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View Full Version : Fixing Racial HD and LA PEACH



Frog Dragon
2009-01-27, 10:31 AM
This is not complete and I am taking ideas, but I decided it's complete enough to be put here in the homebrew forum
So we all know that LA is balls. And Racial Hit Dice too. LA is class abilities without saves, BAB or HD and Racial HD is a class without any class abilites whatssoever. And a bad class at that! You end up paying double for what should be in one package. Unfortunately it's quite hard to find a quick fix that doesn't destroy things as some racial abilities are still quite powerful. However the loss of HD, Saves and BAB usually doesn't measure up to what you get unless you template abuse which can be done without gimping your base creature.
Now what to do with this?
My suggestion would be to have two choices in addition to being simply able to ditch your RHD in favour of class levels.
1. This may works for warrior classes. You merge RHD and LA with the minimum amount of RHD you must keep being your LA and you no longer have the LA. This means the Racial hit dice becomes a reasonable class when you merge abilities.
"But wait a second. LA only races aren't helped by this at all"
For this you could give them Racial hit dice according to their type and then perform the merge. Like a drow gets 2 humanoid HD and then has his/her LA merged with it

That sucks for casters. They lose too much CL.
2. Yes they do and that's why I think it could be reasonable to let you ditch RHD and Halve LA and be happy.

Now there's nothing concrete with these and I haven't done any serious rules research for this, but it looks reasonable to me.

Frog Dragon
2009-01-28, 12:20 PM
Comments? I am just wondering that am I blowing up the game into tiny little pieces or am I actually fixing something?

watsyurname529
2009-01-28, 07:36 PM
Well, I'm not exactly sure how your ideas work. The best thing I've found (along with many other people) is the LA buyoff rules in Unearthed Arcana [3.5]. It allows you to "buyoff" your LA at the cost of about a level's worth of XP. Then with the way XP distribution is supposed to work, or with a sensible DM, you'll catch up to your party members soon enough and you have a class level instead of LA.

You can go look at the DnD Wiki (check link in sig), for the LA buyoff rules. Also you can go look at the Monsters as Class Levels, which I also think are in UA. Other than that, I don't know of any good ways to get rid of LA or RHD.

Frog Dragon
2009-01-29, 12:55 AM
I'd be giving these chances. Either
Merge your LA and RHD with the minimum amount of RHD you must keep being your LA. Actual LA is gone and it is now at some levels compared to a class level. If you don't have RHD, but you do have LA. Take levels of the correspondng type and merge LA and RHD.

Or

Just Halve LA

Fiery Diamond
2009-01-29, 04:16 PM
What I do is use the LA Buyoff rules. AND delete racial HD. Yes, you heard me. Gimp the base creature's HD and skills. Playing classes other than the ones in the PHB is supposed to suck. Exception: Lycanthropes should probably use your racial HD and LA merger instead.

Frog Dragon
2009-01-30, 08:43 AM
Why is it supposed to suck. Why is it wrong to play an LA race. I did this to make it not suck. That's the entire point of this homebrew. To make playing the powerful-ish monsters a better option and keeping them inline with the other party members. I think the monstrous races should as a standard keep up to the PC:s. They are powerful creatures after all. It's still not superb. Most of the time PC classes will be more powerful than the LA HD merger, but not by a large margin anymore.

Baron Corm
2009-01-30, 03:36 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like Fiery thinks that racial HD don't increase ECL, therefore having them would be a good thing.

I think that a better way to fix RHD and LA would be to do it on a case by case basis. You can't just make a sweeping statement like "halve LA". Some races need slight beefing up in certain areas to fit their LA (drow) and some need slight toning down to fit a lower one (hobgoblin). And anything with +3 or higher remains mostly unplayable.

It seems to me like races were made without regard to the LA system, and then had LA applied to them. So you need to change both.

Frog Dragon
2009-01-30, 04:11 PM
I was thinking that it does not go lower than 1 except for special cases like thiefling which should just be blank no LA

Fiery Diamond
2009-01-30, 06:08 PM
No, I recognize that Racial HD increase the ECL - which is why I think racial HD (in most cases) should safely be eliminated. If you're playing a centaur, for example, go ahead and have +2 to you ECL from the LA for all the stat increases; but there is no reason that you should have more hit points, higher saves, BAB, etc. on the basis of being a centaur. Sp., Ex., and Su. abilities + Ability Score changes are the reasons for playing a "monster race" (ie., one other than the PHB races). Being tougher and more durable in terms of extra HD is unnecessary. If you're tougher and more durable, it should come from your Constitution changes.

Devils_Advocate
2009-01-30, 08:50 PM
Making a rakshasa a 7th-level character is crazy broken. Making it a tenth or eleventh level character might work.

Quick-'n'-Dirty Challenge Rating and Monsters as Characters Guidelines:

0. To start off with: Some monsters' listed CRs are, to put it bluntly, fake. A monster's real CR is the level that a standard party of four adventurers needs to be in order for a fight with that monster to consume about 20% of their expendable resources. If you want things to actually balance, you should replace monsters' listed CRs with their real CRs. This is especially true if you're going to convert a monster into a PC race using the below guidelines.

In order,

1. Giving a monster the elite array / a PC-level point buy / 4d6 drop lowest for stats and max HP for its first hit die increases its CR by about 1 if its stats weren't already based on the elite array or similar in addition to racial modifiers.
2. Equipping a monster using gear appropriate to a PC-classed NPC whose level equals its final CR generally raises its CR by 1, but maybe more depending on how much this increases its abilities. Note the "final": You need to decide whether a CR 8 monster most closely becomes CR 9 with level 9 gear, or CR 10 with level 10 gear, and so on.

A monster should be playable as a character of level equal to its CR, after applying step 2 above. Applying step 1 first is optional, unless required by the DM. A monster PC receives normal PC WBL appropriate to its level, just like the other PCs receive PC-level wealth instead of NPC-level wealth.

Fiery Diamond
2009-01-30, 10:37 PM
Where on earth did you get all that from?

Baron Corm
2009-01-30, 11:05 PM
No, I recognize that Racial HD increase the ECL - which is why I think racial HD (in most cases) should safely be eliminated. If you're playing a centaur, for example, go ahead and have +2 to you ECL from the LA for all the stat increases; but there is no reason that you should have more hit points, higher saves, BAB, etc. on the basis of being a centaur. Sp., Ex., and Su. abilities + Ability Score changes are the reasons for playing a "monster race" (ie., one other than the PHB races). Being tougher and more durable in terms of extra HD is unnecessary. If you're tougher and more durable, it should come from your Constitution changes.

It doesn't really make you tougher or more durable. You would have an equal amount of HD from your class. What it does is mimic the fact that every other grimlock has 2 HD. Having a different amount would make you no longer a grimlock. What the "grimlocks as characters" section essentially does is give you that exact grimlock monster stat block, then lets you add class levels to it.

Pie Guy
2009-01-30, 11:24 PM
My group just gets rid of LA, and once the rest of the party (read: Me, the only human) gets to that level, they start gaining experience as if they were level one. So, for the first few levels when the abilities matter, they can use them, and later the party gets to be the same level in roughly two fights.

Frog Dragon
2009-01-31, 11:54 AM
Making a rakshasa a 7th-level character is crazy broken. Making it a tenth or eleventh level character might work.
.
I agree. your basically a level 7 sorcerer with super stats. d8 hd better skills and nice SLA:s in addition to other stuff like DR and natural Armor. I hadn't looked at specific monsters when making this so I'm taking suggestions to balance this. The thing that spurred me to do this was the infamous Frost Giant Wizard

Wizard levels are nonassociated for a Frost Giant yet that kind of stuff is not taken into account in PC:s
So I make an ecl 20 frost giant wizard using PC character creation rules. Its a level 2 wizard.
Now lets try with the CR system. The wizard levels are nonassociated so they count as 1/2 CR for determining final CR. Okay to match ECL 20 it needs 22 wizard levels. So what we have learned here is that a frost giant with 22 levels in wizzy is equal to a frost giant with 2 levels in wizzy.'
Oh and just to note. The CR 20 frost giant wizard is way out of the league of an ECL 20 human wizard too.

Bull****. This is travesty. The big problem with ECL&CR is that the number counts just don't match. CR acknowledges the inherent weakness of monster classes. ECL doesn't. Then to mix the already pretty ****ed up mechanics we have creatures that somehow fits both molds (rakshasa) just to seal the deal that you can't try to fix it without creating brokenness:smallmad: The mechanics can't even be equally bad on all counts!

ECL and CR shouldn't be seperate mechanics at all. They're supposed to translate into each other when they don't. I have to think about this.

RS14
2009-01-31, 03:11 PM
I agree. your basically a level 7 sorcerer with super stats. d8 hd better skills and nice SLA:s in addition to other stuff like DR and natural Armor. I hadn't looked at specific monsters when making this so I'm taking suggestions to balance this. The thing that spurred me to do this was the infamous Frost Giant Wizard

Wizard levels are nonassociated for a Frost Giant yet that kind of stuff is not taken into account in PC:s
So I make an ecl 20 frost giant wizard using PC character creation rules. Its a level 2 wizard.
Now lets try with the CR system. The wizard levels are nonassociated so they count as 1/2 CR for determining final CR. Okay to match ECL 20 it needs 22 wizard levels. So what we have learned here is that a frost giant with 22 levels in wizzy is equal to a frost giant with 2 levels in wizzy.'
Oh and just to note. The CR 20 frost giant wizard is way out of the league of an ECL 20 human wizard too.

Bull****. This is travesty. The big problem with ECL&CR is that the number counts just don't match. CR acknowledges the inherent weakness of monster classes. ECL doesn't. Then to mix the already pretty ****ed up mechanics we have creatures that somehow fits both molds (rakshasa) just to seal the deal that you can't try to fix it without creating brokenness:smallmad: The mechanics can't even be equally bad on all counts!

ECL and CR shouldn't be seperate mechanics at all. They're supposed to translate into each other when they don't. I have to think about this.

Well yeah, CR are guidelines, rather than strict rules. Once that frost giant has 9 levels in wizard, it shouldn't advance as a Frost Giant, but as a wizard. So it would be CR13 at that point; each subsequent class level should increase its CR by about 1. Your Lvl 22 frost giant wizard should really be about CR26.

Edit: Apparently it is official that levels are non-associated until they equal its HD. So officially, a CR20 frost giant wizard should have 18 wizard levels.

Now, the ECL system is broken when it comes to casting, yeah.

To work properly, it absolutely needs to be adjudicated on a case by case basis. Otherwise you get Rakshasa cheese, or Unbodied cheese, or spellcasting doesn't work at all.

If any system can be constructed which mechanically converts monsters into playable characters, I think it should depend on CR. LA was created with specific expectations, and if we start throwing those expectations out, we can't expect LA to work in a sensible way.

Not that I know how to do it.

Frog Dragon
2009-01-31, 03:21 PM
Looks like if I want to fix this one I will have to assign level equivalencies to each and every creature and if you play that creature your progression continues straight from your level equivalency. Dumping CR system in it's entirety. The Level Equivalency would be the CR and your ECL would be Level Equivalency + Class levels. I think I'll try to do it. I might be posting some massivity here sometime in the future Oh and btw even if i missed the Frost Giant CR it still is quite horrible. Only it gets a few more wiz levels than I calculated it's still way out the league of similar ECL Frost Giant Wizard. Point still stands.