Encounters for Gestalts

[Humble Master]

So I am starting up a Gestalt campaign and was wondering what kind of "level" should I aim the monsters at? Also, would it be going overboard to put in monsters with gestalt levels? This is my first Gestalt campaign so I really have no idea what kind of power level to aim for.

For more detail here are the PC's class levels:
Crusader 6/Druid 6
Swordsage 6/Bard 6
Wizard 5/Warblade 5 Homebrew Gish PrC 1/Rouge 1

[fishyfishyfishy]

I use a mix of normal enemies and Gestalt ones. I usually save Gestalt for elite/boss monsters. It's really unnecessary for you to go through the extra work of creating all customized Gestalt enemies when they usually only exist so players can deal with them.

That said, you can use some really interesting combo's to make enemies seem more unique with Gestalt. Take a troll for example. Gestalt their RHD with the NPC Adept class and you have some useful buffs to bypass their normal weaknesses (resist energy).

[Ramza00]

You should be using a mix of normal enemies for mooks and gestalt npcs for memorable characters.

Remember gestalt does not mean your player characters are necessary stronger, just more versatile or having more staying power. Thus you need to make the monsters the same. Don't make your monsters hit harder instead work on their defenses, buff smarter, use better tactics, etc so the monsters last longer. (That or just throw more at them at the pcs in waves, but not all at once so you don't tk them with numbers/action economy).

As long as the bard doesn't doesn't go insane with inspire courage / dragonfire inspiration just pretend you are making encounters with 4 people instead of 3.

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

I use a mix of normal enemies and Gestalt ones. I usually save Gestalt for elite/boss monsters. It's really unnecessary for you to go through the extra work of creating all customized Gestalt enemies when they usually only exist so players can deal with them.

That said, you can use some really interesting combo's to make enemies seem more unique with Gestalt. Take a troll for example. Gestalt their RHD with the NPC Adept class and you have some useful buffs to bypass their normal weaknesses (resist energy).

Or you can make it even nastier with levels of fighter and barbarian. You can make some fun elite enemies with gestalt rules.

[Ramza00]

Or you can make it even nastier with levels of fighter and barbarian. You can make some fun elite enemies with gestalt rules.

I am pretty sure a troll with energy resistance 10 fire and acid would be far worse than a troll that gets +4 to strength (+2 to attack and +3 to damage). That means the troll ignores about 3d6 worth of fire damage per attack, thus making the only way to kill the troll is via a pure spellcaster blaster or using the alchemal item trollbane. At level 5, losing 3d6 of fire damage due to resist energy means even the pure blaster wizard is getting his damage cut in half unless he optimizes for it.

And at level 7 the resist energy increases to 20 thus that means 6d6 worth of fire damage is effectively removed. You are vastly increasing the amount of hit points the troll has by giving it resist energy. Hell make the troll a sorcerer and give it the spell shield alternate class feature, if he sacrifice a 2nd level spell slot he ignores 10 damage that actually bypasses the fire resistance.

[Fouredged Sword]

Generally gestalt is worth CR+0 for a matching ability class (hill giant with gestalt barbarian levels) to CR+3 for a tier 1 class (hill giant with Cleric levels).

Now there are exceptions and fuzzy spaces where you have to think things through, but generally, I lower all CR's by 1 for non-gestalt monsters and use the above system to guesstimate CR.