Replacing LA penalties with feat penalties?

[Pinkie Pyro]

As we all know, level adjustment is a pretty terrible system, one that most informed players try to avoid, (save for a select few, like half-Minotaur) simply because it will only help the most at low levels and be a real pain at higher levels.

So, what if instead of level adjustment, you gave the same numbered penalty to the amount of feats they could choose? a +1 LA means you just skip out on that first level feat, while a +4 means you don't get to pick one until HD 12.

Opinions?

[Seerow]

1) It wouldn't synch up with the normal monster rules, where they don't suffer LA and gain full feats from HD. You'd either be forcing a differentiation between a NPC and a PC representing the same creature (see: People crying about 4e doing just that), or rewriting all monsters ever, and generally making them weaker across the board.

2) It's simply not going to be a big penalty for a lot of people. Most classes gain their best abilities through class features, not feats. Feats are mostly in the "Nice, but not necessary" category, making them a pretty bad penalty.

I could maybe see something like that working in E6, in place of the suggested reduced point buy for high LA creatures, but not in a normal game. (And even in E6, that's going to turn out to be a huge advantage once you've been at level 6 for a while and pick up the feats you really want)





Recently I've seen musings about having LA count against wealth, which is a much better measure, since gold gets spent on being able to do new and interesting things and/or higher stats and such, which your LA is supposedly doing as well. But also one harder to balance, particularly at low levels where characters don't have the wealth to give. It also has a certain metagamey feel to it where one player simply doesn't get to keep loot because he's a Werewolf and the other players just take his share.

[Fates]

Now, see, that's just not a big enough penalty. Take for example the dark creature template- a decent template, but not considered at all overpowered. That only costs 1 LA. How would people reaft if there were a feat which granted:

-Darkvision, Superior Low-Light Vision
-+10 to all movement speeds
-Cold Resistance 10
-Hide in Plain Sight
-+8 Hide, +6 Move Silently

You can take any one aspect of the feat, and that alone would be strictly superior to any and all preexisting feats which try to do the same thing.

Personally, I find LA buyoff is a perfectly fine balance for LA- it's not perfect, but it can make templates/races with LA worth it.

[OldTrees1]

Honestly I think LA (and RHD which act like minor LA) is a good balance mechanic. They allow a player to buy racial/monsterous abilities with their levels (just as Classes are how they buy class features with levels). The only problem is WotC is _bad_ at estimating a fair price.

If something is not worth its RHD + LA, then reduce the RHD + LA until it is worth the cost.

Consequences:
1) Some abilities will (at a fair price) cost few enough levels that they can be obtained before a DM might want them to available. In those cases a DM will need to exercise their ability to delay access without increasing cost.
2) Obviously LA will never be optimal at a table where the only valid character is a full caster. However I consider that a problem with spell balancing, not with LA.

[AuraTwilight]

Aside from re-adjusting RHD/LA amounts, which are waaay too high in most cases, and making/using Monster Classes as available, I also like using this variant rule I found:

http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Level_Adjustment_Dice_%283.5e_Variant_Rule%29

It's still a penalty, but RHD and things like it are still preferable to LA in all cases.

[Drachasor]

In principle a CR X creature should be about as tough as a Level X PC, right? Seems like you should just use CR with wealth only being the treasure it would have and what's listed as part of the creature description. You then gain additional wealth normally (so total wealth after Y levels would be WBL Y - WBL X).

Though this does give you some wonkyness in terms of higher hit points for creatures since their hit dice suck. But overall CR is probably a better measure to work with than Hit Dice or LA. Modify epic rules so that you are epic when your CR = 21, and modify experience so that it uses your CR not your levels.

Sure there are likely some problematic options like Efreeti, but overall it should work...I think. An Old Silver Dragon would be CR 20, cast spells as a level 11 Sorcerer, have a lot of hit points (350), but only 240k gold (whereas a PC would have 760k). You do get some great saves, but in the Tier System this is probably still just a T3.

Hmm, though the Ancient Brass is perhaps more of an issue, as that is also CR 20 but 15th level casting. Though, I was looking at Dragons in particular since they have a low CR for their capabilities.

Still, I think working with CR gives you a better ballpark to work with in all respects.

[OldTrees1]

It's still a penalty, but RHD and things like it are still preferable to LA in all cases.

I would note that 2* RHD can be less preferable than LA +1*.
*X+1 RHD can be less preferable than LA +X. Exact ratio for the average player is unknown.
Ratio subject to variation based on player personal preferences

[FMArthur]

Feats are more important for some characters than others.

Almost every nonmagical, non-ToB class is actually feat-driven to find their niche and effectiveness at it. Their class features supplement their chosen feat focus. Without feats, they get too little to do - and sometimes fail to set up conditions for their own class features to be useful. It's also less fun to have such options trimmed away, disregarding the new balance problem it introduces.

So you wind up in a situation where only certain already-great classes can afford to take your new option and the already-weaker classes can't (and if they do, they slowly realize it's a trick!).