LAs, a different approach?

[Rover]

I'm fairly sure I read this somewhere but I want some more opinions before I use it.

Instead of the regular XP penalties for reducing LAs would it be possible to simply reduce stats.

Let's say you took away a total of three points per LA.

If I roll up these stats for a gnoll ranger:
Str.14
Con.11
Dex.15
Int.9
Wis.17
Cha.13

Now if I wanted to reduce the LA to 0 as opposed to 1 I could take away three from charisma or perhaps two from charisma and one from constitution.

Is this an acceptable method? Or is it completely unacceptable?

[nedz]

Sometimes Races/Templates are given LA for stat mods, sometimes they get given LA for other abilities.

That said, your approach benefits SAD builds since they will take the bump to their key stat and just dump more points where it doesn't matter.