Partial Gestalt

[Alex12]

Last night, I started running a new campaign for the group I've been playing with for a while. The problem is that the group consists of a total of four people, including myself, which means that there's a three-person party. Compounding the problem is that we're doing a pre-published adventure, which assumes four party members. Instead of shoehorning in a DMPC or communal character, I decided to give everyone in the party a single level of gestalt. Their first character level is gestalt, but subsequent levels are only one class.
Has anyone else tried anything like this? I was wondering if it worked out well. Last night's session went well and seemed to be enjoyed, but I wanted to pick the brains of the Playground. If it matters, we're playing Pathfinder, the Way of the Wicked third-party adventure, but I don't see any reason it couldn't apply to 3.5 as well.

[Xerlith]

I gave my players something like that once - Their first three levels were gestalt, rest normal. The campaign never saw fifth level, so basically wholly gestalt, though. :smallbiggrin:

that was PF with 3.5 material allowed and the characters were:
Bladebound Magus3//Rogue3 (enormous damage-dealer, seeing as he was able to maneuver into sneak-attack positions most of the time)
Life Oracle3//Paladin3 ( Archery-focused Oradin)
Crusader3//Fighter2/Bard1 (Tank. Not much to say here. Dealt considerable damage, too).

Overall, they all excelled in their niche and I found myself adjusting the upcoming encounters on the fly (we played a rescalled Forgotten Forge into Shadows of the Last War). it was quite nice and if I ever have a party of three again I'll probably use this setup again.

[Alex12]

Overall, they all excelled in their niche and I found myself adjusting the upcoming encounters on the fly (we played a rescalled Forgotten Forge into Shadows of the Last War). it was quite nice and if I ever have a party of three again I'll probably use this setup again.

Good to know. The current party setup- they levelled up at the end of the session after leaving a trail of blood and corpses in the prison consists of:
human Aegis 2//Cleric (Growth and Trickery) 1
human Warlord 2//Fighter 1
aasimar Stalker 2//Barbarian 1.
There's some pretty non-trivial gaps in their capabilities right now (read: anything that isn't "get up close and hit them until they stop moving", and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that bites them in the rear in the future, but for what they've dealt with so far, they've been winning (though if it hadn't been for the Aegis's last-second switch from Egoist to Cleric, someone probably would have died)

[PsyBomb]

I once did something like this in PF. All players started off by declaring a 10-level PrC as a "style" and agreeing to grab the prerequisites as soon as possible. At every even level, they got one level of the chosen class gestalted on. It worked beautifully for my mid-Op group