Monsters worth their CR… as a PC… in gestalt

[Quertus]

It's a well-known fact that Monsters' CR are often highly dubious. And that LA for monsters is horrifically bad.

But today, my focus is on using monster CR as their total level cost. And, for added fun, as their total level cost… as both sides of a gestalt.

What monsters are actually worth those lost levels in 2 classes? If you were given this scenario, what would you want to run? And, of course, is there anything so horrifically bad that it deserves a call out?

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Various creatures advance spellcasting faster than CR, and many more advance HD faster than CR. This can lead to shenanigans.

One example is the Steel Dragon (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20040328a). Some age categories to illustrate: Young (CR 4, sorcerer 5, 12 hit dice), Adult (CR 8, sorcerer 11, 21 hit dice), and Very Old (CR 13, sorcerer 17, 30 hit dice). Another nice feature of Steel Dragons is their arcane shield ability (+10 SR against lower level spells, 1-4 for Young+), which can be very useful at low levels.

[zlefin]

It'd depend on how good of a gestalt character I was making. If the classes you were gonna take don't complement each other that well in a gestalt, then the monster wouldn't be much of an issue at all; like if you have two beatstick classes which don't mesh notably well in a gestalt.

From my recollection of the LA rework project; monsters with a CR = HD tend to end up at recommend LA = 0. Most monsters have CR < HD, and while they aren't so good in the LA rework project, for here where you wouldn't pay levels for HD at all, but only for the CR, they'd seem potentially quite fine. Anything the project gave an LA of 0, but that has CR < HD, would thus probably be at least passable under the hypothetical rule here (as long as that projects playability rule wasn't also factored in - ie the rule where stuff with 0 int or such is handwaved to be playable somehow). Since gestalt is generally considered to be worth +2 LA about; any of the cr < hd things with 0 recommended LA would be getting to at least +1 worth, so math-wise that means they're close to and potentially equal. In fact, now that I think, they should be equal at least, since the CR'd monster doesn't have notable items; whereas a PC gets PC WBL, which is worth a +1 or +2 CR; so that should bring things up to equal, meaning near anything would work fine enough.

Monsters can be a great source of raw stats and raw BAB; sure they don't get the iteratives from it, but a high raw BAB is still pretty useful. Great for beatsticks again; an Ogre or Troll would probably work fine enough under such a system. It might be a bit weaker than say something that gestalted two ToB classes from the start, but it'd be fine enough. Many of the elementals would at any level.

Selecting a low CR monster is a good way to pick up some useful abilities, and especially if its CR 1-2 it wouldn't put you too far behind except for full-caster classes. Small elementals are nice, you could pick up some nice bonuses for a mere 1 level. Air elemental gives you perfect flight with 100' move for only one level, that's sweet.

Choker is only cr 2, and it nets you an extra standard or move action each round. That's totally worth 2 levels on both sides of a gestalt.

[Gnaeus]

Various creatures advance spellcasting faster than CR, and many more advance HD faster than CR. This can lead to shenanigans.

One example is the Steel Dragon (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20040328a). Some age categories to illustrate: Young (CR 4, sorcerer 5, 12 hit dice), Adult (CR 8, sorcerer 11, 21 hit dice), and Very Old (CR 13, sorcerer 17, 30 hit dice). Another nice feature of Steel Dragons is their arcane shield ability (+10 SR against lower level spells, 1-4 for Young+), which can be very useful at low levels.

That is a particularly good example, but I think dragons in general will perform very well. A very young red, for example, is CR5, 10 HD. Not as good as the steel by a fair margin, but 3 good saves, full bab, 60+int x10 skills, at will high speed flight, large size, better than at will fireball breath weapon, good base stats. Again, while significantly worse than yours, significantly better than most melee//skillmonkey or caster combos.

[Maat Mons]

Let me have a look.
Abiel Queen: CR 12, casts as a level-16 Druid, other cool things
Planatar Angel: CR 16, casts as level-17 Cleric, other cool things
Trumpet Archon: CR 14, casts as level-14 Cleric, other cool things
Psionic Mind Flayer: CR 8, manifests as a level-9 Telepath, other cool things
Nymph: CR 7, casts as a level-7 Druid, other cool things
Sylph: CR 5, casts as level-7 Sorcerer, other cool things
Advanced Sylph: CR 8, casts as level-13 Sorcerer, other cool things

Sylph is pretty tempting from a pure cheesiness perspective. But I think I'd go nymph, because it's pretty darn awesome without breaking game assumptions about when you gain access to spells.

[Crake]

I've always fancied a succubus/urpriest//binder into tenebrous apostate. The fluff of combining urpriest and tenebrous apostate just feels so perfect, and you can get decent spellcasting with urpriest to offset your 7 levels of succubus, so you end up with 9ths at 16, pretty good. The only real issue is how far behind your binding is honestly, it would almost be better to actually use standard succubus LA and have the succubus HD/LA on on side of the gestalt with binder/urpriest/tenebrous apostate on the other, though that's not entirely surprising, since succubus HD+LA =12, vs CR7 x2 = 14.

Still, with a succubus's innate high charisma, your binder abilities would be very strong, especially if you went with naberious for silver tongue, you could standard action diplomance so many encounters away with just that. Bonus points if you can somehow get urpriest casting to be tied to charisma, at least for DCs if not bonus spells. Also highly recommend supernatural transformation on either ethereal jaunt or greater teleport, if not both, for that sweet no concentration, no provoke escape.

If you want to go higher power than binder, you could instead go urpriest//bard with versatile spellcaster/heighten spell/sanctum spell to meet the 3rd level spellcasting requirements of sublime chord, and then chaos shuffle away those feat for more useful ones now that sublime chord self qualifies. Chaos shuffle also totally makes sense in character since you're literally a spawn of the abyss.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Dragonkin in the Draconomicon are CR 3, but they've got 7 HD of Monstrous Humanoid (d8 hp, full BAB, good Reflex and Will saves). They also get Str +8, Dex +2, Con +2, Wis +4, Cha +2, a +7 natural armor bonus, natural flight, two claw attacks, and two rake attacks on any full attack made while flying.

So I'd say trading three gestalt levels for all of that is totally worth it on any type of martial character. I'd probably run it as a Deadly Hunter (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druid) Druidic Avenger (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druidVariantDruidicAve nger) mixed with Fighter 6 for Dungeoncrasher or maybe 9 for Zhentarim Soldier, then Warblade. Definitely take Knock-Back in RoS to Dungeoncrash opponents against the ground when he's flying above them.


An Immoth in MM2 is CR 9, but has 10 HD of Elemental and Sorcerer 12 spellcasting. The biggest selling point is this ability they get:

Ice Runes (Sp): Any spell an immoth has prepared can be inscribed on an ice nugget. The creature can
trigger the spell contained in such an ice rune as a free action. An ice rune remains magical until triggered by
the immoth. Each immoth has at least 3d4+2 ice runes embedded on its body. Some wonder
whether this ability lends credence to the story about frozen words in the Mountain of Ultimate Winter.

So at the end of each day, and every day during downtime, spend all your remaining spell slots to cast spells you know as ice runes. There's no limit to how many of those you can have at any time. You can activate any of those as a free action, meaning any number of them per turn. Yes, it's that absurd.

[Voldine]

It's a well-known fact that Monsters' CR are often highly dubious. And that LA for monsters is horrifically bad.

But today, my focus is on using monster CR as their total level cost. And, for added fun, as their total level cost… as both sides of a gestalt.

What monsters are actually worth those lost levels in 2 classes? If you were given this scenario, what would you want to run? And, of course, is there anything so horrifically bad that it deserves a call out?

I don't know about being fully worth it on both sides of a gestalt, but looking at the Monster Mash contest I noticed one monster that is already almost a gestalt at their CR. The Lillend.

7HD Outsider, CR 7, 6 levels of Bard spellcasting and music abilities on top of a handful of useful SLA's and a natural weapon that can be used as part of a full attack with manufactured weapons, which can also grapple to constrict without interfering with using said manufactured weapon.

The fact that their HD equals their CR means that it wouldn't run into the problem in this scenario of hitting level 20 way before they actually hit level 20, because anything with HD over CR is going to run into that level 20 problem: your base attack and base saves STOP PROGRESSING at 20 HD if you're a PC and you start using the EPIC progression rules.

So, looking under the hood of this monster, Outsider HD gives monk saves (All good) and HD while giving fighter BAB and bard skill points...already a bit of a mix in there not quite getting the best of all three class comparisons. They also have really nice stat bonuses.

Coming right out the CR7 gestalt gate they immediately qualify for any prestige classes that require; less than a +7 BAB, large size, flight, use of bardic music, spontaneous arcane spellcasting of level 2 spells or less, arcane spellcasting in general, bard spellcasting specifically, natural weapons, a base save bonus of +5 or less...

[Remuko]

Dragonkin in the Draconomicon are CR 3, but they've got 7 HD of Monstrous Humanoid (d8 hp, full BAB, good Reflex and Will saves). They also get Str +8, Dex +2, Con +2, Wis +4, Cha +2, a +7 natural armor bonus, natural flight, two claw attacks, and two rake attacks on any full attack made while flying.

So I'd say trading three gestalt levels for all of that is totally worth it on any type of martial character. I'd probably run it as a Deadly Hunter (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druid) Druidic Avenger (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druidVariantDruidicAve nger) mixed with Fighter 6 for Dungeoncrasher or maybe 9 for Zhentarim Soldier, then Warblade. Definitely take Knock-Back in RoS to Dungeoncrash opponents against the ground when he's flying above them.


An Immoth in MM2 is CR 9, but has 10 HD of Elemental and Sorcerer 12 spellcasting. The biggest selling point is this ability they get:


Ice Runes (Sp): Any spell an immoth has prepared can be inscribed on an ice nugget. The creature can
trigger the spell contained in such an ice rune as a free action. An ice rune remains magical until triggered by
the immoth. Each immoth has at least 3d4+2 ice runes embedded on its body. Some wonder
whether this ability lends credence to the story about frozen words in the Mountain of Ultimate Winter.

So at the end of each day, and every day during downtime, spend all your remaining spell slots to cast spells you know as ice runes. There's no limit to how many of those you can have at any time. You can activate any of those as a free action, meaning any number of them per turn. Yes, it's that absurd.

wait any spells they have prepared? but they cast as a sorcerer. they dont prepare spells...

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

wait any spells they have prepared? but they cast as a sorcerer. they dont prepare spells...

It was 3.0, things were called differently back then.

[Kazyan]

A Multiheaded (SS) Runehound (MMIII). With the upper extreme of permitted heads, a Thirty-Headed Runehound would be CR 13, but it would also have 63 hit dice and 76 Constitution (or more, if you assign a better stat than 11 to its Con at character creation). Its Vile Spew would deal 63d6 acid damage (DC 44 reflex save for half), and since it's a spitting attack, the Multiheaded template allows each spit to be performed from each head independently. The synergy between the base monster, the template, and the "CR = Level" stipulation is disgusting.

[Quertus]

Various creatures advance spellcasting faster than CR, and many more advance HD faster than CR. This can lead to shenanigans.

One example is the Steel Dragon (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20040328a). Some age categories to illustrate: Young (CR 4, sorcerer 5, 12 hit dice), Adult (CR 8, sorcerer 11, 21 hit dice), and Very Old (CR 13, sorcerer 17, 30 hit dice). Another nice feature of Steel Dragons is their arcane shield ability (+10 SR against lower level spells, 1-4 for Young+), which can be very useful at low levels.

Huh. I hadn't expected to be stymied by the very first post. It's hard to see any advantage (outside the Dragon's growing waistline and stealth penalties) that a gestalt Fighter // Sorcerer would have over such a Dragon. Aside from access to ACF and prestige classes, I guess.

Still, I didn't know that there were creatures that would win on *two* fronts of a gestalt, *and* the player never needs to stop advancing the monster. The Steel Dragon… it's a pretty strong pick for "gestalt in a can".

Also,

The fact that their HD equals their CR means that it wouldn't run into the problem in this scenario of hitting level 20 way before they actually hit level 20, because anything with HD over CR is going to run into that level 20 problem: your base attack and base saves STOP PROGRESSING at 20 HD if you're a PC and you start using the EPIC progression rules.

Anybody know whether a) epic progression starts "at level 20" or "at 20 HD"; b) which takes priority: the table listing the BAB, or the epic rules; C) where this "T trumps T" idea came from?

[Remuko]

Also,


Anybody know whether a) epic progression starts "at level 20" or "at 20 HD"; b) which takes priority: the table listing the BAB, or the epic rules; C) where this "T trumps T" idea came from?

ELH says epic progression starts at 20 class levels. It says (iirc afb atm) that monsters do not ever start following epic progression until/unless they take a class, which then if theyre over 20 total levels between racial and class, they follow the epic progression, iirc. Which I think renders a lot of the statblocks of classes for True Dragons moot, as a dragon taking those classes would never get the BAB or saves listed in the class.

[Maat Mons]

Part of the prompt was "what would you want to run?" So I'd like to take my short answer of "nymph," and expand it with class levels and things.

I went with nymph because it was relatively restrained. It doesn't get casting above its ECL. And it doesn't get HD above its ECL. But now I'm tempted to throw that "restraint" nonsense out the window and go for some metamagic cost reduction. Spelldancer only has three levels that I'd regard as useful. That actually works out well, since I could go Nymph 7 / Spelldancer 3 / whatever PrC 10.

Can a nymph be 1/8th elf? There don't seem to be any rules for anyone being 1/8th elf. But I seem to remember a half-nymph template existing, so I guess nymphs can crossbreed.

For the 10 levels of casting after Spelldancer, Holt Warden seems reasonably appropriate for a nymph.

But I also kind of like the idea of Dancer of Sharess, to play up the dancing angle even more. So this would be less of a typical nymph who's all about hanging out in the woods, and more of an atypical nymph who's taken a liking to parting with humanoids. The down side is that Dancer of Sharess isn't particularly impressive in what it grants.

And I don't really want a pet cat. I'd be tempted to use Token Familiar so I don't have to worry so much about it. But that feat says the familiar retains its mind in token form but loses all its senses. That sounds kind of horrifying. Like if a creature in a pokeball could do nothing but wait in the darkness for its trainer to decide to make use of it. It would be much kinder for the creature's awareness to cease while it's unable to perceive or act.

And speaking of playing up the dancing theme, Battle Dancer also has dance in the name. It would give Cha to AC a second time. And the nymph could go out on the town without weapons or armor and still be ready to throw down if needed.

And another way to double-up on Cha synergy is Paladin of Freedom. Though that seems to detract from the "party girl" concept I might otherwise have going. But it would also allow the use of Caduceus Bracers fix the drawbacks from overuse of Spelldance.

Unfortunately, neither Battle Dancer nor Chaos Monk get Wholeness of Body, so no Caduceus bracers on that front. And regular, lawful Monk just doesn't seem appropriate even for a slightly atypical fey.

I'm also not sure how I feel about double Cha to saves. This probably sounds weird from the guy who wants metamagic cost reduction. But adding the same ability score to something twice always felt unintended to me. I feel a little better about combining Unearthly Grace and Battle Dancers AC bonus. Mostly because Unearthly grace is a Deflection bonus that doesn't combine with a Ring of Deflection, and Battle Dancer's AC bonus only works when unarmored. Combining a deflection bonus with an unarmored-only AC bonus doesn't feel weird to me.

Maybe, to avoid too much hypocrisy, I should scrap my Persist-omancy plans limit how much I use Spelldance.

So does that leave me with Nymph 7 / Spelldancer 3 / Dancer of Sharess 10 // Nymph 7 / Battle Dancer 13? It would be mostly sub-optimal classes, and maybe not making fully optimal use of Spelldancer, because Persist-o-mancy can get crazy. But it would be full Druid casting, and some okay numerical bonus and other extras.

This whole gestalt build would wind up being less powerful than a non-gestalt Druid, but I think there are a lot of decent gestalt builds that wind up less powerful than non-gestalt Druid.

On the feat front, my only ideas so far are Charming the Arrow and Token Familiar. Any ideas?

Or for that matter, better ideas on how to progress a nymph's Druid casting? (Without winding up trying to utilize Animal Companion and Wild Shape in spite of being 7 levels behind, preferably.)

Or suggestion on what to do with the other side of the gestalt?

[Voldine]

ELH says epic progression starts at 20 class levels. It says (iirc afb atm) that monsters do not ever start following epic progression until/unless they take a class, which then if theyre over 20 total levels between racial and class, they follow the epic progression, iirc. Which I think renders a lot of the statblocks of classes for True Dragons moot, as a dragon taking those classes would never get the BAB or saves listed in the class.

In other words, the moment anything with ridiculous HD but a low CR takes one class level it's epic if HD+CL>20.

[Crake]

In other words, the moment anything with ridiculous HD but a low CR takes one class level it's epic if HD+CL>20.

Except, as noted in the OP, the CR is treated as the class levels for the monster, not the HD.

[Remuko]

Except, as noted in the OP, the CR is treated as the class levels for the monster, not the HD.

in this thread yes, but they were replying to me who was replying to Quertus who was asking about the general rule outside of this thread.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Huh. I hadn't expected to be stymied by the very first post. It's hard to see any advantage (outside the Dragon's growing waistline and stealth penalties) that a gestalt Fighter // Sorcerer would have over such a Dragon. Aside from access to ACF and prestige classes, I guess.

Still, I didn't know that there were creatures that would win on *two* fronts of a gestalt, *and* the player never needs to stop advancing the monster. The Steel Dragon… it's a pretty strong pick for "gestalt in a can".The size issue reminded me: Another nice thing about Steel Dragons is their 5/day Polymorph SLA starting at Wyrmling (CR 2).

One partial fix is to blanket ban advancing features (such as spellcasting) faster than you could normally with class levels, and capping hit dice at CR. So for instance, you could still play a Young Steel Dragon, but it would cast as a sorcerer 4 and have only 4 dragon HD; then Fighter//Sorcerer/PrC's chassis+features compete with the Steel Dragon's native features and stats. I would also soft-ban templates and 3.0 material (including SS) even if it's converted; see Kayzan's multi-headed example for why. I think you'll still find examples of powerful creatures that out-compete basic gestalt (for instance, outsiders aren't as affected by this change, having fewer but higher-quality HD) but it won't be as silly.