Level adjustment

[herculesftw]

what do you think the LA would be for a pitfiend? I know the HD + the level adjustment= ECL. Mindflayer having 8hd and +7 LA. Pitfiend having 18hd and _____? Just curious what you guys would give the generals of hell lol

[Yora]

The big problem with Level Adjustment is, that the numbers are almost always too high.

The basic idea is: At what level is a character about equally strong as a pit fiend? That level minus the racial HD would be the Level Adjustment. What makes the whole thing so compliacted is that it is very difficult to say how strong an average character is, if not outright impossible.

[Namfuak]

LA -- means players can't use it. Considering pit fiends have +15-25 in every stat and a ton of SLAs, I imagine their LA would be at least as high as their RHD. If you are really interested, I think Savage Species has an approximation guide for making races with LA.

[Karnith]

In a just world, I think that a Pit Fiend would have a LA somewhere around +5 at the highest. Given Wizard's history of assigning LA, though, a Pit Fiend would realistically have an unmanageably-huge LA, probably somewhere around +10 to +15.


If you are really interested, I think Savage Species has an approximation guide for making races with LA.
Unfortunately, their guidelines are basically useless, as they generally give LAs that are even more inflated than normal. Using the rules for LA in the chapter, they got ogres at ECL 7 (actual ECL: 6), kuo-toas at ECL 6 (actual ECL: 4), trolls at ECL 14 (actual ECL: 12), and nixies at LA +5 (actual LA: +3). Which doesn't even take into account that those level adjustments are already too high to begin with.

[herculesftw]

I'm mainly trying to guestimate using the rituals from savage species. It's ECL is easily in the Epic range.

[herculesftw]

hmmm this might work . . . http://csserver.evansville.edu/~jc84/DD3/Monster_ECL.htm

[Karnith]

hmmm this might work . . . http://csserver.evansville.edu/~jc84/DD3/Monster_ECL.htm
I just ran the math, and I believe that it gives a Pit Fiend a final ECL of 35. Which is, unsurprisingly, way too high. It is on his list of monster ECLs as 26, which is more reasonable, if still too high.

Generally speaking, anything that gives you a straight formula like that is not going to be very helpful.

[Xerxus]

Once you get up into ECL 20 territory on racial HD alone, you give the poor thing its barbarian levels or whatever with maybe LA +3 and call it a day. Chances are, a wizard of the same ECL is going to beat it anyway.

[herculesftw]

well, I wanted to basically use a **** ton of rods of excellent magic for the ritual. That way the transformed creature would actually keep their levels instead of sacrificing them. It says you can use the rods up for epic spells, which this ritual would have to be given it's so high a level adjustment. each rod gives 26000 xp for rendering it useless in a epic spell.