Half-gestalt for balance?

[NikitaDarkstar]

I've been toying with the idea of running a campaign in a high magic type setting for a while now. Most likely 3.5. And I've also been toying with an idea of what I'd like to call half-gestalt for non-caster classes. The idea here being that every other level a non-caster class (say a Fighter) gets one level in a caster class for free. Except he only gets the spell-casting, none of the other class abilities.
There's two reasons for this. First is I'm hoping it'd balance out the difference between the full-casters and the non-casters some, but without ending up outdoing the wizards in their own game. The second is I plan for this to be a very high magic type game, with relatively high starting levels (around level 8-10), so, at least to me, it'd fit the feel of the game quite well.

But I have some worries here, which is where you lot come in. Where would this leave the classes such as bards and paladins if the rogues, fighters, and barbarians suddenly can cast spells too? Would this make them completely redundant and if so would there be a good way of keeping them viable? (Giving them the same "half-gestalt" treatment?)

How would it overall effect game balance? It'd obviously bring up the power-level some, but would it be game-breaking? And roughly how much should I expect having to turn up the CR for encounters for a setup like this?

[NikitaDarkstar]

Giving this a bump to see if anyone has any thoughts on this at all.

[RPGaddict28]

The spellcasters would still be better. A fighter 20/Wizard 10 would have full BAB and can cast 5th level spells. A wizard20 would be able to cast time stop, shape change, and wish.

[Jack_Simth]

Giving this a bump to see if anyone has any thoughts on this at all.
Let's see...

UMD loses a lot of it's value as a skill (as anyone can use wands).

There's a number of PrCs that become easier to enter (most notably the dual-progression ones, such as the Arcane Trickster, the Eldritch Knight, and the Abjurant Champion... but also some less common ones such as the Arcane Archer or the Warshaper).

Healing is a lot lower of a load (half of a 'standard' party will be able to cast Lesser Vigor - the Cleric, and either the Fighter or the Rogue).

Basic utility spells are more common (the Fighter may be able to cast Invisibility or See Invisibility at level 6, for instance, by gaining Wizard-3 casting; Fly is available to the mundanes as a spell at 10th (Wizard-5 casting)).

Anyone can participate in Magic Item Crafting.

But yes, the actual full casters will still reign supreme after a point.

[Zaydos]

It'll slow the power differential, especially if you have classes like warblade and incarnate in your non-casters, but will not stop it completely. I'd be more likely to go for a gish with 2 levels of fighter to gain access to Full BAB-Full Casting PrCs if they're allowed.

I'd say expand it to the half casters too. Giving bard 1/2 wizard casting honestly does less for bard than giving it to fighter does for fighter. Although this makes Sorcadin even more appealing (I like Sorcadins).

[NikitaDarkstar]

I'm not to worried about PrC's getting easier to enter, and the general idea is to give the normally non-magical individuals some more flexibility (the clerics, wizards and druids will still be dominating though. Hard to get away from that without simply removing those classes from play, which I'm not comfortable with).

I admit I didn't think of the healing as an issue, but if anything it just means a party can get away with not having a dedicated healer (heck many parties already do).

But so far it mainly seems some things would get easier, but nothing really threatening to break them game horribly?

Also, I'm still not quite certain what do do with the classes with partial spell-casting, the bards, rangers, paladins etc. Any suggestions for them? Or would a change like this not really affect them?

EDIT: (ninja'd) Hmm, I admit I didn't think of full-casting prc's, nor multi-classing into full-caster. I'd have to say no, if you multi-class into a full-caster or take a full-caster prc you'd loose the gestalt side of the character. That would just open up the door for a whole lot of cheese, and kind of be against what I'm hoping to accomplish.

[gadren]

EDIT: (ninja'd) Hmm, I admit I didn't think of full-casting prc's, nor multi-classing into full-caster. I'd have to say no, if you multi-class into a full-caster or take a full-caster prc you'd loose the gestalt side of the character. That would just open up the door for a whole lot of cheese, and kind of be against what I'm hoping to accomplish.

So, what does a loose gestalt side do that a tight gestalt side doesnt? :smallcool:

Seriously, though, how would that work? They would suddenly forget everything they learned about being a fighter?

[Abithrios]

Also, I'm still not quite certain what do do with the classes with partial spell-casting, the bards, rangers, paladins etc. Any suggestions for them? Or would a change like this not really affect them?

EDIT: (ninja'd) Hmm, I admit I didn't think of full-casting prc's, nor multi-classing into full-caster. I'd have to say no, if you multi-class into a full-caster or take a full-caster prc you'd loose the gestalt side of the character. That would just open up the door for a whole lot of cheese, and kind of be against what I'm hoping to accomplish.

I would probably count paladins and rangers as noncasters for this purpose. I may even give all tier 3 the half gestalt treatment.

I would probably allow multiclassing as normal. Taking levels in rogue still costs spellcastng, just not as much.

As for full (or almost full) casting PrC s, I would say that you cannot advance a particular class's spellcasting more than once at a given level, and you can only gestalt it if you are using the PrC to advance a weak enough casting progession (eg paladin).

You may run into issues with MAD-ness--casting is generally mentally based, while noncasting generally isn't.

[NikitaDarkstar]

So, what does a loose gestalt side do that a tight gestalt side doesnt? :smallcool:

Seriously, though, how would that work? They would suddenly forget everything they learned about being a fighter?
Is that with or without getting the BoEF involved? :p

But really, if you're upfront about it before-hand I'd assume people would be intelligent enough to not go there, if not that'd be dealt with on a case-by-case basis (seriously, it's not like D&D doesn't already have many examples of "you loose those abilities, the DM gets the headache of figuring out how to explain it").

Abrithos, you do bring up some good points, meaning I'll have to think about the multi-classing some more. I'm just worried about cases where people would take a few levels of say Fighter and then multi-class into wizard, but since he started full fighter he now has sorcerer (or cleric, or whatever) spell-casting ontop of that. And I know there's a few ways out there to minimize the impact of multi-classing, and I don't want to make the already powerful classes even more powerful, I want to give the weaker ones more ways to shine.

While MADness is a risk think of it more as a freebie. Swordy McStab the Fighter has a build that makes him REALLY good at stabbing things with his greatsword, so good he doesn't want to change a thing about it. If he gets access to some spellcasting for free he doesn't have to change a thing about his build, he just gets some options for stabbing things better/in more creative ways with the help of magic. On the other hand, if he does want to change his build to make use of some of the directly offensive spells that's cool too.

And the more I think about it the more I agree, giving the partial casters the same treatment wouldn't really change anything, most of them are Tier3's anyway and have rather... boring spell-selections.

Also, as you can tell I don't quite have this idea completely sorted out yet, but that's why I'm tossing it out here, you guys are usually good with looking at things from different angles, or asking questions I hadn't even thought about.

[Zaydos]

Only give the half-gestalt for levels in non-full casting classes.

For example Fighter 2|Sorcerer 1 who takes a level in Wizard would be Fighter 2/Wizard 1|Sorcerer 1.

Now Fighter 2|Wizard 1 who takes a level in Wizard would have 2nd level wizard casting (and some funky notation) and be a tempting option for going into Abjurant Champion and Eldritch Knight (although ED would lose another caster level), and if you really don't want that you just say that your half-gestalt caster level and spells are tracked separately from any class you may take so that Fighter 2 (Wizard 1) who takes a level in wizard has the spells per day of 2 1st level wizards; although that might be messy at 3rd level (much beyond that and the lost of 2 spell levels on the wizard side more than make up for it).

[Adverb]

Nikita,

I like this idea and I want to play around with it some day.