Post/Author/DateTime	Post
orangepeel7 04-22-04, 03:21 PM	I'm trying to build a Thri-kreen gestalt, but they have two racial HD. Do I just treat them as ordinary levels, and take something else alongside them, or do I start taking two classes after the two HD (which would suck, because I would be losing out on a couple of levels) Thx in advance -orangepeel
Lady Ishtar 04-23-04, 10:39 AM	we are treating racial HD and LA as a single class, so a level 10 thri-kreen would be thri-kreen 4/class X 6/class Y 10 hope this helps
Adriayna 04-26-04, 09:48 AM	Ahh! This was the thread I was going to start anyways :) UA doesn't seem to cover what it should with Gestalt characters. Not only does it not give them a individual specific conversion to normal characters, but it does not say what you should do with LA or ECL + anything characters. If you think about it this way--lets say you want to play a drow gestalt character. Your drow has a LA of two, meaning, that the drow is equal to a normal second level character. But if there are other characters in the party playing elves or humans or any other core race, they are already two gestalt levels up on you by the time you can take your first gestalt level. The system has no way of compensating for gestalt charcters with any LA or ECL rating to get them up to speed with the power level of the other Gestalt characters. I see two possibilities--either reduce the LA/ECL by one for any incoming monsterous races. This should be sufficient to bridge the gestalt power gap. Another suggestion may be to give them some gestalt levels (say half of their race) mingled in with those racial hit die. But this may prove too powerful--so possibly giving them NPC class levels with the racial levels may be a better option. A final option is simply to give the racial abilities a bonus--perhaps give them an additional spell like ability or whatever, but something to bump them up to equivalent to a normal gestalt character. My question is this--has there been an official ruling on the subject? If not, does anyone have good ideas as to how this can be accomplished?
sylver 04-26-04, 11:04 AM	I allowed my player to apply the LA on just one of his two gestalt classes. I based my decision on a article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20040213a) that appeared on the wizards site a while back. It basically explains how to divide a race with LA into a base race without LA and several "racial class levels". I ruled that these racial class levels can be taken like a PrC, affecting just one of his gestalt classes. I just haven't decided yet if I will allow this player to also take a real PrC in the future.
tiornys 04-27-04, 02:27 AM	To repost my thoughts on this matter from a similar thread: Our play group concluded that simply applying the LA in full would underpower +LA races, as a gestalt level is clearly better than the regular levels that LA was designed for. We also concluded that simply gestalting the LA would overpower +LA races, as doing so eliminates the primary penalty of +LA, namely lack of hit die progression. Therefore, we decided to use a combination of full level loss and half level loss (i.e. getting a "normal" level instead of a gestalt one). If we guestimate that a gestalt level is roughly 150% as good as a normal level, then the following seems reasonable: +1 LA: 2 half levels +2 LA: 1 full level, 1 half level +3 LA: 1 full level, 3 half levels OR 2 full levels +4 LA: 2 full levels, 2 half levels +5 LA: 2 full levels, 4 half levels OR 3 full levels, 1 half level +6 LA: 3 full levels, 3 half levels OR 4 full levels As a side benefit, this allows for some fine tweaking of the LA system. Some races just seem better than other races at the same LA. We can boost a race that seems minmal for its LA by removing a half level (so a weak +2 LA would lose only 1 full level), and we can downgrade a race that seems almost too good for its LA by adding a half level (so a strong +1 LA would lose 3 half levels). Racial hit dice are gestalted normally, starting with half levels from LA. t~