Multiple Limbs and LA

[Draconium]

I've had an idea for a spider-based race of humanoids floating around in my brain for a while, but I'm having trouble deciding an appropriate ECL for them. The problem mainly revolves around the fact the race has more than two arms capable of fine manipulation. So I was wondering what the Playgrounders' opinions were on what LA would be appropriate for a race that has that as their main feature. As a note, the race doesn't have any other abilities really worth a LA, though I may put up the stats for the race in a player post if I need to.

[Troacctid]

The most comparable race would probably be diopsid, from Dragon Compendium: a four-armed race with two of the arms being much weaker than the primary pair. No other racial abilities that are especially worth noting. LA +1.

[Doc_Maynot]

I know that is one of the key features of the Diopsid, having four arms, as well as a glide speed, bioluminescence, natural armor, the ability to TWF without DEX, and immunity to sleep, and they were +1 LA. So that could be a good starting point to base things off of.

Edit: Swordsage'd

[TheCrowing1432]

LA 1 sounds about right. Though honestly, having multiple limbs isnt all that good considering the hefty minuses that come from multi weapon fighting.

People have come up with warshaper builds that use shapechangers and.....they are generally lackluster.

[Necroticplague]

I'd say LA+1, because 3 arms lets you do two-handed fight and use a non-buckler shield, 4 arms lets you do that and have a hand free for using consumables. So it is fairly useful in sheer utility. More arms let you do more damage because of the savage species rules for greater-than-two-handed weapons.

[MisterKaws]

You could base them off the Anthro-Octopus or Anthro-Squid, at least if they have the number of arms I think they do.

[Malimar]

Add to the diopsid example the fact that four-armed sahuagin have an LA 1 higher than two-armed sahuagin, so WotC apparently thinks an extra pair of arms is worth +1 LA on its own. Does it follow that each extra pair of arms is worth an additional +1 LA? Probably not.

MisterKaws is correct, the closest thing we have for comparison for an eight-limbed creature is the anthropomorphic octopus and its ilk, which have 2 (crappy) RHD and +0 to +1 LA. Lacking any racial features to speak of other than four extra arms (with corresponding 6 natural attacks), that gives us a rough estimate of where the writers of Savage Species thought it should be, anyway. But in this case we must balance the consideration that anthropomorphic animals are notoriously poorly-balanced against the consideration that WotC consistently assigned LAs too high for what any given race gives you.

Of course, that last point is always a sticking point when assigning LA. Your race can be balanced against other WotC races with LA, or it can be balanced against the equivalent number of class levels, not both.

I'd say six arms on its own is probably a strong LA +1 or weak LA +2. If you slap on a couple other interesting racial features (natural bite attack with poison?) it'd probably be a pretty decent choice for +2.


Here's something that just occurred to me as an idea you didn't ask for: you could give this race the option to switch as a move action between four legs/four arms and two legs/six arms. Four legs mode gives the advantages of being a quadruped (+4 defending against bull rush, overrun, and trip; increased carrying capacity), whereas six arms mode gives the weapon-wielding benefits of having extra arms.

[Troacctid]

I was pretty much assuming you'd go with four arms and four legs. The other way seems a bit top-heavy.

[Malimar]

I was pretty much assuming you'd go with four arms and four legs. The other way seems a bit top-heavy.

Nonsense!
https://paragonwiki.com/w/images/thumb/7/79/421px-Rndr_Lord_Recluse_02.png/250px-421px-Rndr_Lord_Recluse_02.png

[Inevitability]

LA 1 sounds about right. Though honestly, having multiple limbs isnt all that good considering the hefty minuses that come from multi weapon fighting.

Note that according to Savage Species, it's possible to create a weapon that can be wielded with more hands than usually and allows you to increase your strength-modifier-to-damage-multiplier. For example, you could create a greataxe created for use with six hands rather than two which would add 7/2 times your strength modifier to damage, not 3/2 times.

[Werephilosopher]

Dungeon 136 has the Obah-Blessed template, granting two extra arms for +2 LA and four extra for +3 LA. It also gets Multiweapon Fighting, and boosts to grappling and ability scores.

[OldTrees1]

Dungeon Master's Guide II has a +2 arms for +2LA template that can be applied multiple times. That's it. It literally only adds 2 arms and WotC priced it as +2LA. So knowing WotC we can definitively assert that +2N arms is at most worth +2N LA and that likely +2N arms is worth considerably less than +2N LA.


4 armed races being worth +1 LA makes sense when looking at mid level.
With 6-8 arms I can see a way to make it worth a +2 LA at mid level.

[Zaq]

Though honestly, having multiple limbs isnt all that good considering the hefty minuses that come from multi weapon fighting.

Yes and no. If you have more than two hands (and those additional hands are as dexterous and as useful as human hands are), you can do more than just hold extra weapons. A four-armed Bard, for example, could simultaneously hold a rapier, play a masterwork/magical instrument (gaining some kind of bonus above and beyond just singing), and have a hand free for casting. Is that enormously more powerful than a two-armed Bard? Not necessarily, but it should still indicate that there's more to having additional arms than simply wielding extra weapons. (Also, while it's true that multi-weapon fighting does carry nasty penalties, having lots of arms still gives you a bigger optimization-launching platform than having two arms, at least as far as making lots of attacks is concerned.)

[Flickerdart]

MisterKaws is correct, the closest thing we have for comparison for an eight-limbed creature is the anthropomorphic octopus and its ilk, which have 2 (crappy) RHD and +0 to +1 LA. Lacking any racial features to speak of other than four extra arms (with corresponding 6 natural attacks)...

Actually, no. Both creatures use all of their arms in one natural attack.

Octopus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/octopus.htm) Full Attack: Arms +5 melee (0) and bite +0 melee (1d3)
Squid (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/squid.htm) Full Attack: Arms +4 melee (0) and bite -1 melee (1d6+1)

[Malimar]

Actually, no. Both creatures use all of their arms in one natural attack.

Octopus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/octopus.htm) Full Attack: Arms +5 melee (0) and bite +0 melee (1d3)
Squid (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/squid.htm) Full Attack: Arms +4 melee (0) and bite -1 melee (1d6+1)

I was going on
If the base creature has more than two limbs, the anthropomorphic animal has the same number, but two of them become feet. Thus, an octopus-man, for example, would have only six natural attacks rather than eight.

Investigating further, it would appear this was a 3.0->3.5 change: 3.0 SRD lists Octopus as having "8 arms +5 melee", and so on.

In any case, pretend I was just talking about Anthropomorphic Giant Octopus, then -- even in 3.5, Octopus, Giant lists "Full Attack: 8 tentacles +10 melee (1d4+5) and bite +5 melee (1d8+2)"

(I would suggest that anthropomorphic giant octopus having lower LA than anthropomorphic regular octopus should be reversed in the 3.5 update: anthro-octopus loses its 6 arm attacks but anthro-giant-octopus doesn't.)