DavidWL

How I would think fractional saves work (subject to Fil's approval)

"Normal", rounding down:

etc.

In Summary - Incremental Saves

1st level, good = +2.5

2-20 level, good = +.5

1-20 level, bad = +.33

So, what are the saves of a:

Cleric 2/Rogue 2\\Fighter 1/Wizard 3?

Fil, will you chime in saying yea or nay? Explaining what you intended?

The most logical alternative (which is a mixed bag, but which I actually prefer, but which isn't "internally consistent" is to only give the 1st level bonus if taken at 1st level ...)

Best,

David

fiol here 1-19

good work, david. I wish we bumped into each other before I moved!

Here was my interpretation, which is only giving 2.5 at ecl1 intentionally inconsistent after 1st level.....

So, what are the saves of a:

Cleric 2/Rogue 2\\Fighter 1/Wizard 3?

if this was straight cleric, at level four it would be 4/1/4

if a standard fig/clr/rog/wiz at level four it would be 4/2/4

a standard gestalt would be 3/3/5

with david's fraction gestalt it would be 4/3/6

with fil's fraction gestalt it would be 3/3/4

so far, fil's interpretation is actually more balanced with standard save rules for gestalt... while we already see the saves starting to spike in david's.

Once prc's start coming into the build, traditionally, the good stats will rocket and the bad can get real bad. even more so with david's method. the balance problem for a DM is that all the spell dc's are the same, your defenses are what change. Fil's method help prevent one save from lagging too far behind the others... so I don't have to build monster stat oponents to be able to challege your good save, but auto succeed yer weak save (which I consider broken).

If you guys are seeing something I don't, I have proven to be flexible.

again, good work guys, and your patience is humbling.

ZarZak

I actually thought it was a cross between the two methods. You get the 2.5 @ every first lvl (prc or whatnot) for a good save then .5 or .33 depending on whether its a good or bad save. But unlike David's, I thought that, say for the wizard example, you would lose the .5 fort save of the fighter and go to the .33 save of the wizard.

Cleric 2/Rogue 2\\Fighter 1/Wizard 3

^

fil here 1-19

oops! both david and I missed that typo... zarzak has just provided the numerically correct version of david's interpretation. If we were to use david's model, it would look like what you have just done, zarzak.

But I still stand my ground... unless there is a good arguement not to that I have missed.

thanks for the editing there, zakattack. You are now the new king!

DavidWL

*Smiles*

Sorry about the typo ... *all hail the new King* ;)

Also, Fil, while you did the incremental right, you didn't sum your incremental. You say:

Actually, it would be:

Because you'd never get the bonus +2 from the Rogue.

Fil, as I said, yours is the method I prefer - conceptually, it is the cleanest. I'll update the saves in my build.

Noldor - I'll still eventually need to know what the proper progression for Arcana Evolved's medium save is. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to follow a recognizable pattern; there had been failed attempts to determine a simple linear relationship when I was still posting on the Malhavoc boards. My suggested +4/9 per level fits most cases, but runs into problems on certain levels (starting at 2nd level). For whatever reason, it seems to do normal rounding in those cases, rather than the usual "always round down".

Surreal - I say go with Fil's method. Sure the saves will be a bit lower, but I think half of us add Charisma to our saves anyways

oops.. good catch, david. you are the new king.

dammit, surreal! all you punks with your cha bonuses and efreeti inherent bonuses and possession wiggly maroo! at least you guys get to pick what gear you have each level... :)

ZarZak - If fil is going to tune the monsters up or down to whatever the appropriate level is it doesn't really matter what method we go with ... and Fil's is probably more accurate (and its very easy to change ... that doesn't have anything to do with my choice ... ;) ). So I also vote for Fil.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Fil's method meant the highest possible save you can have at lvl 20 is 12?

^^Surreal - that's correct Zarzak, and that 12 will be hard to get unless you can keep a good save progression the entire way through (not too tough if you're a caster). I think overall it'd benefit our team using the lower saves, and keep the monsters at similar level. As a DM it's much easier for Fil to crank up his monsters to beat our saves, as opposed to us trying to beat really tough monsters.

fil here 1-20

you all make me very proud. Just to open the door on my methods, when creating threats, I look at what the team is capable of doing on the high and low end of the spectrum. I will stat the critters at either weak, moderate, tough, or severely dificult to overcome numerically. I then tos in a crature type package... like outsider, aberration, elementla, whatever. provide appropirate su, sp, ex abilities to make them fun/interesting, and then decide what monster they will look like.

so a weak demon may be identical statistically to a moderate demon, but the mod demon has a higher dr and sr, with an extra at will sp ability. You;'ll get a feel for what these critters can do in time, but you'll get hit with a curve ball when something doesn't do what you expect. it will usually look different than the "typical" critter... you just don't know what to expect.

good example: Dhraksis's old team was fighting a "tough" glabrezu demon at level 21. the party tanks could hit it around roll 10-15 on a d20, the casters could overcome it's SR on a 13. it would take 10 "good" hits from the tanks to kill.. I gave it a tiny familiar with an at will heal spell item to use as a standard action once per round, and the glabrezu can use at will power word stun, dc set so the tanks would fail 50% of the time. this assured the tanks would have to hit the damn thing all day the famiiar would just reheal it, and the glab would stun one of them and work on the others. by the time one tank would recover from stun, the other would get shut down, and it could dedicate a round or two on the others with a standard demon spell packet or melee (if it can hit... about a 75 - 50% hit on the non-tnaks... tanks are effectively auto hit when stunned, about 50% when not). so the team was cat and mousing with it for a good 15 rounds, as it slowly worked down the softer team members. the tanks finally got some crits in after a good success avoiding stun. If they found the familiar, it would have been done much faster-- but it was hidden, and they weren't searching for a second enemy. If the familiar was attacked directly, the glab would have fled immediately to regroup and change tactics... so there was afast, moderate, and difficult succes available... aside from the diplomatic solution which was ignored by the team. Virtually EVERYTHING has a diplomatic defeat as well, worth the same xp. This gave the team 25% of what they needed to get to next level.

Remember that guy, Jared? I never told you about that familiar, did I?

I had bumped "the sunless citadel" up to epic levels... they went from 15th to 22nd level on that damn tower before they finally destroyed it by gating a bunch of genie into the large catacombs beneath and imploding it... undead beholders and all. They then moved on to elysium to track down some npc villains.

I learned a lot in that tower about pc tolerance levels of frustrating enemies.

good times.