Pathfinder Level Adjustment Rules.

[Mr. Zolrane]

Ooookay, so I'm looking at this business here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monsters-as-pcs), and as best I can tell, the only race it gives a specific level adjustment for is the tiefling, but many of them clearly should have one. The PF drow, if I read it properly, isn't quite as good as the 3.5 drow, but I think a LA is still in order, (if for nothing else but the SR). Am I not looking at this correctly, or are the PF LA rules really as fast and loose as that? Can someone help me out, here?

[SamBurke]

Hm. I have no idea what the LA rules are either...

The drow are DUMBED DOWN from 3.5? Dude... They're pretty awesome as races go, so that surprises me. Although, it's mostly the noble drow who are over-powered.

I'm interested to hear from others what the rules are, then.

[subject42]

The Pathfinder level adjustment rules are pretty poorly defined. It might not be perfectly correct, but here's what we do:

1. Pick a monster. The CR of the monster is the 3.5 equivalent of your level adjustment.

2. Get stats. By default, you should probably use the ability scores from the stat block, but we've been assuming that you subtract 10 or 11 from each stated score to get your racial stat adjustments. It's kind of an estimate.

3. Raid the feats block. Those are racial bonus feats.

4. Write down any racial abilities that you get.

5. At 3rd, 6th, 9th, etc levels, you get an extra level, until you've received extra levels equal to half of your "level adjustment". We've been rounding down (ie, granting an extra level) for odd CRs, according to convention that's used almost everywhere else in D&D.



All that said, the rules don't work terribly well. Pixies and half-dragon trolls, in particular, make things into a bit of a mess.

[FMArthur]

As it was explained to me IRL (this may not be correct, since I haven't ever seen this in text), you use the CR as the full ECL of the monster, and not a level adjustment.

The idea might be based on the concept that a normal character with class levels has a CR equal to its level, according to WotC's description of Challenge Rating. So using that idea as a base, they extrapolate that a monster of a certain CR could be taken as-is and played from there as if it were a character of a level equal to its CR - so while PF doesn't use LA, you could think of it in terms of 3.5 level adjustment by subtracting its HD from its CR to get the LA.

The horrible flaw in this is that it's based on the assumption that a challenge appropriate for a four-man party is supposed to be equal to one member of that party, which just isn't the case for so many monsters. LA barely worked, but this works even less.

[Mr. Zolrane]

Hm. I have no idea what the LA rules are either...

The drow are DUMBED DOWN from 3.5? Dude... They're pretty awesome as races go, so that surprises me. Although, it's mostly the noble drow who are over-powered.

I'm interested to hear from others what the rules are, then.

Yeah, the only thing the PF Drow loses is the Int bonus and 5 points of SR, but it's still down from the 3.5 version.



The idea might be based on the concept that a normal character with class levels has a CR equal to its level, according to WotC's description of Challenge Rating.

Yeah, I never did get that. How exactly is 1 Level 5 Fighter a decent challenge of 4 level 5 Fighters with similar gear and optimization?

[Divide by Zero]

Yeah, the only thing the PF Drow loses is the Int bonus and 5 points of SR, but it's still down from the 3.5 version.



Yeah, I never did get that. How exactly is 1 Level 5 Fighter a decent challenge of 4 level 5 Fighters with similar gear and optimization?

It follows from the CR guidelines. Doubling the number of opponents adds 2 to the CR, and an opposing four-man party should equal CR+4.

All that shows is that CR is horribly borked.

[jmelesky]

The idea might be based on the concept that a normal character with class levels has a CR equal to its level, according to WotC's description of Challenge Rating.

In PF, it's modified: CR is PC level - 1. If they have NPC classes instead of PC, it's level - 2.

That doesn't solve the problem, but it's slightly closer to reasonable.

[Mr. Zolrane]

Well, I suppose you could always do what my DM does and just you know, intelligently figure out what a group can handle, rather than trying to get it down to an equation: as someone else said, CR is borked.

[Taelas]

Yeah, I never did get that. How exactly is 1 Level 5 Fighter a decent challenge of 4 level 5 Fighters with similar gear and optimization?

1 equal CR creature isn't intended as a "challenge" for a 4-man party -- you are expected to win.

[grarrrg]

Ooookay, so I'm looking at this business here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monsters-as-pcs), and as best I can tell, the only race it gives a specific level adjustment for is the tiefling, but many of them clearly should have one. The PF drow, if I read it properly, isn't quite as good as the 3.5 drow, but I think a LA is still in order, (if for nothing else but the SR). Am I not looking at this correctly, or are the PF LA rules really as fast and loose as that? Can someone help me out, here?

They are fairly loose, this is probably because they OVERcompensated to fix the borken LA/CR rules of 3.5.
Look at the paragraphs at the top of the page you linked to.
It explains how (lack of) LA works in PF.

For starters, it warns:

Monsters are not designed with the rules for players in mind, and as such can be very unbalancing if not handled carefully.
And

GMs should carefully consider any monster PCs in their groups. Some creatures are simply not suitable for play as PCs...

Basically it says it's up to the GM to allow a monster as a PC.

Then it explains how to do handle its CR, if allowed as a PC:

Treat the monster's CR as class levels when determining the monster PC's overall levels. For example, in a group of 6th-level characters, a minotaur (CR 4) would possess 2 levels of a core class, such as barbarian.

Note that in a mixed group, the value of racial Hit Dice and abilities diminish as a character gains levels. It is recommended that for every 3 levels gained by the group, the monster character should gain an extra level, received halfway between the 2nd and 3rd levels. Repeat this process a number of times equal to half the monster's CR, rounded down.

So "starting LA" is equal to CR, and "LA buyoff" is in effect until CR has been reduced by half.

Let's use a CR 5 for an example.
Say the game starts at ECL 6. You would have the base stats, plus 1 class level. If you played until ECL 20, you would end at CR 3 plus 17 class levels.

[Doug Lampert]

1 equal CR creature isn't intended as a "challenge" for a 4-man party -- you are expected to win.

Well it is intended as a "Challenge" (where Challenge is a game-mechanical term with a definition given in the rulebooks).

The problem is that that rulebook definition amounts to "speed bump and resource sink", which many people don't think of as "challenging".

But if challenging means it has a real chance to kill you then you die. Seriously, if you got all your XP while going from level 1 to 20 from equal opponents you'd need to overcome more than 250 of these suckers, it's probably a good idea that most encounters are "easy" or almost all PCs would be "dead".

DougL

[Mr. Zolrane]

Well it is intended as a "Challenge" (where Challenge is a game-mechanical term with a definition given in the rulebooks).

The problem is that that rulebook definition amounts to "speed bump and resource sink", which many people don't think of as "challenging".

But if challenging means it has a real chance to kill you then you die. Seriously, if you got all your XP while going from level 1 to 20 from equal opponents you'd need to overcome more than 250 of these suckers, it's probably a good idea that most encounters are "easy" or almost all PCs would be "dead".

DougL

Fair point. I've always found that a good fix is to simply have most non-trivial encounters be about something other than killing things... or at least something other than just killing things.

[IthroZada]

As it was explained to me IRL (this may not be correct, since I haven't ever seen this in text), you use the CR as the full ECL of the monster, and not a level adjustment.


That doesn't seem right. A troll in Pathfinder has 6 HD, and is a CR 5. If you extrapolated your LA from that, you'd get -1 LA on the Troll.


The way that I understood the CR system, is that an appropriate CR creature for a 4 man party, should use 1/4 of the party's resources to defeat it. Resulting in 3-4 challenges a day. It's a war of attrition against the PCs.

[Rixx]

I think the Pathfinder monster rules are mostly for playing the kinds of monsters who don't have a huge load of special abilities - like minotaurs, gnolls, lizardfolk, dark creepers, and what have you - whose abilities will not necessarily remain useful as you gain levels. It is certainly not designed to allow you to play as a dragon, or a gibbering mouther bard, or what have you.

The biggest problem is probably that monsters get abilities that are far more useful to PCs than they are to monsters, and they get them far earlier than PCs do - I.E. a hound archon's Greater Teleport at will at level 4 would be a nightmare to deal with, but if it's a hound archon with 12 levels in paladin in a party that includes a level 17 wizard, Greater Teleport at will becomes less of a huge deal.