Gestalt argument thread

[Kaelik]

Why do druids have a wisdom 4-7 higher than a wizard's int?

Because they can be Anthropomorphic Bats and they can ignore physical scores and they get a class feature to not take penalties from aging but still gain benefits.

[...You Lost Me]

Can't the wizard do that second one with polymorph?

[John Magnum]

Wizards don't get Natural Spell.

[DrPraetor]

EDIT: Shugenja spellcasting is Charisma-based, oops! Fixed.

Polymorph only lasts a minute per level; it doesn't allow you to leave all your physical attributes as junk stats, as (and here I agree with Kaelik, except I think the last ruling was that Wild Shape changes to Con didn't boost your HP, so only Str and Dex) wild shape lets you do.

Facepalm I totally forgot the anthropomorphic animals! The anthropomorphic bat has an interesting history. The people who wrote Savage Species wanted the system to be sensible; that is, monsters with a lot of base HD relative to their powers would have a lower Level Adj. since of course you're supposed to get a bunch of powers at high level. The powers-that-be at WOTC vetoed this. This is why anything with more than 1 HD in the entire book completely sucks (even the anthropomorphic animals who at least are Level Adj + 0 still blow since they have caster stats). So the authors of Savage Species put in Anthropomorphic Bats, Lizards, etc. as a big fuck you to their editors, for being 'tards in both senses.

Those are unbalanced for every Wis caster; nothing to do with Druids, as I have things laid out you could be an (EDIT)Fire-Souled(/EDIT) Shugenja/Samurai and that'd be broken. As would be any other way to boost your prime requisite above +2; there are probably a few more in there, templates (Fire-Souled only, as far as I can tell), I dunno.

So, we add an errata: none of your mental attributes can, for whatever reason, start higher than 20.

Kaelik... so... you're saying that you believe:
1 - that I'm forbidding the Natural Spell feat, because I forbid it in games I actually run, even though I explicitly denied this.
and
2 - that Wild Shape + Natural Spell enables Druids to treat all their physical attributes at junk stats, which is totally a good thing and must never be interfered with in any way?

Another errata: when you wild shape (but not other forms of shape changing), you apply your age modifiers to the new form. An Old Druid turns into an Old Wolf. Because duh.

[Kaelik]

Praetor.

Just die in a fire. Just go kill your stupid fucking self.

If you want to make a bunch of stupid gestalt houserules that you balance based on all your own stupid houserule assumptions why not just say that on the tin? Why not just say, this is my stupid shit for my stupid shit?

No one cares that you think you know the inner secrets of WotC politics. No one cares that you think everything Druid needs to be nerfed but nothing Wizard because Wizards are so much better than Druids.

You don't know how good Wildshape is because you ban it's (effective) use in your games, and then say you wouldn't give up one spell slot per level for it (Well, it and an AC, and a higher casting stat, but whatever).

You don't see that Anthro bats actually do have disadvantages for people who can't wildshape.

Whatever. I'm going to stop pointing out how stupid you are, and this pile of shit thread that represents your stupid stupid thoughts is going to sink to the graveyard where it belongs, because no one gives a shit about your pile of shit houserules that serve no purpose whatsoever, and it will drop off the main page in a week the second I stop posting to tell you how fucking dumb you are.

[Duke Flauros]

...(snip) So, we add an errata: none of your mental attributes can, for whatever reason, start higher than 20. (snip)...

...(snip) Another errata: when you wild shape (but not other forms of shape changing), you apply your age modifiers to the new form. An Old Druid turns into an Old Wolf. Because duh. (snip)...

And now we've gone full Oberoni.

You are still missing why gestalt combinations are more important than gestalt classes.

If anyone is still on the same page with all of that, we can go through the specifics on individual classes - which do need to be hashed out, I'm sure. For example, the Midnight feat that gives you more penetration (I'm bored at work so don't have access to my books at the moment) is really good for the Wizard//Soulborn gestalt, especially at higher levels when spell penetration is the only roll you care about; any spellcaster//Gestalt, really. But there are a lot of really good feats, so I really don't think that is such a hot trick.

Midnight metamagic makes metamagic spells cost less. A azurin soulborn on its own is only a fighter or tier 4-3 class (depending on ranking system)- but combined with a cleric, sorcerer, wizard, or archivist, it allows you to piss out a twinned repeat fell draining fell animate maximized energy admixture acid fog, at the cost of 19 essentia and a 6th- level slot. If you've taken arcane thesis, it costs only 13 essentia, allowing you to pull off this trick multiple times.

A archivist combined with a factotum is a ghastly sight, seeing as it can use cunning surge to gain many standard actions (with font of inspiration), can cast all divine spells and has access to the wiz/sorc spell list, and can ignore SR. Oh yeah, and it has access to iajutsu focus, autohypnosis, and UMD.

A wizard/dread necro, by your system would be a broken combination, and it isn't. Apart from gaining some tanking utility, most of the dread necro's abilities can be replicated by an uttercold assault wizard. These two classes features overlap, without much stacking; charnel touch/negative burst is inferior to uttercold metamagiced energy spells, rebuke undead can be gained by clerics who have better synergy with wizards, the DR you gain is inferior to stoneskin, fear aura has poor range, and most of the other bonuses can be replicated by necromancy/transmutation spells.

[Username17]

Midnight metamagic makes metamagic spells cost less. A azurin soulborn on its own is only a fighter or tier 4-3 class (depending on ranking system)- but combined with a cleric, sorcerer, wizard, or archivist, it allows you to piss out a twinned repeat fell draining fell animate maximized energy admixture acid fog, at the cost of 19 essentia and a 6th- level slot.

So?

Acid Fog makes you win because enemies can't leave and take damage every turn until they die. Twinning, Energy Admixturing, or whatever the fuck makes them take damage faster, but that doesn't matter. It still boils down to them either having a teleport effect and being able to leave, or not and being left for dead.

-Username17

[Koumei]

except I think the last ruling was that Wild Shape changes to Con didn't boost your HP, so only Str and Dex

Yes and no: it doesn't, but when you then cast Bear's Endurance on yourself, it figures your HP out based on your new Con of 34 or whatever, as opposed to just your base 10 + 4 for Bear's Endurance. And when that runs out, it seriously just removes the excess from 34 (or whatever) down to 30 (or whatever), removing 2 HP/level. So you actually do get the extra HP if you can somehow find the ability to cast a second level spell at that level, as long as you somehow have an obscure spell like Bear's Endurance on your list. I recommend meeting these criteria by being a Druid, preferably fifth level so you can Wild Shape at all.

So yeah, by the time you can Wild Shape in the first place, you can do all of this "trick", and you have 3rd level spells so you don't care too much that you're spending a 2nd level spell slot on a short duration boost to Con (and a long duration massive boost to HP).

Have you considered the fact that it's probably easier to just accept that Druids are better than you give them credit for than to slap house rules onto houserules just to try to make them worse than the game says they are so your bullshit arbitrary rating system can list them as worse in a combo than Wizards?

[DrPraetor]

but combined with a cleric, sorcerer, wizard, or archivist, it allows you to piss out a twinned repeat fell draining fell animate maximized energy admixture acid fog, at the cost of 19 essentia and a 6th- level slot.

Unless I'm misreading what you are proposing, that would require an essentia capacity of 19. In fact, since you get the essentia back after the spell is cast, none of the essentia feats can possibly cost more than 4 essentia, at levels 16-20. For a second feat you could make it 5 essentia; for two feats you could make it 6 essentia if you can also turn undead.
So that's pretty good but it costs a lot of feats; there are a lot of good ways to spend feats.

A wizard/dread necro, by your system would be a broken combination, and it isn't.

Again, that is not at all what I am saying! A wizard/dread necro wouldn't be a very good combination at all, but it would be two primary casters which is simply forbidden by the way I have set things up; not because it is broken, but because I don't want to allow that.

Even if Druids are +1, I'd still need to fix Kelpstrand (for the reason I mentioned) and forbid mental stats of 20+. So none of what I've done can be said to be intended to avoid making Druids +1. If you think Druids should be +1 anyway, I could make them +1, but certainly I'm not persuaded on the basis of their spells.

The Factotum is labeled as shoot me for a reason. Should I simply have left it off the table? This system wouldn't work with Factotums.

[...You Lost Me]

Yes and no: it doesn't, but when you then cast Bear's Endurance on yourself, it figures your HP out based on your new Con of 34 or whatever, as opposed to just your base 10 + 4 for Bear's Endurance. And when that runs out, it seriously just removes the excess from 34 (or whatever) down to 30 (or whatever), removing 2 HP/level. So you actually do get the extra HP if you can somehow find the ability to cast a second level spell at that level, as long as you somehow have an obscure spell like Bear's Endurance on your list. I recommend meeting these criteria by being a Druid, preferably fifth level so you can Wild Shape at all.

Wat.

[Whatever]

Yes and no: it doesn't, but when you then cast Bear's Endurance on yourself, it figures your HP out based on your new Con of 34 or whatever, as opposed to just your base 10 + 4 for Bear's Endurance. And when that runs out, it seriously just removes the excess from 34 (or whatever) down to 30 (or whatever), removing 2 HP/level. So you actually do get the extra HP if you can somehow find the ability to cast a second level spell at that level, as long as you somehow have an obscure spell like Bear's Endurance on your list. I recommend meeting these criteria by being a Druid, preferably fifth level so you can Wild Shape at all.

Wat.

I stopped paying any attention to how the nested polymorph rules worked after seeing this post some years back. Things have probably gotten even more fucked since then, but who even knows.

Whoever wrote the new polymorph rules is a goddamned idiot.

Granted.

What exactly does this nerf besides the druid's wildshape ability?

It certainly doesn't nerf the Druid's Wildshape ability. As per the rrata, druids are not dependent upon Polymorph at all. They are dependent upon Alternate Form. So the new rules don't affect them in any way.

It doesn't really affect polymorph either, since polymorph has its own rules text supercede the Polymorph Subschool whenever they are in conflict. So, because the polymorph spell, after errata, states that it functions like alter self, and after the errata alter self still states that you retain all qualities derived from class levels, you keep all your class features while polymorphed.

The new polymorph rules are more complex, but actually more powerfl than they've ever been before. The basic rules are now that you default to gaining all the powers of the creatur whenever the rules don't specify. Of course, since the printing of the polymorph subschool rules, noone has made a polymorph build, because it is no longer possible to tell the DM in a reasonable amount of time how it works and noone knows what it is supposed to do. Adjudicating polymorph now requires:

Checking the polymorph errata.
Checking the polymorph spell enry.
Checking the alter self errata.
Checking the alter self entry.
Checking the Polymorph Subschool rules.
Checking the Monster entry of the creature you are becomming.
Performing a find-and-replace on your character sheet with tall the stuff that is being added and replaced on your character.
Recalculating all your figured characteristics based on the interaction of the new number set you have.

With shapechange running, you can add two steps to that process and even do it as a free action in the middle of a full attack routine. Adjudicating polymorph is a nightmare that noone comprehends. The power available is intense, and the only thing that stops it is that even I can't explain exactly how it works without a chalkboard.

-Username17

[Duke Flauros]

Unless I'm misreading what you are proposing, that would require an essentia capacity of 19. In fact, since you get the essentia back after the spell is cast, none of the essentia feats can possibly cost more than 4 essentia, at levels 16-20. For a second feat you could make it 5 essentia; for two feats you could make it 6 essentia if you can also turn undead.
So that's pretty good but it costs a lot of feats; there are a lot of good ways to spend feats.

So?

Acid Fog makes you win because enemies can't leave and take damage every turn until they die. Twinning, Energy Admixturing, or whatever the fuck makes them take damage faster, but that doesn't matter. It still boils down to them either having a teleport effect and being able to leave, or not and being left for dead.

-Username17

Point taken. You can quicken it, in which case you can then use your standard action to dimension lock the area. It isn't any more cheesy than any other metamagic offset option, though- but it can combo with divine metamagic, as well as other metamagic reducers.

The Factotum is labeled as shoot me for a reason. Should I simply have left it off the table? This system wouldn't work with Factotums.

It might work to some degree if you took a "superior" and an "inferior" class, and then got +x worth of level adjustment to work with. In your system as written, a drow soulknife/aristocrat has the same level of power as a human cleric/fighter.

[John Magnum]

Why not just declare by fiat that every gestalt should be one full-caster and one non-caster? What do you gain by assigning a numerical ranking to each class, other than inspiring a bunch of idiotic attempts to linearly order the full casters?

[DrPraetor]

John_Magnum - it's not "inspiring" such an attempt, it is such an attempt.

It's an attempt to do so while using as much Canon material as possible and keeping the number of house rules to a minimum. Note that to a minimum is not at all the same as zero. If the entire thing falls apart without some house rule (such as preventing Archivists from learning Domain spells, which in turn enable them to trade slots for Arcane spells, which...), you have to add that house rule.

I'm going to get back to rating the non-combat classes next week (have a deadline so I'm going fast), but one final comment on Anthropomorphic Bats, and one final look at Wild Shape vs. Spell Slots.

If you allow Anthropmorphic Bat / Wisdom Casters (Clerics, Druids, Mystics, Spirit Shamans) then you effectively require Anthro Bat / Wisdom casters. Yeah, the Anthro Bat has some penalties which a Druid past 6th level with Natural Spell will just ignore, so maybe someone will be an Anthropomorphic Lizard instead and settle for "only" +4 Wisdom. But the point is this vastly reduces the number of relatively viable characters, rather than increasing it as-is-our-goal.

Put another way - suppose I want to be a Tiefling Druid. If the rules even allow an Athropomorphic Bat Druid, then I'm screwed; because I'm missing out on the +6 wisdom that Kaelik says (correctly, given the assumptions) Druids "get", which is a major class feature that I'm forced to sacrifice.

So that has to go. To me this is transparently obvious. You could either ban all PC races and templates with positive mental stat modifiers, but people might want them for other reasons so that's not cool. I think a far better solution to this is to simply cap all the starting mental attributes at 18 (rather than 20). Because otherwise, every Wizard is a Grey Elf and every Cleric is an anthropomorphic Lizard.

Spell Slots vs. Armour Wearing and Wild Shape.

The Armour Wearing only really matters below 5th level. 11th level Druids may cast Iron Wood on their Sabretooth Cat barding - whatever. So for levels 1-5, you're sacrificing 1-3 spell slots for +4 AC, give or take. Personally, I would not make that trade - if I wanted to make that Trade I would sometimes cast Mage Armour and I don't.

Since Druid spells aren't as good as Wizard spells, it may be, especially as a Gestalt, that I'd trade a slot of each level for Wild Shape. I generally don't cast Polymorph out of a 4th level spell slot, but YMMV.

An amulet of being a troll all the time costs 56K, which you hit at 11th level. You can have a 6th level spell slot (36K) and a 5th level spell slot (25K) instead, and I would. Actually, I wouldn't, I'd buy a Quicken Spell metamagic rod.

Anyway, out of time, gotta go.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Since Druid spells aren't as good as Wizard spells,

I'm going to stop your ass right here. Yes, even granted that druid spells on the whole aren't as good as wizard spells (which I personally find extremely suspect, but whatever) who gives a shit as long as there are still good druid spells?

That's Pathfinder thinking right there. Yeah, Pathfinder clerics don't have as many good blasting spells as Pathfinder wizards -- but that doesn't matter because the blasting spells they do have are crazy face-rockers like Greater Forbid Action, Aura of Fear, and Visions of Hell. In conjunction with the other advantages that they have, this makes them crazytown face-rockers. You'd be stupid NOT to make your cleric a blaster cleric after level 7 were it not for the fact that other clerical build options (like cleric archer, fist-fighter, or summoner) are easily stapled on top.

To prove that druid spellcasting is inferior to wizard spellcasting, you have to show that there are no spells at any level which don't rock peoples' faces off.

[DrPraetor]

Lago: I agree with you 100% on the pathfinder principle being incorrect, so let me be crystal clear (and brief, since I need to stop procrastinating and get back to work) in what I am asserting:
Against any given threat, the best Druid spell to deal with that threat will, generally speaking, be considerably worse than the best Wizard spell to deal with that threat.

It starts out with:
Grease > Wall of Smoke
Spellstaff > Contingency
Acid Fog > Fire Seeds

There will be situations in which the Druid will have spells which are as-good or better. Entangle is better than Grease, if you are "outside". A lynch mob with multiple castings of Fire Seeds will murderize just about anything that isn't actually immune to Fire. But, averaged across all situations, not all spells, the Wizard will have a better response.

Now, I could be wrong. There could very well be spells in sourcebooks that I haven't read, or noticed, or remembered, that change this drastically. To show otherwise we need to continue hashing through the individual spells. Doing so with Kaelik was pretty damn exhausting, but it was useful to think about Kelpstrand, I suppose.