Lower Stat Rolls, Lower ECL

[Mike_Lemmer]

One of my players wants to play a high ECL race, but he wants to lower it by playing an "average" member of that race. In other words, he'll roll 3d6 for stats, instead of the standard 4d6.DropLowest. In your opinion, how much should that drop a character's ECL by? (Assume the ECL is lowered before the rolls are made.)

Alternately, could he drop its ECL by lowering all his stats by 2 points? How much would that drop his ECL?

[Matthew]

Well, Elite Array is the default, so:

15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9 = +4 Bonus

Dropping down to to 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10 might effectively knock off off a point or two of ECL. I wouldn't advise this sort of thing, though, especially via rolling you are running the risk of unbalanced results.

[Diggorian]

If he rolls worse than the Nonelite Ability array I'd take his Level Adjuster down by one.

You could leave certain abilities unattainable until they reach a certain ECL with the character like a Bloodline. Esentially cutting up their special abilities into chunks that are worth a portion of their LA. Savage Species covers these issues well.

[EDIT]And what Matt said.

[goat]

High ECL would normally either mean high stat bonuses in key areas, or lots of special abilities and modifiers.

Will losing a few points of bonus across the board hurt them that much? If their character design is built around one stat they get a racial boost on, it might not impact too hard upon them. If they plan on using special abilities in most situations rather than skills, it could also have limited impact.

I'd be wary of giving them too much back for a potentially minor handicap.

[Human Paragon 3]

I believe there is an ECL -1 template you can add to any race to reduce its ECL. I think it boils down to a minus one penalty to all skill checks and attack rolls (Much like reducing ability scores by 2).

[adanedhel9]

I read somewhere that 4 to 5 points on a point buy is approximately the same as 1 ECL. (Sorry, I don't remember where; it might just have been a wild guess.) 3d6 is about 15 point buy, 4d6 drop lowest is about 25. So 2 ECL would be a decent trade off.

Mind you, that's assuming the player rolls something near average. One set of 3d6 stats can easily be better than some set of 4d6 drop lowest stats. And if that happens, the player just got something for nothing. If you want to go down this road, use point buy.

[Arbitrarity]

My new squishy, level 4 wizard, ECL 2 wishes to play with his 20 INT, 22 for bonus spells.




Maybe... not. Particularly at level 1. When not using templates .

[TO_Incognito]

I read somewhere that 4 to 5 points on a point buy is approximately the same as 1 ECL.

Really? 4 points off a buy points is only an extra +2 on modifiers, if that; I'd think most playable +1 LA races (I.E.: not hobgoblins) would more than compensate for that. I was thinking at least 6, maybe 8. Could someone with more experience possibly weigh in on this topic?

[Dausuul]

Really? 4 points off a buy points is only an extra +2 on modifiers, if that; I'd think most playable +1 LA races (I.E.: not hobgoblins) would more than compensate for that. I was thinking at least 6, maybe 8. Could someone with more experience possibly weigh in on this topic?

I have seen it said in a number of places that going from 25 point buy (the standard to which D&D is balanced) to 32 point buy (which seems to be the standard at which most people actually play) is roughly equal to a +1 effective level. This jibes pretty well with my own experience.