Cause the magus spell list sucks. And the magus abilities, while thematically fighter + magic, are totally wrong for what I want from a fighter/wizard combo.

I'm sure similar thoughts exist for other hybrid/combo classes.

My point exactly: power gaming.

Not power gaming.

To me, a swordmage needs non-combat spells. Things like spiderclimb and alarm.

The entire point of mixing swordplay and magic, is to use weapons and armor for attack and defense so you can focus your magic on tactical flexibility and utility.

Using magic and swords for attack is just plain redundant with the exception of circumventing dr and resistances, for which simply allowing my weapons to deal alternate damage types is preferable to loading up on blasting spells.

Power gaming has negative connotations.  It usually means wanting to be more powerful than your fellow players, or the setting.  That's not really what running a game where all players are gestalt is about.

I run them, and prefer to play them, because the characters are more versatile and more interesting.  It isn't about how many dice I can bring to bear, or how tough the character becomes.

I guess its the same reason why I don't really want to play a world of darkness game where I am an ordinary human.  It isn't interesting to me.  I like playing characters that are more capable and unusual than real life.
This message was last edited by the user at 14:13, Wed 27 June 2018.

That's what dipping and magic items are for. In Pathfinder you can easily build a fighter with decent charisma and ranks into UMD so you can use wands or scrolls at higher levels. If you don't want to deal with UMD then even a single rank in wizard unlocks all those spells lists for the purposes of magic items. The system as designed is quite flexible but you do have to make sacrifices.



Hmmm....



Perhaps the word power gamer is throwing people off. Looking up on urban dictionary it focuses more on min/maxing rather then what I think is written write there in the name gaming the system for more power = power gaming. Taking two different classes and merging them together seems a perfect example of that, having the flexibility of a wizard but the durability of a fighter...how else can that be construed as gaining more power without giving up anything?

You're describing it in terms that sound judgemental.  So does the term power gaming.

Its just a desire to play a different style of game.  I don't enjoy baseline d&d.  Its tedious, repetitive, and too constrained.  I'd rather play a different game. I prefer games that are more dynamic, more heroic, and don't consist of a grind of so and combat.

But I like d&d settings.  I like the fantasy atmosphere.  Gestalt rules allow me to run and play games that are more enjoyable for me, and those that play.  Its really no different than adapting rifts earth to savage world's, or star wars to d20.

like every role playing game book I've ever read says, whatever makes a fame enjoya now for everyone playing it, do it.  So that's what were doing.

Pathfinder is a league better than D&D (though late 4e wasn't half bad for that) for customization.  I largely feel that gestalt is unnecessary in Pathfinder (though there's certainly a case to make for boosting the skill ranks for the 2+int classes) and Mythic is a better supported path if you want to boost the power level a bit.

Why can't I just play and run gestalt if my players and I enjoy it?

Gestalt is a good way to expand the backgrounds of your character's story without detracting from his class. I once played a fighter with a background in alchemy. He carried around metallic sulfur and magnesium shavings in small bags to use as surprise weapons (admittedly I was using my own Chemistry background to craft these weapons), but the ranks I threw into Craft and Profession detracted from what I could put into traditional Fighter skills. This was in 2nd edition, before UA even came out. Gestault would've made the creation and diversity even better.

I don't think I'm being judgemental but I could be wrong. I feel like you are seeing an attack on gestalt that doesn't exist. Hence the quote I keep linking you back towards



All I and others are saying is that from a mechanics perspective it isn't necessary as a game like Pathfinder has plenty of options for customization to fit most niches in fantasy culture people want to fill. However that doesn't mean people can't build their own stuff and have fun with it. You can throw all the rules out the window and nobody can stand there and say "No, not allowed! That is not how you have fun!"

OP asked why gestalt is so common in Wanted-GM and I simply answered that 9 times out of 10 it's because people aren't satisfied with the apparent power of their character. They want to hit as hard as a fighter, sneak as well as a rogue and sling spells as well as a wizard without sacrificing things to multiclassing penalties or the "hybrid" classes that as mentioned give up things. The games systems are inherently built to provide niches because if I'm the rogue, I don't want the wizard being able to out sneak me (ha!) or if I'm the fighter I don't want the bard to be hitting harder than me. The niches are intentionally focused on a specific class and it is designed to be difficult to master them all. You can either specialize or be a "Jack of all trades, master of none" but that doesn't satisfy some people (and that is fine!). They want to be "Jack of all trades and master of some"  or "jack of all trades and master of all". As mentioned if the entire party and GM are on board then that is a-okay. You do you. You have fun your way.

As mentioned though it only becomes an issue when everyone isn't on board and that describes like 99% of problems at the table. If one person is playing a gestalt and stealing the spotlight from everyone else, that's when it becomes a problem. High level wizards and clerics often have this problem because in D&D/Pathfinder you can use spells to bypass the things that other roles are specialized for. Why do you need to be sneaky when you can cast invisibility? Why do you need to be a good fighter when you can summon demons to take the field of battle for you? Why do you need a ranger to track your enemy when you can just scry them from afar.

That is power gaming as a perjorative, when it is detracting from the fun of others. But as I said above, I think power gaming is just using the system to gain more power: literal power gaming.


Anyway I think the reason you see it so often in Wanted-GM is because it is a niche that is hard to fill. As I said you really need everyone (players and GM) on board for a gestalt game and there aren't pre-published gestalt adventures and managing a part of overpowered players is a challenge on top of all the regular DMing challenge. I think the end result is you have a moderate number of people wanting to play gestalt overpowered characters and a very small minority of DMs willing to take on that challenge.

If you follow Wanted-GM you will notice a lot of patterns for:

• High Level Games
• Niche/unknown games
• Solo games
• Gestalt/OP Games
• 3PP friendly games

And the simple economics is that you have more demand than supply. The majority of games on here are "regular by the book games" or close to it. Low-to-moderate level, only core or official materials, popular game systems etc. The stuff you see frequently in the Wanted-Players is and should be very different from Wanted-GM by its very nature.
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I think it seemed judgemental because terms like Mary sue and power gaming are almost always used as a criticism online.  But as long as we agree on the general idea, I guess it doesn't matter.

Sorry, my point was that Superhero RPGs are chalk full of characters that would otherwise be described as Mary Sue's in a D&D game. Batman is a super wealthy, super intelligent master detective and hand-to-hand-combatant with a contingency plan for everything and gadgets for every situation.

If I tried to submit that character for a D&D game I would be laughed out of the process but if I submit that character to a Superhero RPG they would say "Oh, so Batman?"

All the major super heroes are that way and I don't think anyone would come out and say that Champions or Mutants & Masterminds is a bad way to have fun.

A point I tried to make up-thread is that the inherent nature of PBP pushes encounters to be more meaningful and thus higher powered (the design assumption in D&D is that the party should have about four encounters of level APL per day - which really bogs down PBP if you stick to it in many cases).  It's only natural to players to respond to that trend by pushing for their own power level to be higher to compensate.


I find this list very interesting and accurate.  The common thing I see in it is that all of these game types require a greater amount of GM work-per-player than the more standard, restricted games (or, at least, more "knowing stuff").  In some cases, it's flat-out beyond the ability of many GMs to meet them with a quality game (myself included).

What's 3PP?

Third Party Press. Basically, any material for the game outside of the main publisher.

To me, Gaming the system, minmaxing, and power gaming are pretty much the same thing, focusing on maximizing numerical/mechanical power.

But there is a whole other side to RPGs, the narrative. By their very nature, the above give up narrative plausibility and consistency to achieve their power (and such players often ignore possibilities present in the narrative but not the mechanics. I.E. flipping a table over is often ignored as cover because there is no mechanic for flipping a table over).

D20 has many aspects where numbers translate to narrative, and those parts are set such that no real world person is higher than level 5, but real world people can become more versatile than a level 5 character despite not being more powerful.

Gestalt allows that greater versatility without improving the numerical "cap" at any particular level.

You would be surprised at what has mechanics. Flipping over a table is a move action or a standard action depending on how generous your GM is feeling and how heavy the table is. It would provide soft cover or full cover depending on what it is made of.

In fact many printed modules that take place in dining areas will make mention of using tables as cover. I recall older adventures where it specifically talks about goblins ducking under tables and thus having cover from medium-sized attackers.



So...multi-classing? Again I speak of pathfinder but a single level dip into Rogue or Ranger unlocks almost every skill in the game. You also don't have to put max ranks into skills so a skill-based class like a rogue can easily put a point in every single major skill and pick up a couple of professions/performances by 3rd level.

I have to ask, why are you arguing with him?  This is why it seems like you're trying to convince people they don't need to play gestalt.

Just let people play what they enjoy.  The people that play gestalt have answered the OP.  No reason to convince anyone they shouldn't play it.

In D&D especially, classes can be deeply pigeonholing.  If you're playing a wizard, you're a dude in robes who can't hit the broadside of a barn with a thrown rock. Your skills and abilities are all focused on wizard and wizarding.  Because of the leveling economy of D&D (you have limited resources but are constantly chasing a rising curve of mechanical needs), you simply don't have the ability to invest in anything that isn't wizarding.

Gestalt loosens that straitjacket.  You can Wizard/Rogue if you want to play a streetwise hedge mage.  You can Wizard/Fighter if you want to play an educated sword sage.  And alternately, you can Wizard/Sorcerer if you want to double down and be the best arcanist who ever arcane...d.

Multiclassing, especially for spellcasting characters in 3.x, just isn't an option.  When you are relying on your mechanics to carry you through an encounter, you simply can't afford to fall behind in caster levels or spell access.  Sadly, especially on pure flavor grounds.  A common counter-argument is that you should.  The counter-counter argument is that if you do, you'll probably end up dead for want of a spell slot at some point, if the GM is adequately challenging your group based on well-built characters.

So much this.    I'm sure we've heard at some point: "What do you mean you don't have fireball, you're a wizard and we're 5th level!"

Tell that to sorcerers. They don't seem to mind :P

In reply to praguepride (msg # 36):

Sorcerers miss out for a single level as a penalty for them not needing to prepare spells and not having super-tight limits imposed on some of their slots.

Yeah, but imagine the Rogue 1 / Sorc 6 who is level 7 and JUST got level 3 spells.

Pathfinder shifted away from multiclassing by providing archetypes and later hybrid classes that largely did the same thing without causing weird math problems for progression.  In some ways, magic users have it the worst since their caster level is critical in so many ways (including SR when the levels get up there).

I'm not entirely sure why a sorcerer wouldn't mind multiclassing.  Unless you're doing some sort of gish build where you want to mix it up in close combat as well as with spells.

I don't really have a dog in this race, but I know that sometimes Charm-oriented sorcerers like to multiclass with another "social" class (eg. bard, vigilante, rogue) in order to gain some of their socially-oriented abilities.