How does BAB work with Gestalt?

[SangoProduction]

Very simple question, yes? You just take the side with the best attack bonus at the level, right?

Well, what about Fighter 1/Wizard19 // Sorcerer 20
Now, every level either the Wizard, or the Sorcerer seem to have a "Increase attack bonus by 1", giving a 20/20 BAB....this seems odd

So, if that's not how it's supposed to work, how does it? Are you supposed to total up the entire side, for a stat, and then compare it to the total for the other side?

Or what?

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I suppose the same question goes out to saves. Do you still get the +2 bonus to good saves for dipping a class (since at almost no level does any non-dip class gain +2, over their normal bonus).

Or are these bonuses ignored, if the total of that classes's save bonus (for Fort, Ref, or Will( is not greater than the other side's. Thus, you'd only ever gain the +2 bonus for the first time you gain a level in a class with a good save there, outside of ....

This hurts my brain. Gestalt doesn't gel well with multiclassing.

[Necroticplague]

Very simple question, yes? You just take the side with the best attack bonus at the level, right?

Well, what about Fighter 1/Wizard19 // Sorcerer 20
Now, every level either the Wizard, or the Sorcerer seem to have a "Increase attack bonus by 1", giving a 20/20 BAB....this seems odd

So, if that's not how it's supposed to work, how does it? Are you supposed to total up the entire side, for a stat, and then compare it to the total for the other side?

No, you simply take the better progression at each level individually, there is no 'sides', despite how frequently that construct is used.
In that case, 'the better progression at each level' would be 1 level of full BaB at level 1, then 19 levels of .5 BaB.



I suppose the same question goes out to saves. Do you still get the +2 bonus to good saves for dipping a class (since at almost no level does any non-dip class gain +2, over their normal bonus).

Or are these bonuses ignored, if the total of that classes's save bonus (for Fort, Ref, or Will( is not greater than the other side's. Thus, you'd only ever gain the +2 bonus for the first time you gain a level in a class with a good save there, outside of .... No, there is no limit on getting the +2 for the first level in a class with a good save multiple times. Again, you simply take the best progression at each level. And the first level in a class is a +2, so you'd get that progression at that level (+2.5 if using fractional).




This hurts my brain. Gestalt doesn't gel well with multiclassing.

Doesn't gel well? At it's most basic, it is just multiclassing every level. You just need to take it level-by level, instead of trying to jump straight from the end result of a build.

[SangoProduction]

So, what if you don't use fractional BAB?

[Zombulian]

So, what if you don't use fractional BAB?

I don’t see how this question is different than the first.

[SangoProduction]

I don’t see how this question is different than the first.

It was answered as "You gain 0.5 BAB each level," when 0.5 BAB is only a thing in fractional BAB. 1 level of rogue, sorcerer, and wizard still only have 0 BAB, in standard rules.

[Rebel7284]

So, what if you don't use fractional BAB?

For gestalt to make sense, you SHOULD use fractional BAB, otherwise, yes, you end up with 20BAB on your sorcerer/wizard by staggering the levels correctly.

[Necroticplague]

So, what if you don't use fractional BAB?

Then it's 'one level of poor BaB progression', and it's no different from a non-gestalt character who goes fighter1/wizard19. Because either way, you have one level worth of good BaB progression, and 19 of bad. The .5 was merely to express this concept.

[SangoProduction]

For gestalt to make sense, you SHOULD use fractional BAB, otherwise, yes, you end up with 20BAB on your sorcerer/wizard by staggering the levels correctly.

Cool. Thanks for the help.
EDIT: That sounded sarcastic to me, for some reason. It's not sarcastic, thanks.

[RedWarlock]

I actually had a character where I used incremental increases in a spreadsheet, and since we were doing an insane high-end gestalt, I think I wound up accidentally doing max-possible BAB/saves, though it's been like 8-9 years since. (it was also involving monk and lurk levels, so it was just FUBAR all around)

Gestalt is best considered, even when incorporating multiclassing, purely on the raw total contribution of each class. You don't evaluate each level's contribution, because that way lies mismatched fractions that give too-high bonuses. You can only evaluate the sum of each class's contribution to the total, as of the last level taken of that class. Fighter 1/wizard19//sorcerer 20 is still only going to net a +10 total, because you take the higher-of-two.

(Let's say, in a formula, that comparison uses a ⥣, which kinda looks like the programming || OR, but it's also an up arrow. :smallbiggrin: My homebrew system uses a lot of better-of-two or worse-of-two comparisons, so I picked those symbols (⥣ and ⥥) for more convenient formula writing. If anybody knows a proper symbol from mathematics, please let me know.)

Now, the first half is +1 (fighter) and +9 (wizard), which sums to +10, while the second half is +10 (sorcerer). Thus the formula becomes (1+9)⥣10, which still evaluates as 10.