monstrous races (making them better, 3.5)

[lunar2]

Generally what i hear is that monstrous races generally aren't worth it, especially for casters. Buy off makes them better, but has no significant benefit for LA higher than 3 unless you are playing well into epic levels.

How far would these 3 house rules go to fixing that problem?

1. All RHD are optional. 1HD creatures already have the option to trade in that HD for a class level. with this rule, you can trade in any or all of your RHD for an equivalent number of class levels.

2. if the first rule is in place, this rule becomes necessary to limit abuse. No race/class combination can grant you a caster level (or equivalent, for other magic systems) higher than your ECL. bonuses to effective caster level, such as from a prestige class feature that doesn't improve spells per day, do not count for the purpose of this rule. for example. a trumpet archon is an ECL 20. it has a base cleric caster level of 14. you could trade in 6 RHD for cleric levels to get your CL up to 20, but any cleric levels above that would offer no benefit to your caster level. the hierophant prestige class (DMG) would still boost your effective caster level, though, as would certain domain granted powers.

3. Gaining feats, ability score increases, and max skill ranks are determined by ECL, not HD.

so, how would these 3 rules affect the viability of monstrous races, especially casters?

also, on the DM's side. replacing RHD with class levels should increase the CR by 1 per 2 levels traded. a creature with class levels instead of some or all of their RHD has no non-associated levels when advanced past their baseline. for example, wizard is typically non-associated for fire giants. a fire giant can replace their 15 RHD for an equal number of wizard levels, and is now a CR 17 challenge. if that fire giant were to gain any more class levels in any class, it's CR would increase by 1 per level.

[Urpriest]

3. Is going to have some really odd consequences in terms of PrC entry etc, plus it's overly specific (why skills and not BAB?).

[Duke of URL]

so, how would these 3 rules affect the viability of monstrous races, especially casters?

The easiest way to determine that is by using examples. Compare the ECL 20 Trumpet Archon to a straight human Cleric 20 -- with your houserules, are they roughly the same power level? (The answer, of course, is no -- the Trumpet Archon has significantly better ability scores and extra SLAs while the human gets a bonus feat, a boost to BAB, and better base saves (which are pretty much offset by the ability score differences). Skill points should be close to a wash, and both have identical max skill ranks.)

Of course, no one actually goes straight cleric, so the Trumpet Archon's advantage is somewhat offset by the fact that the human has been in PrCs since level 6, while the Trumpet Archon only has 12 levels of PrC to work with at all (and only gets caster level boost from 6 of them ) as opposed to the human's 14 PrC levels by ECL 20.

[JeminiZero]

The base class in my sig might be of interest to you. It has some support for creating semi-monstrous characters. In particular, you might want to look at the angel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12830701&postcount=18) example I give at the end. (Following Duke's analysis, the angel example is actually weaker than a straight Cleric, but I WAS aiming for Tier 3)

Basically, the solution I arrived at was to start with no monster abilities at level 1, and then allow one to trade class features for monstrous abilities of similiar power at each level. In the case of spellcasters, Class Features includes spell slots per day (and spells known for spont casters).

E.g. so a Succubus wizard starting at level 1 would have no ability score adjustments, no flight or any other normal succubus abilities. But she would have the option of trading in a level 1 wizard slot for a succubus ability of similiar strength. Perhaps the ability to Change Shape for example.

[Togo]

You need to be clear whether you're trying to make Monster LA and RHD more worthwhile, or whether you're trying to scale them up to Tier 1 to make them comparable in power to straight casters. It's almost impossible to make LA and RHD attractive to casters, precisely because they lose caster levels. Trying to do so will break the rest of the game.

Of course, if you're not using the rest of the game, that's not necessarily a problem.

[lunar2]

well, i was using cleric/ trumpet archons for an example, but the next campaign i run will be T3/4. classes available to PCs will be an upgraded adept(bard spells per day, pick a spell list and class feature from druid/animal companion, cleric/domains, wizard/wizard stuff), barbarian, beguiler, dread necromancer, fighter, healer, rogue, and warmage. the healer, warmage, and fighter will be upgraded, as well, to make them viable options.

@ archon being more powerful than straight cleric. well, you generally only have monstrous PCs when everyone has access to monstrous characters, so while the Archon cleric may be more powerful than a human cleric, he's not more powerful than an Ursinal wizard (i don't think, anyway). the point was to make LA worth the cost, and overshooting a bit is fine, as long as everyone overshoots comparably. Archon may have also been a bad example, since it was one monster that's actually worth the LA on its own, as long as you are looking for a gish or martial character, and not a straight caster.

@ rule 3. BAB is not a function of character level, but of class level. Level Adjustments aren't class levels, and so don't grant hit points, skill points, or BAB, but under rule 3, they are character levels, so they count towards feats, ability scores, and max skill ranks.

[Urpriest]

@ rule 3. BAB is not a function of character level, but of class level. Level Adjustments aren't class levels, and so don't grant hit points, skill points, or BAB, but under rule 3, they are character levels, so they count towards feats, ability scores, and max skill ranks.

Ok, yes, there are clear implementational distinctions that make this a natural breaking point. It still breaks one of the basic symmetries of the game, which feels to me like someone running their nails across a chalkboard. Affecting skill points but not skill ranks means you break the "all skills at max ranks" situation, instead creating a bunch of orphan skills on the side. I also feel like it divides up PrC requirements and feat requirements in odd and unanticipated ways. There isn't, as far as I'm aware, some decisive overpowered aspect to this, but I feel it's a really drastic and unpleasant step.

[lunar2]

yeah, definitely makes things a bit awkward at times (when i first started playing, we did something along these lines, and determining which skills to sacrifice could be a pain), but if you aren't particularly skill focused, you could just ignore the extra max rank and throw the skills together normally, but still gain the benefits of the extra feats and ability score increases. it's something extra for the rogue to take advantage of if they need it, not to give the fighter a(nother) headache.