Partial Gestalt

[Rahdjan]

My group started out as the following

Half Elven Cleric
Elven Rogue
Half Elven Ranger
Human Duskblade (me)
Dwarven Barbarian

well sence then, the Barbarian and the Ranger have pretty much dropped out of the group and we've written them out of the story. We did it in a way that if they came back, we could bring them back in, but I don't see it happening. My question is this, if we can't beef up our group with numbers, our other option is to Gestalt. Being that we're already close to level 3, it wouldn't be a full gestalt. So my question is, how do any of you deal with a partial gestalt? If it makes a difference, I plan to take wizard for my altnerate class so I can get Wraithstrike.

[Ramza00]

There is no such thing as a partial gestalt by the rules.

In reality the way to do it is just pretend the first 2 lvls was a Gestalt of the same classes twice. Since they have identical features which don't stack on gestalt its like they were one class.

Now treat the rest of the levels like gestalt.

Or you can just get your DM to allow you to gestalt the previous two levels, via RetroCon.

[Ted_Stryker]

Yeah, just convert fully to Gestalt, or the DM needs to tone down the encounters some.

[Quietus]

You still have three PC's, what's the problem? I've accomplished some of my most entertaining adventures solo, or with two. Three PC's is plenty.

::Edit:: It's worth noting, I've never played gestalt. Even solo.

[Ted_Stryker]

You still have three PC's, what's the problem? I've accomplished some of my most entertaining adventures solo, or with two. Three PC's is plenty.

As long as the DM adjusts combat encounters to reflect that there are only three PCs instead of five, this works. Or move to more non-combat encounters...

[MeklorIlavator]

It is true that you don't need for as long as the DM accounts for this. Or is just bad with tactics.

My Dm on saturday had a wizard teleport near my psion with crystal shard and had the wizard cast heartfreeze(i had 4 rounds to live.) So I manifest crystal shard and hit. 10d6 damage to a WIZARD. I took him down to 5hp while the golem grappled my buddy, a homebrew vampire. He then Polymorph any object me into a statue, and then the vampire manages to kill the wizard and the golem. In the end the golem turned out to be a CR 9, and the wizard was a CR 15. But, bad tactics means the other side wins easy.

[Quietus]

Uh - One of my DMs rarely bothers to scale encounters. It makes for a very dangerous game, but a LOT of entertaining fights. And we have a fair mix of combat/noncombat encounters.

A party of three instead of a party of four just means that you can't all act like knobs all the time, and that you need to work together. Or just get stupid-powerful... that happens a fair bit.

[MeklorIlavator]

Uh - One of my DMs rarely bothers to scale encounters. It makes for a very dangerous game, but a LOT of entertaining fights. And we have a fair mix of combat/noncombat encounters.

A party of three instead of a party of four just means that you can't all act like knobs all the time, and that you need to work together. Or just get stupid-powerful... that happens a fair bit.

Just for Informations sake, what are your classes? And our Dms aren't good/prepared, so going in with a 3 person party against good tactics would have been suicide with my group. I have literally had teammates have there characters go off to sleep mid battle, or our cleric didn't prepare spells.

[Quietus]

Nice.... yeah, I can see where that would be a problem. Let's see here...


We've got the one group of four, and we do incredibly well with them, so that doesn't really count.

There's Limion and Al'em, elven Cleric and elven Druid respectively. Druid's got a bear companion. Freshly level 5, going strong. A few close calls - the bear's Improved Grab has saved us more times than I would like to count.

I've had a couple solo shots with a Ranger (he got turned into a Meenlock from the MM2; I rolled WAYYYY too many 1's in a row in escaping from a place. Poor guy was the most unlucky character ever; Though he did seem to have the strange ability to, any time he was stripped to his skivvies and thrown in a pit, make his way out by sheer luck; I brought down a Grell at level 1, with my bare hands, completely naked. FE Abberations.), I've got a halfling Monk that focusses on throwing things, haven't played him in a while.

I've also got the combo I've mentioned in another thread, a blind human monk and half-elven ranger. Those two haven't been outside of the "immediate area of town" places, really, so they haven't seen much combat. They're hunting down a group known as the Ghoul Touched.

There's also several solo games that I've run for other people. A char with straight 10's for stats, who managed to do quite well for himself - still alive, he's on a quest to buy a ring for his girlfriend. There's his slaver character, who is exceptionally good at capturing people alive. And then there's his Troll, who singlehandedly manhandled a freaking wyvern like it was nothing. Admittedly, some things are toned down slightly; I don't send the same group against his all-ten fighter1/rogue1 as I would against a full team. But if he had two others with him, I wouldn't have any problems sending the same group against that collection of 3 as I would against a collection of 4.