Level Adjustment, Does It Really Even Matter?

[Bartmanhomer]

I know that so many people avoids Level Adjustment because it's makes their character overpowered but does it really even matter if people want to use level adjustment with their character?

[Zanos]

Level adjustment makes characters weaker, not stronger. It increases ECL, so you have to pay for it by having less class levels.

[Sirdragon]

I know that so many people avoids Level Adjustment because it's makes their character overpowered but does it really even matter if people want to use level adjustment with their character?


Level adjustment does not make your character overpowered, in most cases it does the opposite, and makes a character weaker. Because very few races or templates give you abilities which make up for lost caster levels, and class features.

And wizards of the coast overestimated most LA's.

*sword-saged*

[CharonsHelper]

And wizards of the coast overestimated most LA's.

While I agree - I also don't think that they were wrong for erring on the side of caution. The game is designed to be played by characters with +0 LA, and I don't think it would have been a good thing to make a bunch of LA races the mechanically superior options.

[RoboEmperor]

I know that so many people avoids Level Adjustment because it's makes their character overpowered but does it really even matter if people want to use level adjustment with their character?

Nothing is worth a spellcaster level loss. Nothing.

2 spellcaster level loss results in being an entire spell level behind. Level 4 spells are godly, level 5 spells destroy games. Level 6 spells = GG I WIN for spellcasters. You want to hit these higher spell levels a.s.a.p.

A succubus has 6hd. It also has an LA of 6, making it ECL 12. Compare a level 12 wizard throwing around level 6 spells (aka GG I WIN) v.s. a succubus. NOT WORTH IT.

That's the main reason no one goes Aasimar. Being outsider is not worth the +1 LA despite the many, many benefits being outsider brings.

So if you want to use LA with your character, go ahead, if you have some way of keeping yourself relevant in a party and not become total worthless deadweight.

[Telonius]

I wouldn't say, "Nothing," exactly. There are a very few Prestige Classes (Recaster, War Weaver, Malconvoker, and a few others) that have abilities that compare to a loss of caster level. But not Level Adjustment. LA creatures can be okay if you're minmaxing a melee class, or if buyoff is available. If you can find the mythical DM that allows Half-Minotaur, plop that template onto your Orc Lion Totem Barbarian and go nuts.

[exelsisxax]

I wouldn't say, "Nothing," exactly. There are a very few Prestige Classes (Recaster, War Weaver, Malconvoker, and a few others) that have abilities that compare to a loss of caster level. But not Level Adjustment. LA creatures can be okay if you're minmaxing a melee class, or if buyoff is available. If you can find the mythical DM that allows Half-Minotaur, plop that template onto your Orc Lion Totem Barbarian and go nuts.

Or the creature has innate spellcasting as a high caster of equal ECL, or nearly combined with obscene ability score increases, or has something crazy like 9th level spells as SLAs(looking at you, 1/day Wishes)

[Pugwampy]

Level adjustment makes characters weaker, not stronger. It increases ECL, so you have to pay for it by having less class levels.


You have less class levels because you are playing the monster , not the class .



If you can find the mythical DM that allows Half-Minotaur, plop that template onto your Orc Lion Totem Barbarian and go nuts.


I was showing one of the new players who asked about powerhouse melee combatants , half ogres and Goliaths which he promptly ignores and instead makes a Jovian fire giant half blood barbarian .
I allowed it . This monster ran through my T Rex .
Later i checked up the level adjustment which was a cool 7 . Being a newb he never knew about level adjustment and i forgot to tell him .

[Elkad]

Nothing is worth a spellcaster level loss. Nothing.

2 spellcaster level loss results in being an entire spell level behind. Level 4 spells are godly, level 5 spells destroy games. Level 6 spells = GG I WIN for spellcasters. You want to hit these higher spell levels a.s.a.p.

A succubus has 6hd. It also has an LA of 6, making it ECL 12. Compare a level 12 wizard throwing around level 6 spells (aka GG I WIN) v.s. a succubus. NOT WORTH IT.

That's the main reason no one goes Aasimar. Being outsider is not worth the +1 LA despite the many, many benefits being outsider brings.

So if you want to use LA with your character, go ahead, if you have some way of keeping yourself relevant in a party and not become total worthless deadweight.

Mixmax says "Thou Shalt Not Give Up Caster Levels". In practice it doesn't matter.
12 levels? Of course you don't do that. 1 level on your Wizard/Cleric/Druid? That just means you get your new spells when a Sorcerer does. In an all T1 party, you'll be smashing everything anyway, so the missed level won't be noticeable. In a T3 party, you'll still be the most powerful member of the party, so again it won't be noticeable. In a party with T4/5 characters you should probably take LA+3 on purpose if you can.

[RoboEmperor]

I wouldn't say, "Nothing," exactly. There are a very few Prestige Classes (Recaster, War Weaver, Malconvoker, and a few others) that have abilities that compare to a loss of caster level. But not Level Adjustment. LA creatures can be okay if you're minmaxing a melee class, or if buyoff is available. If you can find the mythical DM that allows Half-Minotaur, plop that template onto your Orc Lion Totem Barbarian and go nuts.

I will concede that Malconvoker is in fact worth the caster level loss. Every time I have a problem with my build malconvoker always solved it.

Oh and level buyoff. I forgot about that but yeah, level buyoff lets +LA totally worth it. Only upto +2 though imo. +3 is too expensive.


Or the creature has innate spellcasting as a high caster of equal ECL, or nearly combined with obscene ability score increases, or has something crazy like 9th level spells as SLAs(looking at you, 1/day Wishes)

Pretty sure everything with a free wish is LA:-. Nightmares have at-will astral projection, but their LA is +4 (cohort), so I guess that means they are unplayable?


Mixmax says "Thou Shalt Not Give Up Caster Levels". In practice it doesn't matter.
12 levels? Of course you don't do that. 1 level on your Wizard/Cleric/Druid? That just means you get your new spells when a Sorcerer does. In an all T1 party, you'll be smashing everything anyway, so the missed level won't be noticeable. In a T3 party, you'll still be the most powerful member of the party, so again it won't be noticeable. In a party with T4/5 characters you should probably take LA+3 on purpose if you can.

Depends. My builds usually require a certain spell level for its shtick to come online and the later I get the requisite spellcaster level, my shtick gets delayed by a good 2 months per level delayed so it's not about min/maxing power, it's about enjoying the game as soon as possible.

[Bartmanhomer]

Level adjustment makes characters weaker, not stronger. It increases ECL, so you have to pay for it by having less class levels.


Level adjustment does not make your character overpowered, in most cases it does the opposite, and makes a character weaker. Because very few races or templates give you abilities which make up for lost caster levels, and class features.

And wizards of the coast overestimated most LA's.

*sword-saged*

My mistake then. My bad. :biggrin:

[Elkad]

Depends. My builds usually require a certain spell level for its shtick to come online and the later I get the requisite spellcaster level, my shtick gets delayed by a good 2 months per level delayed so it's not about min/maxing power, it's about enjoying the game as soon as possible.

I kinda feel the same way. But 3rds on a Wizard is when I think it gets fun, so if the game is starting at 6+, I'm OK with taking some LA. If it's starting at 1, you usually don't have the option at all. So there is only a L2-L5 spot where I feel it's really an impediment. And I don't think I've ever started a character in that range. It's either starting at 1st, or jumps to about 8th...

[Crow_Nightfeath]

Pathfinder did it a bit different, the CR is considered the level of the creature for what level you have to be to play it.
Minotaur (favorite example of this since they are almost exactly the same) in D&D has 6 HD and a level adjustment of +2, sure you get some nice physical stat boosts, but the racial HD don't give you as much as class levels, and being 2 levels behind at that.
In Pathfinder they are a CR 4 creature, so you can't play one til level 4 or higher, but you get it's 6 racial HD and all of its other stat boosts and abilities.

[weckar]

Nothing is worth the loss of caster levels. Except maybe fun gimmicks.

That said, if you're not playing a caster, feel free to take an LA up to (ECL-1).

[Fouredged Sword]

Pathfinder did it a bit different, the CR is considered the level of the creature for what level you have to be to play it.
Minotaur (favorite example of this since they are almost exactly the same) in D&D has 6 HD and a level adjustment of +2, sure you get some nice physical stat boosts, but the racial HD don't give you as much as class levels, and being 2 levels behind at that.
In Pathfinder they are a CR 4 creature, so you can't play one til level 4 or higher, but you get it's 6 racial HD and all of its other stat boosts and abilities.

Yeah, pathfinder ers in the other direction. High HD, low CR creatures are not uncommon and are great skillmonkies. Green or Black dragons are especially fun as they have some nasty feat support and can be scaled to almost any ECL.

[Yogibear41]

/shrug IMO if your using LA buy-off even if you are playing a full caster taking something with a +1 or a +2 la is almost always worth it in the long run.

People always talk about "xp is a river" when they talk about making magic items so why not LA buy-off. some guy even wrote an article about when +1 la, +2 la, etc. become "free"

[Bullet06320]

/shrug IMO if your using LA buy-off even if you are playing a full caster taking something with a +1 or a +2 la is almost always worth it in the long run.

People always talk about "xp is a river" when they talk about making magic items so why not LA buy-off. some guy even wrote an article about when +1 la, +2 la, etc. become "free"

Experience is a River (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444932-Experience-is-a-River)

[ericgrau]

While I agree - I also don't think that they were wrong for erring on the side of caution. The game is designed to be played by characters with +0 LA, and I don't think it would have been a good thing to make a bunch of LA races the mechanically superior options.

Power creep is to blame more than anything.

If anything the LA assignments are about right for core, then fall behind later. In core they also fall behind by about 0.5 for several races (rounding problem), at very low levels, sometimes at very high levels, and for casters.

Combine being conservative so that LA won't be too low even in the best circumstances with power creep and you get a bunch of hate. But the flipside would have been everyone powergaming 953 different races like they do to classes, feats and spells. And they still do it to races, but they do it to a lot fewer.


/shrug IMO if your using LA buy-off even if you are playing a full caster taking something with a +1 or a +2 la is almost always worth it in the long run.

People always talk about "xp is a river" when they talk about making magic items so why not LA buy-off. some guy even wrote an article about when +1 la, +2 la, etc. become "free"
Which is why it breaks at high level and the DM shouldn't allow it. I guess it's fair if the whole group is experienced and everyone uses it. It also fails to help at low level where LA is usually more painful. Mainly from HP so low you get 1 hit deaths. It's like a proper solution in reverse.

[Bartmanhomer]

Power creep is to blame more than anything.

If anything the LA assignments are about right for core, then fall behind later. In core they also fall behind by about 0.5 for several races (rounding problem), at very low levels, sometimes at very high levels, and for casters.

Combine being conservative so that LA won't be too low even in the best circumstances with power creep and you get a bunch of hate. But the flipside would have been everyone powergaming 953 different races like they do to classes, feats and spells. And they still do it to races, but they do it to a lot fewer.

953 races?! Does that include homebrew? :eek:

[ericgrau]

Come on this is D&D 3.5. There are way more than 953. I'm just talking the ones that would appear in builds if they weren't so conservative with LA.

[Jormengand]

Level adjustment is silly and I almost always work with players to adjust or remove it in the case of humanoid-shaped things (Including planetouched [fortunately there's an inbuilt way of doing this] and vampires) and don't usually let them play non-humanoid-shaped things. The fact that a vampire should be able to defeat four identical vampires relatively easily because of the LA, CR and ECL rules is, to be frank, really stupid.

[RoboEmperor]

I agree with ericgau.

If you look at it from core-only-non-spellcaster classes, the LAs largely make sense.

But its funny how Humans, the first race in the game, remains one of the most powerful races even after all of the source books. It's weird. Power Creep makes everything that was first worthless without further support. Look at the fighter, worst mundane class if you include all the books. Even wizards are nothing compared to all the PrC wizards out there. I half expected a non-core race to replace all the core races, but even Lesser Aasimars and the like are worse than humans.

Same with spells. Core spells are the strongest spells in the game to date.

[Bartmanhomer]

I agree with ericgau.

If you look at it from core-only-non-spellcaster classes, the LAs largely make sense.

But its funny how Humans, the first race in the game, remains one of the most powerful races even after all of the source books. It's weird. Power Creep makes everything that was first worthless without further support. Look at the fighter, worst mundane class if you include all the books. Even wizards are nothing compared to all the PrC wizards out there. I half expected a non-core race to replace all the core races, but even Lesser Aasimars and the like are worse than humans.

Same with spells. Core spells are the strongest spells in the game to date.How are humans the most powerful race? Explain yourself.

[vasilidor]

the thing is, the lowered power granted by level adjustment was intentional, wizards of the coast wanted to steer people away from playing monsters, while giving us monsters to play. yes i know what that sounds like.

[RoboEmperor]

How are humans the most powerful race? Explain yourself.

I said one of the most powerful races. Not the most powerful race.

Humans + 2 flaws for 4 feats at level 1 is the basis for a great deal of early entry shenanigans.

Human's favored class allows you to dip as many classes as you want without incurring multiclass xp penalty.

That's all I got on top of my head.

[JNAProductions]

I said one of the most powerful races. Not the most powerful race.

Humans + 2 flaws for 4 feats at level 1 is the basis for a great deal of early entry shenanigans.

Human's favored class allows you to dip as many classes as you want without incurring multiclass xp penalty.

That's all I got on top of my head.

Not as many as you want. Any does not mean every.

[Jormengand]

How are humans the most powerful race? Explain yourself.

One feat and one skill rank per level (bear in mind that Nymph's Kiss is a fairly highly-rated feat that gives 1 skill rank per level, and it's still fairly high-rated even with a massive drawback that humans don't have) is pretty good. Compare them to elves: they get a bonus to a stat you might want and a penalty to a stat you don't want, they have four incompatible feats (ie you can only use one at a time) which you might have anyway and are usually subpar if you're something which doesn't usually use them, a bonus to three skills which are useful but probably not class skills for you (barbarian has one, bard has one, druid has two, fighter has zero, monk has two, paladin has zero, ranger has three, rogue has three, sorcerer has zero, wizard has zero. FC: wizard), and a niche immunity and fairly niche resistance. Half-orcs get darkvision, minus 2 stats, and that's it. Comparatively, being able to pick between a list of abilities which includes +4 to initiative and a bunch of cool stuff that isn't numbers, as well as having a bunch of extra skill ranks? That's not bad.

Plus, Races of Destiny took this up to 11, with a subrace of humans with the ability to give a +2 bonus to any two of the following: all strength checks and strength skill checks, all dexterity checks (including initiative!) and dexterity skill checks, all intelligence checks and intelligence skill checks, all wisdom and constitution checks and all wisdom and constutution skill checks, all charisma checks and charisma skill checks, or your caster level to a maximum of your hit dice. Then, depending on which two you picked, you got an ability from a list which includes changing your casting stat to strength for purposes of bonus spells, or emulating one of the most broken powerful feats in the game. You're welcome.

[Bartmanhomer]

One feat and one skill rank per level (bear in mind that Nymph's Kiss is a fairly highly-rated feat that gives 1 skill rank per level, and it's still fairly high-rated even with a massive drawback that humans don't have) is pretty good. Compare them to elves: they get a bonus to a stat you might want and a penalty to a stat you don't want, they have four incompatible feats (ie you can only use one at a time) which you might have anyway and are usually subpar if you're something which doesn't usually use them, a bonus to three skills which are useful but probably not class skills for you (barbarian has one, bard has one, druid has two, fighter has zero, monk has two, paladin has zero, ranger has three, rogue has three, sorcerer has zero, wizard has zero. FC: wizard), and a niche immunity and fairly niche resistance. Half-orcs get darkvision, minus 2 stats, and that's it. Comparatively, being able to pick between a list of abilities which includes +4 to initiative and a bunch of cool stuff that isn't numbers, as well as having a bunch of extra skill ranks? That's not bad.

Plus, Races of Destiny took this up to 11, with a subrace of humans with the ability to give a +2 bonus to any two of the following: all strength checks and strength skill checks, all dexterity checks (including initiative!) and dexterity skill checks, all intelligence checks and intelligence skill checks, all wisdom and constitution checks and all wisdom and constutution skill checks, all charisma checks and charisma skill checks, or your caster level to a maximum of your hit dice. Then, depending on which two you picked, you got an ability from a list which includes changing your casting stat to strength for purposes of bonus spells, or emulating one of the most broken powerful feats in the game. You're welcome.

Oh wow. No wonder that humans are a powerful race. :eek:

[Zaq]

To be fair, while illumians have the [Human] subtype and therefore have access to human-only options (the only worthwhile one of which I can think of being Able Learner, though Able Learner is good stuff), they should be treated as separate from humans for the purposes of this particular discussion, because illumians don’t get the human bonus feat or human bonus skill points, the two of which are what make humans good.

Illumians are still awesome (they’re my favorite race overall), but it’s a little misleading to talk about a bonus feat making humans good and then say that illumians are like humans turned up to 11. They’re both good, but they’re good for completely different reasons despite having a mostly-fluff link to each other.

[ericgrau]

Humans are good because they get the feat and the feat got boosted with power creep. In core-only or similar power you'd usually want a +2 over a feat.

The most broken spells aren't really in core. There are core ways to get infinite/NI/long loops/stacking in core and people don't bother looking/discussing much elsewhere after that. I bet there are also plenty of non-core loops if you check, but once you hit infinity who cares? If you don't play with the silly infinite/etc. loops, and almost nobody does, then you do get spell power creep from splatbooks too.

[Fouredged Sword]

Honestly the fast and dirty way to do things so that they are somewhat balanced is to use the highest of the creatures hd, cr, or spellcaster level as the ecl for a player who wants to play a monster race. It is not perfectly balanced, but no more so than classes.

[Jormengand]

Illumians are still awesome (they’re my favorite race overall), but it’s a little misleading to talk about a bonus feat making humans good and then say that illumians are like humans turned up to 11. They’re both good, but they’re good for completely different reasons despite having a mostly-fluff link to each other.

Oh yeah, but it's just funny how one of the most powerful races aside from humans are another kind of human. I was more saying that illumians take your power level up to 11, rather than the stuff that humans get (although it's not necessarily dissimilar, depending on what you're using that feat on).

[Nifft]

Humans are good because they get the feat and the feat got boosted with power creep. In core-only or similar power you'd usually want a +2 over a feat.

The Human bonus feat is also good for reducing the prereq pain of PrCs, and PrCs scale up in value as non-Core options are introduced.

You're right that the splat-feats introduce power-creep, but they're not the only power creep which being Human can enable.

[Jack_Simth]

Not as many as you want. Any does not mean every.

Ah, but someonenoone11 said "dip".

If I have 1 or 2 levels each in six classes, and ten levels in one class as a human... I'm not taking any XP penalty (the level 10 class doesn't count, and all the others are within one level of each other). If I do the same as a dwarf, that level 10 class needs to be "fighter" for that to apply.

[P.F.]

In my experience people, given their druthers, will exclude the multiclass penalties. It's a softened holdover from a 2nd edition rule people had been routinely ignoring anyway.

In that ruleset, humans were easily the best race in the game, except that level-limits were such obvious bull**** that no one wanted to enforce them. Games were played at levels below the limits, neatly sidestepping the issue, or the rule was thrown out, either case-by case (elves can't be ninjas because they would be too good? Wtfever, you can play your drow ninja) or entirely (yeah we're not doing that, just make the character you want to play). Without level limits, humans were easily the worst race in the game.

Flash forward to 3.x, humans are considered the best race in the game, and people ignore the race/class restrictions for the opposite reason: humans obviously don't need the help. The bonus feat is worth every bit of any other race's racial abilities, why should other races be penalized for novel class constructions?

Hence why paffinder chose to abandon this rule entirely--hardly anyone was using it anyway.

[Jack_Simth]

Hence why paffinder chose to abandon this rule entirely--hardly anyone was using it anyway.It morphed into a bonus when taking your favored class... and you get to pick your own favored class irrespective of race (although sometimes there's extra bonus).