The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA

[OgresAreCute]

So, you are saying that 3.5 is so poorly balanced that attempting to bring balance to it without first rebalancing the classes isn't worth it. This thread is attempting to balance monsters for use as PCs. If that isn't worth it or possible to you, what is the point of you contributing to this thread? I'm not trying to be rude here, I'm actually curious how you view this thread.


Speaking more generally, people keep throwing the idea that my position should mean that all tier 1 classes get LA at me as a "gotcha". However, what if they did? If tier one classes got LA every five levels or so, it would be a straight nerf. I still think there would be reason to play the classes over tier 4 or 5 classes. If given the choice between a monk 15 and a druid 12, I'd say the druid comes out ahead. How can we balance a monster when either one of those could be used as a balance point? (Actually, we won't be choosing between those, because we'll just compare beatsticks to weak classes and casters to strong classes, and produce trap options and tier one or twos with high optimization floors. But that's ok, because a rebalancing project shouldn't try to produce balanced outcomes.)

This thread is rebalancing monsters in particular, not the whole game in general. The game is terribly balanced at high optimization levels, but that's not something this thread can do anything about. The point of this thread to me is to make the monsters more-or-less competitive with their PC-classed analogues, so that if I wanted to play some nature-magic-man I would normally go Druid, but then I see the nymph also has nature magic but different abilities and I consider it as an option or a side-grade.

In my experience, most people don't nerf higher tier classes (if anything, they just straight up ban tier 1 and 2), so rating the nymph around tier 3 classes would make it useless in most games compared to a druid, and in most games druids will be available for play. There's also that the tier disparity mostly crops up in higher optimization games, which aren't as common outside of forum PbP games. My IRL group is perfectly happy to have a Wilder, a Transmutation Wizard and a fully level adjusted Red Dragon Wyrmling in the same party, and the differences aren't too noticable (at least, the wyrmling player doesn't seem to mind, though I am personally glad I'm not in his shoes).

Using tier 3-based adjustments together with a rebalancing would absolutely be a worthwhile endeavor I think, and might work well if used together with a system like Spheres of Power and Might (at least I assume these are tier 3-ish and much less disparate than the Samurai -> Druid gradient in 3.5). However, balancing the adjustments like that would essentially require anyone who uses this thread to also use whatever rebalance-undertaking/rework it's based on as well, which I imagine most people aren't willing to do. Therefore, my conclusion is that it's best to balance around roughly analogous classes (if there is one) and if those classes are too weak to use in your own high-op game, you'd just not use dumb beatstick monsters like the Ogre which would most likely be inappropriate for a tier 3+ game anyway (or try to work out a lower/higher adjustment with your DM).

The thing about the 'if we give caster-monsters LA, maybe we should give those to druids too' isn't that giving druids/clerics/wizards/whatever LA would be a bad idea. It's that doing so would be beyond the scope of this particular project. If we lived in a world where druids pick up 4 LA over the course of 20 levels, then it'd make sense to balance a druid-casting monster in the same way. However, since Druids don't get LA it wouldn't make sense to give a monster that's the rough equivalent of a druid of level equal to its HD LA because it'd make it unplayable compared to a Druid in the same niche.

Basically, I think we should keep the baggage of this project as low as possible so anyone could easily include them in their games and its intuitive what they need to change to fit their own house-rules. That way someone that rules that all Tier 1 classes get +3 LA knows that the monsters that are listed as being balanced against a Tier 1 class the same LA, and someone who gives Tier 4 and 5 a free template knows which monsters to pick for that. If we try to balance it all to Tier 3 we're going to have to make a lot of assumptions which increases the baggage of the project and makes adapting it to your home-table less intuitive.

Pretty much this.