[PF] Gestalt Questions / Caster Level?

[Luckmann]

Alright, so, I'm thinking about diving into Pathfinder GMing, but I was thinking that it would be a Gestalt game, with the players being allowed to pick one Base/Core Class and one Prestige Class. My plan was to simply waive some of the regular requirements for a selection of basic prestige classes (notably cutting out the Skill Prereqs.) such as the Assassin, Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster, Duelist, Shadowdancer, etc.

I'd ban anything with double caster-progression (Mystic Theurge, etc) and judge that for any one level, you are not allowed to progress as two different caster levels (exceptions may apply, but I'd rather cross that bridge when we get to it, so it's not a hard rule, but players shouldn't plan around it).

That said, I was wondering how Caster Progression is meant to work for Gestalt, when used with Prestige Classes.

Let's say a character is a Sorcerer//Arcane Archer.

On every Sorcerer level, he gains +1 Sorcerer Cast.Lvl.
But on 7/10 of the Arcane Archer levels, you gain +1 to Cast.Lvl of existing class.

How is this usually arbitrated? I assume this to be an issue in 3.5 too, but I couldn't see it covered anywhere. Surely he doesn't end up getting +2 Cast.Lvl, and at the same time, I can't help but to feel that if it's "only" +1, this really punishes anyone that'd want to take a caster prestige class to go with his caster class.

...although it'd allow for some interesting combinations for sure with prestige classes that does only have partial caster progression; Arcane Archer right there has 3 levels that'd "let" you deviate from the Sorcerer class.. but.. yeah, let's stick to the question.

[DreganHiregard]

This is a really interesting idea! Basically you're really doing two different things at the same time here.

First, You're making prestige classes into regular classes, but shorter. We'll cover that first. It is a really great idea as long as you keep a careful eye on what prestige classes people are taking. For example, the arcane archer gets a slaying arrow as their capstone. At 10th level a free slaying arrow a day is really useful and powerful, normally this ability is gained around 15-16th level when entry requirements arn't raised. A lot of classes give you abilities based on the assumption that the players are higher level. So it's a good idea to closely read every ability in their class and think carefully about "Is this too strong if they get it 5-10 levels early?"

Next, you're running a gestalt game, which can get rules intensive but is, in my experience, a ton of fun and a great way to enhance a game for players who know the rules really well and have gotten bored with lower powered play. So normally for gestalt if you have a base class and a prestige class that enhance the same casting, they don't stack. Without getting into the exact details of it. Basically if you have let's say 5 wizard levels and 5 let's say fighter levels and you level up, you're prestige class that says +1 level of existing casting" really means "casting as 6th level wizard" in your instance. So if you also level up your wizard level at the same time, they're both giving you the features of a 6th level wizard's spellcasting, and since in gestalt you always take the best abilities but don't gain duplicate abilities, it just gives you 6th level wizard casting instead of 7th.

What you'll probably see is that any level that advances casting the player will probably take something else, like fighter, ranged or whatever, and any levels of their prestige class that doesn't advance casting they will probably take alongside another level of casting so that they still have full casting by level 20. I hope this was helpful.