Question About LA Buyoff

[Allanimal]

I am DMing a party of 11th level characters, and since we meet infrequently but play for up to 12 hours in a session, our group has always encouraged players to have a backup character ready, so nobody has to sit out for such a long time in the event of a PC death.

One of my players informed me she wants her backup to be a Catfolk character, which is the first time anyone has asked (at least while I was DM) to play anything with LA. I am all for allowing LA buyoff, which in the case of Catfolk, would happen at ECL 4, if I am remembering correctly.

Since the character would come in, at least for now, as ECL 11, with the buyoff, that's 7 levels of being behind the rest of the group, earning extra XP to catch up.

I'm just trying to figure out if that's enough... I have fiddled with some XP calculators, and depending on how I set it up, the lost level/3000 XP is made up very quickly or hardly at all... So I figure I must be doing something wrong...

What do you think, should I hand wave it and allow this character to come in at the same level as the rest of the party, or should it still be some percentage of 3000 XP behind? if so, what portion seems appropriate?

What if the LA was 2 or more?

[Re'ozul]

Honestly I don't really know the intricacies of XP rewards, but from the DMG table it looks like one level lower tends to give you 1/8th more XP.
(So 9/8th)
Going with that, the difference should shrink to 8/9th of what it was with each level.
So with 8 steps from 4 to 11, the total amount should be reduced to about 39% of the original.
That way she would be trailing 1170XP behind the others.

This is by no means an actual analysis of the situation, just an off the cuff theory based on the XP rewards table.

EDIT: Whoops. I only looked at the lowest levels. The difference is much higher in higher levels. So yeah, by ECL 11 if you truely want to emulate gaining levels then the difference would be negligible.

Further EDIT: Okay I went through the table again step by step. Assuming the party and the backup character faced the same enemies and virtually all of them were level appropriate single monsters then the backup would be trailing by 660XP. But at this point it doesn't really matter anymore.

[Gnaeus]

At that point, I would handwave +1 LA. I would put +2 at 1 level behind. +3 I would eyeball it to see how strong/weak their LA choices are. Most LA is way underpowered, so that is usually a good idea anyway, especially at level 11 when some PCs are effectively demigods.

[Allanimal]

Thanks. You said pretty much what I was thinking.
Just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something significant.

[Onikani]

One of my players informed me she wants her backup to be a Catfolk character, which is the first time anyone has asked (at least while I was DM) to play anything with LA. I am all for allowing LA buyoff, which in the case of Catfolk, would happen at ECL 4, if I am remembering correctly.


Catfolk have +1LA, with no racial HD.

Their +1 LA gives them
+4 dex, +2 cha
medium with 40 base move
+1 Natural Armor
Low-light Vision
+2 to a few skills.
Pref Class: Ranger

At ECL 11, this character would have 10 class levels and a +1 LA.
While it's true that the usefulness of most +1LA classes fades with time, catfolk is one of the best ones.
A +4 stat with no stat penalties, +10 move, and nat armor are all solid. Plus it gives access to Catfolk Pounce (allows them to make a full attack on a charge) - can you say 2 level Ranger dip for 2wf?



I would NOT hand wave this if the rest of the party 0LA races.

IIRC it takes 3000XP to buyoff a 1 LA, so this character would only be 3k XP behind the others. This means most of the time she would be the same level as the rest of the party, but once in a while, they will gain a level and she will still be a few k behind. She'll have to play the next session a level behind, but since you play 12 hour sessions, consider giving XP mid session so she is only behind for half a session...
This isn't a huge penalty, but it is enough of a nod to the other players that they don't suddenly feel like they should all reroll +1 LA char's...

[Gnaeus]

Catfolk have +1LA, with no racial HD.

Their +1 LA gives them
+4 dex, +2 cha
medium with 40 base move
+1 Natural Armor
Low-light Vision
+2 to a few skills.
Pref Class: Ranger

At ECL 11, this character would have 10 class levels and a +1 LA.
While it's true that the usefulness of most +1LA classes fades with time, catfolk is one of the best ones.
A +4 stat with no stat penalties, +10 move, and nat armor are all solid. Plus it gives access to Catfolk Pounce (allows them to make a full attack on a charge) - can you say 2 level Ranger dip for 2wf?
.

I can say it, but it doesn't impress me much.

2wf is still crummy at level 11. Many fighter types have easy access to pounce by that point. I guess it prevents a 1 level barbarian dip, at the cost of a feat. That is nice.

+2 to a couple of skills is negligible, as is +1 to natural armor, as is +10 move. This is a point in the game where all the casters should have flight at will at speed 60+, with a huge range of defenses. Haste by this point is also likely to be at will, and the difference between a move of 60 and 70 is not worth sweating about.

The best thing about it is the net +4 on stat bonuses.

A much bigger question than that to me is how magic items are being handled. If he gets to pick his WBL, there is a reason to do what Onikani suggests and retire and rebuild characters (a really bad build would also give more reason to retire and rebuild than this.). If it is largely random, or less than the loot other players have gotten, he will be behind other party members even with his mighty +4 dex. Without knowing a lot more about party and optimization level we can't really say what is over/under powered, but a 3 point difference in AC and some trivial racial abilities aren't going to matter much at that point in play. Unless you think you have a number of players who really want to rebuild, I don't think you will have a problem. If you DO have a number of players who already want to rebuild, you might want to allow a rebuild anyway...

[erikun]

If you really want to, you could penalize the character 3000 XP for the XP spend to buy off the level, putting her character at 10th level with 3000 XP to go (or even at 11th level but 3000 XP behind the rest of the party). However, by this point the difference will be mostly negligible, so just ignoring the +1 LA will probably work just as well.

[Onikani]

IIRC it takes 3000XP to buyoff a 1 LA, so this character would only be 3k XP behind the others. This means most of the time she would be the same level as the rest of the party, but once in a while, they will gain a level and she will still be a few k behind. She'll have to play the next session a level behind, but since you play 12 hour sessions, consider giving XP mid session so she is only behind for half a session...
This isn't a huge penalty, but it is enough of a nod to the other players that they don't suddenly feel like they should all reroll +1 LA char's...



If you really want to, you could penalize the character 3000 XP for the XP spend to buy off the level, putting her character at 10th level with 3000 XP to go (or even at 11th level but 3000 XP behind the rest of the party). However, by this point the difference will be mostly negligible, so just ignoring the +1 LA will probably work just as well.

It takes a net gain of 11k XP to go from 11th level to 12th level.
3k is roughly a quarter of that, it's more significant than you realize.
(Balanced encounters at level 11 are roughly 850 XP each when divided by a party of 4, so 3k is 3-4 encounters, easily a 12 hour session...)


2wf is still crummy at level 11. Many fighter types have easy access to pounce by that point. I guess it prevents a 1 level barbarian dip, at the cost of a feat. That is nice.

+2 to a couple of skills is negligible, as is +1 to natural armor, as is +10 move. This is a point in the game where all the casters should have flight at will at speed 60+, with a huge range of defenses. Haste by this point is also likely to be at will, and the difference between a move of 60 and 70 is not worth sweating about.

The best thing about it is the net +4 on stat bonuses.

2WF isn't great on its own, but pouncing for 6 hits at ECL 12 (i'm assuming full BAB and the +1LA) is nothing to sneeze at. You can charge in a suprise round...

I'll agree that +2 to a few skills is nothing to write home about, that's why i never bothered to write them in the first place. But the bonus to stats is likely more than +4. Compared to a +2/-2 race (net zero) a +4/+2 race is a +6 net. However anyone will tell you that a +2/-2 is usually better than a no change at all.
+4 to a primary stat is pretty huge.


Look at in terms of cash economy...
A Phb race gets a +2 as a racial bonus. Then spends 16k on a +4 item for a total bonus of +6.
Then he spends 4k on an amulet of nat armor +2.

The catfolk can spend 4k and 2k for the exact same total bonuses - which puts them (statwise) on equal ground with the rest of the players. Except they are 14k ahead on wealth.
Handwaving the LA away is the exact same as letting 0LA races walk in with an extra 14k in (non-stat boosting) gear over the current party levels - And i haven't even accounted for the fact that converting a -2 to a +2 is another +4 stat booster, that's another 16k (total 30k).

This problem pronounces itself exponentially, when the Phb races are buying +6 gear (36k) and the catfolk is still buying +4k (16k) to maintain the same stat mods. That's 20k, and another 18k as the difference between the bonus from +4 to +5 amulet of nat armor (total 38, or 58 if you count the second stat booster).

And while Fly can be used in most combat situations, i wouldn't exactly call it "at will". Flying Ten minutes 6-8x a time is certainly nice, but it blows your whole 3rd level repertoire, and by the time you cast it on the whole party, the fight is over.
Our Catfolk here (probably a ranger) will rarely ever get to Fly, her natural boost in speed always matters.
If the catfolk is a sorc, then the bonuses to dex (ranged touch orbs) and cha mean ever more (find me a +0LA race with a +2 cha, don't worry, i'll wait), of course it comes with the trade of a level in spell progression... oh wait you're proposing to wave that

Still think it's all insignificant?
Lol, so i play in your game, with full starting wealth and a wave off on this LA?


Seriously, being 3k XP behind the rest of the party is fine.

[ericgrau]

IIRC it takes about 3 levels to catch up if 1 level behind, since you gain 30% more xp. Dunno how much it is if 2 levels behind, probably somewhere between 3 and 6 levels to fully catch up. Won't matter if you do the buyoff one level at a time though, or if there's only 1 LA anyway. Specifically the catfolk should easily be fully caught up by now. If you want to get technical he is at most (2/3)^7=0.059 levels behind (640 xp). But if you let his bonus xp overshoot the amount required for level up, then he isn't even behind by that much. He caught up 4 levels ago.

The buyoff xp amount puts you exactly one level behind, so that doesn't change anything.

I always thought buyoff was a wonky solution since LA usually hurts more at low levels than high levels. Buyoff makes more sense on races with SLAs that become obsolete, which are relatively uncommon. Otherwise I'd pick an LA reduction depending on your gaming group's power level and hand it out at level 1, or even make the reduction at level 1 higher than what it is later. The real question is whether or not you're ok with catfolk fighting alongside elves of equal level. Even if you start him behind on xp now it won't last long.

[Allanimal]

Ok, interesting perspectives...
There are 5 players, none high op. The DM that started the campaign had a house rule that allows only one PrC per character, so that limits a lot of high power tricks. Since we were in mid-campaign when he had to leave the group and I took over, I left that rule in place.

Of the 5 players, the one wanting to play Catfolk is probably the least optimized. She rarely plans her characters more than a couple levels in advance and picks things because they sound like fun to play. In this case, she chose to play a warlock because, and this is seriously what she said, "I like the picture" (in complete arcane). Granted, the class features appeal to her too - "unlimited blasting, invisibility and flight? No daily preperation? Cool." The choice of Catfolk was on similar grounds. So I don't worry about her breaking the game with it...

But I do wonder what other players may may think / do once the precedent for "free" LA +1 has been set and where it may lead. I also can't look like I am playing favorites (player in question is my wife). So if I let her come in ~700 XP behind the rest of the party, there is a penalty for choosing a race with LA, but close enough that the buyoff is nearly complete. This, of course, is only an issue if her current character meets an untimely death...

[ericgrau]

The party has 11 levels. How much you want to bet she's at least 1/11th level behind in power on each, even after help? You might say "she's getting a free LA; don't expect anyone to get free LA later, including her", as long as everyone's ok with that. OTOH if she's been playing for a while there's not much excuse. And on a ray shooter it's a free +2 to hit with no drawbacks. Not frail like an elf, not slow like a halfling.

[tyckspoon]

Ok, interesting perspectives...
There are 5 players, none high op. The DM that started the campaign had a house rule that allows only one PrC per character, so that limits a lot of high power tricks.

Hee. It's so cute when people still believe that.

(1 base class + 1 PrC still gets you Wizard 10/Incantatrix 10. Or Druid/Planar Shepherd. It's one of those rules that hampers the class archetypes that are already hurting, because a lot of non-casting prestige classes are pretty terrible.. jumping around PrCs for a fighter-type isn't "high-power" most of the time, it's just looking for class features that are worth having.)

[ericgrau]

Well he said "a lot", not "all". And I bet it makes things simpler to monitor such things too.

[sonofzeal]

Well he said "a lot", not "all". And I bet it makes things simpler to monitor such things too.
Er, no, not even "a lot". Fast-casting exploits, sure, where you stack Ur-Priest or something similar with a different PrC that advances casting, but the vast majority of "high power tricks" depend on abusing a single poorly written ability or spell (Manipulate Form, Planar Ally, Gate/Wish, Flowing Time Trait, Taint-for-spellcasting, free metamagic), not on taking twelve different PrCs.

Too many people flat-out mistake multiclassing for munchkinry. Frankly, going just off that one comment, I wouldn't be surprised if Allanimal thinks Ranger2/Rogue4/Fighter2/Barbarian1 is abusive while Druid9 is just peachy.

This is a misconception that needs to be corrected, not defended.

[Allanimal]

Too many people flat-out mistake multiclassing for munchkinry. Frankly, going just off that one comment, I wouldn't be surprised if Allanimal thinks Ranger2/Rogue4/Fighter2/Barbarian1 is abusive while Druid9 is just peachy.

Not at all. As I said, I took over as DM mid-campaign. Some of the PCs had been with us a long time (since level 3). The players had an attachment to them (well, most of them) and nobody wanted to scrap them when the old DM was deployed elsewhere by the military. So when I took over, I didn't want to change too many of the old DM's house rules since the characters were already made.

I am slowly making changes though. The player of the wizard has already brought up the 1 PrC thing, and I am trying to figure out how to let him take a 2nd without the other players feeling cheated. I will probably allow a free rebuild at the next level-up, but I am still working on that one.

So please don't lump me in with the sort that feels multi-classing is icky/munchkiny/bad. I have no problem with it. My problem is balancing encounters so that they are not too hard for the players that don't want to optimize and too easy for those that do...

[Draz74]

You could let the new character start at the same level as the other characters, but penalize him 15000 gp (the equivalent of 3000 xp) on his allotted equipment. That way, there's a nominal penalty to the character's power that should discourage other players from following suit, but it's not as big of a power gap as a Level would be.

[Gnaeus]

2WF isn't great on its own, but pouncing for 6 hits at ECL 12 (i'm assuming full BAB and the +1LA) is nothing to sneeze at. You can charge in a suprise round...

And if that were the only way to get it, that would be meaningful. But the barbarian and the druid can do it too, The paladin with a swift action spell (in a wand chamber) or anyone with a 1 level barbarian dip. Travel devotion works almost as well (better for some builds), and anyone can take it for a feat, or a cleric can get it for free (or anyone with a 1 level cleric dip.)




The catfolk can spend 4k and 2k for the exact same total bonuses - which puts them (statwise) on equal ground with the rest of the players. Except they are 14k ahead on wealth.
Handwaving the LA away is the exact same as letting 0LA races walk in with an extra 14k in (non-stat boosting) gear over the current party levels - And i haven't even accounted for the fact that converting a -2 to a +2 is another +4 stat booster, that's another 16k (total 30k).

This problem pronounces itself exponentially, when the Phb races are buying +6 gear (36k) and the catfolk is still buying +4k (16k) to maintain the same stat mods. That's 20k, and another 18k as the difference between the bonus from +4 to +5 amulet of nat armor (total 38, or 58 if you count the second stat booster).

Look at in terms of what it actually DOES. +2 init. +3 AC. +2 to hit on some attacks. At level 11, that really does not make much difference.


And while Fly can be used in most combat situations, i wouldn't exactly call it "at will". Flying Ten minutes 6-8x a time is certainly nice, but it blows your whole 3rd level repertoire, and by the time you cast it on the whole party, the fight is over.

Alter Self. Overland Flight. Wildshape. Druid Pet. Animate Dead. Charm Monster.

Yeah, the casters can fly any time they want to fly.


Our Catfolk here (probably a ranger) will rarely ever get to Fly, her natural boost in speed always matters.

Sounds like she has flight at will, if she is a warlock.


If the catfolk is a sorc, then the bonuses to dex (ranged touch orbs) and cha mean ever more (find me a +0LA race with a +2 cha, don't worry, i'll wait), of course it comes with the trade of a level in spell progression... oh wait you're proposing to wave that

Lesser Aasimar, Spellscale.


Still think it's all insignificant?

Yes.



Lol, so i play in your game, with full starting wealth and a wave off on this LA?

As I said, the ability to use full wealth and pick items, (if that is in fact what she is doing), is much more significant than anything given from catfolk.

[Onikani]

Sounds like she has flight at will, if she is a warlock.

True, but that came up after my post. :D


As I said, the ability to use full wealth and pick items, (if that is in fact what she is doing), is much more significant when combined with everything given from catfolk.

Fixed it for you.
:)