Talk:Gestalt Style Multiclassing (3.5e Variant Rule)

Ratings

	Leziad favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	Yes! Yes! YES! This is wonderful. I love it.

	RiverOffers favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	Simpleness that is what some of us want to a degree. Not that we want everything made easy or as no-brain-ers but that we want to focus more on that game and less on the maths.

DanielDraco opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

I did not notice the first time around that your effective level in each class is equal to the class level for your primary class, not your character level. This takes away any feasible options for multiclassing and gives you instead the option to shoot yourself in the foot. It is, furthermore, incredibly complicated and/or unclear -- it is apparent that some raters, including formerly myself (and hell, maybe still myself) do not properly understand it, which is an issue of how it is written.

	Foxwarrior likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	Although it probably becomes a mess when combined with homebrew classes that make their own assumptions about balance, it seems to do a nice job of making essentially SRD-like campaigns end up with more than just the 4 (or 6) good classes.

	Ghostwheel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	Basically doubles your options (and thus potentially power) with very little drawback. You'll virtually never see someone going along a single path with this variant. Also, exacerbates problems between quadratic wizards and linear fighters.

It's probably more accurately described as exponential wizards and quadratic fighters. That said, this variant rule seems to be balanced specifically with Wizard-level style class designs, so it should probably be listed at that balance point. Also, why wouldn't you want to voltron together heaping handfuls of martial classes when playing a Tome martial character in this system? Those are still designed without enough exponential versatility progression, as far as I can tell. --Foxwarrior (talk) 02:33, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I guess I forgot to respond to this last year. Since the level that determines class features and saves and BAB is still your level in your primary class, voltroning heaping handfuls of anything together is not very helpful. If you're a level 14 character with 2 fully vested secondary classes, you're basically a triple gestalt level 10 character. You're 4 levels down in BAB, saves, class features, and so on. While that might make sense in some situations, every secondary class you take causes you to fall further behind on the RNG and grants increasingly less level appropriate class features (even if there are more of them). Taking 2 secondary classes pushes you down into cohort levels of bonuses and abilities, 4 puts you down in follower levels of bonuses and abilities, and 5+ puts you so far off the RNG as to not be a viable character.

It's mentioned in the supporting changes section on cohorts that it's a bad idea to take 2 or more fully vested secondary classes, but having written the above bits out I think I might just forbid it. Allowing it doesn't seem to do anything other than leave a really terrible option in, and I don't like it. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 15:03, 18 August 2013 (UTC)