Just a funny idea for gestalt E6

[Pleh]

Nothing but a raw concept that just occurred to me. Wanted to see if it sparked any discussion or interest.

Imagine playing E6 as written, except when you reach level 7, you start gestalting the levels you already have?

For example, say you had a Rogue 3/Wizard 3 and gained a level. At level 7, you take that first level in Rogue and retroactively gestalt that level. Now you are Fighter/Rogue 1//Rogue 2//Wizard 3.

You retro-gestalt each successive level until you reach 12 and have 6 full gestalt levels.

Best question I can think of is, "why not just gestalt from the start?"

Best answer I've got is, "spread out power progression so leveling is still fun."

Just raw thoughts. Do you have any?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Seems like a decent way to keep improving, yeah. Another way to do it might be to alternate new levels and gestalt levels-- something like Rogue 1 -> Rogue 1//Wizard 1 -> Rogue 2//Wizard 1, and so on.

[Mendicant]

This is basically what I'm doing for my next campaign. You can buy a feat for 5,000 xp flat, or spend the cost to level normally and gestalt a level retroactively.

[ExLibrisMortis]

E6 is well-suited to this kind of mechanic, though you can do it in regular play (insofar it's still regular if you do). I've played around with a 'grid gestalt' before, where you can choose to level in 'depth' or 'breadth' for each individual level. It becomes really important how you define ECL for XP purposes, but otherwise, it's pretty straightforward. I usually set the limit that the build had to be a legal (partial) gestalt at each stage (so you can't be Incantatrix 1//wizard 6), you can't leave gaps or skip levels (can't be [nothing] 5/Incantatrix 1//wizard 6), and you can't have more levels horizontally (gestalted) than vertically (in sequence)(so you can't be a fighter 2//wizard 1//cleric 1, but a fighter 3//wizard 1/cleric 1 would be fine).

Note: gestalt suffers a mild case of dip-crazyness, because you don't have to break your main progression to get said dips. This gets worse in tristalt. In grid gestalt, with 100+ levels on the grid, it becomes stupid. I really don't recommend it. E6 is nice and contained, and should work much better.