they are, or are you adjusting them? Remember, gestalt is a higher-powered variant. Challenges that were appropriate for a normal party will not always work for a gestalt party.

In general, CR in gestalt needs some amount of tweaking. Since CR even in non-gestalt is not an exact science, once gestalt is involved I tend to advise that CR be estimated on a case-by-case basis. So look at the enemy you're putting together, look at where their stats are in comparison to the PCs' stats, and what they can do in comparison to what the PCs can do. It's tough, but once you've wandered into the land of gestalt you've lost whatever guideposts the CR system had. Better to start afresh.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If they're gestalt and have racial HD, such as in the case of the Werewolf, then it gets gestalt class levels with those racial HD.

Just ignore LA completely for NPCs, with the only exception being maybe for giving them gear. When using high LA templates it's easy to end up giving the PCs too much treasure, but something like a Vampire would need servants and hirelings to guard him during the day, houses in which to hide coffins, etc. rather than stuff that the PCs can loot.

For PCs with those templates, they can use the savage progressions (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/sp) for things like Vampire (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030824a) and the various Lycanthropes in case they get bitten. Note that you don't have to take all the levels of those template classes in succession, you can wait a few levels between them or even just never take any more levels in it once you've got the abilities you wanted.

[Duke of URL]

The gestalt "rules" (for lack of a better term) do not account for level adjustment at all. So how you deal with LA has to be defined for the specific game.

If you build your NPC as a character, use only the LA, and then follow the normal guidelines on determining CR. I.e., Your Monk 10 // Vampire 8 / Rogue 2 has the equivalent of a 10 class level character, and so would be CR 10. Alternatively, you could take a CR 10 character of Monk 10 // Rogue 10 and add the template, in which case you should use the template's CR adjustment, making it CR 12.

While the advice above about adjusting CR for gestalt is sound, it doesn't necessarily apply to gestalt opponents. The whole point of downward adjustment on CR is that a gestalt character is more capable (and generally has better defenses than) a non-gestalt character; comparing gestalt to gestalt is more of an even proposition.

[NadrojOfTheMad]

First of all, LA should never be used for NPCs, period. It represents something completely different.

Where to put the CR adjustment is a tougher question, but here are some ways to think about it:
First, I assume you aren't gestalting non-NPCs (i.e., if the players ran into a pack of wolves, they would just be wolves, not wolf|warblades). If so, are you leaving non-NPC CRs as they are, or are you adjusting them? Remember, gestalt is a higher-powered variant. Challenges that were appropriate for a normal party will not always work for a gestalt party.


All valid points and questions. I tend to think backwards with gestalt (leaving CRs as is, then mentally adjusting when designing encounters). And yes, non-NPC enemies are not gestalt. So when I say "CR 10" in the context of this thread, it's shorthand for "CR 10 if somehow this gestalt creature found itself in a non-gestalt game." The case-by-case seems the best way of handling things in general, I was just looking at shortcuts. Duke does raise a good point on comparing gestalt to gestalt, but it's another facet of the puzzle.

[Rejakor]

CR is whack.

The LA costs on templates and races are double whack.

Learn to eyeball encounters from the stats, it's much easier and also better.

Also how much templates are worth depends on your group - if your group is very low-op, the +4 str +2 NA and Wings from Half-Dragon might be HARDCOREEEE and be worth +4 LA. If your group knows how the power attack button works, and has a wizard that uses Web, the half-dragon is going to feel sad and his template is probably only worth +2 LA to him. If your group is uberchargers and god wizards and Hood, that template is probably only worth +1 LA.

[Wavelab]

It is generally accepted that the LA applies to only one side. So you could have Wizard 8/ LA 8. But in lower OP games the DM might rule that it affects all your gestalt levels. It all depends on what the DM wants optimization wise really.

[NadrojOfTheMad]

Just in case it wasn't clear from the OP, I am the DM of this game and this discussion applies to NPCs only. If a PC wants a template in game, it's standard apply LA to one half (or what I infer to be standard practice). Not intending to be snarky, just saw a few posts that seemed to refer to PCs having templates.