What's with this LA?

[Getsugaru]

A long time ago (not in a galaxy far, far away...), I made a thread questioning the madness of some Level Adjustments. Rather than go through the process of getting a mod to reopen a thread no one would be interested in looking at again, I'm making a new thread and will link to the old one.

Now that that (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=195914)'s out of the way, here's what the thread is about. Over the years, I've seen level adjustments that are, in my mind, absolutely bonkers. An example is the Silit from the Fiend Folio, which has a CR of 6, HD of 7d8, and a maddening LA of +18! Another is the Vampire. Yes, it has some powerful abilities, but is it really worth an LA of +8? My question is this: what should their LA really be? Also, what kinds of inappropriate LA have you run into? How'd you fix it? Any and all opinions are welcome and wanted. If a list gets big enough with inappropriate ones that the playground fixes, I'll compile them together into a "Fixed LA List" handbook-thing.

So, what do you think?

[icefractal]

+18?! I had to look at that one, and I remain puzzled by how they got that number. For reference, the abilities are:

+2 Str, +4 Dex, +4 Con, +6 Int, +4 Wis, +8 Cha
+5 natural armor
Reflective SR 19
Resist cold, electricity, fire 15
Mirror Jump, at will
Some nice but not that impressive SLAs
A really crappy "Shard Spray" attack
Some minor bonuses
Vulnerability to sonic

The 7 HD are the big issue here - even with LA +0, you're in an odd spot. You could be a warrior-type, I guess, good defensively at least. It puts the kibosh on being a caster though, so those huge mental stats aren't doing you a hell of a lot of good.

Therefore, I will price it for a warrior-type taking it. Compared to Ranger 7:
+ Same BAB, skills, better saves, natural armor
+ Good energy resistance, SR which starts good but becomes weak within 3-5 levels.
+ Mobility from Mirror Jump
= Stats are better than favored enemy at this level, but will be worse eventually
= SLAs are better at this level, but will be worse eventually
- Less bonus feats
- No animal companion
- Doesn't progress into further ranger abilities later on.

Overall, a bit better in the short term, but could be weaker in the long term, especially considering that straight-Ranger is already on the low end of the power curve. Therefore, I'd call it somewhere between LA +0 and LA +2, depending on how conservative you wanted to be. I could see LA +2 if the SR scaled (at 12 + level).

Obviously, if you dropped the racial HD, the LA would be higher. With no racial HD, I'm thinking LA +3 at least, maybe +4. Not +5, because Ghost is better.

[Bakkan]

I'm afraid I don't have any examples of inappropriate LA at the moment, but I wanted to share something I did in one of my campaigns in which everyone was a monstrous race. What we did was essenitally remove the LA, but require everyone to have a number of NPC class levels equal to their LA. What this did is fix the problem of attack bonuses and hit points being far to low for High-LA, low-RHD races. It also made it so that High-LA races were'nt entirely hosed by HD-dependent effects such as Color Spray and Cloudkill. It seemed to work well for us, though most of the characters had between +3 and +6 LA, which isn't huge.

[LOTRfan]

I find that a lot of creatures with both LA and RHD have far too much LA for their own good. For example, I'd say a Rakshasa should have +3 LA (for a total ECL of 10) rather than +7.

An LA of +2 sounds good for the Silit, if you ask me. But generally what I try to do is make a character progression like the ones in Savage Species, and see how many levels I can go while including two bonuses (usually 2 ability score increases, or an ability score increase and a minor special attack/quality) as "class features."

So the Rakshasa I mentioned before has an ECL of 10 because it took three extra levels beyond the 7 HD to give it all of its racial abilities in this manner.

[Urpriest]

The +18 really really looks like a typo. Look at the other Nerra: while not all that fair, they're generally in a much saner range.

[Getsugaru]

The +18 really really looks like a typo. Look at the other Nerra: while not all that fair, they're generally in a much saner range.

Still, there's no errata for Fiend Folio other than the one that just gives examples for the three "Fiend of" prestige classes. Therefore, by RAW, the only way to play one without DM house-ruling is in an epic campaign...

WotC really needs to hire a lawyer to proofread their stuff...

[limejuicepowder]

IMO, 99% of LA is wack (98% too weak, 1% too strong, 1% reasonable). I am convinced the designers did not make, much less playtest, a single level adjusted race.

Straight off the bat, virtually no race with HD should have a LA. The ECL at that point is out of control, and to add insult the CR is usually significantly lower than ECL. I know they are supposed to measure too different things, and neither measurement is very good, but it always struck me as odd that many creatures that are supposed to fit in a party of level X would be a poor fight for that same party....7 levels ago.

If the race doesn't have HD, or it's a template, the abilities it comes with have to make up for significant loss of HD - Bab, saves, hit points, skill points, feats. Generally speaking, this means a melee-oriented LA race/template needs +2 str/LA to even consider it (and that's only one facet). A spell caster will almost never consider it short of outrageous stat boosts or abilities because loosing spell levels is unthinkable.

It's really just a terrible system that makes many cool and flavorful creatures unplayable.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Fiend Folio is a poor example. Level adjustment will RANDOMLY include hit dice. For all LA's the designers err'd on the side of caution. I often knock some off, but rarely more than one. As a side note I love kalareem, although I cannot decide if the +3 is a tad too high or just right.

Edit: I think the lesser templates from Faerun did an excellent job of balancing out the LA's to make them easily useable.

[Spuddles]

I think the LAs in the fiend folio include HD, so it is actually more like total ECL. It was a 3.0 book, so monsters as PCs wasn't codified yet.

[Urpriest]

I think the LAs in the fiend folio include HD, so it is actually more like total ECL. It was a 3.0 book, so monsters as PCs wasn't codified yet.

Some of them do, yeah. But some (including some of the Nerra) don't, since they have LA lowers than their RHD.

Yeah, it's the editing.

[Vizzerdrix]

Off the top of my head, the poor, poor Blue has no reason to have an LA.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Off the top of my head, the poor, poor Blue has no reason to have an LA.

I can tell you right now, from extensive play testing, dropping the adjustment from the Blue breaks the game precisely never. It is a common house rule in our gaming group.

[TypoNinja]

I think LA's (and RHD) seems to terrible to us because we forget that the level of OP assumed by designers and play testers is, well practically none. Just have to look at example NPC's to figure that out, or how base races in the PHB value physical stats at double mental for balancing. (hello half orc), and blasting is the best way to use a wizard.

Based on those assumptions its easy to see how designers could end up seriously underestimating how badly RHD suck, and how useless an LA over 1 or 2 is. It's practically impossible to offer a caster something worth losing spell levels over, and even beatstick types can get far better class abilities, despite melee not getting nice things than you can score from most templates/monstrous races.

[erikun]

Pretty much all LA is out of whack, and the few examples where it does make sense are probably easier to list than all the times it doesn't. :smalltongue: My favorite examples are the Rakshasa (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/rakshasa.htm) (7HD, 7th level Sorcerer casting, +7LA), the Lillend (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lillend.htm) (7HD, 6th level Bard casting and music, +6LA), the Unbodied (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/unbodied.htm) (4HD, 4th level Telepath manifesting, +4LA), and the Mummy (N/A LA, but Savage Species made it playable... as the equilavent of a 20th level character. With 8 Hit Dice.)

And this doesn't even begin to address the silliness of trying to play a +2LA Drow spellcaster.

[SowZ]

Pretty much all LA is out of whack, and the few examples where it does make sense are probably easier to list than all the times it doesn't. :smalltongue: My favorite examples are the Rakshasa (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/rakshasa.htm) (7HD, 7th level Sorcerer casting, +7LA), the Lillend (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lillend.htm) (7HD, 6th level Bard casting and music, +6LA), the Unbodied (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/unbodied.htm) (4HD, 4th level Telepath manifesting, +4LA), and the Mummy (N/A LA, but Savage Species made it playable... as the equilavent of a 20th level character. With 8 Hit Dice.)

And this doesn't even begin to address the silliness of trying to play a +2LA Drow spellcaster.

For what they get, Unbodied aren't unplayable. At level ten, you are casting as a 6th level Psion with great stats, flight, a few nifty SLAs, incorporealness, etc. Monstrous Humanoid is a good racial Hit Dice, too. It's no Outsider or Dragon, but as an incorporeal you really shouldn't need a Fort save and the extra 1HP/level a d10 would give you. An Unbodied certainly won't keep up with a straight Psion, but you will certainly have your role in most parties and there will be times you are even happy you are the race you chose.

Drow are pretty bad, though. Their Spell Resistance is really the only thing worth looking at. Give them +2 Dex/Int/Cha without any penalty, make their SLAs all at will, (add Levitation to that list,) make the +2 racial saving throw bonus a flat Will Save bonus, +2 to your caster level for any spellcasting class you take, and give them a racial bonus feat. Give them an extra bonus feat, too, choosing between 'Weapon Focus: (Rapier or Shortsword)' or 'Hand Crossbow Focus.' And treat their Fighter Level as two higher for Fighter bonus feats. Just to help level out some of the drawbacks of losing out on BAB.

Then I might consider taking them, but they would still be sub-optimal.