[Sanity Check] LA into RHD

[Xerlith]

A quick question - what unexpected things could happen if I changed ALL the LA of a playable race into appropriate racial HD?

[Forrestfire]

Some creatures (dragons, outsiders, stuff with decent hit dice and decent abilities) would be worth playing, and many (especially lots of lower-LA races) would be unplayable as a result of a rules quirk. If you turn a Hobgoblin's +1 LA into RHD, they now have 2 RHD, and thus, the first cannot be swapped for a class level. If you ignore the existing one hit die, they end up with one RHD, they now have one, and it can be swapped for a class level, making them effectively LA 0 (and the LA +2 humanoid races cry, because in either case, you're saddled with extra hit dice that's barely better than LA).

[Psyren]

A quick question - what unexpected things could happen if I changed ALL the LA of a playable race into appropriate racial HD?

- You couldn't trade in your one for a class level anymore, because that option is only available to races with 1 HD, and your races would now have two. So every LA +1 spellcaster would actually lose 2 caster levels (e.g. an ECL 20 Tiefling sorcerer would now be a Tiefling 2/Sorcerer 18, instead of Tiefling Sorcerer 19.) I'm not aware of any LA 1 races whose RHD progresses spellcasting or other class features.

(^ Ninja'd by Forrestfire)

- Also LA buyoff wouldn't work anymore, since you can't buy off RHD (not counting level drain shenanigans.)

[Seerow]

Or y'know, as a part of the houserule being implemented, you could just add some note to previously LA+1 races that prevents them from trading that hit die out. So now your Hobgoblins have 1 racial hit die in addition to class levels, rather than just being a level lower with no hit die.



The real trouble with it isn't LA+1 races, it's races that already have both RHD and LA. Let's look at the Ogre for example. You have 4rhd, and +2 LA at CR3. A player wants to play an Ogre.


So does that player start with 2rhd, 4rhd, or 6rhd? If the answer is something other than 4rhd, why are they different from standard ogres? If they are not different from standard ogres (ie all ogres get changed to this new pre-adventuring standard) how does this affect the CR when you use the same creature in an encounter?

[OldTrees1]

The real trouble with it isn't LA+1 races, it's races that already have both RHD and LA. Let's look at the Ogre for example. You have 4rhd, and +2 LA at CR3. A player wants to play an Ogre.


So does that player start with 2rhd, 4rhd, or 6rhd? If the answer is something other than 4rhd, why are they different from standard ogres? If they are not different from standard ogres (ie all ogres get changed to this new pre-adventuring standard) how does this affect the CR when you use the same creature in an encounter?

You could increase the HD for all instances of the race and increase the CR to match. I believe the Monster Manuel has guidelines for how much the CR would increase (but DMs would still have to estimate the real CR for when the guidelines are wrong).

[atemu1234]

You could increase the HD for all instances of the race and increase the CR to match. I believe the Monster Manuel has guidelines for how much the CR would increase (but DMs would still have to estimate the real CR for when the guidelines are wrong).

You mean all the time?

[Seerow]

You could increase the HD for all instances of the race and increase the CR to match. I believe the Monster Manuel has guidelines for how much the CR would increase (but DMs would still have to estimate the real CR for when the guidelines are wrong).

It does, but then in some cases you're going to end up with weird partial CRs. For example the aforementioned Ogre is Giant type which is +1 CR per 4 HD, but you're only adding 2. So you end up with the 6hd ogre falling into a weird CR3.5 grey area.



My personal solution to the problem would be allow everything to advance by hit dice up to at least 4 hit dice, even if they don't normally have a hit dice advancement entry in their stat block. So yeah you can have a 4hd human without any levels (NPC or PC) if you really wanted to (which would actually probably be pretty solid for a cave man or whatever), and require player characters with weird races to advance at least as many hit dice as the LA of their chosen race before they are allowed to start taking class levels.

Why does an Ogre need to become more Giantish before they can start taking real classes? I don't know. But what the solution does do is allow for a more consistent CR conversion. You can use standard monsters with no issue as normal. If you want to use monsters with class levels, you'll probably round bonus hit dice added up to the nearest CR. So in the Ogre Example, a player character will go Ogre6/ClassesX, where the GM making a custom NPC will likely go Ogre8/ClassesX, so those 2 extra hit dice bring the CR total up to an even number (4+classes)

[Psyren]

Or y'know, as a part of the houserule being implemented, you could just add some note to previously LA+1 races that prevents them from trading that hit die out. So now your Hobgoblins have 1 racial hit die in addition to class levels, rather than just being a level lower with no hit die.

We were responding to the proposal as presented, i.e. without any compensating/corrective houserules. Presumably that would be the next step.

[Chronos]

I think that the biggest issue is that not all RHD are created equal. Outsider or dragon RHD aren't a bad "class" for any non-caster, fey are decent for skillmonkeys, a few are decent for warriors, and a handful of creatures (most of them outsiders or dragons, even) have racial spellcasting that scales with RHD. For any of those, the RHD would be almost no penalty at all, which could lead to overpowered characters (under this system, for instance, a sylph would have better spellcasting than a sorcerer of the same ECL, plus much better skills, saves, stats, and BAB). On the other hand, for some creature types (humanoids, animals, and oozes come to mind), there's almost no difference between LA and RHD, and so they'd probably still suck.

[OldTrees1]

You mean all the time?

Yeah. That is why I am not too concerned about the partial CRs Seerow brought up.

However personally I am much more a fan of reducing the cost of a race and shrinking CRs than to increasing CRs. (Especially since WotC rarely gave a fair price for races)

[Eloel]

A quick question - what unexpected things could happen if I changed ALL the LA of a playable race into appropriate racial HD?

Given that you're (probably) the DM, check for your players' races, and if anything is overly broken, nerf it.

The first problem I see is races with RHD-based casting, that's going to hurt and hurt a lot.

[Crake]

- You couldn't trade in your one for a class level anymore, because that option is only available to races with 1 HD, and your races would now have two. So every LA +1 spellcaster would actually lose 2 caster levels (e.g. an ECL 20 Tiefling sorcerer would now be a Tiefling 2/Sorcerer 18, instead of Tiefling Sorcerer 19.) I'm not aware of any LA 1 races whose RHD progresses spellcasting or other class features.

(^ Ninja'd by Forrestfire)

- Also LA buyoff wouldn't work anymore, since you can't buy off RHD (not counting level drain shenanigans.)

Tieflings don't have racial HD, they have class levels. If you look closely the sample tiefling is a level 1 warrior, not a 1HD outsider, so that wouldn't apply. They would instead become 1HD outsiders with no LA (which would then be replaced by class levels anyway unless you houseruled that out)

[Psyren]

Tieflings don't have racial HD, they have class levels. If you look closely the sample tiefling is a level 1 warrior, not a 1HD outsider, so that wouldn't apply. They would instead become 1HD outsiders with no LA (which would then be replaced by class levels anyway unless you houseruled that out)

No - you're talking about the way things are now, where they only have 1 HD, so they get to replace that with a class level. OP's change would give them 2 RHD, removing that option and leaving them stuck with the RHD. Hobgoblins, Half-Giants, and similar 1+1 races would be affected as well.

[Xerlith]

Or y'know, as a part of the houserule being implemented, you could just add some note to previously LA+1 races that prevents them from trading that hit die out. So now your Hobgoblins have 1 racial hit die in addition to class levels, rather than just being a level lower with no hit die.


What I had in mind was that LA becomes HD AFTER the class levels are assigned. Now that I think about it, probably subject to LA tradeoff at a levelup (well, more like retraining in this case).

[Crake]

No - you're talking about the way things are now, where they only have 1 HD, so they get to replace that with a class level. OP's change would give them 2 RHD, removing that option and leaving them stuck with the RHD. Hobgoblins, Half-Giants, and similar 1+1 races would be affected as well.

No, the way things are now, planetouched have 0 RHD and 1 LA. Other creatures with 1 RHD show it as having a racial HD in their statblock (pixie is a good example) but planetouched (and the core races like elves, dwarves, halflings and gnomes) have no racial HD in their statblock and instead have a single class level. There is no mention of such creatures having any racial HD that can be replaced with class levels, they simply begin play with class levels by virtue of having no RHD