Villain Balancing [Pathfinder]

[JGoldenberg]

Hello everyone, I'm running a Pathfinder game at Phantasm '10, a convention at my city this September. And I've decided to run an adventure where the players are level 8. So I need to work out some balance issues on my villains.

Meet Rocian: The Dragon of Rayluun and The Clutch:

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So my main villain isn't mopped by the players I've decided I want to run him as a Gestalt Character, at first I was thinking Level 10 Fighter/Sorcerer with a feat that allows him to ignore Arcane Spell Failure. But I was thinking fighting a villain who could cast up to level 5 spells and hold his own in melee might not be the best to throw at my players, even if I leave him on his own without his minions.

Does anyone have a system for calculating CR of Gestalt Villains? Should I make it so he has 5 levels of straight fighter and then gestalt with Sorcerer the other 5?

The Clutch are going to be Gestalt characters as well, all Spellcasting characters with Rogue, Bard, Barbarian, etc. But they'll be level 5s and likely I won't pit more than 2 or 3 of them at any time against the party so I don't think they're much of a problem.

So yeah, suggestions would be awesome, or a good guide on how to calculate CR for Gestalt characters in a mostly non-gestalt world.

[Jorda75]

I don't think you have to make his gestalt in order for him to be a powerful gish character. Since you can set his level to be whatever you want I would search the boards and google for some gish builds and then run some mock battles with yourself to test what he can/can't take.

[JGoldenberg]

I don't think you have to make his gestalt in order for him to be a powerful gish character. Since you can set his level to be whatever you want I would search the boards and google for some gish builds and then run some mock battles with yourself to test what he can/can't take.

Well I'm trying to keep it simple because this is a con game and some of my players could be new to the game so I'm sticking to Core Pathfinder books and a little bit of homebrew. Plus, I own...3 splatbooks.

[Jorda75]

I see, I think gestalt however just makes things that much more complicated. Unless you're running an all gestalt game a single figure with gestalt rules throws the whole system out of balance. Besides the players don't need to know what levels and classes the BBEG has

[JGoldenberg]

I see, I think gestalt however just makes things that much more complicated. Unless you're running an all gestalt game a single figure with gestalt rules throws the whole system out of balance. Besides the players don't need to know what levels and classes the BBEG has

True but these Builds all use over 9000 splatbooks complete with spells and feats from it. I'm wondering if I should treat him as CR + 1/2 CR for the extra levels and try running him as a level 8 Fighter/Sorcerer?