Zovc
2010-06-16, 02:00 PM
Personally, I like having options in the form of monstrous races and/or templates. The way that RHD and Level Adjustsments were handled in 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons, however, makes these almost useless to casters, especially if they cost more than one level.
There are a few quick and dirty solutions that can be deployed on a case-by-case basis, such as granting casting progression to classes, or perhaps giving a player a bonus feat in place of a lost class level. Perhaps this race's RHD can advance sneak attack progression? I'm not saying these are the best ways to combat the issue, but things like this can be done to catch up monstrous characters.
One downfall (well, I suppose that depends on how you look at it) of E6 (or E"X") is that there is a finite amount of levels that you can take. Even if (especially if?) you redesign classes to fit into this sort of system, monstrous characters get even more hosed. As an example, it's impossible for a Tiefling to get their "capstone ability", even if they don't multiclass.
Can you think of a solution for this issue?
Racial Hit Dice progression (broken up into its own 'class') might be the best solution, requiring you to take levels in it at certain levels (say, every odd level for a +3 LA race) could be an interesting solution, but that's really just twisting monster classes into something closer to racial substitution levels. Of course, if you do it like this, you can allow (certain ones of) your monstrous classes to progress spellcasting, which does fix one of their issues.
Perhaps, to solve the "no capstones for you" issue, you could make an 8th level for every 'monstrous' race?
There are a few quick and dirty solutions that can be deployed on a case-by-case basis, such as granting casting progression to classes, or perhaps giving a player a bonus feat in place of a lost class level. Perhaps this race's RHD can advance sneak attack progression? I'm not saying these are the best ways to combat the issue, but things like this can be done to catch up monstrous characters.
One downfall (well, I suppose that depends on how you look at it) of E6 (or E"X") is that there is a finite amount of levels that you can take. Even if (especially if?) you redesign classes to fit into this sort of system, monstrous characters get even more hosed. As an example, it's impossible for a Tiefling to get their "capstone ability", even if they don't multiclass.
Can you think of a solution for this issue?
Racial Hit Dice progression (broken up into its own 'class') might be the best solution, requiring you to take levels in it at certain levels (say, every odd level for a +3 LA race) could be an interesting solution, but that's really just twisting monster classes into something closer to racial substitution levels. Of course, if you do it like this, you can allow (certain ones of) your monstrous classes to progress spellcasting, which does fix one of their issues.
Perhaps, to solve the "no capstones for you" issue, you could make an 8th level for every 'monstrous' race?