Ignoring LA depending on classes...?

[Saintheart]

As much for discussion as a flat out question, but: has anyone ever tried ignoring level adjustment for lower tier classes as a means of making them a little more competitive with higher tiers, while still enforcing level adjustment rules for higher tier classes?

So for example a Fighter can ignore the normal level adjustment penalties applying to, say, a Shade with its insane level adjustment, but a Wizard is fully stuck with level adjustment rules if they want to run a Tome Dragon character (or indeed the same Shade character).

I am not saying that these balance out the tiers by any stretch of the imagination, but I would have thought a Shade fighter at low levels at least is going to be keeping up with the mage for a while longer than he would as a bog standard human.

Has anyone ever tried doing this? How did it work out in practice in terms of keeping characters at a similar tier for longer?

[TheifofZ]

An interesting concept, but I haven't tried that.
If you insist on it, I think doing what the bloodlines did might help keep the balance alittle better.
Most of the T1 classes don't really hit the unstoppable do everything point until toward late game, and are overall slightly worse off than generic fighters at level 1.
Giving the fighter a free Level Adjustment but denying the wizard anything like it puts the wizard deeper in the hole early game.
If you do the bloodline thing where a portion of the race/template/whatever's power is granted every few levels instead, that lets the wizards feel like they aren't being dumped on early game (where the fights required to challenge the Fighter with +4 LA mean mobs that can squish a 1d4 HD wizard by sneezing) by keeping the early power down, but lets the fighters feel more effective every time they unlock some previously unavailable racial feature.

For example, let's say the fighter starts with Half Dragon. Normally, that'd jump their ECL to 4th level, and grant them a slew of bonuses that would let them breeze through early game if you let them play with the CR 1 mobs appropriate for level 1. On the other hand, throwing out mobs appropriate for the fighter (CR 3-5~) means that the wizard who might have 2 first level spells per day is stuck hiding in a corner until they start to hit their stride.
But let's say instead that the +3 LA is spread out over 18 levels of gameplay, where they get stat bonuses every level (in order, for example, +1 str, +1 con, +1 str, +1 int, +1 str +1 cha, +1 str, and then repeated.) That's a total of +8 Str, +2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Cha over 14 levels. Spread the Natural armor to +1 every 4 levels, and tweak the flight to function as the Dragonborn of Bahumut's, and so on. Doing this keeps the overall power gained at any one point from being overwhelming while still eventually granting the fighter +3 ECL.

Of course, doing this doesn't actually bring a low Tier class in line with a T1 class if the T1 is actually trying, but it still might be fun to do if the T4 players are feeling lackluster.

[Saintheart]

Well, certainly at the lowest levels this would get pretty wonky - but I had a feeling that around level 10 or so you'd have some rough parity: the spellcasters in the party would have fifth level spells which really change the game entirely, but at least the fighters and others would have some shiny toys to keep them semi-relevant, or at least more relevant than if they had no templates on them at all. The only reason I say that is because the majority of games aren't terribly likely to last players through from levels 1-20, so the low tiers never get the full power of the template, or aren't likely to. I was more thinking of this in the context of mid-level short-to-medium-term campaigns, and only because I'm running a game at the moment with no caster PCs and no level adjustment. It's ... intriguing, and it piqued my interest on this issue.

[Ger. Bessa]

Another option would be an adaptation of the "non-associated class" usable for CR calculations. Start with the full LA and decrease that by one every two "non-associated level".

Ex: Succubus is 6 HD, LA +5. (ECL 11)
Succubus fighter 6 is 6 HD, 6 class levels, LA +2. (ECL 14)

Obviously you can choose what is "non-associated". Giving scales and a strength bonus to wizard will not break them any more either, as long as they don't gish.

My opinion is that outside of raw, any ruling should favor the Succubus blackguards PCs.

[NomGarret]

"As long as they don't gish" is the phrase that worries me most with this idea. It seems like you'd have to come up with some average of the tiers of each level to determine at any point how much LA to apply.

[OldTrees1]

As much for discussion as a flat out question, but: has anyone ever tried ignoring level adjustment for lower tier classes as a means of making them a little more competitive with higher tiers, while still enforcing level adjustment rules for higher tier classes?

Savage Species has a small paragraph about LA of a monster race ought to be tailored based on the class they are entering. This section makes a good case for Minotaur having a higher LA for Fighters than for Wizards since Fighters get more out of Minotaur than Wizard does. However it is unaware of tiers. Granting lower tiered classes free levels(which can be spent on LA/RHD) to make them more competitive with higher tier would be reasonable if you are essentially creating a higher tiered level via a combination of lower tiered levels, RHD and LA.

So just limit the benefit based on the number of lower tiered levels (use Template classes as allow multiclassing alongside Monster classes as needed). This will cover all 3 cases (Fighter, Gish, Mage) by differentiating between them.

[Inevitability]

Never tried this (and I'm not sure how it'd work with multiclassing) but I have been in a game where you could gestalt several lower-tier classes together instead of going with a single higher class. Most builds just used one side of the gestalt for LA, so in the end it kind of ended up like you propose here.

The low-tiers ended up overshadowing the higher-tier classes, although that was most likely because the campaign went only to level 2-3.

[Chronos]

The biggest problem is, what if someone just wants to play a human fighter? That's something that should be doable in the game, without effectively taking huge penalties for it. But if the human fighter has no advantage over the half-dragon fighter, then it feels like he's being punished for it.

[Saintheart]

The biggest problem is, what if someone just wants to play a human fighter? That's something that should be doable in the game, without effectively taking huge penalties for it. But if the human fighter has no advantage over the half-dragon fighter, then it feels like he's being punished for it.

But there's already a punishment inherent in the system and huge penalties for playing a human fighter: the fact he's playing a fighter as opposed to a spellcaster. This punishment is glaringly apparent after about level 6 and only gets worse with time. Besides, it's just as arguable that the fighter who wants to be a half-dragon might feel diddled somewhat by the current rules since he's by definition hobbled to allow Teh Puny Humanz to keep up...

[Inevitability]

The biggest problem is, what if someone just wants to play a human fighter? That's something that should be doable in the game, without effectively taking huge penalties for it. But if the human fighter has no advantage over the half-dragon fighter, then it feels like he's being punished for it.

PHB2 had special character traits that increased someone's LA or CR by a set amount. It is fair from optimized, but you could for example give him Prodigy (strength). It doesn't do anything other than giving him a huge strength bonus, but hey, at least you get something for your LA.

[OldTrees1]

The biggest problem is, what if someone just wants to play a human fighter? That's something that should be doable in the game, without effectively taking huge penalties for it. But if the human fighter has no advantage over the half-dragon fighter, then it feels like he's being punished for it.

I believe I covered this above but it is worth restating.

RHD/LA is determined by value gained(Savage Species). This has 2 (game design but non RAW) implications:
1) The less value gained the less RHD/LA
2) The ECL increase of a class level should be determined by value gained.

So:
A Ogre Fighter should have more LA than a Human Fighter or an Ogre Wizard.
However A Human Fighter 6 should be a lower ECL than a Human Wizard 6. The question is whether you want to use gestalt or extra levels to close this gap.

I would recommend offering either Gestalt or free RHD/LA per level of a low Tier class.