LA vs Racial Hit Die

[Raistlin1040]

I understand LA for races like Drow. They are clearly better than an Elf of the same level, and so they need a balancing factor like LA to even the score. But Drow have no Racial HD. I don't quite get Racial Hit Die when applied to PCs. Looking at Savage Species and picking a creature at random, let's say I want to play a Succubus. LA is +6, and 6 Racial HD. So if I take a level of whatever, my ECL is 13. Without Racial HD, I would have ECL 7, but only have hitpoints equal to 1 level of whatever I took. Is there a point to racial HD other than making sure my Succubus isn't running around at ECL 7 with 12 hitpoints? Is there an alternative to them that makes playing monster races more viable?

[vanyell]

the Pathfinder solution is pretty nice. in pathfinder, you just use the CR of the monster as it's ECL. I don't know if it'll fly with your DM, but it's worth a shot, no?

[Arbitrarity]

Savage Species is 3.0, but gives "Savage Progressions" that let you take monster levels to gradually acquire powers.


Honestly though, talk to your DM, and figure out what's reasonable. For a Succubus, I would remove that At-Will Greater Teleport, and a few other things, then drastically cut the LA and RHD.

LA +2 succubus might be... reduce the DR to 3/Cold Iron or Good, remove Elemental Resistances, cut SR to 12+character level, or remove it, remove immunities, remove Summon Demon, Ethereal Jaunt, Greater Teleport, reduce stat bonuses to +2 intelligence, +6 charisma. That leaves you with shapeshifting, soulsucking, magically charming, and supernaturally tough.

[Hague]

Just come up with a class progression for your nonstandard race and start from level n.

[PersonMan]

What I do is fold LA and RHD. So a Succubus with +6 LA and 6 RHD would get the 6 LA worth of abilities as "class features" of the 6 levels of Outsider. So you'd start at level 7 with all of the abilities of the Succubus without having, say, 12 hit points, or having to wait for 6 more levels.

[For Valor]

Frank Trollman created a way of balancing creatures to their CR, making that their ECL as well as their HD. It's very effective, if you're trying to create a race over CR 3. For races under CR 3, I use the standard stat array instead of the elite stat array (like they do for the Bugbear).

Try and use that, as it's far better than making something ridiculous like an ECL 8 Minotaur or an ECL 13 Succubus.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Another option is to ask for this racial classes

[Akal Saris]

The main point to RHD is that they are there because WoTC didn't want to make higher level monsters have class HD. So instead of a succubus having 6 levels of warrior, it has 6 RHD, etc. It's stupid, but at least it's a usable system to play monster characters if you really really want to do that :P

Succubus isn't so bad with RHD because the outsider HD are quite excellent. It's the 6 LA that really kills the race as a PC class.

There's no official alternatives to RHD, except for the "monster classes" that level up by alternating RHD and LA. But the homebrew suggestions above are all pretty decent.

[For Valor]

Another option is to ask for this racial classes

Nyeh... some of those are OK. A lot of them end up making PCs weak, though, like the Troll. It's a Glass Jaw.

And the Dragons are hardly comparable to actual dragons. For those, I actually recommend Kaelik's Dragon Class or Kaelik's Other Dragon Class... or Bigode's Dragon Class. However, only the first class casts spells like a Sorcerer.

Of course, for a very casual game, Dusk Eclipse's suggestion is best.

[Gorgondantess]

Nyeh... some of those are OK. A lot of them end up making PCs weak, though, like the Troll. It's a Glass Jaw.

And the Dragons are hardly comparable to actual dragons. For those, I actually recommend Kaelik's Dragon Class or Kaelik's Other Dragon Class... or Bigode's Dragon Class. However, only the first class casts spells like a Sorcerer.

Of course, for a very casual game, Dusk Eclipse's suggestion is best.

Emm... actually, I'd say Oslecamo's monster classes are much better than those ones, especially the dragons. A couple are disappointing, but overall they're all quite potent, ranging from high tier 4 to tier 1, even, but none of it broken or unbalanced... the only problem is the handful of tier 4s.

[Devils_Advocate]

Without Racial HD, I would have ECL 7, but only have hitpoints equal to 1 level of whatever I took.

A level adjustment is, hypothetically, the amount of levels that a race has to give up in order to be balanced with the PHB races. So if a race's racial hit dice are inferior to class levels, then a version of that race with no racial hit dice should have a higher level adjustment. Being required to take a bunch of lousy racial HD instead of class levels is a handicap that should be included in the assessment of a race's usefulness that's used to determine its LA.

Now, in practice, races as well as classes are not actually balanced such that characters of the same ECL are all close to equally powerful, but that's the way that it ought to work.

Is there a point to racial HD other than making sure my Succubus isn't running around at ECL 7 with 12 hitpoints?

Those racial HD are part of the succubus race. They're no less a part of the succubus's bundle of racial features than are any of her other racial features. PCs and NPCs of any given race are built the same in 3E. (And in 4E, PCs and NPCs are built differently, whatever their races.)

Monster races generally weren't designed to be used by players. They were designed to be used by the DM in a setup where PCs are specifically humanoids with class levels but their opponents can basically be any crazy damn thing. Then it occurred to someone at WotC that a bunch of monsters could function as balanced members of an adventuring party if they had sufficiently fewer class levels than the other party members. So if they just worked out what number of levels that was for each such monster, then they could say that a player is allowed to play a monster race with the corresponding number of levels fewer than the rest of the party. And then players could play crazy stuff like ogres and pixies like a bunch of them wanted to. And lo, it was proclaimed, "Yeah, awesome, let's do that."

However, there was a potential problem with this. Working out the exact cost in levels that would balance each of the many races that they wanted to make playable would be a whole lot of work; more work than would really be worth doing. Just like balancing classes, feats, spells, magic items, etc. would have taken a whole lot of time and effort. But if they took a "close enough is good enough" approach in this case, then they might wind up making many monster races better than the PHB races. That would lead to a bunch of munchkins playing drow or mind flayers or nymphs or whatever wound up giving the most plusses all the dang time. And that would lead to a bunch of disgruntled DMs and players whining that the rules for playing monster characters were ruining the game by providing mechanical incentives to play weird things whether or not there was any roleplaying reason to do so. OH NOES!

Fortunately, there was an obvious way to avoid this problem. All they had to do was make a conservative guess at what level cost would balance each race, erring on the side of making monster PCs underpowered. Thus players who really wanted to could be allowed to play non-standard races, but in a way that neither generated massive whining from customers nor required the really quite surprisingly tremendous amount of work needed to create a balanced game. Whew! Dodged a bullet, there!

And that's the story of why monster PCs usually suck in the d20 system. Any questions?

[Ilmryn]

What I do is fold LA and RHD. So a Succubus with +6 LA and 6 RHD would get the 6 LA worth of abilities as "class features" of the 6 levels of Outsider. So you'd start at level 7 with all of the abilities of the Succubus without having, say, 12 hit points, or having to wait for 6 more levels.

Although i think this approach overpowers monster pcs. There is a significant minority of monsters with a CR higher than their HD.
Also, how would that system treat monsters with more LA than HD? How would it treat monsters with more HD than LA?

[Fax Celestis]

Level Adjustment is specifically and intentionally weighted towards the "too much" end of the spectrum to prevent every character running around as a half-dragon half-drow draconic mineral warrior minotaur of legend.

Or, the long and short of the design intent behind it: if there is no penalty for taking a "weird" race or template (that is, being underpowered due to too-high LA), then everyone will be one, and there will never be an untemplated human in the universe ever.

This is a patently ridiculous idea, in my estimation, and it is for this that I generally reduce level adjustments between 1 and 3, on a case-by-case basis, for my players.

[PersonMan]

Although i think this approach overpowers monster pcs. There is a significant minority of monsters with a CR higher than their HD.
Also, how would that system treat monsters with more LA than HD? How would it treat monsters with more HD than LA?

It's an experimental system I haven't used before, most things would be done case-by-case, with that as a "rule of thumb".

More LA than RHD? You have LA, as usual. RHD 3, LA 5=3 "levels" of X, +2 LA.
More RHD than LA? You have X "levels" of X, with some dead levels.

[PId6]

RHD is the weak-sauce featureless "classes" that monster PCs have to use as filler in case they get too uppity and want real classes.

LA is when you don't even get that.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

Is there an alternative to them that makes playing monster races more viable?

Why yes my little rock friend, there is.