How do you determine the LA of something you create?

[eyebreaker7]

The Pathfinder Advanced Race Guide has rules for creating races using it's "Race Builder" system. You add up RP (racial points) for certain abilities/powers you give them. But how do you then determine what LA they should be? Am I just overlooking it or is there no rules for determining them?

[KillianHawkeye]

I didn't think Pathfinder used Level Adjustment.

[tyckspoon]

Pathfinder doesn't do LA, and really just kind of gave up on the whole idea of trying to balance monstrous characters or stronger-than-average races. It's mostly 'ask your DM', although there's some suggestions in the Bestiary about how to try to manage monstrous characters.

[icefractal]

While Pathfinder doesn't exactly do LA, the Monsters as PCs (http://legacy.aonprd.com/bestiary/monstersAsPCs.html) rules essentially treat CR as ECL. For templates, this means that +LA = +CR.

Going off that premise, you could evaluate your results in comparison to some templates (Advanced, for example) and determine a CR, which would effectively be the LA.

In contrast to the 3.5 rules, these ones are pretty generous. Ghost for +2 LA, which eventually drops to +1 LA? That seems worthwhile even in a fairly optimized campaign. Personally, I would decrease racial HD to fit ECL if greater, but technically you can have more HD than your ECL.

The other way, and what it suggests in the ARG, is that everyone plays races of the same 'tier' (normal / advanced / monstrous). You can "upgrade" existing ones like Human to match by adding more skill bonuses, feats, better stats, etc.

Note that the ARG rules are not very balanced, IMO. Too much focus on making the existing races fit the points they're "supposed" to have, meaning that skill bonuses are overvalued in comparison to stuff like SR and better stats.

[Thurbane]

I guess at the overly punitive LA WotC would assign, and the overly lenient LA that Playgrounders would assign, and go somewhere in-between.