Fixing LA and RHD

[Taelas]

Greetings!

I have never liked LA or RHD. Both are strictly worse than ordinary character class levels. Either you get the class features without the hit dice, or you get the hit dice without the class features (and sometimes you get both, but at twice the cost).

For example, take the succubus. It has a level adjustment of +6, and 6 Outsider hit dice. A first level Succubus is ECL 13. This is ridiculous, as there is no way a succubus, even with all the racial abilities such possess, could equal a 13th level character who does not have RHD or LA.

A character should never have a level adjustment without hit dice to back it up. It does not work; the character ends up as too weak in combat, as everything about combat is built up around hit dice.

On the other hand, hit dice without class features are almost meaningless. You get better at combat, but that's it.

My proposed solution is to combine level adjustment and hit dice. If a race has a level adjustment, give it racial hit dice equivalent to the LA -- for free, with no additional increase in ECL. If a race has RHD, lower them until they either become zero (if the race has no LA), or until you equal it. RHD are a burden, almost always, as they take up ECLs without anything substantial in return. Let whatever caused the level adjustment be virtual "class feature" of the race's virtual "class".

Going back to the succubus, a 1st level succubus would now be ECL 7. I am not sure that is completely accurate power-wise, but I feel it is far better than the current system.

Of course, some of the racial hit dice types are better than others. Dragons and Outsiders are clearly the best -- so perhaps a tier system similar to the one used for classes should be developed for race types.

Anyway. I have posted this idea before, but it was in an on-going thread, and I did not seem to garner much attention at all. (Maybe that says something about the idea in and of itself, but I hope not, as I rather like the elegant simplicity of it.) This is still mostly a rough idea, and I am very interested in hearing input from the community. What do you think? Could this work? Is it completely nuts?

[hydroplatypus]

I Dm a game, but none of my players are experienced, so didn't run into this. That being said looking through the MM1 LA seems broken. If succubus has both racial and LA it just doesn't work. If I even have to deal with it, I will probably just make the person's starting ECL equal to the creature's CR. For instance a bugbear PC with no class levels is ECL 4 where a bugbear NPC is CR2 dispite having the same stats. If I had to retool this I would give the bugbear 2 racial hit die, and then let the Player put on a class level, making an ECL 3 character that is stronger then the above ECL 4 character. You seem to be doiong somthing similar for the succubus, as the final ECL is = to a succubus' CR.

Regardless of method, if anything outside of PHB is to be realistically balanced then LA needs a retool.

[Retech]

This is what Pathfinder does.

CR = ECL

[Taelas]

It is not what Pathfinder does. LA + RHD does not equal CR.

What I am doing is saying 2 LA + 2 RHD = ECL 2.

[Cog]

LA is broken, but it isn't consistently broken in a way that any single patch will fix all cases. I don't think there's any rule you could come up with that would do more than provide a rough starting place. Even beyond that, there's the question of tiers and optimization; what are your trying to match against?

Trading LA for equivalent HD is going to be awkward anyway, though. That's a lot better of a trade for an Outsider than for a Fey, for example.

[Taelas]

Yes, I know that it is better for some races than others. But I doubt that even Dragon HD with bonuses from a LA would be equivalent to more than tier 4. They overvalued level adjustment to an almost ludicrous degree, and hit dice without actual class features (the small bonuses from being a race, aside from the things derived from Hit Dice, are not worth discussing--I believe at most it is the equivalent of martial weapon feats, like from Outsider) are just not strong enough to be the equivalent of a class level. Dragon and Outsider HD, without any other bonuses, are probably the equivalent of a tier 5 class--at best.

I know it won't fix all problems with level adjustment, but I think it fixes the biggest one -- the overevaluation problem.

I'd love to go through every single race and try to balance their level adjustments against one another, but it is a huge undertaking, and not something I have time for.

[HunterOfJello]

There's a homebrew guide somewhere about converting monsters from a CR to a more appropriate estimation of their abilities. I think it was Races of War (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19527458/Races_of_War), but it may have been a different guide.

[Grendus]

The Pathfinder version works a whole lot better. Letting someone play a succubus as an ECL 7 character is much easier, though it may be a little overpowered (use succubus to qualify for a charisma based caster PrC, between your at will SLA's and a quickly growing arsenal of spells you'll blow your partymates out of the water). It's a good start though, and with six outsider RHD you're not that fragile either.

[Metahuman1]

I think this is a good idea. Would make it easier on people who want to buff up a melee concept with a monster race to not fall into a trap. An example would be a Centaur with Spirited charge, a Lance, and Power+Leap attack and Shock Trooper would suddenly be more worth while.

[ericgrau]

My proposed solution is to combine level adjustment and hit dice. If a race has a level adjustment, give it racial hit dice equivalent to the LA -- for free, with no additional increase in ECL. If a race has RHD, lower them until they either become zero (if the race has no LA), or until you equal it. RHD are a burden, almost always, as they take up ECLs without anything substantial in return. Let whatever caused the level adjustment be virtual "class feature" of the race's virtual "class".

Going back to the succubus, a 1st level succubus would now be ECL 7. I am not sure that is completely accurate power-wise, but I feel it is far better than the current system.
Outsider HD tend to be as good or slightly better than core PC class levels. Full BAB, d12 hit die and 3 good saves, and that's ignoring the racial benefits. What's more is CR = ECL fails horribly since PC stat boosts (vs. all 10s) and PC wealth are not worth zero. There is no way ECL 7 could be right, or even close.

Every time I've checked it, done the math on stats, etc., LA was within half a level of core classes. You only need an adjustment if using classes (or class features such as spells or feats) that are stronger than core. But even then the exact amount varies from gaming group to gaming group. Sometimes you might want to hand a weaker class an extra +2 to a stat to make up for the 0.5 LA that got rounded up. Another temporary concern is that some races with little or no HD are weaker than their LA for the first couple levels, simply because your HP is so low.

Some fun monsters to consider that can still be played in mid-level campaigns include: grimlock (melee), pixie (rogue/warlock), nixie (cha caster with big save DCs on low level spells; or UMD monkey), orcs, goblins (rogue), most other LA 0 monsters, lizardfolk (melee). I'm considering an ogre tripper/smasher build (+9 bonus w/o cheese) but haven't looked into it too carefully yet. There are several others too, heck even a gnoll is alright with the aforementioned +2 bonus, but my list focuses on some of the more interesting/fun options.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

I love it when people try to reinvent the wheel. Atleast this OP is on the right track. However there are additional considerations for RHD besides the fact that the LA is usually fairly well assigned:


ECL = Floor[RHD/2 - Racial LA] + Total LA + Class level HD
(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 RHD. For instance a 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) BAB may not exceed ECL and RHD's BAB may not be used for prereqs. This makes the RHD's BAB feel like a "practiced BAB" feat since it adds for future, non-BAB-progressing class levels. This obviously stops BAB from exceeding 20 pre-epic. It turns out this doesn't really matter much even if the 21 and 26th BAB gave more iterations. Astute DM's will notice that the ability to hit things a few more times, or even enter non-caster classes early (as casters already do with reckless abandon) is actually a boon to their game's balance. Even if initially counter-intuitive DMs are encouraged to waive this restriction.

3) 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 considering the other RAW ways to exceed this cap. Therefore, DMs are encouraged to waive this restriction

4) Skill points for the first level are not added twice. 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 chose their lovely 4x(8+int) rogue class levels as the starting skill points. DMs are encouraged to waive this restriction

5) The racial HD does not get con bonus to HP as class levels do. DMs are encouraged to waive this restriction if they want PCs with above average amounts of HP since HP is way too low compared to the damage both PCs and Monsters can receive anyways.

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, so DMs are encouraged to waive this restriction for any players not abusing natural healing rates. Heck, even if they are they will still be screwed by SoDs.

7) Per level option of LA or RHD counting towards the required level for buyoff. This makes buyoffs happen a bit earlier, which in turn helps the 99% of monsters with over-inflated LAs become playable. It goes without saying that players who use restoration cheese need a single iteration cap on each buyoff tier's level per LA row in the chart.
/threa

[ericgrau]

Well if you wanted a system that worked with builds that are higher in power than core then you could figure out two things how many core levels a build level is worth in the higher power build. For example maybe the higher power build is worth 25% more levels. So then you divide the ECL by 1.25 (100%+25%=125%=1.25). Thus a Succubi might be ECL 12/1.25 = 9.6, rounded to 9 or 10 depending on how strong you think the monster is. That would mean 6 HD + 3 LA.

[DeAnno]

Pathfinder has the right of it here. Your ECL should be your HD or your CR, whichever is higher.