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F.L.
2007-04-28, 11:31 PM
Would you think that a Gestalt of 2 NPC classes would be as powerful as a single PC class character?

How about a Gestalt of 3?

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-04-28, 11:34 PM
Certainly not. Though an aristocrat//magewright would almost approach reasonable.

If you're levelling commoners for a game, don't bother. Make their levels a little higher than normal and call it a day. They're just cannon fodder for the most bloodthirsty PC anyway.

Hario
2007-04-28, 11:36 PM
The only one that would halfway be decent is warrior and adept, and they both are worse than PC classes, so maybe up to lvl 10, but after that its horribly bad, the Warrior is a Fighter w/ no feats and the adept is not anywhere as adept as a cleric, so maybe they could be worth .75pct of a character class, even with Full BAB and saves they aren't anywhere as good as character classes, and even using Expert won't help much.

Scribbler
2007-04-28, 11:36 PM
The main thing about gestalt is two classes worth of features. Most NPC classes don't really have any of those. A gestalt commoner would get everything overridden (except his skill list), and might as well just be a member of the other class.

Turcano
2007-04-29, 12:06 AM
Would you think that a Gestalt of 2 NPC classes would be as powerful as a single PC class character?

How about a Gestalt of 3?

Good Lord, no. I mean, you could have a gestalt of all the DMG NPCs, and do you know what you would get? A bard. (Okay, I'm exaggerating, but not by much.)

The_Snark
2007-04-29, 12:30 AM
Good Lord, no. I mean, you could have a gestalt of all the DMG NPCs, and do you know what you would get? A bard. (Okay, I'm exaggerating, but not by much.)

It's worse than that. You'd have a bard with better BAB, but worse spells and no bardic music. Oh, and armor proficiencies... but without any ability to cast in armor.

There's no point to gestalting NPC classes, and it doesn't make sense anyway. Gestalt characters are supposed to be more powerful. NPC classes are for characters without much training.

Turcano
2007-04-29, 12:53 AM
It's worse than that. You'd have a bard with better BAB, but worse spells and no bardic music. Oh, and armor proficiencies... but without any ability to cast in armor.

It's a bit more complicated than that. Here's a side-by-side comparison:

{table=head]|Bard|NPC Super-gestalt

HD|d6|d8
BAB|Cleric|Fighter
Saves|Ref, Will|Fort, Will
Skill Points|6|6
Class Skills|Extensive|Practically all
Spellcasting|Arcane, Cha-based spontaneous, spells known|Divine, Wis-based prepatory, full list
Special Abilities|Bardic music, bardic knowledge|Summon familiar
Weapons|Simple, some martial|Simple, all martial
Armor|Light, shields|Heavy, shields[/table]

Remember, the adept casts divine spells, not arcane spells.

I_Got_This_Name
2007-04-29, 12:54 AM
but without any ability to cast in armor.
Adepts, as divine casters, get that automatically.

The_Snark
2007-04-29, 01:09 AM
Ah, right. They sort of blend spells from both lists, so I thought I remembered them casting as arcane spellcasters. The gestalt is better in combat, but bardic music is actually pretty potent, and the bard gets lots more spells per day (spell list is probably a bit better, too).

So I guess the warrior/adept/expert can almost hold its own with the weaker base classes.

F.L.
2007-04-29, 08:29 AM
Then I guess to get something reasonable, I'd have to replace the > operator in Gestalt with the + operator...

Dhavaer
2007-04-29, 08:31 AM
The sad thing is that the super-gestalt is actually comparable to the RAW Hexblade. So sad...