Ken- Kuni/Li/Sun

[Miriad]

One of my players is fascinated with these 3 monsters (Monster Manual 5, Page 49). Sadly are not described as a playable race. Could someone help me figure out how to make this possible?

[Mcdt2]

Well, page 51 talks about giving them class levels, and states that they have an LA of +5. That makes Ken-Kuni an ECL 13, Ken-li and ECL 17, and Ken-Sun and ECL 22 (and unplayable outside of epic). You can add class levels to that as normal. Altogether, most likely not worth it though. In particular, I think LA +5 is a little to much for the Kuni, YMMV; but I'm the kind of a guy who reduces half celestial down to LA+1

Alternatively, you could come up with a mosnter progression for them, which allows you to start as a level 1 and gain the abilities and racial hit dice over several levels, but that requires significantly more work.

[Urpriest]

Since they would be fairly high LA, I'd advise instead using a Monster Class in the style of the ones made in the homebrew section of this forum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142724). They've already done an Ogre Mage, so I'd use that as a starting point.

[Gotterdammerung]

One of my players is fascinated with these 3 monsters (Monster Manual 5, Page 49). Sadly are not described as a playable race. Could someone help me figure out how to make this possible?


Unfortunately, Level adjustments are one of the most poorly designed facets of D&D. Even if you allowed this to be a playable race, and designed a racial progression, a player choosing this option would fall way behind the power curve, lose a large amount of precious player resources, and have lower chance of survival due to the effective loss of HP and saves that a level adjustment applies.


I currently use a homebrew fix of my own design in these types of situations. In my games, I take a look at a creatures racial hit dice and his level adjustment. Then I take the larger of the 2 numbers, and drop the smaller of the two numbers. If the larger number is a Level adjustment, I convert it into racial hit dice instead. If the 2 numbers are even, I drop the LA and keep the Racial hit dice.

I only use this system specifically when a player wants to play an unusual race. And I still reserve the right to stamp some races unplayable for PC's.


So for example,

A bugbear doesn't give a +1 LA, it simply has 3 humanoid hit dice that must be taken.

A satyr has 4 fey hit dice that must be taken and the +4 LA is dropped.

An ogre mage has 7 giant hit dice that must be taken instead of 5 hit dice and a +7 LA.



Using this system, the elemental magi would just use their 8HD, 12hd, or 17hd respectively, and drop the +5 LA.


If your campaign starts at a lower lvl and the player doesn't have enough lvls to take all of the racial hd, you will have to design some kind of progression or deem it unplayable.

Designing a progression is not difficult though. Just treat the race like its own personal class with as many class lvls as the natural racial Hit dice. design weaker versions of the full races abilities and then slowly scale them up.