Level Adjustment and over-penalizing

[Hemnon]

Hello everyone.

I have a complaint that i really need to hear others opinions on.

Level Adjustment affects a character's ECL, but why does a character with LA +3, that is created for a level 4 campaign, only start as a class level 1 character?

if you read the rules closely, then a character with LA gain levels at a SLOWER rate than the others (aka. if character is ECL 4 then he advances his class levels at a slower rate than others without LA). But that unbalances the whole idea when you aren't a class level 4 character with +3 LA (ECL 7).

ECL represents how big a challenge a PC is in a fight, but if he's only created as a level 1 class character then he's almost totally ineffective (what with bad BaB, saves and general abilities).

A character with LAs should really start out at same class level as the rest of the group since a Class level 4 character with +3 LA would be at 28.000 exp and would hence need 8.000 exp where others with 4 class levels and +0 LA would be at 6.000 exp and only need 4.000 for their next level.

this sums up to, if they are both given 4.000 exp, that the +3 LA character would only be halfway to class level 5 where as, the +0 character would gain a level and then only need 5.000 more exp.

This means that the +3 LA character would need 4.000 exp to reach class level 5 but the +0 LA character would only need 5.000 exp to reach class level 6. This grants the +0 LA character faster class levelling and this would basicly level out the difference in the characters abilities and power, but granting a diversity with more exotic races and templates.

however, if the +3 LA character was only a class level 1 character then the character would always be 3 HDs (and other statistics) behind class level 4 characters, and the whole idea of having i more diverse character would be pointless.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the full summery is:

Characters with LA is slower at class leveling than characters with less or no LA, so the strange idea almost all GMs have that LA chould count against the character's starting levels is absurd to me, since it undermines to REASON to even wanna take templates or races with LA.

Yes a character that starts at ECL 4 with the rest of the party at ECL 1 would be quite stronger to them, but the ECL is ONLY used to find out what kinds of encounters should be used against the group (or atleast that's the most important use of it). BUT! the split in power levels will even out as the party gains exp and the +0 LAs will gain levels at a much faster pace comparred to the +3 LA character. go check the LA exp table (example of it is found in Races Of Faerun on page 6) and hopefully you'll see the rather unjust penalty most GMs places on characters that start out with LA and making them a lower class levelled character.


I'd like to hear other opinions to my reasoning.:smallsmile:


EDIT: and what about Templates gained Ingame? would all others in the party suddenly gain levels to balance out the difference in their ECLs? no, right? so why should it happen at character creation??? there's no logic to that. that's the reason why it bugs me, that for some reason it DOES happen with almost all GMs i have created a character with Level Adjustment.

Link to a Wizards of the coast forum, that agree with my reason. Check section 2. (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19579290/?pg=last)

[Aron Times]

This post is really difficult to read. Proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation will help us help you.

[Hemnon]

This post is really difficult to read. Proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation will help us help you.

should be a little easier to understand now.


but my opinion in short is:

characters with level adjustment shouldn't start with less classlevels than the rest of the party, since they already gain levels at a slower pace than the rest (as per the LA exp sheet). making all the characters have equal ECL removes the whole reason for taking those templates and races with LA to begin with, since they would then be at lower HP, base attack bonus, save bonus', etc. effectively making them weaker and easier to kill and unable to really hit or kill what the others are able to.

[TuggyNE]

Three things:
This should really be in the 3.5 subforum.
The idea behind LA is not primarily to reduce XP gain, or in fact to reduce XP gain at all*; rather, it is to compensate for unusually powerful abilities gained from templates or races that make a character stronger than others of its same HD. Allowing high-LA races in with lesser at character creation gives them a great deal of short-term power in exchange for not being able to level; this is not at all even, and is likely to cause envy for a while, and then stagnation.
The frailty of high-LA races is fairly well-known, and a common fix is to reduce LA by 1 or 2 points; "glass cannon" races are often over-valued in LA.


*XP gain depends on ECL, not character level or class level. Therefore, a character with LA gains the same amount of XP as their party members, assuming they're all at the same ECL, as recommended. LA buyoff allows short-term loss of XP in order to reduce the gap between nominal power (ECL) and actual power (character levels plus racial abilities) in the future, and eventually catch up in ECL once more, due to XP dynamics.

[Hemnon]

Three things:
This should really be in the 3.5 subforum.
The idea behind LA is not primarily to reduce XP gain, or in fact to reduce XP gain at all*; rather, it is to compensate for unusually powerful abilities gained from templates or races that make a character stronger than others of its same HD. Allowing high-LA races in with lesser at character creation gives them a great deal of short-term power in exchange for not being able to level; this is not at all even, and is likely to cause envy for a while, and then stagnation.
The frailty of high-LA races is fairly well-known, and a common fix is to reduce LA by 1 or 2 points; "glass cannon" races are often over-valued in LA.


*XP gain depends on ECL, not character level or class level. Therefore, a character with LA gains the same amount of XP as their party members, assuming they're all at the same ECL, as recommended. LA buyoff allows short-term loss of XP in order to reduce the gap between nominal power (ECL) and actual power (character levels plus racial abilities) in the future, and eventually catch up in ECL once more, due to XP dynamics.

Then answer me this:

why wouldn't characters with LA gain exp based on the class levels instead the Equivalent Character Level? that's what i don't understand, they gain levels slower than others in exchange for special powers or other special qualities, but are still penalized with starting out with less class levels than the rest of the party.

Quote from a wizards of the coast forum:

ECL stands for Equivalent Character Level. It is a level adjustment used to help "balance" out PCs of more powerful non-standard races such as Drow, Genasi, and Hengeyokai as well as Monsterous PCs. It is the more common name for what is called Level Equivalent on page 22 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. You use ECL as a shift to the XP chart, so that a Hengeyokai (ECL +1) character needs as much XP to reach 3rd level as a human character needs to reach 4th level, as much XP to reach 7th level as the human needs to reach 8th, and so on.
end quote.

this means that what you just said is in fact, wrong.

[Mnemnosyne]

They don't gain levels slower. They gain levels at exactly the same rate other characters of their ECL do.

[Hemnon]

They don't gain levels slower. They gain levels at exactly the same rate other characters of their ECL do.

yes they do, but LA adds to a character's ECL so they'd count as a character of higher level than the others:

this is the reason for them gaining levels at a slower pace, since leveling up is based on ECL, since ECL dictates how much exp a character needs for next level.


It also seems like you missed my point, since my point is that a character with LA should start with equal class levels as the rest of the party and NOT the same ECL as the others.

[Reluctance]

Given the whole XP is a river phenomena and how lower-leveled characters are meant to catch up to their higher leveled ones by design, this will eventually result in the same thing normal La does. All you do is allow players to start with weird races sooner.

Not bad, but you're forgetting a couple of things:

Most monsters with La also have RHD. Unless you go for specific monster growth classes (which are plenty wonky in their own right), you're still cutting out most monster races until the party is high enough level to match the hit dice. That, or you're allowing people to come in with things much more powerful than they should be.
The guy who picks a race with appreciable LA will have an appreciable head start, only to take appreciably longer than everybody else to gain the goodies leveling brings. It's the same philosophy as "wizards are balanced because they're weak at low levels and strong at high levels". Even if it all averages out, there are enough wrinkles in the system (campaigns running longer or shorter than normal, campaigns starting above first level, players changing characters) to make it a lot more iffy in practice.

[huttj509]

A character with LA +1 gains level 2 in his class level, when his party member is gaining level 3. Is that what you're saying?

The idea is that the particular race is 'worth' a class level, so a level 2 Drow Fighter is considered equivalent to a level 4 fighter in all respects (XP gain, XP to next level, capability against a CR 4 monster, etc). It's also assumed that all class levels are equal, so a race with LA +2 is 'worth' 2 class levels whether the character's a Fighter 1, or fighter 18.

Now, these assumptions may be (and generally considered, are) invalid as the game is played. I'm not sure of your particular issue. Yes, a Drow Fighter goes from Fighter 1 -> Fighter 2 more slowly (xp-wise) than his companion did, but since he's taking on tougher fights, he keeps the same ~13 CR-equal fights per level (off the top of my head, think that's the basis there). He takes longer to advance via fighting normal Kobolds, but that's because the Kobolds are so much weaker than he that he's not learning as much from it.

[TuggyNE]

Then answer me this:

why wouldn't characters with LA gain exp based on the class levels instead the Equivalent Character Level? that's what i don't understand, they gain levels slower than others in exchange for special powers or other special qualities, but are still penalized with starting out with less class levels than the rest of the party.

No, you're confused. You're double-counting the penalty, in fact. A character with LA has the same ECL as anyone else in their party; they therefore gain new class levels at the same rate everyone else in their party does. However, they have fewer class levels to start out with. This is a fixed penalty; it does not increase with levels, and it does not slow your advancement relative to party members, because everyone has the same amount of XP, and requires the same amount of XP to level up.


yes they do, but LA adds to a character's ECL so they'd count as a character of higher level than the others:

No. LA adds to a character's ECL so they count as a character of higher level than others with the same class level, obviously. However, if you're comparing LA+2 class level 5 with LA+0 class level 5, that's apples and oranges, and urdoinitrong [sic]. You compare LA+2 character level 5 with LA+0 character level 7 for all purposes, because those are the party members that will be together. All characters in a party should generally be within 1 ECL of each other, especially at character creation.


It also seems like you missed my point, since my point is that a character with LA should start with equal class levels as the rest of the party and NOT the same ECL as the others.

I did get that point, I just happen to disagree with it. :smallwink:

In point of fact, the lowest levels you can play a race with LA is generally the point the LA is least burdensome; as the game progresses, it's common for racial abilities to become less and less significant, which makes the LA less and less worthwhile. (Racial ability score adjustments don't suffer from this as much.) If you change this so that you gain all the benefits up front for no upfront cost, then pay a heavy ongoing price (in being unable to level, due to gaining less XP from the same encounters, penalizing the party XP as a whole due to higher ECL, and requiring more XP to level all at once)... well, that is just severely imbalanced.

[watchwood]

If ECL penalties *came* with a degree of RHD, that didn't stack on top of them, I'd be fine with them. Even without features, it's often needed just to have HP/saves in throwing distance of most +0 races.

Otherwise, many high ECL races are effectively unplayable for the reasons mentioned above.

[Douglas]

The intent of level adjustment is that a character with, say, 4 class levels and 3 LA is actually just as powerful overall as a character with 7 class levels and no LA - the extra benefits that come with those 3 points of LA provide as much power as 3 class levels do. The idea, then, is that each character in the same party should most of the time be the same power as the rest. The purpose of LA is not to slow your advancement, but to bring your total current power at any given time back down to the rest of the party's power despite your race's special advantages.

The problem is that most races with level adjustment have their bonuses and special abilities valued too highly by the designers, so what you get from the race is actually not equal in value to the number of class levels you're giving up for it. That's a problem with assessment of how powerful the various races are and how much LA they should have, though, not with the mechanic of what LA does.

[Runestar]

Sean Key Reynolds posts an exhaustive analysis here,

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/LAvsXPpenalty.html

but the general gist is this:

"XP penalties make little to no difference at low character levels when the differences between races should be the strongest."

I agree that LA is pretty flawed and tends to result in underpowered characters. It doesn't help that most LAs tend to be inflated either. It is however, also the most straightforward and intuitive (well, once you understand how it works anyways) system I know. The others tend to be extremely convoluted and tend to result in tedious math calculations that would make Einstein quiver. :P

As for templates gamed ingame, Wotc has a solution for that as well. Don't slap on the entire template at one go, but instead, let the player "buy" them 1 lv at a time whenever he would gain a level.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030824a

PS: Sorry for the separate links. My browser suddenly went haywire and I cannot click on any of the icons above. :(

[Hemnon]

my issue is that characters that starts with level adjustment is lower class-leveled than the other PCs to begin with.

the reason for it is that if you aquire a template in-game (let's say lycantropy) then what do you do then? just raise the ECL of everyone to match the new ECL of the character that just got the template? no that wouldn't happen since it doesn't make any sense. ECL means Equalent Character Level, which is just a base measure of what your character is equal to, compared to a normal human of the same level.

a human fighter level 1 has an ECL of 1.
an Aasimar Fighter level 1 has an ECL of 2 (because of the +1 LA from race).

this means that the stuff the aasimar get's from being an unbalanced race rasies it's ECL by one, making it about the same level as a human fighter level 2 (which has an ECL of 2). But to balance this out the aasimar starts at what counts as level 2 exp-wise, which means that he'd need 2.000 exp to reach a new level. the human fighter only needs 1.000 exp to reach a new level.

this is the whole meaning of it, by that characters with a higher ECL than the rest counts as a higher leveled being but is still only the same class level as the others to begin with. this means slightly more challenging encounters to begin with but a more balanced out party after 1 or two levels. if you penalize a character by starting with less class levels than the others then they should not count as a higher level character.

[Gavinfoxx]

Right, an Aasimar Fighter 1should not be in the party with a Human Fighter 1 at game start. An Aasimar Fighter 1 should be able to be in a party with a Human Fighter 2, though. If someone gets Lycanthropy in play... you might want to consider making them an NPC, or going on a quest to cure them.

[Namfuak]

Somewhat in relation to the OP, would it be particularly overpowering if characters were allowed to add their class BAB, saves, skills and HP to LA? So, for example, if I were a drow sorcerer 1, I would have 4+2d4+(con*3) HD, saves of a Sorc 3, 1.5 BAB and 12+int skill points, but the spells known/ability to cast of a first level sorcerer? To make it more fair (so people didn't use barbarian levels for their LA all the time), LA could grant the racial HD/saves/BAB/skills instead, but the point is that that way you aren't just making a glass cannon character when you choose a class with LA.

[Hemnon]

oh god!
where do i write anything about XP penalties? im refering to a fine list found a page 6 in Races Of faerun. by looking at the +1 LA you can see that the character counts as a level 2 character but only has 1 class level at the 1000 exp. I never meantioned anything about XP penalties, i said that they level at a slower pace because they are a higher level character than the others, but still of equal Class level at the start. just look at that table and maybe SOMEONE will understand what i mean.

Or check this link if you don't have that book. (http://www.hambo.com/rpg/rules/level-adjustment.html)

[VGLordR2]

oh god!
where do i write anything about XP penalties? im refering to a fine list found a page 6 in Races Of faerun. by looking at the +1 LA you can see that the character counts as a level 2 character but only has 1 class level at the 1000 exp. I never meantioned anything about XP penalties, i said that they level at a slower pace because they are a higher level character than the others, but still of equal Class level at the start. just look at that table and maybe SOMEONE will understand what i mean.

Or check this link if you don't have that book. (http://www.hambo.com/rpg/rules/level-adjustment.html)

The problem with that chart is that you aren't supposed to use races with LA unless you are starting the campaign at a level higher than the level adjustment. So, in a level one campaign, you are not supposed to have an Aasimar Fighter, because he is ECL 2, and the campaign is ECL 1.

[Hemnon]

The problem with that chart is that you aren't supposed to use races with LA unless you are starting the campaign at a level higher than the level adjustment. So, in a level one campaign, you are not supposed to have an Aasimar Fighter, because he is ECL 2, and the campaign is ECL 1.

That's the root of my problem.

why not? why not allow that? the player pays for the early advantages from the race by being 1000 exp behind the others for leveling up. that's the whole meaning of Level adjustment, as far as i understand. both the aasimar and the human have the same class levels but the aasimar is a character of level 2. it's just plain stupid in my opinion not to allow such a thing, since, as i said earlier, the aasimar will always be behind that human when gaining levels because the human is in essence a lower level character to the start, but will balance out after the human gains his first level or 2.

[VGLordR2]

That's the root of my problem.

why not? why not allow that? the player pays for the early advantages from the race by being 1000 exp behind the others for leveling up. that's the whole meaning of Level adjustment, as far as i understand. both the aasimar and the human have the same class levels but the aasimar is a character of level 2. it's just plain stupid in my opinion not to allow such a thing, since, as i said earlier, the aasimar will always be behind that human when gaining levels because the human is in essence a lower level character to the start, but will balance out after the human gains his first level or 2.

Why not?

Because a 42-halves dragon could play in a level one campaign. With an ECL of 133. Compared to a puny human fighter's ECL 1.

[Kumori]

That's the root of my problem.

why not? why not allow that? the player pays for the early advantages from the race by being 1000 exp behind the others for leveling up. that's the whole meaning of Level adjustment, as far as i understand. both the aasimar and the human have the same class levels but the aasimar is a character of level 2. it's just plain stupid in my opinion not to allow such a thing, since, as i said earlier, the aasimar will always be behind that human when gaining levels because the human is in essence a lower level character to the start, but will balance out after the human gains his first level or 2.

The answer to the question 'why not?' is simply that the aasimar character is effectively level 2, they human is level 1. Would you let a Human start at level 2 when another Human is starting at level 1? Being an Aasimar is having an extra level.... that's how level adjustment works.

That being said, I'd be perfectly happy allowing it. The system would auto-correct for the change you made by giving that player less XP from each encounter, so after a handful of fights the Human would have an extra class level. The only two problems that comes from this are :
1. Potential player abuse. A person may see this as an opportunity to play a Celestial Half-Dragon Human Ghost Fighter 1 (ECL 11) while his party Rogue is simply an Elf Rogue 1 (ECL 1). This would very much be imbalanced, and such a large scale difference would not be corrected during play.
2. I forgot what I was gonna say here while I was typing out 1.... I did have another point....

[TuggyNE]

Somewhat in relation to the OP, would it be particularly overpowering if characters were allowed to add their class BAB, saves, skills and HP to LA? So, for example, if I were a drow sorcerer 1, I would have 4+2d4+(con*3) HD, saves of a Sorc 3, 1.5 BAB and 12+int skill points, but the spells known/ability to cast of a first level sorcerer? To make it more fair (so people didn't use barbarian levels for their LA all the time), LA could grant the racial HD/saves/BAB/skills instead, but the point is that that way you aren't just making a glass cannon character when you choose a class with LA.

So, convert all LA to RHD? This would strictly better than LA-no-buyoff, although not absurdly so, and probably worse in most cases than LA-with-buyoff, although again not massively so. It's a decent idea. Though do watch out for those high-LA Outsider/Dragon PCs... RHD from those types are almost worth losing a level for. :smalltongue:


why not? why not allow that? the player pays for the early advantages from the race by being 1000 exp behind the others for leveling up. that's the whole meaning of Level adjustment, as far as i understand. both the aasimar and the human have the same class levels but the aasimar is a character of level 2. it's just plain stupid in my opinion not to allow such a thing, since, as i said earlier, the aasimar will always be behind that human when gaining levels because the human is in essence a lower level character to the start, but will balance out after the human gains his first level or 2.

The problem with this is that, as previously mentioned, LA characters start out stronger than usual, by a fairly stiff margin, and then tend to stagnate to some extent while the others catch up. Let's take a nymph (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/nymph) for a fairly strong example of what this could lead to. Nymphs have 6 Fey RHD and +7 LA; normally you should only play one if the rest of the party is at least ECL 14, and you'll have one class level. With this suggestion, you could play a nymph at level 7 (6 RHD + 1 class level, almost certainly Druid); compare the stat adjustments (+6 Dex, +2 Con, +6 Int, +6 Wis, +8 Cha) and racial features (druid casting, unearthly grace, DR 10/cold iron, stunning glance, blinding beauty, dimension door 1/day, swim speed) to a Human Druid 7, and then remember the nymph actually has an extra level's worth of casting! That's pretty absurd.

"Oh," you say, "they pay for it later, by leveling up slower." Probably so. Consider this, however: the presence of an ECL 14 character in a level 7 party throws off XP calculations; to get an approximately equal encounter, the tables state you should be pitting them against 4 CR 7 creatures, instead of merely 1. What are the chances of one of the ECL 7 characters in the party dying, needing to be raised, and losing a level; or dying and being replaced by another character of a lower level (a common tactic)? How about across the next seven levels as they catch up? And while the nymph surely gains less XP (about 1/6 as much, in fact), they have a great chance of managing to gain at least one more level before the party finally catches up, even without unequal level loss. None of this is really fair to the weaker party members.

It's not really fair to the nymph, either; they aren't being challenged very much, and are leveling with painful slowness, so it'll be a long time before they get any more class features or change their character in any way besides just gathering more equipment.

Edit:

That being said, I'd be perfectly happy allowing it. The system would auto-correct for the change you made by giving that player less XP from each encounter, so after a handful of fights the Human would have an extra class level.

I'm pretty sure it takes longer than a handful of fights to fully even out; ECL 2 characters in an ECL 1 party don't get a mere half XP. In fact, oddly, SRD's Encounter Calculator (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/) says that an ECL 1 party with an ECL 2 character facing a single CR 1 creature gives out 75 XP to each — literally no difference. This pattern holds up to ECL 4/1, in fact. At higher levels, smaller level differences will produce the desired XP award differences, though.

However, because the Human requires less XP to level, they do reach level 2 sooner than the Aasimar would level 3; still, they're only even for maybe 30-40% of a level before the Aasimar picks back up.


2. I forgot what I was gonna say here while I was typing out 1.... I did have another point....

Heh, I have this happen to me a lot. :smallsigh:

[killem2]

That's the root of my problem.

why not? why not allow that?

Here's a great example, in an upcoming module my buddy will be running, he said we can be any race as long as it does not exceed la +1. So my son chose a non-psionic thrikreen. It sadly will have 2 racial hit dice, and begin as a level 1 warblade. Which, means, it will start as an ecl 4.

He understands that he won't be playing with us until we all are at least level 4 as well.

If we let a thrikreen, with a bab of 3, 30+ hp, a jump skill that is unbelievable, and who is able to already have all the feats needed to do the lightning mace/kukri slaughter of death...

in the same level ECL 2 party, he's going to out shine everyone, unablance the entire campaign as it was made for ECL 2, and possible wipe the party if the DM scales the fights to anticipate an ECL 4 in the mix.

That's why.

[TuggyNE]

Here's a great example, in an upcoming module my buddy will be running, he said we can be any race as long as it does not exceed la +1. So my son chose a non-psionic thrikreen. It sadly will have 2 racial hit dice, and begin as a level 1 warblade. Which, means, it will start as an ecl 4.

He understands that he won't be playing with us until we all are at least level 4 as well.

If we let a thrikreen, with a bab of 3, 30+ hp, a jump skill that is unbelievable, and who is able to already have all the feats needed to do the lightning mace/kukri slaughter of death...

in the same level ECL 2 party, he's going to out shine everyone, unablance the entire campaign as it was made for ECL 2, and possible wipe the party if the DM scales the fights to anticipate an ECL 4 in the mix.

That's why.

QFT. Brevity is the soul of wit, here, esp. in comparison to my monumental screeds. :smallwink:

[Kumori]

That being said, I'd be perfectly happy allowing it. The system would auto-correct for the change you made by giving that player less XP from each encounter, so after a handful of fights the Human would have an extra class level.

I'm pretty sure it takes longer than a handful of fights to fully even out;

Handful may not be the best choice of the word, but when the difference is only 1 level it shouldn't take too long and the difference in party balance isn't so significant that the length of time it doesn't take shouldn't be too problematic.


ECL 2 characters in an ECL 1 party don't get a mere half XP. In fact, oddly, SRD's Encounter Calculator (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/) says that an ECL 1 party with an ECL 2 character facing a single CR 1 creature gives out 75 XP to each — literally no difference. This pattern holds up to ECL 4/1, in fact. At higher levels, smaller level differences will produce the desired XP award differences, though.

Characters ECL 1 to 3 do gain the same XP in encounters, yes, but don't forget that the ECL 1 guy needs only 1000 XP to level and the ECL 2 guy needs 2000. The ECL 1 guy who starts at ECL 1 will hit each new level before the ECL 2 guy. This does mean that when he hits ECL 4 before the other guy he'll start gaining reduced XP by comparison, but this is short term as well. I'm gonna crunch numbers and see when these balance out.


Here's a great example, in an upcoming module my buddy will be running, he said we can be any race as long as it does not exceed la +1. So my son chose a non-psionic thrikreen. It sadly will have 2 racial hit dice, and begin as a level 1 warblade. Which, means, it will start as an ecl 4.

He understands that he won't be playing with us until we all are at least level 4 as well.

If we let a thrikreen, with a bab of 3, 30+ hp, a jump skill that is unbelievable, and who is able to already have all the feats needed to do the lightning mace/kukri slaughter of death...

in the same level ECL 2 party, he's going to out shine everyone, unablance the entire campaign as it was made for ECL 2, and possible wipe the party if the DM scales the fights to anticipate an ECL 4 in the mix.

That's why.

All true, but that gets more into the problem of not counting RHD in ECL, doesn't it? Granted, the LA+1 does matter, but RHD provides the majority of the imbalance (BAB, HP, feats).

[Annos]

just start a campain were eveyone can have an ECL of x or a template class of x

[TheOOB]

I don't see what the disconnect is. LA is supposed to be roughly equivalent to class levels. A Drow has an LA of +2, which means that the benefits of the Drow race are supposed to be equivalent of two character levels. This means that a Level 1 Drow Fighter should be about as strong as a level 3 Human Fighter, and a Level 18 Drow Fighter should be about as strong as a level 20 Human Fighter. LA is basically character levels that provide stat bonuses and racial abilities instead of Hit Dice and Class Abilities. Regardless of what you say, a Level 3 Drow Fighter is much stronger than a Level 3 Human Fighter.

Now, due to the way the HP system works, you generally don't want to start as a level LA race. You shouldn't play a Half Dragon in a ECL 4 game, because starting with 1 Hit Die at level 4 is pretty crippling, but in an ECL 6-8 game you could manage much better.

The idea of starting a LA race character at the same class level as a non LA character is actually downright stupid. I'll just say it. Now I don't like the ECL system as it is, but saying you want to unbalance the party like that shows a lack of understand of basic game balance.

Personally I'd prefer it if all LA races instead had HD apporpirate for their racial advantages, and remove LA all together, though that would require a resign of pretty much every LA race ever.

[NichG]

The message of the LA system is 'don't play things with LA much greater than 1'. Its basically a design that's saying 'these things are really intended for NPCs, but if you must, here's a way that guarantees you won't be more powerful than a traditional character'. Things like the Savage Species progressions are the right way to do it, IMO.

That said, afflicted/acquired templates play havoc with this idea. Generally speaking, if someone is hit with one of those I say 'you either have to lose levels, or buy off the LA at 6000xp for the first, 7000xp for the second, etc'. I figure thats steep enough to prevent over-the-top dipping into all sorts of acquired templates, but it still gives an option to get it over with and not be slowed down by your LA forever more. You could just as well use the same pricing for starting with a race with LA in a higher level campaign (and just figure out what class level it leaves you with), or adjust it up or down to taste. I wouldn't recommend allowing 1LA to be bought for 1000xp though - thats basically allowing +4 to your stats to be bought for 1000xp.

[Tvtyrant]

Honestly I just ignore LA and go by HD. Most monsters are actually weaker than a character of the same HD, so it doesn't disrupt things too badly. I ban some things (Phaerimm for instance), but mostly it just works out.

[Kumori]

Okay, so the results of my number crunching from a few posts up:

Assume the following:
A party of 4 fights one monster at a time.
The monster's CR = higher character's ECL = Average party level
PC#1 is an ECL 1 character with one class level
PC#2 is an ECL 2 character with one class level

Results:
PC#2 gains each new level first, until they both gain level 11 simultaneously. This is after 121 fights.
PC#1 gains level 2 after the 7th fight.
PC#1 reaches 3rd level 4 fights after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 4th level 3 fights after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 5th level 3 fights after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 6th level 2 fights after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 7th level 1 fight after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 8th level 1 fight after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 9th level 1 fight after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 10th level 1 fight after PC#2 does.

I stopped when they gained the level simultaneously. So all in all, if a PC starts with +1 LA at first level and the rest of the party does not have an extra class level to compensate, 23 of 121 (approx 19%) encounters should have any change from the norm as a result and future encounters should rarely (if at all) be affected.

[pres_man]

A race with a LA levels up (in class levels) slower than a standard (LA +0) race. So let's say a group is going to start a "4th level" game.
Player A wants to play a human wizard. Their wizard will have 4 class levels (4 HD).
Player B wants to play an Aasimar cleric. Their cleric will have 3 class levels (3 HD).
Player C wants to play a drow rogue. Their rogue will have 2 class levels (2 HD).
Player D wants to play a gnoll fighter. Their fighter will have 1 class level (3 HD).

Now why is that so? We thought that having LA was suppose to make the character level up slower. And in fact it does. Let's assume that all of these characters experienced equivalent trials prior to the start of our "4th level" game. The human, with a LA +0, was able to gain (class) levels at a faster rate than the others.

My suggestion would be instead of focusing on the "level" of the game, instead focus on the xp. For a 4th level game, instead think it of as everyone starting with at least 6000 xp and then having whatever level would be appropriate for that amount of xp.
==================================================
Now my suggestion of how to handle LA:
If you have the 3ed DMG and the Savage Species book, then the following will make sense to you, if not just try to follow along.

A) First off, I would change each LA to a level of basically Commoner (1/2 BA, all 1/3 (poor) saves, 2+Int skill points, d4 HD). The benefits of this is that the LA is not just empty levels. You still get some hps, skills, and potentially some BA and Saves (depending how great the LA is). Also it makes it easier to keep track of feats, ability adjustments, and xp levels since you don't have to track ECL separate from total HD.

B) If you want to start a non-standard race at 1st level (or any level lower than you normally could), then draw up a set of level progression where the race gets access to more of its abilities as you level up. If you have the Savage Species book, you can see how this could works.

C) Lastly, I would allow the character to have an apprentice level abilities (see the 3ed DMG) from their class until they reach a high enough level to fully gain the benefits.

[TheOOB]

Your all thinking of this wrong. A Drow Fighter 2 is a level 4 character, that is their ECL(Effective Character Level) is 4. They have less HD(and thus a lower actual character level), but for the purposes of experience and leveling up, they are level 4.

And you can't just give LA races HD and make it all better. A Half-Dragon, among other things, gets a +8 Strength. Thats +4 to all melee attack rolls, which is balanced by the fact that they'll lose out on 3 HD worth of AB. If you give them HD, even crappy common HD, the Half-Dragon will begin to clearly outstrip the fighters and rogues because they are not suffering from the lack of AB, HP, and Skill Points/Skill Max there are supposed to. The races and race system need to be redesigned from the ground up, A haphazard solution will only make things worse.

Also, don't use spellcasters as examples, everyone knows that spellcasters should NEVER take LA races.

[TuggyNE]

@TheOOB: As I understand it, Half-Dragon is already a fairly strong template. You're right that converting LA into RHD is likely to result in a significant increase in power relative to the no-buyoff situation, and it's made worse by the ability to use Dragon HD. Still, given enough time, even +3 LA can be bought off, and class levels are generally superior to RHD. So I'd call it about even in the long run; somewhat higher short-term power, tailing off eventually.

@NichG: Yes, acquired templates make things pretty wonky. It's unfortunate that throwing werewolves at a party may result in severe and long-lasting party imbalance; fortunately, I can't think of any other templates that are easy to accidentally acquire, so a partial solution might be to rework the Lycanthrope template to reduce its impact on characters.


Okay, so the results of my number crunching from a few posts up:

Assume the following:
A party of 4 fights one monster at a time.
The monster's CR = higher character's ECL = Average party level
PC#1 is an ECL 1 character with one class level
PC#2 is an ECL 2 character with one class level

Results:
PC#2 gains each new level first, until they both gain level 11 simultaneously. This is after 121 fights.
PC#1 gains level 2 after the 7th fight.
PC#1 reaches 3rd level 4 fights after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 4th level 3 fights after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 5th level 3 fights after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 6th level 2 fights after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 7th level 1 fight after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 8th level 1 fight after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 9th level 1 fight after PC#2 does.
PC#1 reaches 10th level 1 fight after PC#2 does.

I stopped when they gained the level simultaneously. So all in all, if a PC starts with +1 LA at first level and the rest of the party does not have an extra class level to compensate, 23 of 121 (approx 19%) encounters should have any change from the norm as a result and future encounters should rarely (if at all) be affected.

Thanks for running the numbers, I was too lazy to do it myself :smallblush:

Note that similar results apply when buying off LA (albeit in reverse), in case anyone is wondering about that.

[Hemnon]

ECL is not mean't for equal party level, but for measuring a character's equivalent to the difficulty of encounters.

there is quite a diffference since it's not the character's true level per say, but rather what that classlevel 4 character is equal to, based on enemies and encounters.


now i read that most of you all comes with the 'but if we all take 42 LA then we break the game'... well yes that's true, but what GM would allow that to happen at game creation???

ECL is not a tool to balance out the party, but a measure for when a character goes up a level. making a character start out with less class levels ruins the reason for taking the LA in the first place, since the LA chart indicated that the higher the ECL, the longer it takes to gain a level.

[ThiagoMartell]

Hemnon, why don't you just use LA buyoff or lesser races? They are built specifically for this.

[limejuicepowder]

How unbalancing would it be, really, to convert LA to RHD? Racial hit dice would become class levels, essentially. How many races actually have abilities that would be deemed overpowered if they were converted in to a class? Most races get abilities that are either weak, disorganized, or are extremely specific - not terribly useful when it comes to actually taking class levels.

I fully admit that there would be some potential problems, notably with races that get massive ability increases and few other abilities, like half-dragons, minotaurs, ogres, etc. But still, I'm inclined to think RP, and DM rules, would limit that: not everyone wants to be half-dragon troll, even if it was mechanically superior (after all, if mechanical superiority was the defining factor of every build, then everyone would play spellcasters). Plus, it would make races with LA actually playable, which right now they largely aren't.

[ThiagoMartell]

How unbalancing would it be, really, to convert LA to RHD? Racial hit dice would become class levels, essentially. How many races actually have abilities that would be deemed overpowered if they were converted in to a class? Most races get abilities that are either weak, disorganized, or are extremely specific - not terribly useful when it comes to actually taking class levels.

If you treat as class levels, you're going to end up with all sorts of trouble.
Planetouched would now get as many skill points at first level as Rogues. Half-dragons would be better than Barbarians - more skill points, and higher Strenght than a raging Barbarian. You're also undervalueing type-based immunities. Also, any "casts as X of equal level to it's HD" race also gets ridiculously overpowered.

[Network]

I'll add than if the vampire has LA +8, he's also very hard to kill. He can survive (maybe not win, but survive) against a foe of the same, if not greater ECL.

Fast healing also assure he will be at the maximum of his hp in (almost) every fight. So at the fourth fight of the day, he is the one who has the most remaining resources.

It's the same thing with a lot of LA creatures, in fact (not all, sure, but still more than a few).

[limejuicepowder]

If you treat as class levels, you're going to end up with all sorts of trouble.
Planetouched would now get as many skill points at first level as Rogues. Half-dragons would be better than Barbarians - more skill points, and higher Strenght than a raging Barbarian. You're also undervalueing type-based immunities. Also, any "casts as X of equal level to it's HD" race also gets ridiculously overpowered.

hmmm good points, I hadn't really thought of those; I was just thinking of races like hobgoblins, drow, bugbears, etc - who really are unplayable as listed. It's true that "dipping a level(s) of draconic" or outsider would be extremely valuable, if just for the immunity to various effects.

Just to play devil's advocate though, would what you outlined really be that bad? I can think of a few reasons why a half-dragon SHOULD be more powerful then levels as a barbarian, or why a planetouched should have "heavenly" skills. After all, it's not like a character can increase there level in their racial HD - on a long enough time line class levels will ensure there is little difference. Considering traditional fantasy ideas of powerful races, this makes sense: certain races are that good; beyond a normal mortal's abilities. However, great hero's can match, or exceed, them. I'll also add that arguments based on balance are particularly unconvincing to me, as 3.5 is about as far from balanced as a game can get, and as I said before few people play to take advantage of every mechanical option.

Still though, I guess it would take a more nuanced change xD.

[Douglas]

ECL is not a tool to balance out the party, but a measure for when a character goes up a level.
It's both. Balancing out the party is blatantly obviously the reason for why characters with LA are supposed to start with fewer class levels.


making a character start out with less class levels ruins the reason for taking the LA in the first place, since the LA chart indicated that the higher the ECL, the longer it takes to gain a level.
The goal of LA's design is to ensure that the character with LA will forever remain exactly that many levels behind the rest of the party. A character with 3 LA starts out 3 levels behind, and his level gain is exactly matched so that he will stay 3 levels behind. That is the full sum total of the intent of how LA is supposed to work. Theoretically, the benefits that 3 LA race gives should provide the same amount of power as the missing 3 levels, making it a fair trade.

Slower level advancement is not the reason LA exists, but rather a necessary mechanic to maintain LA's true intended effect, which is that the LA character will at all times be a specific number of levels behind.

[Network]

I'll also add that arguments based on balance are particularly unconvincing to me, as 3.5 is about as far from balanced as a game can get, and as I said before few people play to take advantage of every mechanical option.

So what are you doing on this thread? It's about balance, not ''they should be more powerful by themselves''.

As already said, LA exists so that not all players will want to play monsters. LA should not grant more powers than they do : the only game mechanic they should have is slowing the evolution of PCs, since NPC don't use them (well, most of the time). So if a drow PC has RDHs, there's no reason for a drow NPC to don't have them.

I'm not saying monsters must be underpowered, but be a troll, with regeneration, three natural weapons and +12 on strengh and constitution worth it if the character is build correctly. Don't try to make them wizards : there are other races for that.

[ThiagoMartell]

hmmm good points, I hadn't really thought of those; I was just thinking of races like hobgoblins, drow, bugbears, etc - who really are unplayable as listed. It's true that "dipping a level(s) of draconic" or outsider would be extremely valuable, if just for the immunity to various effects.
I've played both hobgoblins and drow. In the last game I DMed, I had hobgoblin PC (and an aasimar PC, and a tiefling PC). In the current game I DM, I have a drow PC. Actually, out of every two games I run, I usually end up with at least 2 drow PCs. So I hardly think that's "unplayable".

[That_guy_there]

Right, an Aasimar Fighter 1should not be in the party with a Human Fighter 1 at game start. An Aasimar Fighter 1 should be able to be in a party with a Human Fighter 2, though. If someone gets Lycanthropy in play... you might want to consider making them an NPC, or going on a quest to cure them.

I had this exact problem in a higher level game. We were already 12th level when my PC was infected by a wereboar. It happened at the end of a game session and we had the means to cure me ASAP, so the DM gave me a little time (until the next session) to mull over if i wanted to keep the template. He told me i would gain the benefits (at the next full moon) and LA of the template imediately. Which meantI'd be earning XP as an 18th level PC since the LA+RHD= 6. Which wasn't worth even the substantial increase in the PCs abilities.

So The IDEA of LA is good but it just never seems worth it (im my opinion)

[ima donkey]

I get this problem alot in my groups and we have a simple solution, everybody has to be within 1 LA of each other and we try to avoid racial hit die. This seems to work fairly well because being one class level behind does not affect things too badly. So my advice to you is pick a different race with a LA 1 such as a gnoll (we drop the racial hit die to make it playable in my group) or an aasimar or whatever fits your class.

[limejuicepowder]

So what are you doing on this thread? It's about balance, not ''they should be more powerful by themselves''.

As already said, LA exists so that not all players will want to play monsters. LA should not grant more powers than they do : the only game mechanic they should have is slowing the evolution of PCs, since NPC don't use them (well, most of the time). So if a drow PC has RDHs, there's no reason for a drow NPC to don't have them.

I'm not saying monsters must be underpowered, but be a troll, with regeneration, three natural weapons and +12 on strengh and constitution worth it if the character is build correctly. Don't try to make them wizards : there are other races for that.

Funny how balance discussions are almost always about mundanes, when mundanes are not the source of imbalance on the wide scale.

Yes, there are some races that are worth the LA; to generalize, they are races with high RHD and low LA, and sufficiently high ability score modifiers. Trolls are definitely one of the worthwhile races. However, there are a whole bag o' races that turn out to be weaker options as compared to LA +0 races, when it is suggested fluff-wise that they should be stronger. This is usually because they have LA with no HD. That is pretty much all I'm saying, and my simple solution is to convert LA to HD.

[NichG]

I think there's a dissonance between the fluff of 'this race should be stronger' and the practicality of 'hey guys, lets all make characters and play a game together'. In some sense, the simplest way to resolve this dissonance is to simply say 'PCs cannot be this race'.

I mean, basically what you'd want for 'this race is stronger' is that you'll never meet an individual of that race who is weaker than the basic individual of a 'weaker' race, and is on average stronger than such creatures. So an ogre usually be stronger than a goblin, and a troll will usually be stronger than an ogre, and a dragon will usually be stronger than a troll, and so on.

Meanwhile, building a party of characters means having people who are 'about as strong as eachother'. LA explains this as 'its a party consisting of a highly seasoned warrior and an adolescent troll who has never seen combat', but people may not want to play that archetype when playing a troll. So the simple, fair solution is to say 'you cannot play a troll'.

This is even worse with races that have weak, but transformative abilities. A race that has a 5ft fly speed totally changes the game at Lv4, but is basically moot by Lv8. A race that is hard to kill permanently (such as a ghost, lich, or vampire) removes the threat of death entirely for that character, but doesn't actually grant them anything proactive to do - those points of LA are going to a powerful defensive ability that doesn't help the character contribute, but is transformative to the nature of gameplay for that PC (and can lead to bad party behaviors where the player takes advantage of their invulnerability to be overly careless, but thats an aside)

That said, 3.5 decided to give people the option, and because of the dissonance that option is somewhat fundamentally flawed. In order to ensure table balance, you have to introduce setting imbalance by having a weird mix of highly skilled and seasoned LA 0 characters and unseasoned LA nonzero characters, who just happened to decide to get together and form a band of heroes.

One solution I've seen is to have a campaign be specifically about playing monstrous races or outsiders or whatever. Give everyone 3 free LA, and require people to play races with at least that LA.

[pres_man]

And you can't just give LA races HD and make it all better. A Half-Dragon, among other things, gets a +8 Strength. Thats +4 to all melee attack rolls, which is balanced by the fact that they'll lose out on 3 HD worth of AB. If you give them HD, even crappy common HD, the Half-Dragon will begin to clearly outstrip the fighters and rogues because they are not suffering from the lack of AB, HP, and Skill Points/Skill Max there are supposed to. The races and race system need to be redesigned from the ground up, A haphazard solution will only make things worse.

While agree with exchanging racial HD (especially if done 1 for 1) is most likely a bad idea, I disagree with giving commoner-ish HD (d4 HD, 1/2 BA, 1/3 Saves, 2+Int skills [no class skills]) is going to seriously unbalance the character. And I wouldn't call it a haphazard solution, it is something I have in place for several years in my game and it hasn't unbalanced anything.


Also, don't use spellcasters as examples, everyone knows that spellcasters should NEVER take LA races.

Agreed. In my games a I created a feat that allowed a character to count half of their non-casting HD (including racial HD and my LA weak HD) towards the casting class to help with this. Still generally it is best for a caster to stick with a standard race and not to multiclass.



I'll add than if the vampire has LA +8, he's also very hard to kill. He can survive (maybe not win, but survive) against a foe of the same, if not greater ECL.

One thing to remember about vampires is they have to return to their coffin, which puts a dampen on adventuring, well that and the whole burn up in sunlight thing.



Meanwhile, building a party of characters means having people who are 'about as strong as eachother'. LA explains this as 'its a party consisting of a highly seasoned warrior and an adolescent troll who has never seen combat', but people may not want to play that archetype when playing a troll. So the simple, fair solution is to say 'you cannot play a troll'.

I have to say that is a bit strange thinking for me. Player, "I don't want to start as an adolescent troll." DM, "Fine, no trolls then." Wouldn't a more reasonable answer be, "Well this is how you can start at low level as a troll, otherwise you will have to wait to bring in your troll character till the party reaches the appropriate level. Your choice." Generally choices are better than decrees in my experience. I mean just because a player doesn't want to play a weak wizard at level one doesn't mean that I ban wizards. Why would I do that with a monstrous race?

EDIT: Another option, especially for something like lycanthropes that are acquired, is to give the character equal virtual negative levels as those gained from the template/race. When the character "level"s, they buy off one of those negative levels (no choice). So the character doesn't gain a class level until they have "mastered" their new state.

[Doug Lampert]

EDIT: Another option, especially for something like lycanthropes that are acquired, is to give the character equal virtual negative levels as those gained from the template/race. When the character "level"s, they buy off one of those negative levels (no choice). So the character doesn't gain a class level until they have "mastered" their new state.

LA is generally set to the "best" use of the creature (as seen by the same people that think wizards and monks are ballanced). But that's the goal, for a strong and appropriate use of the template be no better than an approriate PHB race.

Thus the Lycanthrope templates have LA set on the basis that you were building arround being that type of Lycanthrope or becoming that type of Lycantrope.

But in actual play when your character gets bitten he's NOT someone who grew up a lycanthrope and built his training and skills arround that. He's not at all optimized to use his new template, so it's not surprising that dumping something like 6 RHD and 6 LA on the character means he's FAR weaker than his LA would indicate. What you've just done is probably like dumping 12 levels of wizard on someone's barbarian or 12 levels of barbarian on someone's wizard, the ability scores are wrong, the feats are wrong, the build is wrong, there's no synergy. If it WORKED then that would mean that the LA and RHD would be far too powerful for a character built to use them.

This in turn means that the CURSE of being bitten by a were is treated as something you try to get fixed, which is all to the good.

[TuggyNE]

ECL is not mean't for equal party level, but for measuring a character's equivalent to the difficulty of encounters.

Others have responded to the other parts of this post, but I wanted to compare this to a few quotes:
Starting Level of a Monster PC

Monsters suitable for play have a level adjustment given in their statistics. Add a monster’s level adjustment to its Humanoids and Class Levels to get the creature’s effective character level, or ECL. Effectively, monsters with a level adjustment become multiclass character when they take class levels. A creature’s “monster class” is always a favored class, and the creature never takes XP penalties for having it.
The heading, and the text about "effective multiclassing", indicate rather clearly that characters in a party are supposed to start at the same ECL.

Here's a quote from the previously linked article by SKR (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/LAvsXPpenalty.html):
The LA system was build [sic] so you could have a human, a dwarf, a drow, and an aasimar all in the same party at a comparable power level (particularly at low character levels where differences in ECL have a much greater effect) so that it's fair to all the players (nobody gets to play an über-character while someone else has to play a weenie character).
I don't really know how to express it more clearly than that. In short, you started by complaining about the existing LA system, and then shifted to saying that your proposed solution is actually how it's intended to work. That is quite simply wrong, in a factual sense.


That said, 3.5 decided to give people the option, and because of the dissonance that option is somewhat fundamentally flawed. In order to ensure table balance, you have to introduce setting imbalance by having a weird mix of highly skilled and seasoned LA 0 characters and unseasoned LA nonzero characters, who just happened to decide to get together and form a band of heroes.

One solution I've seen is to have a campaign be specifically about playing monstrous races or outsiders or whatever. Give everyone 3 free LA, and require people to play races with at least that LA.

Yeah; another common solution is to give everyone up to 1 free LA (which will usually mean everyone picks LA +1 races). It's also a bit more workable if you have, say, an LA+4 0RHD character in an ECL 7 party*; the high-LA character may not have as much experience as their compatriots, but they haven't exactly just fallen off the turnip truck, either.

*Bit of personal experience here. :smallwink:


Thus the Lycanthrope templates have LA set on the basis that you were building arround being that type of Lycanthrope or becoming that type of Lycantrope.

But in actual play when your character gets bitten he's NOT someone who grew up a lycanthrope and built his training and skills arround that. He's not at all optimized to use his new template, so it's not surprising that dumping something like 6 RHD and 6 LA on the character means he's FAR weaker than his LA would indicate. What you've just done is probably like dumping 12 levels of wizard on someone's barbarian or 12 levels of barbarian on someone's wizard, the ability scores are wrong, the feats are wrong, the build is wrong, there's no synergy. If it WORKED then that would mean that the LA and RHD would be far too powerful for a character built to use them.

This in turn means that the CURSE of being bitten by a were is treated as something you try to get fixed, which is all to the good.

This is a fair point, when it turns out right, but it's still possible for someone to accidentally have a lot of synergy with an acquired lycanthrope template. For example, for a Barbarian, 3 animal RHD + 3 LA is not a horrible price to pay for +4 Str, +6 Con, DR 10/silver, and +8 natural armor. (Compare to the excellent mineral warrior at +1 LA: +3 natural armor, DR 8/adamantine, +2 Strength, +4 Con, -2 Int (minimum 1), -2 Wis, -2 Cha.) Gaining that much power during play can be a fairly serious bump, especially in lower-op groups.

[NichG]

I have to say that is a bit strange thinking for me. Player, "I don't want to start as an adolescent troll." DM, "Fine, no trolls then." Wouldn't a more reasonable answer be, "Well this is how you can start at low level as a troll, otherwise you will have to wait to bring in your troll character till the party reaches the appropriate level. Your choice." Generally choices are better than decrees in my experience. I mean just because a player doesn't want to play a weak wizard at level one doesn't mean that I ban wizards. Why would I do that with a monstrous race?


The point I was trying to make is that there are several mutually opposed design forces here.

Force 1: Trolls are inherently better than humans
Force 2: The party should consist of 'equally powerful' characters
Force 3: The game should start at a low level so that people can grow into their power.

So my point is, by playing a Troll with no class levels alongside a human character with class levels equal to the Trolls RHD and LA, you're implicitly saying that the guy playing the troll is playing someone with less training and experience than the guy playing the human. If you want to play a seasoned veteran troll, you have no choice but to play alongside even more seasoned humans, because that is the tradeoff made to balance the power of playing the troll against everyone else. Savage Species progressions are a good mechanic, but they still suffer from this dissonance.

Having an all-monster party resolves the issue, since now you can all play skilled characters with some sort of innate racial advantage and it balances out. Starting at high level resolves the issue because the difference between someone with 15 class levels and someone with 18 class levels isn't nearly as big as the difference between 1 class level and 4 class levels.

Alternately, you could stop trying to achieve the second point and just allow PCs to be unbalanced against eachother. People will (somewhat rightly) argue that the guy playing the Wizard can still dominate play almost regardless of how much free LA you gave someone (barring I suppose races that help you be a better wizard like Illithid). You could also try to cover for the imbalance in-game, by giving the non-monster characters plot benefits, loot geared to them, more roleplay opportunities, whatever. That takes skill and its kind of hard to 'write a rule for that', so its an option that tends to be left out of these discussions.

I guess you could formalize it in terms of some kind of action point/fate point/etc mechanic. Characters all get, say, 4 Fate Points to begin with. You can spend a Fate Point to buy off 1LA, to declare that a magic item or artifact you want is included in a treasure horde (somehow scaling with your level, but probably worth up to your WBL), to declare that you have a plotty contact or in with some group, etc. That way, you could start as a monster and be simply better than other PCs, but the other PCs get to spend their Fate Points to grow faster than you.

[Icewraith]

For moderately high templates, I've found the following is a little better than the commoner substitution:

each +1 level adustment grants poor BAB, poor save progression, 1d1 hp/level, and no skill points.

Combine with level adjustment buyoff for best results. It also eliminates the headache of "what the heck do I do to my hp pool and skills when I gain a level." - You roll your class hit dice and subtract one, since your con score for that level is already figured into your hp pool (this distinction is why I use "1d1" instead of "1" hp/level).

Alternatively you can add Int skill points (if Int >=10) as cross class skills and re-train them when you get the level, but this is generally more headache and record-keeping than it's worth.

Make sure to still require that all characters start with the same amount of xp to play with (you can include xp buyoff as part of this total, especially if you're starting at 4th level with a few +1 LA characters).

The higher the LA and the more RHD the character concept has, the more difficult it will be to integrate with standard characters. While high LA characters often have really good ability scores that somewhat compensate for lower base saves, usually there's still enough of a gap in one of their saves to render the character screwed the first time they take a disintegrate or charm person to the face or similar.