Gestalt NPC

[firruna]

Hello Playgrounders,

My group has recently started playing around with Gestalt classes, so as I am working on a new word for our next game, I figured I would make the NPCs Gestalt to begin with. The game will revolve around a world at war. Whether the players are soldiers in one of the armies, or diplomats, will be up to them, but either way I want to have the main leaders on all sides, and the base soldiers ready to go for when I need random encounters, and the like.

The world, as far is it has been explored, is one large landmass, with humans living on the plans In the middle of it. Elves in the forests to on the west coast, Dwarves in the East mountains, Halflings to the arctic south, and Gnomes on islands to the south, the only race to not be affected large scale.

The world is low magic, almost anyone can use magic, but it comes from a pact with demons, so most people are scared of it, like how it was in the middle ages of earth, only there really is magic, and it really comes from hell. However, I am thinking of making one race be able to use it without the deals w/demons.

The players will have access to PHB, PHB2, Arms and Equipment Guide, Complete Warrior, Complete Adventurer, Complete Scoundrel, Complete Divine, and DMG for prestige classes/magic items. So I want to try to stick to these for the NPCs, but am willing to look else where.

Human army. Their Emperor is power hungry, and believes humans are superior, so mounted an army to talk over the world.
They are going to have both cavalry, and infantry, with very weak artillery, and maybe a special strike force for some fun for the players if they end up on the front lines.
For the infantry I will be going with Fighter/Warrior (DMG NPC), with maybe a few levels in a prestige class for the non-Noble leaders.
The Cavalry is where I am struggling. I have found that most games do not make mounted combat something you can put time into developing, if you want to use your skills, as you're always in dungeons and places where you just can't get a horse or other mount. As such, I don't have experience working with mounted characters. I am thinking fighter so I can get the bonus feats to help with mounted combat, but them am unsure of the class. Someone suggested ranger, which seems like a good idea, but I was wondering if scout would work well as an alternative? Get the scremish bonus working when they charge, with ride by attack this could be great.

The Gnomes are going to be much more technically advanced than the other races, but most likely not show up at all, or if they do, very rarely, with minimal involvement.

The Elves will be allied with most woodland creatures.

The dwarves leader is going to have a devil whispering in his ear to get him to lead his people into war.

And the Halflings will... Not sure, be the first target of the humans or dwarves? I really don't have much of an idea.

Any advice is appreciated, I am mostly looking for help with how to build the mounted units in the human army, but anything is appreciated, and will be taken into account.

[Angelmaker]

Regarding the devil: war for the sake of war is a rather chaotic act. Sounds more like a demon.

As far as I understood d and d cosmology, a devil would instill a war only if it served to further an agenda that benefits the hells with more evil souls than it would send good souls to the astral sea ( or whats it called).

I may be wrong here, it is just that devils usually do not benefit from destruction as much as demons may would.

@ cavalry: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?150928-mounted-combat-build-3-5

My take on this: dont. You can make the damage from a mounted charge high enough that if you hit a play, he is dead. Dead, dead, dead.

I would rather treat the cavalry, if player encounter them, as a monster, who I can give my own special qualities to, without the excessive x6 charge mutliplicator or even more that you can achieve on a mounted charge.

Something along the lines of forced movement, or being impaled on a spike... Stuff like that.

Edit: clarification: cavalry is a bit of a save or suck damagewise. Of they hit you, it screws your day. The charge is deadly.

While realistic, again, preventing those binary situations from happening my suit the style of your group. If you think players, especially melee, can life with character dead by being one shotted then you can build a mounted charge as writtin in the link.

Double edit: gestalting npcs is a lot of work too. You should only ever do it for important npcs. To estimate their combat capalities with simple npcs iyou are better of using the various monster generators out there.

[firruna]

Regarding the devil: war for the sake of war is a rather chaotic act. Sounds more like a demon.

As far as I understood d and d cosmology, a devil would instill a war only if it served to further an agenda that benefits the hells with more evil souls than it would send good souls to the astral sea ( or whats it called).

I may be wrong here, it is just that devils usually do not benefit from destruction as much as demons may would.

I think you're right, I didn't really think about the difference. I will come up with someway for this to help them, or else use a demon.



@ cavalry: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?150928-mounted-combat-build-3-5

My take on this: dont. You can make the damage from a mounted charge high enough that if you hit a play, he is dead. Dead, dead, dead.

I would rather treat the cavalry, if player encounter them, as a monster, who I can give my own special qualities to, without the excessive x6 charge mutliplicator or even more that you can achieve on a mounted charge.

Something along the lines of forced movement, or being impaled on a spike... Stuff like that.

Edit: clarification: cavalry is a bit of a save or suck damagewise. Of they hit you, it screws your day. The charge is deadly.

While realistic, again, preventing those binary situations from happening my suit the style of your group. If you think players, especially melee, can life with character dead by being one shotted then you can build a mounted charge as writtin in the link.

Double edit: gestalting npcs is a lot of work too. You should only ever do it for important npcs. To estimate their combat capalities with simple npcs iyou are better of using the various monster generators out there.

Thanks for the link, I will look over the thread in more detail in a few. As for one shoting my players, we all take turns DMing, and they do it to me all the time, so it's completely fair game.