un-gestalting a gestalt character?

[Guizonde]

hello all, it's time to delve back to the cursed well of my bad luck ridden character.

the choices below are all due to fluff reasons, and nothing truly optimized in the theoretical way, so i'm looking for rules help before anything else.

the character started off as a level 5 halfling paladin in 3.5 greyhawk, got necropolitanized against her will, turned into a gestalt barbarian 3// sorceror 3 (aberation lineage) (3.5 build) and chucked into pathfinder.

a friend of mine wants to create a golarion campaign set in the osirian desert, and i'm kind of wanting to join using this character that was tailor-made to be self-reliant, as reflected by her skills in tracking, survival, stealth, climbing, acrobatics... here are my questions:

would it be broken to keep her build and stats from 3.5 over to pf? i know halflings got a massive racial power boost in pf, but here i'm talking about broken as both a bad and good thing.

is it possible to ungestalt a gestalt or is it simply easier to start from scratch and redo her build as a multiclassed barb/sorc?

she's a necropolitan, so how will that work in regards to survivability? as a gestalt she had a negative energy touch spell to heal herself and a wand, but unless she gets rerolled as ecl6, i won't have that option until later. after that, well, she's pretty much immune to everything (sleep, crits, pain, illness, dismemberment...).

speaking of which, are there any changes to necropolitans in pf if it exists at all? it's kind of a big deal fluff-wise, so i hope so, failing that, are there other undead templates available? aside from the really evil things, i didn't find much.

as an undead, do i have a chance of coming back to unlife or once i hit 0 hp i'm dust and gone? will resurrection work to get me back to life after that? in dnd i knew that once i was at 0 i could rip up my sheet and forget about the character for good. if i got nailed by a res, i'd just lose the undead template (and suffer a massive debuff).

what should i watch out for to not be hunted on sight? she's got ranks in disguise to hide her true nature, but are animals sensitive to undeath? children? she won't ping to detect evil, being true neutral, but she'll ping to detect undead. any low-level ways of getting around it?

finally, are there any classes, acf's, or feats that fit in with the concept of two souls in one body? why she became gestalt was because her wild-elf barbarian teammate got his body destroyed at the same time she died, allowing her to be a halfling that fights like a wild elf (read: take levels in barbarian). this soul-melding idea is a very rich seam for both a player and a dm, and my friend was sold to this detail, explaining a few necropolitan abilities thanks to the wild elf's soul guarding over her.

as it is, i was thinking of building her up as barb2-sorc 2-barb1-sorc1, and either going into a prestige class that benefited both (iirc there's a pf prc that allows barbarian and sorceror progression) or multiclassing into something that synergizes with her abilities and multiplies a future group's efficiency.

any suggestions are welcome, and i'll gladly add any details i omitted.

[Crake]

I would say the best way to handle it would be to rebuild the character using whatever character creation rules your DM is using for his current game. Necropolitan does not exist in pathfinder, but there are some racial options which have an undead theme to them, have a look at the dhampir, or ask your GM if you can build a custom race using the race points system to create some kind of amalgamation of halfling and undead.

The undead type on it's own is worth 16 race points, while a "standard" race is usually 8-10 race points, so you'd have to take some downsides to fit it in, or you can go with the half undead type for an undead feel, but without all the undead goodies.

[Guizonde]

I would say the best way to handle it would be to rebuild the character using whatever character creation rules your DM is using for his current game. Necropolitan does not exist in pathfinder, but there are some racial options which have an undead theme to them, have a look at the dhampir, or ask your GM if you can build a custom race using the race points system to create some kind of amalgamation of halfling and undead.

The undead type on it's own is worth 16 race points, while a "standard" race is usually 8-10 race points, so you'd have to take some downsides to fit it in, or you can go with the half undead type for an undead feel, but without all the undead goodies.

when creating a necropolitan in dnd, you lost a level because you died, and all the disadvantages made it avoid a level adjustment, since you were both a level behind and pretty much hunted on sight. do you think a level adjustment may be in order? it's not the undead feel i'm trying to emulate, it's the challenge of playing an undead doing good against all odds (and avoiding angry mobs and burning at the stake. funny, but necropolitans aren't immune to fire or witch hunts).

that's also the reasoning behind being a very well rounded survivalist, mobs of the torch and pitchforks variety can seriously hamper your day of following the plotline.

i'm sure that my dm would gladly allow to houserule in the necropolitan template, but i don't want to overshadow the group in terms of raw power. since pf is pretty retro-compatible with 3.5, are there any pitfalls to avoid doing this?

all of the undead things i found in pf were either atrociously evil (lich, wight, ghoul...) or not what i'm looking for (vampires, specters). most had crazy abilities that could be exploitable, but had at least a +2 level adjustment. so i'd be stuck with 12hp until level 3, basically.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

You might want to take a look at the Bloodrager, the barbarian/sorcerer hybrid. You could take the Undead bloodline to simulate the necropolitan stuff.

[Guizonde]

You might want to take a look at the Bloodrager, the barbarian/sorcerer hybrid. You could take the Undead bloodline to simulate the necropolitan stuff.

that's the prc i half-remembered! i'll look into it in more detail on how i can get into it, you can cast while raging is the gist of it right?

alright, i guess it used to be a dnd prestige class turned a hybrid class. looking at the spells per day, the bloodrager doesn't get any cantrips at all? it only says spell levels 1 through 4. it seems weaker than a multiclassed barbarian/ sorceror, though.

i'm trying to avoid the undead bloodline (mostly due to fluff reasons, but also because being a necropolitan made it redundant), but it's on the table if i can't convert the template to pf or find a similar one.

the aberration bloodline made more sense stylistically as well as in combat: the character gains unlife unwillingly, gets a second soul grafted in her body, and on top of that gets blasted from greyhawk to golarion. that's a pretty big aberration of all things fluff. the fact that at later levels an aberration can attack at a distance by extending her limbs made for a sweet combo in close combat. add to that black tentacles and you've got a creepy little character.

i started looking at creature types on the d20pfsrd, but i don't understand the concept of racial hit dice. would this mean if i chose the undead creature type i'd simply be an undead halfling no questions asked?

[The Glyphstone]

You wouldn't choose your creature type, or change it unless it was given to you by a race or template. This is the same as 3.5, as will be many things in PF - the options you pick are the same, but aside from how skill points are allocated and how Combat Maneuvers are calculated, Pathfinder works like 3.5. One big balance factor that is different for you, though, is that all PF Undead automatically use Charisma to calculate Hit Points instead of their missing Constitution - in 3.5 this ability was exclusive to a small number of high-level undead like the Dry Lich. So keep that in mind if you try to convince you DM to make a Necropolitan PF template. Personally, I'd just use the rules for a Dhampir as your Necropolitan replacement. Fluffwise the character is still a halfling, mechanically Dhampir with its Negative Energy Affinity trait is the closest thing the rules have without custom homebrew to a playable undead race.

A Halfling is a Humanoid, so it advances solely through class levels. You only have Racial Hit Dice for monstrous creatures, who then put class levels on top of that.

[Guizonde]

You wouldn't choose your creature type, or change it unless it was given to you by a race or template. This is the same as 3.5, as will be many things in PF - the options you pick are the same, but aside from how skill points are allocated and how Combat Maneuvers are calculated, Pathfinder works like 3.5. One big balance factor that is different for you, though, is that all PF Undead automatically use Charisma to calculate Hit Points instead of their missing Constitution - in 3.5 this ability was exclusive to a small number of high-level undead like the Dry Lich. So keep that in mind if you try to convince you DM to make a Necropolitan PF template. Personally, I'd just use the rules for a Dhampir as your Necropolitan replacement. Fluffwise the character is still a halfling, mechanically Dhampir with its Negative Energy Affinity trait is the closest thing the rules have without custom homebrew to a playable undead race.

A Halfling is a Humanoid, so it advances solely through class levels. You only have Racial Hit Dice for monstrous creatures, who then put class levels on top of that.

thank you for the clear explanations. i'm looking at the dhampir page, and a lot of things do make a lot of sense. it really does feel like it was created to be an ersatz playable undead. it seems there's a lot more conversion work for this character than i had anticipated, this character was transformed with a repentant psycho dm essentially poring over heroes of horror to make "living" a character he killed off out of game. it seemed simple in 3.5, less so in pf.

couple questions regarding the dhampir, do they count as undead concerning rebuking or controlling and are they destroyed when they hit 0hp or are they considered living for that part? since they have a constitution score, do they use that for hp calculation? some things in the alternate racial features make me suspect both opposite ideas.

[The Glyphstone]

They still have the Humanoid type, not the Undead type, so they would use Constitution for HP, die at -Con, and wouldn't be affected by Rebuke or Control Undead (though they would be healed by a negative Channel Energy and hurt by a positive one, because of Negative Energy Affinity).