How much power does gestalting give.

[Thatwarforged]

So their seems to be a lot of people talking about gestalt players and so. Long ago my friend and I were talking about gestalting an he told me it effectively doubled the character power level. A while ago I read the gestalt rules and it didn't seem to completely double power level but did seem to increase versatility a lot. So playground my question is how much does Gestalt actually raise a persons power by will a 10 level gestalt party have to fight a CR 20 monster for a challenge or would it be level CR 15, or 12? You get the point.

[Aegis013]

The question of what CR could they defeat depends a lot more on the Player than whether or not gestalt is involved. Then it depends more on the Build of the character in question than whether or not gestalt is involved.

But as a decent rule of thumb, I'd say gestalt will make a PC roughly 1.5x more effective/versatile/powerful if done reasonably well. If it's done poorly, you'll see marginal improvement, but nothing substantial.

[georgie_leech]

Unless extremely optimised, note that Gestalting generally gives about the same numbers as a straight class would. What it does do, however, is vastly expand possible toolkits. In other words, it's not that parties can necessarily take on more difficult problems, but that the number of problems they can work with increases. A bog-standard fighter, for instance, would have little recourse against an Allip unless they got lucky with loot or planned ahead; a Fighter//Warlock, on the other hand, has a built in usable tool, even if he/she would be using a sword for greater melee damage more often.

In short, if your players or you are good at leveraging your resources to solve different kinds of encounters, Gestalting is a noticeable power bump because it expands your metaphorical toolbox. If looked at in terms of straight numbers, Gestalting doesn't do much. If you find equal CR encounters aren't challenging enough, two possible solutions are to slowly ratchet up the CR until the greater numbers start to become challenging again, or you can add different wrinkles or complications to existing encounters. Maybe the terrain becomes more favourable to the enemies, or they have better positioning, or they start using one-shot buff items like potions or scrolls.

[Thatwarforged]

Thanks. I'm just exploring all the territories before my group gets back together.

[The Insanity]

Depends what you do with it. As a rule of thumb, gestalting would be like +1 CR/+1-2 ECL.

[Rowan Wolf]

What is the group size it kind of matters. Though action economy will remain in the same range as a normal game just more options as has been stated above.

[Thatwarforged]

My group size is up in the air right now but it most likely be between 3 and 7. ATM I belive it will most likely be 4 on average. I think I would only use these rules if it was 3.

[deuxhero]

Another for the depends. While Pathfinder has nothing like Factotum's extra actions to worry about, you can get very SAD if you know what you are doing: Empyreal Sorcerer//Zen Archer Monk and Lunar Oracle//Paladin with Noble Scion: War feat are two straightforward ones that get wisdom or charisma to lots of stuff (and you can do much worse if you reserve one side for lots of dipping)

[Thatwarforged]

I don't really have to worry about crazy optimization, the players don't completely suck but they don't really have that good of system mastery. The most op character was a accidental batman caster. To put the party pretty much chooses what sounds neat instead of practical so I have to tend to over feat choices and skills to make sure they have some capabilities that work cool. Like the 13 wisdom rogue wanted to multiclass into monk. I asked if he really wanted to do that then I explained the ramifications that it could occur and he still did it.

[black-jack]

I find that gestalting allows characters to have more flavor in their builds. You can pick an gimmick or two, and have it executed much better in gestalt than in normal games. For example, I built this goliath ranger/monk who went into drunken master/kensai who threw random objects, applying his unarmed strike damage to them (which included the magical bonuses from kensai), getting his two weapon fighting feats from ranger. While the build could have worked non-gestalt, it never would have worked as well as a more generic build, and it was able to keep up with more traditional builds.

[Fouredged Sword]

Gestalt allows "neat" builds to be much more functinal without the issues of trying to make a cool concept stand on it's own. One thing is that a gestalt game is likely to have every character involved in almost every scene. Rarely do you have a character that just sits out an encounter because they lack options to deal with said encounter.

Now, it DOES tend to extend the "day" before the party starts running out of resources for the day. They have two pools of options to pull from. When the barbarian runs out of rage, well, good thing he gestalted with rogue so he can still be useful if he fights smart. This is easily solved by ether not caring or adding an extra encounter per day to push them a little harder.

[Mithril Leaf]

I'd generally consider really good gestalting to make you around 4 CR higher, while average gestalting I'd probably say a CR +2.

[aleucard]

At absolute bare minimum, it's going to be equal to the strongest half of the Gestalt, though that's difficult to the point of near-impossibility without deliberately choosing to do such, and even then the other side's bringing SOMETHING to the table most likely. As a good rule of thumb, expect whatever combo it is to bump that character up at least 1-2 tiers on JaronK's Tier List. If it involves something Tier 1-2 and it actually brings something to the table, though, expect a +1-2 LA at minimum. You should probably not allow gestalting of T1 classes, simply because that's very liable to get too much power AND complication for one person unless if they have been playing this game for YEARS and know how to play to their party's level.

[Vhaidara]

I honestly recommend Gestalt. Then tell them to build someone from a game or a movie. That's pretty much the only way to be loyal is with gestalt. For example
Batman: In Paizo only, Slayer//Investigator (I prefer to use DSP content and build him as Stalker (swapped to Int)//Investigator)

My other recommendation, especially at your optimization level, is to be a bit freer with swapping the stat that a class runs off of. Let people use Int for a Monk without taxing a feat, if it makes sense for the character.

That, or give a very generous point buy. Gestalt can be fun, but it is also very easy to stretch yourself way too thin and come up useless.

[Cavir]

I find that gestalting allows characters to have more flavor in their builds. You can pick an gimmick or two, and have it executed much better in gestalt than in normal games. For example, I built this goliath ranger/monk who went into drunken master/kensai who threw random objects, applying his unarmed strike damage to them (which included the magical bonuses from kensai), getting his two weapon fighting feats from ranger. While the build could have worked non-gestalt, it never would have worked as well as a more generic build, and it was able to keep up with more traditional builds.
Another possibility to consider... In the games run by Ghostfoot on here he does 1st level only as gestalt. It gives a little extra flavor without going overboard. It also helps a bit with PrC requirements. This also addresses issues about tiers/LA and getting overly complicated.

[Snowbluff]

Synthesist + Vivisectionist.

Druid + Summoner.

Cleric + Vivisectionist.

Actually, just about anything with alchemist or synthesist will cream everything.

[Raimun]

I wouldn't say "doubles it".

Sure, a Fighter//Wizard is more powerful than either a Fighter or a Wizard.

But Fighter//Wizard is not the equal of a Fighter and a Wizard. That is mainly because two characters have more hit points, have more actions and exist in different points in space. Also, Fighter//Wizard needs to divide his Skill points and Feats between two different needs, ie. magic and martial might. You might also need to compromise with ability scores.

Of course, that's just the basic assumption. If you take out all the stops, gestalt character's power can well exceed double the power of a regular character. Just off the top of my head, a Cleric//Wizard could cast any spell worth knowing and Artificier//Wizard could... do pretty insane stuff.

So no. I wouldn't say "doubles it".

[aleucard]

I wouldn't say "doubles it".

Sure, a Fighter//Wizard is more powerful than either a Fighter or a Wizard.

But Fighter//Wizard is not the equal of a Fighter and a Wizard. That is mainly because two characters have more hit points, have more actions and exist in different points in space. Also, Fighter//Wizard needs to divide his Skill points and Feats between two different needs, ie. magic and martial might. You might also need to compromise with ability scores.

Of course, that's just the basic assumption. If you take out all the stops, gestalt character's power can well exceed double the power of a regular character. Just off the top of my head, a Cleric//Wizard could cast any spell worth knowing and Artificier//Wizard could... do pretty insane stuff.

So no. I wouldn't say "doubles it".

Which is why I say that the range of the improvements can range anywhere from nonexistent to near-PunPun depending on what you do with it. A Wizard//Sorcerer should be damn near impossible to deal with, and a Cloistered Cleric//Warblade or Swordsage is going to be Holy Warrior Incarnate in a way that few things can even get in the right ballpark. Fighter//Samurai, on the other hand, is going to be having a bad time more often than not. The idea with gestalt is to get two level-only builds that complement each other well without stepping on each others' toes too badly, like the Fighter//Samurai example above. Everything else is personal preference, though the suggestion of designing it so that one half is active while the other is passive is good housekeeping if you're not good at keeping track of a small book's worth of abilities. If both are capable of both, though, the game changes a bit. See what I mean when I say this [excement]'s complicated?

[Rubik]

A cleric//wizard isn't actually that much better than an early entry wizard 1/cleric 3/mystic theurge. A bit, sure, because otherwise you'd be three levels behind in wizard and one in cleric, but not that much more.

A wizard (or archivist)//factotum or (gods forbid) a wizard (or archivist)//psion, however, is considerably more powerful than any of the base classes on their own, due mainly to action economy advantage and extreme SAD (along with the Ultimate Cosmic Powers that magic brings). Psions especially are crazy for gestalt, since it's so very easy to wreck the action economy with little effort, and the biggest problem with gestalt builds as compared to standard builds is the fact that you still only have one set of actions to use all your abilities in.

[JohnDaBarr]

How powerful would something like a Fighter/Rogue gestalt be on the Tier system scale?

I was wondering how ''balanced'' would be to allow for Tier 3 and below classes the gestalt (with other Tier 3, 4 and 5 classes) option in heavily powerful/optimized games.

[Vhaidara]

Fighter//Rogue isn't bad. You get a lot of feats to support a TWF character, and full Sneak Attack, while your skill points are also good. However, you will need a lot of good ability scores. Str for damage, Dex for TWF, Con because you're melee, Int for more skill points (3.5 has way too many skills for the number of points they give). And you can't dump Wis because neither of your classes has a good Will Save.

Now Warblade//Factotum is good.

[johnbragg]

How powerful would something like a Fighter/Rogue gestalt be on the Tier system scale?

I was wondering how ''balanced'' would be to allow for Tier 3 and below classes the gestalt (with other Tier 3, 4 and 5 classes) option in heavily powerful/optimized games.

Probably Tier 3. Fighter with Sneak Attack is always going to be relevant in combat, and Rogue and skills mean you're always relevant out of combat. So you should always have something interesting to do. You're MAD, but arguably no more than the Rogue was to start with.

Tier 1s can still bigfoot you, using spells to do anything you're supposed to do at least as well or better, but that's Tier 1.

[Snowbluff]

How powerful would something like a Fighter/Rogue gestalt be on the Tier system scale?

I was wondering how ''balanced'' would be to allow for Tier 3 and below classes the gestalt (with other Tier 3, 4 and 5 classes) option in heavily powerful/optimized games.

Well, it's complicated. Both are T4 for the combat ability. Adding them together makes them no stronger in terms of greatly expanding their abilities, so it's still T4. However, their numbers would go up significantly, so it wouldn't be balanced on those terms.

It's like how the Vivisectionist and Synthesist are both T2, and stay T2 when you combine them, but they are so much stronger in terms of damage and other numbers.

[Thatwarforged]

Wow thank you everyone for answering. If it helps I'm trying to make it T3. I'm converting and rebuilding several core classes to be Intiatiors (Fighter, Monk and Ranger mainly, might do paladin), I'm not sure what I should do about Rogue, thinking of just giving it Intiating or mid level spell casting (Sphere casting technically). The other thing I'm doing is using Spheres of Power for the casters in the game and just leaving out core casters besides bard (Sphere bard archetype).

[Naez]

I think the most powerful thing I've seen beyond the norm is a War Hulk build with Full BAB.

[Vhaidara]

Oh, you're gestalting with PoW and Spheres? I'm actually running a gestalt Spheres/DSP game.

It generally works out very well. Spheres classes and PoW balance each other very effectively

[Thatwarforged]

Oh, you're gestalting with PoW and Spheres? I'm actually running a gestalt Spheres/DSP game.

It generally works out very well. Spheres classes and PoW balance each other very effectively

Good to know, I am wanting to give player options and not have as many trap options while also making everyone equal in power level. Actually bought SOP last night after reading several of the stuff you and Ssalarn were saying in another thread. It is really awesome glad I bought it.