Balance issues for gestalt melee (or other lower Tier) characters

Question

An idea I had for balancing higher level play is to allow characters who are not tier 1 spellcasters to gestalt. The worries I have are

1. What is the cutoff where a character becomes tier 1? generally spells -> power, but what about characters that "only" get mid level spells like duskblade or bard? How about martial initiators or meldshapers?

2. Martial characters generally do better than spellcasters in the low levels (except the druid, they are hardcore). making them gestalt might compound this. A possible work around is waiting till mid levels and then go gestalt, either from there on, or retroactively.

3. What happens if a character is a gestalt low tier character for the first 10 or so levels, then wants to into a fast spell level progression prestige class? ...with Factotum on the other side.

Answer 1

The typical approach that I have used and played under is this:

• Tier-4 classes can gestalt with tier-5 classes

• Tier-3 classes can gestalt with tier-6 classes (i.e. non-adept NPC classes)

• Tier-2 and tier-1 classes cannot gestalt

It’s not perfect, but it seems to work pretty well. The higher-tier classes are still more powerful, even with these benefits, but the lower-tier classes are much more interesting than they usually are, giving players more incentive to play them and more reward, in terms of fun, for doing so. My current character is a smorgasbord of monk, paladin, and spellthief, and I’m having a lot more fun than I would as a wizard, even though the guy who is playing a wizard can ultimately do a lot more than I can.

As for distinguishing between classes, the tier list itself covers most classes, and why each class is in its tier explains how to eyeball other classes.

Tier 1 and 2 are relatively easy to adjudicate: if a class has access to something at most levels that trivializes problems in an overpowered or broken way, it’s tier 1 or 2. If it doesn’t, then it’s not. Generally, this means full-casting: a spell progression that eventually hits 9ths. The cleric, druid, and sor/wiz lists have many, many entries that fit this description. The shugenja and wu jen lists are not quite at that level, but probably have enough. And artificer flies here just because his crafting means he can use any and all of the above, if he’s careful.

It’s important to note that tiers should be level- and optimization-agnostic. A broken 20th-level capstone won’t change the tier of an otherwise-fine (or otherwise-awful) class.¹ A particularly broken build that manages to break the game with some shenanigans doesn’t count either.² The idea is that something about the class itself is, at most levels, overpowered.

The difference between tier 1 and tier 2 is, basically, the difference between prepared and spontaneous spellcasting: can the class change what it’s doing regularly, so that it can cover all sorts of very-different situations, or does it get locked into one set of abilities that, while extremely powerful, leave some room for flaws and vulnerabilities?

The other tiers are somewhat fuzzier. Tier 3 is defined as being excellent at one thing and reasonably competent at other things (e.g. warblade), or being quite good at a lot of things (e.g. bard). Tier 4 is decent, or even great at one thing, but useless outside it (e.g. barbarian), or OK at a lot of things but struggles to excel (e.g. rogue). Tier 5 is OK at their specialty, but not even the best at that and utterly useless outside it (e.g. fighter), or is just so spread out that it struggles to get much done (e.g. monk). Tier 6 is NPC classes (and the Complete Warrior samurai, which is basically a fighter with his feats pre-chosen, and chosen poorly). The truenamer doesn’t get a tier, since it doesn’t even work without a lot of work (a high-optimization truenamer probably functions around tier 4 or 5 in a mid-optimization group).

1. _{cf. truenamer, who goes from nigh-unplayable to quite-possibly the most inherently-powerful class in the game when he dings 20th.}

2. _{cf. Pun-pun’s use of ex-paladin}

Answer 2

For posterity's sake, the tier system discussed is this one. To summarize: tier 1 breaks the campaign every which way, tier 2 breaks the campaign in one way per character, tier 3 is always relevant, tier 4 is relevant at one thing, tier 5 isn't relevant even at their one thing, and tier 6 doesn't even get their own thing.

Cutoff for Tier 1

The cutoff for Tier 2 is 9th level spells, basically. Duskblades, bards, and initiators can never hope to make it past Tier 3 even if they were all gestalted together. Tier 1 is way beyond their reach.

The generally accepted Tier 1 classes are Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Archivist, Artificer, and Spell-to-power Erudite. This is because they don't just get 9th level spells, they get all the 9th level spells.

Melee supremacy at low levels is... questionable

What makes melee guys good at low levels? They get better BAB than casters, and better HP. Gestalting together two classes with good BAB and good HP won't make the BAB and HP better than the maximum. And creatures at low levels have so few HP that it's generally trivial to one-shot them for even a non-gestalted character.

The real gap you should be trying to close is doing things outside of combat. Fighter//Barbarian hits like a truck, but what if the problem can't be solved with hitting? The wizard prepares charm person. If the mundanes try to solve this problem (say, by grabbing a skillful class rather than a second fighting one) then their combat power doesn't go up dramatically, and there's no issue with becoming "too good" at combat.

Casting is good if you build for casting

Let's take the barbarian from before, and slap on 10 levels of Factotum and Ur-priest. His Intelligence and Wisdom are probably rubbish, so he can't benefit from all these new cool abilities. He didn't sink his feats into Font of Inspiration, or Divine Metamagic, so he can't do the coolest stuff these classes do. He can buff himself a little bit, but his caster level sucks so bad that the buffs fall off at the first dispel magic.

So no, Factotum + Spells is not a silver bullet. Let people build what they want.