Gestalt characters supported?
 

Hi,
I searched the forums and the manual and found no mention of gestalt characters. Is there an easy way to create them and/or has someone already done this?
-Syli

Gestalt characters supported?
 

SyliMaahn wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
> I searched the forums and the manual and found no mention of gestalt
> characters. Is there an easy way to create them and/or has someone
> already done this?


Unfortunately, Hero Lab can't create gestalt characters yet. We have
plans to add the functionality for this over the next few months.


Thanks,


--
Colen McAlister (colen@wolflair.com)
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development
http://www.wolflair.com/

Thread necromancy for the win!

So, ahh.... Any progress on this one?

Sadly, we've not added Gestalt functionality. Some users have had success adding them through Variant Classes though.

Is Gestalt functionality still in the works?

If anyone knows of these "successes" by other users; could you please direct us to the details on how to do it? After all isn't that the point of this thread; to get this information for those of us who do not yet know how to make it work?

I believe there are some in the community set, but I don't have it in front of me. I'd have to take a look at it. If you have the community set, I would recommend perusing the variant classes to see if anything looks like a gestalt class.

so has anyone made a data file that can just be inported?
 

is it possible to just make a data file with some of the basic combos. i have been entering them 1 by 1 and its taking for ever. if some one has not done the work I guess i'll just post them when i'm done. i'm at 65 of 152 possible combination, for current classes.

I have been adding some of them that I have used, but its not easy especially with classes that have overlapping custom abilities.. Cleric and rogue... BLECH.. Wizard and ANYTHING... egrrrrrg!

And it is currently impossible in any way shape or form from what I have read to create gestalts of two caster classes. Creating two seperate spell lists from what I can see isn't possible.

For the Custom abilities, you can overwrite the candidate expression of a later table to select a different category of abilities.

For 2 caster classes, maybe you could use the racial spellcasting mechanics for the second spell class? Haven't really tested that, and it might get pretty complicated.

I haven't a clue how to begin coding that so it would come up properly, how exactly would assign racial spell casting after the race has been chosen. And as for the Custom abilities, I wouldn't want to simply overwrite them..

How would a cleric choose domains, or a wizard select specialized schools, for some classes it isn't an issue. But it is for many, and since we are adding class abilities, we are also limited to how we can use them.

Not to mention the difficulties with class abilities and feats that run off of class abilities. For the base class that's easy, but for the variation we are adding.

Rogue/Sorc variant class: and then they wanted to go. Woodland rogue, since we have to use the Sorcerer as a base class, the variants that affect the rogue would no longer be applicable. whole mess of messiness.

And alot of fun to try and do, which is why I've played around with it. :D

Making a copy of the Rakshasa race, it looks like you would have to add a SplLookup tag to the race, and set the cMagicLev field on that as well. Probably needs to happen early as possible.

??, So what's the progress after 5 years?

This.

My GM told me to make a gestalt, and I was looking for software to make it easier. I want to make a Sylph Ninja/Druid. Can Herolabs do this yet?

Thanks for your time!

Bump this to the top

I'll see if I can make a Ninja/Druid over the week and post it here, it wont be pretty but I'll probably (mostly) work.

Also, a question for the staff or those knowledgeable, in these matters:

How can one force a caster class to default to the "Racial Spells," lets say I wanted to force a race to have racial levels.

After I have that, I can try and set up gestalts. I know people want them and thats the only problem I have when making them. Cant gestalt two caster classes, which limits their usefulness dramatically.

I'm assuming this is possible otherwise you wouldn't be able to create racial levels. (If you can create them at character creation, it stands to reason you can force it to occur after.)

If you can point me in the right direction, I'll see if I can set up some files that have gestalts until you can get something more stable going.

While I have never used Gestalt characters, there is clearly a need for them within the community. I will look at what it would take to implement something for the community set.

Well, I was off to a promising start, but there are some things I can't seem to resolve. So it looks like gestalt characters need to be created on a case-by-case basis unless/until support is added from LW's side.

As for giving your race spells, try using the SplLookup.? tag class (ie. SplLookup.cHelpSor) and then giving a value to the field cMagicLev.

Gestalt classes, themselves are not particularly hard to implement, at least ones that do not have more than one caster class.

I've done a few of them myself using variants, the problem is when you get to classes with two caster classes, assigning those to racial levels from a class.

Also, if you have say, a rogue and a wizard both use custom abilities... what do you do?

The final issue I've run into is the class abilities mouse over, it only shows a list of the base classes' abilities and does not include specials from the added class. Which, is minor, but still frustrating.
---

Your suggestion works, except it gives the following error:

Where 'rEQAlicorn' was the name of the race being tested. I applied the code from a race directly not from a varient class linking it to a race, that might be a bit more complicated. But it shows the basic principle being workable. This helps alot.

No, but I was going to try to make it easier to add through an adjustment. Something like Gestalt - Sorcerer, which could then be added to any other base class. This could have solved a lot of the issues with keeping track of spells individually. Unfortunately, you can just bootstrap the cHelpXX class level (which provides the desired class tab) because you get a ton of errors. I then tried to create a class with no max count (because you can't bootstrap something with a non-zero max count). This removes the errors, but provides a whole host of other problems, primarily because it adds a level to the character. Many things can be suppressed, and maybe in time I can find a way to work it, but right now its looking like a gigantic pain in the rear. I'll give it some more thought. Maybe I can find another way.

Glad I can help. I didn't test it out, but those are the two things that the Rakshasa uses to get a racial spells tab.

The way I was going to go with a Pathfinder Gestalt addon was similar to how I implemented the play test for Mythic characters. You have the player add "three" characters. One is your Wizard, one is your Cleric, and one is a "gestalt" class. The gestalt class lets you pick your two classes for "level 1" it then figures out your saves, skills, and hit points and assigns it to itself. It then takes the wizard class and cleric levels and takes them out of the leveling process. You end up with a Level 1 character with three classes but two of them are only used for their "Class Specials" and the "Gestalt" class is used for Skills, HP, BAB, Caster Level, and saves.

At level "2" you add two more class levels of say wizard/cleric but could be other classes. And on the Gestalt class tab you would have a class special to pick the level two classes. As we are taking the two classes out of the leveling process we should have no problem supporting characters up to level 20. The gestalt class just has 20 class specials allowing for picking two classes that are combine together.

Granted its not "perfect" but it will allow you to easily combine any two classes and it will support two caster classes.

Obviously its allot of work and I have not even finished it in Pathfinder (other than theory) but that was my "idea" to fix the issue.

Ok, this is where I'm stuck. How the heck do you do that?

I can explain it and even have examples in Pathfinder but d20 sometimes can be different. This was exactly the fun part I had to do for the Mythic playtest.

Basically you strip all "hero.hitdice" tags and reset the hero fields (tHitDice) yourself manually at like post-levels/10. Which in Pathfinder at least is "right" after all the class and Hit Dice have been calculated. So I then remove all the hitdice tags and reset fields to zero. This also included BAB and Save Progression values which will be pulled from the Gestalt class. Then "recalculate" those Hit Dice values and re-add the tags back to the hero. In this case changing the addition of "3HD" of classes into 1HD of classes. Everything from that point forwards sees "1HD" of classes. :D

Then at least in Pathfinder I also had found a special "tag" that when applied to a class would remove the "hit Point" area of the classes so that the wizard/cleric couldn't type in their hit point and instead it would only be placed onto the "gestalt" level.

In theory Pathfinder is built from the code base of d20 so it "should" all work. Of course in theory the bumble bee can't fly! ;)

So you created a new tab named Gestalt, or you created a new class named gestalt?




Lol Yes.. curse those bumble bees defying the laws of physics!

Sorry "tab" and "class" I was using interchangeable above. The Gestalt class would have its own tab by default.

That would be lovely if it were possible, that wouldn't be a fix, but a full on permanent solution but in order to do that you'd need extensive knowledge of how hero labs was coded wouldn't you?

And staff permission to change how the program functioned. Yikes, thats.. yikes.

Yes this is a "very" advanced idea and would take good knowledge of HL and how to dig into the values, tags, and timing. I would estimate 80-120hrs of work to get this to work and to get through allot of unit testing.

I am just putting out an "idea" but not one that is "easy". ;) :p

Nope. My above idea would be how the "community" would do this. Not LW or how I would do this using the Authoring kit. Why I would "love" to add this feature their is allot more "base" features I think are more important for d20 currently.

So the above is a theory for how someone like Sendric maybe able to build something for the community.

The variant or archetype methods do currently work for both "d20 and pathfinder".

I'll give it a whirl. I work pretty fast, so I'll reduce that 80-120 hrs estimate. Honestly, though, it if ends up taking that long I'd probably have given up long before then. :)

BTW, this was more or less the path I was heading down anyway. The area I ran into major trouble was removing the other class(es) from the skills tab. Any ideas on how to do that would be greatly appreciated.

Gestalt(s) are the 2nd ed. multiclassing method brought to 3.5 through Unearthed Arcana. Taking two classes and taking the better options between the two. They're new classes in their own right. If you're going to edit source code, you might just want to build a new gestalt component based similarly on classes that uses a foreach loop and takes the best progression from each class. You will end up with a lot of scripts doing it this way though. It will be time intensive to do it though.

Have you tried building a new Gestalt class instead? You could use pull down menus possibly and then tell hero lab to make the class features available through tags. You'd still need the foreach loops, but it would take less time to build.

Yea, the biggest issue we run into is being able to keep track of multiple spell-casting classes (ie cleric-wizard or bard-druid). The ability to have both class tabs available for this is key. There's a tag you can assign to create the tab, but without the class level it gives errors.

Ultimately, there may not be a good solution with how the d20 system is currently set up.

Is the error a persistant error (yells at you every time you make an action), or one that only yells at you when you open, save or test your work?

I can live with it it yells at you only when saving and opening.

It's a persistent error I believe.

What is the practice of setting up the Gestalt option under the d20 system? I am trying to do this as well using Sorcerer and Warmage. Granted I don't code so console commands with Herolab are challenging for me atm.

So speaking of Gestalt classes. I have a "game" question for everyone that is using the Gestalt rules.

For example we have a character that takes:
1st Fighter/Monk
2nd Monk/Rogue

What is the BASE save values of the above character? What is the BAB of the above character?

I would appreciate the input of others in this area.

Take the best from each... so Good Base Save and Good Base Attack as Monk. Just wanting to point out, 99.9% of all GM's are not going to let you take more than one gestalt. They are just too powerful.

For more information on gestalts I highly recommend reading the section on gestalting in Arcana Unearthed.

You mean the paragraph of info? Yea read it and no answer is found within.
Which is why I was hoping for some input from the community for how others have calculated the values. Its clear from the gestalt rules that multiclassing is allowed. But how you combine those values is not clear...

My understanding is that you always take the best from each. When you mix the classes, though, that can certainly get confusing. Let's see how your example would work:

1st Fighter/Monk - Good BAB (Fighter), Good Fort, Ref, Will saves (Monk)
2nd Monk/Rogue - Medium BAB (both), Good Fort, Ref, Will saves (Monk)

I would treat it the same way you treat adding a new class to an existing character. For example, a 1st Fighter / 1st Rogue would have a +1 BAB, +2 Fort, +2 Ref, +0 Will. Treating each of those levels as new classes would provide a +1 BAB, +4 to all saves. That said, I think there's an argument to be made against doing that for the saves in this case. Since you are progressing as a Monk, and you are using the Monk's progression for saves, you could easily treat this as second level for this purpose, thereby giving the character a +3 to all saves.

So, I guess what I would really do here is instead of viewing "Monk/Rogue" as a different class than "Fighter/Monk", I would view it as 2 levels of good progression for saves and 1 level each for good and medium progression for BAB. I'll add two more hypothetical levels for fun:

1st Fighter/Monk (+1 BAB ; +2 all saves)
2nd Monk/Rogue (+1 BAB ; +3 all saves)
3rd Rogue/Wizard (+2 BAB ; +3 all saves)
4th Monk/Wizard (+3 BAB ; +3 Fort/Ref ; +4 Will)

The break-down is as follows:
BAB: 1 level good progression (+1) plus 3 levels medium progression (+2)
Fort/Ref: 3 levels good progression (+3) plus 1 level poor progression (+0)
Will: 4 levels good progression (+4)

Doing it this way might help keep the progression from getting crazy.

This is a rundown of how gestalting works.

• Hit Dice: Best of Two Classes
• Saves: Best of Both Classes
• BaB: Best of Both Classes
• Classes Skills: Take the higher of two classes Cleric/Rogue takes 8+int.
• Combine the class skills of both classes.
• Class Features: Take both, penalties of one apply to the other. Arcane
• Spell fail applies to both, druid's metal restriction etc.
• Class features that share a features share accrue at the faster rate (uncanny dodge).
• More than one spell-casting class keep track separately.
• A gestalt class cant combine prestige classes at any level but you can combine a base class with a prestige class. (Although some prestige classes should be prohibited, arcane trickster, mystic theurge, eldritch knight, etc.

I thought this way at first but went with that the "rogue" should provide its +2 as its a new class. Giving 3,5,3 for saves.

Just pulling the best "save" and progressing is not a bad way either and makes sense. The issue is my new Pathfinder gestalt addon has complaints that the saves in this example should be 3,4,3 as the monk increased Ref by +1 and the Rogue increased by 2 so we increase by 2 not 1.

Currently my addon sees the rogue level as a "new" class and adds in the value. This seemed to make sense based on what you said Sendric. I see it as having two levels of monk giving 3,3,3 and then the rogue applies new values of +2 Ref. From the point of view that a normal Monk 2 / Rogue 1 would have saves of 3,5,3 it makes sense.

I guess the question is if the monk/rogue is a "new" class or not? Its really confusing when you add in multiclassing here. My other thought is if monk/rogue is a "new" class then it should have base saves of 2,2,2 added to the level 1 fighter/monk to get 4,4,4.

Doing a google search provided no real answers as most people are all over the place. The only one that surfaced is many use the fractional BAB and Save method from the UA as that makes things easier to figure out....

sigh....

Can't argue with that. It seems to be sound enough logic. Woulda been nice if they provided some examples in UA, though.

Toby mentioned earlier that most DM's don't allow multiple gestalt classes like this because it becomes too powerful. I say go ahead. Just as long as they know we DM's get to play by the same rules. :)