High LA races: what would make them tolerable

[Mystify]

The general consensus is that LA +1 is easily workable, +2 is tolerable, and +3 or higher is generally a very bad idea. The LA is meant to offset the inherant advantages of the race, but if the high LA makes the character unplayable, then its obviously not working right. Instead of balancing the race, it simply gimps it horribly. So I ask the question: What adjustment to LA would make it balanced, so you could play a +8 LA race and not shoot yourself in the foot, nor be overpowered? Assume martial classes, as casters are too intrinsically dependant on level.

Would giving health(if not actual HD) from LA help? Grant racial hit dice without the BaB, saves, or feats associated with them? This would fix high LA character's being made of tissue paper, which always seemed to be the big reason high LAs where unplayable.

Advancing BaB would be overpowered. Part of the LA is offsetting the accuracy gained by the stats. If you get a +8 str from a +4LA race, your accuracy stays the same, your damage improves, and the cost is slowed iterative attack progression. Coupled with the other benefits a +4 LA race grants, I don't think granting BaB would be balanced

Advancing saves seems fairly minor. Even a LA 4 is only down 2 on their primary saves, and the stat boosts are likely to offset it. Thats only an extra 10% chance to fail any given save. It hurts a bit, but hardly makes a character unplayable.

So, do people think I am right? If you take out the health sacrifice from LA, is the tradeoff of class features, feats, and BaB worthwhile compared to the advantages of a LA race?

[subject42]

The best fix I've seen for this are the savage progressions, which turn racial qualities into character levels.

[Mystify]

The best fix I've seen for this are the savage progressions, which turn racial qualities into character levels.

I thought savage progressions where just a way to take the LA over time so you don't have to start at a high level to take it? Or am I thinking of something else?

[subject42]

I thought savage progressions where just a way to take the LA over time so you don't have to start at a high level to take it? Or am I thinking of something else?

Sorry, I was thinking of monster classes (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20041001a&page=3), which are a little different from savage progressions.

[Amnestic]

Sorry, I was thinking of monster classes (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20041001a&page=3), which are a little different from savage progressions.

They are? How so? :smallconfused:

[classy one]

You could use LA buyback. The thing about LA is that it really is a balance mechanic rather than a gameplay issue.

All good templates/races with LA usually have things that scale with HD which can make it easier to stomach as well.

[Mystify]

Monster classes always looked like a bad deal to me. You still end up with the LA, since they have partial HD advancement, but you are taking up more levels to get it, and hence mroe sacrifice from your class levels. It does ease out the health loss, but that is by forcing you to have a distribution of HD and LA. I'd have to compare a monster progression to playing the monster to say for sure though, but the only advantage I see is starting play at a lower level.

[Mystic Muse]

Personally, I prefer monster classes like the homebrew ones on the forum that are actual classes in addition to being races. They aren't like the WOTC ones. You don't get LA, you don't technically get RHD, and you usually don't get anything broken. It depends on who the class was made by. Plus, past first level, you can multiclass out at any time if you please, and you get something to look forward to each level if you don't feel like multiclassing.

I've got a silver dragon class in my signature as an example. I wouldn't say it's quite finished yet though.

[Kobold-Bard]

There's always the GitP Monster classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192151). The project started as a result of LA & Savage progesssions being made of fail & most classes turned out pretty well.

The thread got locked because the way it was run wasn't democratic enough for the mods liking, but there's a new thread somewhere, don't know how far they got with a new system though.

Edit: Damn you Kyuubi. Damn your Swordsaging hide to Hades.

[Mystify]

You could use LA buyback. The thing about LA is that it really is a balance mechanic rather than a gameplay issue.

All good templates/races with LA usually have things that scale with HD which can make it easier to stomach as well.

LA buyback is mostly worthless for more than 3 LA.

And it is a balance mechanic. You should end up with similar capacity between a fighter 5 and a fighter 1 LA 4 race (or whatever an appropriate class is for that race). In practice, the fighter 1 LA 4 is madeof tissue paper and is nearly unplayable. The rulebooks(I forget which one specifically states this) say that having more LA than HD is very hard to play, and even when its equal, you are at half health compared to everyone else. With high LAs, this point is at a very high level.

Take vampire for example. Huge list of really cool abilities. +8La, and is nearly unplayable The only reason they are is that they are nearly impossible for monsters to permamently kill, so dying every battle isn't disasterous. if they had another 8d12 health, then they could be functional.

[Mystic Muse]

Edit: Damn you Kyuubi. Damn your Swordsaging hide to Hades.

*Evil laugh* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb8fWUUXeKM)

Seriously, most of the classes made by forumites are pretty good. I suggest avoiding the ones by Oslecamo though since they tend to have problems. The ones by Hyudra and Gorgondantess are pretty great though. I'll link the thread once I can, but I have to get going right now. Somebody else might be able to link it in the meantime.

[Mystify]

Personally, I prefer monster classes like the homebrew ones on the forum that are actual classes in addition to being races. They aren't like the WOTC ones. You don't get LA, you don't technically get RHD, and you usually don't get anything broken. It depends on who the class was made by. Plus, past first level, you can multiclass out at any time if you please, and you get something to look forward to each level if you don't feel like multiclassing.

I've got a silver dragon class in my signature as an example. I wouldn't say it's quite finished yet though.

Stuff like that sounds cool, but I am looking for an easy fix to make high LAs playable. I don't want to have to design a new clas, or hope that someone already did, just becaus someone wants to play a half dragon vampire. If a player wants to play a half dragon vampire, I think they should be able to, even it is +11 LA. Losing 11 HD of health makes you virtually unplayable. With it, your awesome list of abilities can make up for the lack of class features.

[subject42]

Personally, I prefer monster classes like the homebrew ones on the forum that are actual classes in addition to being races.

The better homebrew GitP ones are definitely better than the WotC ones, but nowadays that's kind of a given.

[Kobold-Bard]

Stuff like that sounds cool, but I am looking for an easy fix to make high LAs playable. I don't want to have to design a new clas, or hope that someone already did, just becaus someone wants to play a half dragon vampire. If a player wants to play a half dragon vampire, I think they should be able to, even it is +11 LA. Losing 11 HD of health makes you virtually unplayable. With it, your awesome list of abilities can make up for the lack of class features.

Half-Dragon (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8159828&postcount=257) Vampire (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8056982&postcount=173). Sorted.

[Mystic Muse]

Stuff like that sounds cool, but I am looking for an easy fix to make high LAs playable.

There's probably an easy fix, but easy fixes are prone to problems.

[FMArthur]

One quick and dirty fix I worked out but never implemented was giving bonus hit points = LA * (Con + 3), and abilities used on you (but not by you) consider your HD to be your ECL.

But that doesn't solve all the problems, and there really is no rule you can make that satisfies every monster-as-a-character need. The best fix is to use case-by-case homebrew monster classes as seen on the forums here.

[Tengu_temp]

They'd be more tolerable if they stopped picking their noses during meals and farting in public. Some people think that just because they have LA they can do whatever they want.

[Mystify]

One quick and dirty fix I worked out but never implemented was giving bonus hit points = LA * (Con + 3), and abilities used on you (but not by you) consider your HD to be your ECL.

But that doesn't solve all the problems, and there really is no rule you can make that satisfies every monster-as-a-character need. The best fix is to use case-by-case homebrew monster classes as seen on the forums here.

Thats essentially what I propsed, only with a slightly sub par d6 HD instead of racial HD. Counting as extra HD vs attacks is a good thought.
Health is the major drawback. I ran a party of vampires one. They were functional in melee between their increased str,NA, DR, and fast healing( at least agaisnt groups of weaker enemies.), but I could wipe the entire party out with a single fireball. I think being 8 levels behind in class progressions is a significant tradeoff.


Half-Dragon (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8159828&postcount=257) Vampire (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8056982&postcount=173). Sorted.

That was just an arbitrary example. How about an half-elemental Armand? Astral stalker? Insectoid Nycter? Phoelarch? I doubt I'll find anything for the more obscure races.

[FMArthur]

A lot of LA races quite simply do not have RHD attached to them. You can do it by creature type, but it's not a quick fix anymore when you have to look up charts for it. :smalltongue:

3 + Con mitigates the disadvantage without eliminating it or making it something that someone might seek to take advantage of.

[Divide by Zero]

3 + Con mitigates the disadvantage without eliminating it or making it something that someone might seek to take advantage of.

What about undead? Losing the Con bonus hurts even with a d12.

[FMArthur]

Man, eff undead. :smallsigh:

I said I never implemented this. That means it didn't get the opportunity to run into such snags. :smallwink:

[Mystify]

A lot of LA races quite simply do not have RHD attached to them. You can do it by creature type, but it's not a quick fix anymore when you have to look up charts for it. :smalltongue:

3 + Con mitigates the disadvantage without eliminating it or making it something that someone might seek to take advantage of.

Unless its a template, it has at least 1 racial HD. Looking up the racial HD for an arbitrary type isn't hard or time consuming, and is certainly a lot faster than making a new class. I know the most common ones by memory anyways. 3+con is weaker in most cases, and really hurts undead. A vampite is only getting 24 hp, as oppsed to an expected 52. And trust me, they need it. It also makes type a bit more relevant. I always viewed one advantage of templates chainging your type to be a (normally) larger hit dice, which doesn't matter without RHD. This allows that to be relevant, however slightly.

[FMArthur]

Unless its a template, it has at least 1 racial HD. Looking up the racial HD for an arbitrary type isn't hard or time consuming, and is certainly a lot faster than making a new class. I know the most common ones by memory anyways. 3+con is weaker in most cases, and really hurts undead. A vampite is only getting 24 hp, as oppsed to an expected 52. And trust me, they need it. It also makes type a bit more relevant. I always viewed one advantage of templates chainging your type to be a (normally) larger hit dice, which doesn't matter without RHD. This allows that to be relevant, however slightly.

Uh... what? Level Adjustment races without RHD are everywhere. Drow, duergar, half-giants, all the planetouched things from faerun, catfolk, half-giants, goliaths... you get the idea.

Anyway just doing it by each creature type's HD probably works out for the best, I think you're right about that.

[Divide by Zero]

Uh... what? Level Adjustment races without RHD are everywhere. Drow, duergar, half-giants, all the planetouched things from faerun, catfolk, half-giants, goliaths... you get the idea.

Well, technically those all have one racial HD. But the examples (and probably all relevant NPCs in a given world) all have class level(s) instead, so you never see it.

[nyarlathotep]

I found most high la high racial hit die creatures balanced if you just eliminate the level adjustment and just have them take the racial hitdice, the biggest exception being creatures that get casting which really need both LA and racial hitdice.

[FMArthur]

I found most high la high racial hit die creatures balanced if you just eliminate the level adjustment and just have them take the racial hitdice, the biggest exception being creatures that get casting which really need both LA and racial hitdice.

This is a common fix but as you note, there needs to be such an extensive list of exceptions that IMO you're better off just eyeballing whatever a player approaches you to play as.

[charcoalninja]

One thing I've noticed with this sort of issue is that the LAs are almost universally punishing and out of line in all of the published material. The LAs are usually okay on LA +2 races or lower but once you go beyond that the system just doesn't work and the LAs are far, far too high. And racial HD mess things up huge. For example:

Minotaur = LA+2 but with 6 racial HD. So the minotaur loses 8 effective levels compared to a normal character. I don't think its much of a challenge to show that a Minotaur barb12 <<< human barb 20, or even half-orc barb 20. Racial HD are just that bad.

Illithid is another example: LA+7, favoured class Wizard, 8 racial HD. Sure you get spell resistance and some nice spell like abilities, but by lvl 20 you're what: Illithid 8/ wizard 5. those level 3 spells sure are putting you on par with your human timestop + gate buddies... This is made even more insulting by the fact that the so called ECL 15 mind flayer has a CR of 8 when he's a monster... how does THAT make sense? Not to mention the fact that the SLAs are useless even at lvl 15 when you can first play a full flayer due to having a CL of 8 vs. CR15 monsters, you're made of cardboard but hey at least your SR is decent (25+class level is pretty sick). Somehow a good stat build and PC wealth turns a CR8 monster into a CR 15 one... go figure.

Basically I prefer to ignore racial HD entirely and halve the LAs. All racial HD are replaced with class levels and they're inserted into the party at an appropriate level, or from the get go with an exp penalty depending on the group. Some groups can handle having someone start out a lot stronger but it evening out at the end, but some players would abuse this.

I don't see a problem with a lvl 1 mind flayer truckin around with wizard HP and all his spell like abilities. Wizards are using colour spray et all to take out half of most encounters anyway, so what difference does it make if its done with mindblasts and brain eating instead? The guy still goes down in a full attack from a pair of housecats anyway.

By the book, moster LAs and racial HD are garbage and make universally weaksauce characters (unless you get into some nutty templates) in my experience and should be taken as very loose guidelines.

Another thing I like to do is take the monster as written with an ECL = its CR. After all an NPC of the PCs level is supposedly the same CR as the PC's level anyway so why should monsters be any different?

[Mystify]

Because there is a big difference in what makes a character challenging in 1 encounter and what makes a player very powerful across a campaign. Take vampire as an example with a huge disparity. +2 cr, +8 LA. Their huge number of abilities and immunities are very potent in the hands of a player. On a NPC, they never get a chance to use the vast majority of them. And their resistance to death; a NPC dying and being able to recover doesn't change the challenge of that encounter (though it can have interesting applications for a campaign, that has nothing to do with CR). On a player, that is a really, really powerful ability. Same thing with fast healing. On a monster, it is a few extra HP in battle. On a player, it means no expenditure of heal spells outside of battle. Same with DR/silver. Agaisnt players, that is kinda useful, but competent parties carry silver, and its not a big deal. How many monsters deal silver damage? practically none, that DR is going to work the vast majority of the time.

CR and LA differences are fully justified. Monstous HD counting equal to a level is not balanced; after all, many creature types get 3-4 HD for each CR increase. A player gets 1. A monsterous hid dice does nto confer class benefits. So that part of the system is out of whack. LA doesn't work well in large doses. But do not think that CR and LA should be equal.

[charcoalninja]

That is a very good point about the campaign spanning impact of certain abilities. Especially vampire with its access to creating spawn.

Since I tend to look at these things in the realm of high level play though (since you're forced to in most cases due to the RHD + LA amounts) I still don't feel they bridge the gap in most cases due to the sheer power of high level PCs.

A high level adventuring party already has scores of near free Cure wands, or other effects they can use to heal up without spending magic, an amulet of the planes and going to the Positive energy plane, etc.

At low to mid levels your point is very valid and one I hadn't considered, but I still feel that their powers are overrated. Vampire is LA +8 and I would argue that no vampire PC is remotely on par with a normal PC at that level of LA. The mechanics of the game simply do not support it.

A vampire wizard 12 vs a wizard 20? there's no comparison, the vampire by all rights is easier to kill than the wizard 20 due to the lack of Clone, astral projection and other potent magic available to such high level PCs. Actually the more I look at vampire the less impressive it is. A vampire fighter 2 vs. a human fighter 10? The vampire's dusted in a round ala Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fast healing/DR or no. There is some potential there for annoyence and if they use their spawn ability to the fullest they can probably win, but in a straight up brawl or dungeon crawl they're not holding a candle IMO. the loss of HP is just too damning.

Not to mention they can't do complicated/hard skill checks or pass an appropriate leveled saving throw. The vampire cleric 2 fails his reflex save against the NPC sorcerer 10's fireball and has his 24hp blown away by a 10d6 fireball in the first round... or they're fighting a CR9 earth elemental and its 2 slams hit the guy for 2d10+10 each, meaning he could escape with nary a scratch after his DR or die almost immediately (and that's only if he has max HP).

I can almost see it being alright at low levels with such a steep LA, but at high level they just don't scale and become far too punishing. I feel much more comfortable with vampire at LA+4 than 8 myself. Vampire wizard 16 vs. wizard 20 is now a much closer brawl. Vampy goodness vs. 9th level magic. Or vampy goodness vs. +4 bab, 4HD, endcap/prestige class abilities, yadda yadda on the melee types...

[Mystify]

As I've mentioned, I ran a group of vampires. If it wasn't for their very low health, they would have functioned extremely well. Their prone-ness to being dusted is purely becuase they are missing 8 levels of HD.

High level characters are hit point sponges. A cure light wounds wand is the cheapest source of healing without mucking around with really odd things, and they only do about 275hp each. for 750 gp. You can easily burn through a couple of those after an encoutner at high levels, which over the course of 13 encounters per level is 20kgp per level. That is a really high estimate, but fast healing does have value.

LAs value does decrease over time. That is the premise behind the buyoff rules. However, the buyoff rules do not really work for reducing high LAs. When part of your LA is becasue of spell liek abilities at a lower level than mages can work with, it is no longer worthy of LA. The sytem ideally would account for that, but it doesn't.

Try comparing a fighter 10 to a vampire 2 if the vampire has health from the LA. Much more favorable comparison. Fighter will win in direct physical capacity, but vampire has a whole host of abilities. DR 10 adds significantly to your survivabilty. at level 10, against a single hit it is effectively +2 con. vampire acts like a fighter with 1 con due to their d12s, so against a single hit, they have the sruvivabilty of a fighter with 14 con. This only increases with hte number of attacks you take. The NA bonus is in additon to anything the fighter would be doing, so you have more AC. You can be level draining the enemy, and hence throwing temp hp in the enemies face, as well as fast healing some. Give them the hp to survive the initial hits, and they aren't horrible. You are also immune to most status effects, drains, abilty damage, death effects, crits, sneak attacks, etc. Which counts for a lot. You have DR 10, and they can't crit around it. It might not satisfy a power gamer, but it would be playable.

[charcoalninja]

I agree that a lot of the LA, in fact most of the issues with LA would be mitigated or often solved if the LA came with some sort of HP bonus. But by virtue of saying the LAs need additional hp in order to even out, that says to me that they aren't appropriate LAs. So I feel that reducing the LAs is the most elegant solution to the problem, since you're not only effectively granting additional health to the LA using player, but also adding some interesting build options and in the case of spellcasting monster PCs, making them viable at all.

The vampire is an interesting case because it doesn't have any racial HD, so you have a heavy LA on its own, which is much more balanced than the poor saps stuck taking racial HD. Poor poor mind flayer...

You've got some great points, especially about the value of fast healing over the course of a campaign. provided you can survive the bursts to use it.

[PersonMan]

I've come up with a general rule of thumb/method for dealing with LA/RHD. Basically, you reduce the RHD of the creature to its CR(don't increase it if it's less, though) and reduce LA by 1/3, rounding up(so reduce LA +8 to LA +5). It doesn't quite solve the problem, but it tends to work as a starting point.

Another thing I did/sometimes do is basically turn LA into Commoner levels, with 3/4 of the LA counting as Hit Dice.

Some examples:

Athach: Base RHD is 14, with +5 LA. So you play them at ECL 20, but are something like CR 9+tons of cash.

With this system, your RHD is 8 and you have +3 LA(giving you a minor BAB/saves bonus an 1 effective hit die), playing at ECL 12.

Bearded Devil: Base RHD is 6, with +6 LA. You can start playing one at ECL 13, but are something like CR 6+wealth.

RHD is reduced by one, and the LA by 2. You start playing at ECL 10, with 1 effective hit die from your LA, so you're only one hit die behind.

It isn't perfect, but it seems to work pretty well with everything I've taken a glance at with it.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

One quick fix I've seen used to relatively good effect is to cut the LA in half and convert all LA to RHD. That puts vampires at 4 RHD, rakshasas at 10 RHD, and so forth. It makes them somewhat more survivable and reduces the ridiculous LA inflation WotC instituted to dissuade people from playing monster races, while still charging higher-ECL monsters for their abilities.

[Mystify]

The problem with LA is that it is balancing a smattering of abilities with gaining NOTHING. Even things that any character is expected to have, even if they are a commoner, such as health. The tradeoff should be between having racial skills and class skills. Let LA function like racial hit dice: give feats for HD, health, BaB, etc, and let the race give their abilities. These abilities need to function usefully at any level; stat boots remain relevant and useful throughout, spell-like abilites cease to be noteworthy after casters can do the same thing, etc. By quantifying how much these things are actually worth, you can create a scaling LA that keeps the baseline of the character at the properl level, and reduces penalties that don't matter anymore away. Some races have no significant benefit at level 20, others are still giving potent abilities. The former would have no adjustment at 20, the latter would have some. However, this would require a much better defined scale of balance than D&D has. They can't even balance classes against each other, much less mosntrous abilities.

[charcoalninja]

The problem with LA is that it is balancing a smattering of abilities with gaining NOTHING. Even things that any character is expected to have, even if they are a commoner, such as health. The tradeoff should be between having racial skills and class skills. Let LA function like racial hit dice: give feats for HD, health, BaB, etc, and let the race give their abilities. These abilities need to function usefully at any level; stat boots remain relevant and useful throughout, spell-like abilites cease to be noteworthy after casters can do the same thing, etc. By quantifying how much these things are actually worth, you can create a scaling LA that keeps the baseline of the character at the properl level, and reduces penalties that don't matter anymore away. Some races have no significant benefit at level 20, others are still giving potent abilities. The former would have no adjustment at 20, the latter would have some. However, this would require a much better defined scale of balance than D&D has. They can't even balance classes against each other, much less mosntrous abilities.

Too True. And thusly quoted for truth. And written about it at great length because apparently there is a limit on how short a post can be.

[ericgrau]

Reducing LA by 1 until 5 HD helps some of the low level issues. If the group uses high powered classes then reducing LA across the board by some fraction might help. Giving an additional +2 to some stat may help the slightly underpowered races.

[Malimar]

LA buyback is mostly worthless for more than 3 LA.

Because it's effectively impossible to pay off more than 1 point of LA if your starting LA is higher than 3? Yes. So come up with a homebrew LA-buyoff system where you can buy off higher LAs, like this (http://luduscarcerum.blogspot.com/2011/04/level-adjustment-reduction.html) one (http://luduscarcerum.blogspot.com/2011/04/level-adjustment-reduction-2-hit-dice.html) (except try to do better than that, I'm sure it's filled with flaws).

Because of
When part of your LA is becasue of spell liek abilities at a lower level than mages can work with, it is no longer worthy of LA. The sytem ideally would account for that, but it doesn't.? That does put some LAs and LA buyoffs out of whack, and a homebrewed LA-buyoff system should explicitly take it into account. Mine, uh, doesn't.

Probably the first step in a really effective overhaul of the LA and LA-buyoff systems should start with recalculating every creature's LA from scratch, assigning two different kinds of LA: one for things that put you equal in general power to a character with X class levels, and one for individual abilities that are more powerful than a character with Y class levels could do. The former would get paid off in a manner resembling regular LA, and the latter would automatically go away once you hit Y class levels.

But that's getting into a lot of work and complexity.

[FMArthur]

Too True. And thusly quoted for truth. And written about it at great length because apparently there is a limit on how short a post can be.

You can write all your extra text in white to make a post appear smaller if you want.

[charcoalninja]

You can write all your extra text in white to make a post appear smaller if you want.

lol that made for quite the hearty chuckle.

[Kobold-Bard]

lol that made for quite the hearty chuckle.

Or put an emoticon in your post, they take up a lot of letters (expecially the little ones since they have small at the start).

[Tvtyrant]

Add your con modifier to health for each level lost to LA, so you get extra HP. For undead give them construct HP boosts for each LA.

[Mystify]

Add your con modifier to health for each level lost to LA, so you get extra HP. For undead give them construct HP boosts for each LA.
Unless you have a really high con, this isn't terribly helpful. And constructs get bonus hit points based purely on size, not hit dice. I had simulated HD for a reason.

[Darth Stabber]

Gestalt makes LA races more attractive. I would never play a pixie in normal D&D, if you get to take Pixie up one side and a class up the other, pixies are awesome.

pixie//rogue4, sneak attack all day.

Pixie//Cater, your mental stat buffs aren't +6int, +4wis, +4cha for nothing.

[Mystify]

Gestalt makes LA races more attractive. I would never play a pixie in normal D&D, if you get to take Pixie up one side and a class up the other, pixies are awesome.

pixie//rogue4, sneak attack all day.

Pixie//Cater, your mental stat buffs aren't +6int, +4wis, +4cha for nothing.

That depends on how you interprete LA working with gestalt. If its all on one side, it is highly abuseable, since you are only missing out on class skills, since your other side gives you everything else. No feat loss, no health loss, no BaB loss, etc. There are definitely cases where that is broken. Liches with no caster level loss.
If its on both sides, then it is doubley weak, and utterly unthinkable.
The saner method is to split the LA in half, and put half on each side. If its even, you are losing half the levels, if it is odd, one side has an extra class level.Still has some holes. but I think that is the sanest way to do it.

And a pixie rouge is ridicously good, even with the LA. I played one, it made the DM cry. The int bonus plus rouge skills means you can do everything worthwhile, the stat bonuses means you are just as good at it, if not better, than a normal rouge, and between dex adn free weapon focus, you are more accurate than a normal rouge. Plus you are small, but move fast with flight, and have good DR. This made her a very powerful character, even before you account for the utter borkeness of continual greater invis. Maybe the advantage fades at higher levels, but at mid levels they rock.

[Aricandor]

A quick and dirty thing I use when DMing is that LA is basically a class on its own; Commoner levels but worse still.
d4 HP (regardless of type, so this goes for undead too despite inconsistency), half BAB, all bad saves, 2 + Int skill points, no class skills of its own, no features. Or, if you prefer to think of it that way, the "level adjustment class features" are what things you get for the race/template.

It's obviously not perfect either (but at least it lets Practised Spellcaster work...), but it works out decent-ish. People still get some HD, saves and BAB to work with, but with most races/templates this still won't put them ahead of an average fully-class-leveled character.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

GOGO GROUPTHINK!

LA is not the problem with ECL

[PairO'Dice Lost]

LA is not the problem with ECL

True. It is, however, a problem with ECL, and if you're looking for a simple fix, LA is the easiest target.

[charcoalninja]

GOGO GROUPTHINK!

LA is not the problem with ECL

considering that ECL is your characters actual levels + a level adjustment, I fail to see how LA isn't the problem with ECL as its the only thing that separates an ECL using character from a non ECL using character.

[Mystify]

considering that ECL is your characters actual levels + a level adjustment, I fail to see how LA isn't the problem with ECL as its the only thing that separates an ECL using character from a non ECL using character.
There is also racial hit dice, but they are much easier to swallow than LA. Except for the fact that they generally come with LA...

[Eldariel]

Frankly, playing them off their CR is far closer than LA + ECL. Many creatures have abilities far inferior to a character with way less in terms of levels, since Racial HD tend to be bloated especially for many weaker creature types like Aberrations, Giants and Undead. Of course, since CR is borken beyond repair, it's not really useful; you get equally random results out of CR except they vary from "Sickeningly strong" to "Unplayable" instead of categorically falling between "Barely playable" and "Unplayable". Only sensible system would involve just establishing a base line (god knows 3.5 class system could use one too), calculating every single race's abilities comparatively by hand and going from there.

Because even at LA +0, nobody wants to play a 19 HD Giant when you could have actually functional character instead with those levels (Storm Giant LA is, of course, "-" to add insult to the injury; no playing those before Epic).


Honestly, the problem with monster play is that neither empty levels nor Racial HD is comparable to class levels so you have a game system trying to equalize two different currencies (then again, various class levels are of different value too which further messes things up). Base line would really help to get something useful started.

[Mystify]

Theory: The miscellaneous attribute adjustments and abilities of non-standard races or roughly equivalent to X levels of class features
Action: Give PCs playing that race X racial hit dice to form the base outline of progression, and use those levels to take the species abilities as a stand in for class features, paralleling multi-classing.
Problem: The racial hitdice listed is the hitdice for the monster to be a challenge at the desired level, and has nothing to do with how string it would be as a player. Hence, using it as a metric for player power is inherently flawed. LA is a overestimated. The amount of abilities to make up for missing HD is far more than is needed to fill in monstrous HD.
Solution: Determine value of abilities independently of the hit dice, and then assign that many racial hit dice to a player.
Problem: This ends up with the base race as a PC much weaker than a typical example of the species
Solution: While you are under HD for that species, you are considered a young specimen.

This does nothing to help convert existing races, but it is a much more solid outline than randomly factoring in its HD.

[Jack_Simth]

Well, if CR was done with a better eye, the approximation of "set ECL = CR" would work (Pathfinder does this). However, you have a few problems:
1) Certain abilities are far more useful for a PC than they are for an opponent. Fast Healing 1 doesn't make much difference for an opponent - at level 1, the two rounds the opponent is reasonably expected to last is.. 2 hp, about the damage a Wizard will do with a dagger. It'll come up once every five or ten sessions. At 10th, it'll matter even less than that. For players, however, it means no "wasting" resources on healing. A minute or two at level 1 and you're at full health again, and can continue on. Ten minutes at tenth. As near as I can tell, this type of thing is why the distinction between LA and CR in the first place.
2) Optimization levels. Monsters pulled from the monster manual are stock - they were put together by people who were mostly making critters to make critters. A player is very likely to go looking for things to pair it with to make it a better critter. A Half-Dragon is CR+2; how does a Half-Dragon human Fighter-8 stack up against a human Fighter-10? Better attack bonus, better damage, better AC, and an extra attack, but slightly lower HP, and lacking two feats. Not too bad of a trade off... until you start looking at charger builds which rely on not letting the opponent survive long enough to get a return blow. Combinatorial expansion can break the game, easy.
3) CR is borked. Way too many designers weren't using the same measuring stick for balance, and you have CR 9 critters that can spam Disjunction, and CR 9 critters that can be solo'd by 5th level characters that just get a *little* lucky.

[Mystify]

Well, if CR was done with a better eye, the approximation of "set ECL = CR" would work (Pathfinder does this). However, you have a few problems:
1) Certain abilities are far more useful for a PC than they are for an opponent. Fast Healing 1 doesn't make much difference for an opponent - at level 1, the two rounds the opponent is reasonably expected to last is.. 2 hp, about the damage a Wizard will do with a dagger. It'll come up once every five or ten sessions. At 10th, it'll matter even less than that. For players, however, it means no "wasting" resources on healing. A minute or two at level 1 and you're at full health again, and can continue on. Ten minutes at tenth. As near as I can tell, this type of thing is why the distinction between LA and CR in the first place.
2) Optimization levels. Monsters pulled from the monster manual are stock - they were put together by people who were mostly making critters to make critters. A player is very likely to go looking for things to pair it with to make it a better critter. A Half-Dragon is CR+2; how does a Half-Dragon human Fighter-8 stack up against a human Fighter-10? Better attack bonus, better damage, better AC, and an extra attack, but slightly lower HP, and lacking two feats. Not too bad of a trade off... until you start looking at charger builds which rely on not letting the opponent survive long enough to get a return blow. Combinatorial expansion can break the game, easy.
3) CR is borked. Way too many designers weren't using the same measuring stick for balance, and you have CR 9 critters that can spam Disjunction, and CR 9 critters that can be solo'd by 5th level characters that just get a *little* lucky.
I agree on all counts.

[charcoalninja]

I tend to just loathe racial HD because they're boring as hell. The designers missed the boat on monstrous characters. People don't want to "play a balor, or an efreet, or a troll, or a vampire."

They want to play a troll cleric, a balor bard jamming his way through the cosmos or an efreet wizard slayer devoted to defending his people from greedy wizard enslavement.

The racial HD and LAs make most of the fun of monstrous characters impossible to do outside of epic, and if you DO go into epic you're so punished and weak that you're reduced to a fine red mist 2 rounds into your first encounter. I'm looking at you my ECL 20 Illithid wizard 5! :D

Love all the suggestions in this thread though, nice little thinktank on solving the problem.

[Mystify]

I tend to just loathe racial HD because they're boring as hell. The designers missed the boat on monstrous characters. People don't want to "play a balor, or an efreet, or a troll, or a vampire."

They want to play a troll cleric, a balor bard jamming his way through the cosmos or an efreet wizard slayer devoted to defending his people from greedy wizard enslavement.

The racial HD and LAs make most of the fun of monstrous characters impossible to do outside of epic, and if you DO go into epic you're so punished and weak that you're reduced to a fine red mist 2 rounds into your first encounter. I'm looking at you my ECL 20 Illithid wizard 5! :D

Love all the suggestions in this thread though, nice little thinktank on solving the problem.
Racial hit dice or level adjustment is necessary for balance, WotC just overdid it. Or under did it in some cases.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I tend to just loathe racial HD because they're boring as hell. The designers missed the boat on monstrous characters. People don't want to "play a balor, or an efreet, or a troll, or a vampire."

They want to play a troll cleric, a balor bard jamming his way through the cosmos or an efreet wizard slayer devoted to defending his people from greedy wizard enslavement.

The racial HD and LAs make most of the fun of monstrous characters impossible to do outside of epic, and if you DO go into epic you're so punished and weak that you're reduced to a fine red mist 2 rounds into your first encounter. I'm looking at you my ECL 20 Illithid wizard 5! :D

Love all the suggestions in this thread though, nice little thinktank on solving the problem.

One suggestion I've heard (but not seen playtested, so take it with a grain of salt) is, when leveling up a creature with RHD, to replace 1 RHD with a level in the same class that was just advanced, up to some amount of the original RHD (let's say half for simplicity). The troll bard in your example would start out with 6 RHD and 1 level of bard. When he gained a level of bard, he'd also swap 1 RHD for a bard level, going from RHD 6/bard 1 to RHD 5/bard 3. After leveling up again, he'd go from RHD 5/bard 3 to RHD 4/bard 5, then to RHD 3/bard 7, where he'd stop because 3 RHD is the limit we set of half the original RHD. It's kind of like LA buyoff for RHD, though it's more gradual and doesn't completely eliminate the RHD.

[Darth Stabber]

My personal favorite fix is limited gestalt. Get the players together and have them tell you the race they want to play, then everyone gets gestalt upto the level of the highest race's ECL. Gestalt has a higher tolerance for these sorts of issues.

strange note - Bear Warrior, not as much fun on an ogre. Frenzied Berzerker on an Ogre is a crime against your party.

[Mystify]

Actually, some templates are more powerful than their LA. for example, built a feral half minatour mineral warrior lolth-touched goliath. LA of +5. But at level 6, they have about 1/2 the hp of a normal fighter, a much higher AC, DR 8, fast healing, signficiantly more damage per hit, more accuracy, several natural attacks, reach... it wasn't even a contest. After a couple levels, the hp skyrocketed ahead of a fighter as well. You could make any type of fighter out of it and be awesome at it, from uber-charger to chain tripper to grappler. giving it anything for those levels would be even more overpowerd.

So there is obviously more wrong with the LA system than just being too much of a pentalty.

[Devmaar]

Feral, Half-Minotaur and Mineral Warrior are all notoriously overpowered for their LA

[ericgrau]

Frankly, playing them off their CR is far closer than LA + ECL.
Thousands of gp in PC wealth and PC rolled/point buy ability scores instead of all 10's and 11's are not worth LA 0...

[The Cat Goddess]

Some thoughts...

In Unearthed Arcana, there's a thing called "Bloodlines"... which are basically LA (1, 2 & 3) spread over the course of 20 levels. Dividing up the bonuses gained from a race and spreading them out over individual "LA Levels" would help mitigate the costs.

There is a key benefit that Bloodline levels give, however, that could easily apply to LA.

A Bloodline level counts as a level for any level-based class abilities. Thus, if you're a (caster)-5 with 2 Devil Bloodline levels, then your Caster Level is 7. If you're a Cleric-3/Wizard-3 with 2 Devil Bloodline levels, then your Caster Level is 5 with both Cleric and Wizard.

Extrapolating from this... a Rogue-5 with 2 Devil Bloodline levels would have 4d6 Sneak Attack, because Sneak Attack specifically increases every two class levels. Further, Bloodline levels would count as full initiator levels for ToB classes.

Giving this to LA helps slightly mitigate the cost of LA... especially for multi-class characters and Gish-types.

Other benefits would be:
Max points in skills based on ECL, with LA levels counting as class levels for all classes.
Int-bonus skill points for each level of LA. One's first character level would always be a Class (or RHD) level and determine what your class & cross-class skills would be.
Con-bonus hit points for each level of LA. Maybe 1+Con-bonus.
LA counts towards when a character gets bonus feats & stat increases. An LA+3/Fighter-1 would already have 2 Feats, +1 to a Stat and 3 Fighter Bonus Feats (if you assume that Fighter Bonus Feats are a level-based ability).

An LA+3/Fighter-1/Rogue-2/Wizard-2 would have: d10+2d6+2d4+(con-bonus x11) hitpoints, 3 feats due to level, +1 to any Stat (twice), 3 Fighter Bonus Feats, 3d6 Backstab, CL-5 for Wizard Spells and a Wizard Bonus Feat... and whatever bonuses they got from their race.

Not too shabby...

(Edit: Forgot the Wizard Bonus Feat.)

[Mystify]

Some thoughts...

In Unearthed Arcana, there's a thing called "Bloodlines"... which are basically LA (1, 2 & 3) spread over the course of 20 levels. Dividing up the bonuses gained from a race and spreading them out over individual "LA Levels" would help mitigate the costs.

There is a key benefit that Bloodline levels give, however, that could easily apply to LA.

A Bloodline level counts as a level for any level-based class abilities. Thus, if you're a (caster)-5 with 2 Devil Bloodline levels, then your Caster Level is 7. If you're a Cleric-3/Wizard-3 with 2 Devil Bloodline levels, then your Caster Level is 5 with both Cleric and Wizard.

Extrapolating from this... a Rogue-5 with 2 Devil Bloodline levels would have 4d6 Sneak Attack, because Sneak Attack specifically increases every two class levels. Further, Bloodline levels would count as full initiator levels for ToB classes.

Giving this to LA helps slightly mitigate the cost of LA... especially for multi-class characters and Gish-types.

Other benefits would be:
Max points in skills based on ECL, with LA levels counting as class levels for all classes.
Int-bonus skill points for each level of LA. One's first character level would always be a Class (or RHD) level and determine what your class & cross-class skills would be.
Con-bonus hit points for each level of LA. Maybe 1+Con-bonus.
LA counts towards when a character gets bonus feats & stat increases. An LA+3/Fighter-1 would already have 2 Feats, +1 to a Stat and 3 Fighter Bonus Feats (if you assume that Fighter Bonus Feats are a level-based ability).

An LA+3/Fighter-1/Rogue-2/Wizard-2 would have: d10+2d6+2d4+(con-bonus x11) hitpoints, 3 feats due to level, +1 to any Stat (twice), 3 Fighter Bonus Feats, 3d6 Backstab, CL-5 for Wizard Spells and a Wizard Bonus Feat... and whatever bonuses they got from their race.

Not too shabby...

(Edit: Forgot the Wizard Bonus Feat.)

The main problem I see with that is being able to take a wide variety of classes, a huge LA, and get some serious gestalt-like power, only more so. If it gave the benefits of one class, it might be reasonable. Even then, you play an ogre, and still get fighter feats for the LA, for example, and you have pretty much no downside. No, I think class abilities are what the tradeoff should be, not the thing to restore.

[Your Nemesis]

People don't want to "play a balor, or an efreet, or a troll, or a vampire."

They want to play a troll cleric, a balor bard jamming his way through the cosmos or an efreet wizard slayer devoted to defending his people from greedy wizard enslavement.

The racial HD and LAs make most of the fun of monstrous characters impossible to do outside of epic, and if you DO go into epic you're so punished and weak that you're reduced to a fine red mist 2 rounds into your first encounter. I'm looking at you my ECL 20 Illithid wizard 5! :D

GOGOGO LEGEND!!!! No, seriously, take a look at it; due to the incredibly innovative track system, to play a, say "vampire cleric" you could just be a normal character who dropped one of their ability tracks for the vampire ability track: the same goes for demons, other undead, etc.

[Mystify]

GOGOGO LEGEND!!!! No, seriously, take a look at it; due to the incredibly innovative track system, to play a, say "vampire cleric" you could just be a normal character who dropped one of their ability tracks for the vampire ability track: the same goes for demons, other undead, etc.

I've been working on designing my own system, which is part of the reason I amtrying to figure out how LA should work. It has no classes, just generic manuevers and experises you learn. I was thinking of implimenting monstrous races as having certain abilities pre-chosen. Holes in their mandatory progression allow customization of what they are doing, even before you take all of their predefined levels. Unique abilities that you can't normally get distinguish you from a typical human, but they are directly a tradeoff from selecting a normmal abilty. If I design the abilities correctly, this should be well-balanced.
If I am interpreting (ok,guessing) what an ability track is correctly, then its roughly analougous, only I have a looser structure.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

Rogue-5 with 2 Devil Bloodline levels would have 4d6 Sneak Attack, because Sneak Attack specifically increases every two class levels.The "it increases by 1d6 every two rogue levels thereafter (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/rogue.htm#sneakAttack)" isn't a calculation because of the way it is stated (occasional unary incrementation). See the FAQ or the handbook for why.

I think I'll keep a tally of the number of times I have to quote myself (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1143132):

ECL = Floor[HD/2-LA] + LA + Class levels
(with common sense restrictions)
0) This variant is done on a character by character basis. Some in the party might use this but, not all must. This is why its a 'variant' and is actually useful.

1) If a race has racial spellcasting related to its racial HD, remove that abilities racial power source up to it's HD. For instance an psychic Illithid would have no psuedo psion levels but a Spellweaver would still have 2 psuedo sorcerer levels. Remember that this variant is done in a character by character basis allowing a psionic illithid to not use this variant while a spellweaver in the party may chose it.

2) The racial HD does not get con bonus to HP as class levels do. DMs should be strongly encouraged to waive this exception if they want PCs with above average amounts of HP - IMO HP is way too low compared to the damage both PCs and Monsters can receive.

3) Skill points for the first level are not added twice. So a character with aberration/construct/elemental/giant/humanoid/magic beast/monstrous humanoid/ooze/plant racial HD and one class level may must use the crappy 4x(2+int) for their starting skill point allotment rather than their lovely 4x(8+int) rogue class level's starting skill points. If you are a nice DM you could give them the higher of the two.

4) Skill points from racial HD do not allow a character to exceed the normal 3+ECL max since the HD no longer count towards the ECL. For most cases, this is surprisingly not that needed of a restriction.

5) BAB still counts as long as the total BaB from HD and ECL doesn't exceed 20 (if it would exceed 20 it is instead set to 20). However PrC prereqs may, at DM discretion, not use the racial BAB.

6) Natural healing rate is based off of ECL and so is not affected by the free racial HD, though this might seem a bit counter intuitive. If you want the RHD to help, it shouldn't make much of a difference.

7) Per level option of LA or RHD counting towards the required level for buyoff. This makes buyoffs happen a bit earlier. For players who use restoration cheese add a 1 iteration cap on each buyoff tier level per LA row in the chart.

[/thread]

PS. Anyone care to guess how ma

[The Cat Goddess]

The "it increases by 1d6 every two rogue levels thereafter (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/rogue.htm#sneakAttack)" isn't a calculation because of the way it is stated (occasional unary incrementation). See the FAQ or the handbook for why.

I think I'll keep a tally of the number of times I have to quote myself (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1143132):


[/thread]

PS. Anyone care to guess how many?

Which is why I say it should increase those abilities... to match the power increases that giving +1 CL per bloodline/LA gives to casters.

Increasing a Rogue's Sneak Attack is just a small part of what a Rogue is.

[Mystify]

Which is why I say it should increase those abilities... to match the power increases that giving +1 CL per bloodline/LA gives to casters.

Increasing a Rogue's Sneak Attack is just a small part of what a Rogue is.

I think sneak attack is more critical to a rouge than a caster level is to a caster. Spell slots are key to casters. Caster level is nice and useful, but most of the really good spells only have a slight connection to caster level. Contrast a rouge, where sneak attack basically is their combat power. Not so much for a mage, unless its a blaster.