Player wants to play a Large character

[Whammydill]

One of my players wants to play a large character. Any ideas what he might find (with ECL <5, if possible) and / or whether this is a bad idea?

Half-Ogre from Savage Species, and maybe other locations is as written +1LA its pretty powerful for +1LA. It may have been errata'd to +2 or so. It's towards the back of that book.

Large character, in particular a Half-Ogre is going to have a 10' Reach, and a high strenght score. With appropriately sized weapons, say a Maul, he is likely going to have a 26 Strength, so even at level 1 Barbarian, he is going to have +9 to hit, and doing 2d8+12 pts per hit. Even more when raging.

Needless to say, he will be putting out a lot of melee damage with this set up. Things like Power attack, Combat reflexes, leap attack, hold-the-line, Shock trooper, Knockdown....etc will make him a force to be reckoned with. His counter is obviously going to be will-saves or other magics.