Level Adjustement Level Caps: a Thought Experiment

[Gemini476]

Alright, I'm pretty sure that everyone here knows how Level Adjustment works. If you play a Half-Giant, you need to start at 2nd level or higher, and if you get turned into a Vampire then you don't get to level up for eight levels.

The second one is what inspired this.

How would things change if you reversed Level Adjustment so that it worked similarly to pre-3E level caps? A Half-Giant can adventure with a party from level one but never reaches level 20, while a Vampire levels like anyone else until 12th level where they just stop.

How would that change the environment of play? Assume for the sake of this thought experiment that RHD works as per usual and the players in question are going to play the characters from level 1-20 (or 3-20 for a Werewolf, and so one).


I'm pretty sure that this is a bad idea for various reasons, but still. It's basically just the other side of the coin from the Wizards weak at first level -> strong at 20 thing.

[Xintas]

As big a difference as there is between a 20th level Wizard and a 20th level fighter, I would argue that the difference between a 1st level sorcerer and a Celestial Nymph or a Half Dragon Minotaur is much greater.

[Zanos]

First thing that comes to mind is that you might have players trying to game the system with "removable" templates.

Resurrection spells restore as you were when you were living if you're an undead creature, for example.

Most low level campaigns don't get high enough for the limit to be relevant, and as such encourages people to find something with the highest LA and just slap it onto their character knowing they'll probably never be higher than level 10. Players who decide not to do that will be comparatively much weaker and those who do will likely never have to pay for it.

If you do play from level 1-20 players are suddenly going to feel a large hit to their effectiveness as they stop leveling, and won't be able to back out of a bad choice. Usually if a player feels ineffective it can be solved with retraining, but with this that seems like they're getting out of a contract where they agreed to be weaker at higher levels.

[Flickerdart]

How would things change if you reversed Level Adjustment so that it worked similarly to pre-3E level caps? A Half-Giant can adventure with a party from level one but never reaches level 20, while a Vampire levels like anyone else until 12th level where they just stop.
This would break pretty much everything. Before the party reaches level 12, the vampire is much stronger than any of the other characters. Even after 12, the ton of abilities it has will balance out. Only at about level 15-16 will they actually reach parity, and then for the next 4-5 levels the vampire will suck because the LA is too high.

[Urpriest]

The reason LA buyoff exists is because powerful races matter more at low levels than at high levels. So this works in precisely the opposite manner.

[avr]

This is how level caps worked in pre 3e games: they didn't.

One of these 3 held true, the level caps were stretched to fit the game or ignored, the game was never expected to reach the level cap, or people did not pick races/classes which would be affected in the game as it was expected to run.

It was a terrible idea then and it's still terrible.