The Story of the Janky Homebrew Campaign Danae is trying desprately to run.
Hail and Well Met friends, today I'd like to talk a bit about my homebrew campaign that I run basically whenever Nic, Alexis, and I have a free afternoon or evening. We lovingly call it "gestaltfinder" because I'm shit at coming up with titles for stuff. The reason we use this name is because it uses the concept of *gasp* GESTALT. Before I get into the story so far, allow me to explain.
"Gestalt" is the term in pathfinder used for when a character has 2 classes at every level. This is much different than multiclassing, because where you would normally gain a level and choose a class to gain that level in, gestalt gives you 2 classes whenever you gain a level. For example: I am playing in a gestalt campaign and am making a character, I am going to choose 2 classes, a wizard and a fighter. At 1st level, the very beginning of the campaign, I am going to look at both classes: between the 2, I will take the better saving throws, base attack bonus, hit dice, and skill ranks. In this case, the wizard has a +2 to their will saves and a 0 in the others, where the fighter has a +2 to their Fort saves and a 0 in the others. For a gestalt character with these 2 classes, their saving throws would be +2 Fort, 0 Reflex, and +2 Will. The fighter has full BAB progression, so at first level my character will have a BAB of +1, where the wizard would normally have a BAB of 0. The same goes for hit dice, of which the fighter uses a d10 to the wizard's d6, and both classes get 2+Int skill ranks per level.
Now for things like class features, this is where it goes bonkers. You get EVERYTHING. From BOTH classes. So you will get all of the wizard's spellcasting abilities, familiar, arcane school, and the extra feat Scribe Scroll, plus you will get the fighter's bonus feat and all their weapon and armor proficiencies. You do this every time you gain a level, choose the best of everything both classes have to offer, and all of the special class abilities.
So now you may be asking "But mod Danae, isn't that going to make exceptionally powerful characters? How is that supposed to work?" well here's the beauty of this system. You may have noticed at the beginning, I only listed myself, Nic and Alexis. I am the GM, Nic and Alexis are my only players. Gestalt is what allows me to balance encounters in my campaign around the fact that there are only two characters in the party playing through this story.
I think in my next post about gestaltfinder, I will talk about my homebrew world and how it came to be. Keep an eye out for updates from both Nic and Alexis about the characters they play for this campaign, they will be tagged gestaltfinder so you can find them easier. Please feel free to ask questions, our ask box is open for all questions to any mod about anything.
