Quote Originally Posted by Luccan View Post
By this logic, anything with RHD without scaling abilities (like racial casting) should not get LA. Which doesn't seem to fit with previous threads, considering things like Troll got LA.
RHD, as a general rule, are inferior to class levels.
Some RHD are better than others. As for Outsider RHD, they're basically on par with a level in monk with +1/4 BAB, +2 skillpoints, and no abilities or restrictions.
What matters are the other abilities and features a creature has.
The best RHD are generally considered to be Dragon and Outsider, but by themselves, they're on the line between T5 and T6 (everything else is T6 or worse).


Trolls have a relatively modest number of RHD, a solid set of bruiser-oriented racial +numbers, and Regeneration.
Regeneration basically never goes out of style.

Some abilities don't need to scale to remain valuable at higher levels.

Lumi are, IMO, something of an edge case - they're worth their 2 RHD, so at least a +0 ... and then the question is, are they really worth the loss of another class level to LA over the life of a build.
And that's a judgement call. I'd say they aren't worth the +1 LA over 20 levels, but others disagree.
On the other hand, if they had 3 RHD instead of 2 RHD ... I think they'd probably be considered an okay +0.
That is, IMO, Lumi aren't quite worth the loss of the third class level to LA, but probably would be worth loosing that third class level to RHD.