The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA

[OgresAreCute]

I'm not arguing for some strict "tiers as gospel", I know the system has problems. I just want us to try to balance to one balance point, not half a dozen. (Really, we should be balancing against expected challenges, but that's even harder.) Something shouldn't get LA for being stronger than a class that is barely playable straight-classed at the level played. Likewise, something shouldn't escape LA for being weaker than casters at the level they break the game over their knee.

The reason I've been so staunch in arguing this position is that I've been doing a lot of updating of Eberron material for PF, with some rebalancing. There was thins thing I noticed, where I'd update a spell or caster PrC that was useless and I'd try to make it something people would use, and it would get better, but I'd look at the other options and judge that it was fine. Meanwhile, when I worked with a martial feat or PrC, I'd look at what was available and try to make the ability usable, but not strictly better, but that still left it far weaker than caster options. It's so easy to slip into the trap of balancing to existing content, despite knowing that that content is unbalanced and will just perpetuate the problem.

Personally, I don't think balancing around a set balance point (while ideal) is a worthwhile endeavor without a rebalancing of PC classes to go with it. Agreeing on the exact balance point is also going to be next-to impossible. At least with option 1 Ogres and other high strength bruisers are easily comparable to barbarians. There's going to be wacky outlier monsters that are hard to rate regardless because of weird abilities, but that's just how it's gonna be when you can't assign —.

[TiaC]

Personally, I don't think balancing around a set balance point (while ideal) is a worthwhile endeavor without a rebalancing of PC classes to go with it. Agreeing on the exact balance point is also going to be next-to impossible. At least with option 1 Ogres and other high strength bruisers are easily comparable to barbarians. There's going to be wacky outlier monsters that are hard to rate regardless because of weird abilities, but that's just how it's gonna be when you can't assign —.

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.)

[DeTess]

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.)

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.

[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.

[remetagross]

OgresAreCute and Randuir have pretty much summed up my position. I will vote for Option 1.

[liquidformat]

So, the Ghaele would have a different LA when compared against a cleric than when compared against a fighter?

It's almost like the classes are horribly balanced and don't provide a balance benchmark. If LA is going vary wildly based on what class we chose to compare it to, then what's the point? The Ak’chazar is +0 against a tier 1 caster, because nothing it does makes up for being 6 levels down. (5 + 1 for sorcerer) It's at least +2 against a Ranger. It has full BAB, 12+ skill ranks/level, martial proficiency and +13 NA, so it's not crazy to compare it to the original skilled bruiser. However, it has rebuke undead and casts off the wizard list, so it's not crazy to compare it to a tier 1 either.

I actually see your statement as much more of an issue with option 2 than 1.
Optimally with option 1 we can say 'this monster is a gish, lets grab a few gish builds and see how it compares' 'this monster is a beatstick lets use good old water orc barb/warblade as our yard stick', 'this thing looks like a cleric or dread necro lets compare it to both". The goal of this style is trying to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. The fact that I can standardly play a gish, dread necro, cleric, barbarian, and so on without getting an la change is the important point here and what in my head makes this way of giving out la more level.

On the other hand balancing based on tier 3 really has some nasty logic, take the ogre or another beatstick that is well balanced against say a barbarian. Balancing based on tier 3 gives this a -0 la because it isn't powerful enough to hit tier 3 so a dm gives special dispensation to the ogre so it is playable with their group, while treating the standard race paladin as normal. At the same time the monster that is comparable to a druid (lets say has druid spell casting and stats comparable to a druid cruising around in wild shape all day) is also compared to a tier 3 character and it is decided it gets a +3 la. It is also played in the above game with a wizard without any changes.

Are you starting to see the issue here? By trying to hit mythical tier 3 balance point that I frankly only vaguely understand and seems to dramatically change depending on who you ask you end up skewing the LA of monsters in screwy ways to try and find that perfect Goldilocks point that doesn't exist and also isn't being applied to standard classes. On the other hand if we take option 1 and in the final thread say this monster was compared to the following classes and determined to have LA X we are letting the dm say hey that isn't powerful enough for my game I will adjust it or that is too powerful for my game I will add a bit more la.

The reason I've been so staunch in arguing this position is that I've been doing a lot of updating of Eberron material for PF, with some rebalancing. There was thins thing I noticed, where I'd update a spell or caster PrC that was useless and I'd try to make it something people would use, and it would get better, but I'd look at the other options and judge that it was fine. Meanwhile, when I worked with a martial feat or PrC, I'd look at what was available and try to make the ability usable, but not strictly better, but that still left it far weaker than caster options. It's so easy to slip into the trap of balancing to existing content, despite knowing that that content is unbalanced and will just perpetuate the problem.

So you wish to 'balance' monsters because you are converting Eberron content to PF and are resisting the urge to rebalance mundanes? Ya that makes a whole lot of sense...

[Remuko]

People keep saying that this project is about balancing monsters but its not. Its just about assigning all monsters playable LAs. This was never (originally at least) meant to be a balancing thing, not directly. Option 2 is counter to the whole idea of this project, because almost all monsters are either beatsticks (which would be below tier 3 and thus be -0) or caster-likes which would be well above tier 3 and have unplayably large LA. This makes almost no monsters playable, which is counter to the entire purpose of the project.

That is why I (the first reply to Inevitably since asking for a vote) chose option 1.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'd like to withdraw my Naztharune LA vote. I don't know (and at this point, don't really care) if the Naztharune is +0 or +1.

Spoiler: Naztharune

Show

I see this the opposite way. Assign LA if there is even a suspicion that it might be required.
Because its better playing a monster leaves you a little weaker than a plain human, than the opposite taking place.

...Isn't that the logic that leads to ogres getting +4 LA?

And this thing does have a lot of rare abilities thats hard to get.

What abilities does it have that you can't get from a DMG prestige class? Damage reduction, maybe spell resistance? Aren't there armor special abilities that can give you those?

I was under the impression that tiers, with a few caveats, totally disregard prcs because there are too many combinations and abilities to ever justify. Same with acfs. So using them in comparison with la if we go based on tier is rather pointless.

1. The way I've always seen it, tiers disregard PrCs because they don't affect the tiers that much. A fighter with fighter PrCs is weaker than a bard with bard PrCs is weaker than a druid with druid PrCs.
2. I disagree that we should disregard PrCs with regard to level adjustment. That would be like saying we should disregard clerics for level adjustment, just because they're above the tier we want to aim for.

I love how like 1 monster in every 6 or so sparks a massive debate about what each person considers to be the base line LA.

I don't. This is one of the rare times that it isn't the same junk over and over.

Open lock is useless if you have disable device, with the int bonus and dex bonus will equal or exceed the rogue in disable after one level since you are looking at more skill points than a rogue.

...Since when does Disable Device work on locks?

Open lock is a worthless trap of a skill made obsolete by knock and there are many low level magic items that give it to you.

That's a problem with D&D's game design in general, not rogues in specific.

I'd like to vote for option 2 going forward. Yeah, it's kinda weird, but I'd rather have the monsters on a fairly even playing field than not. It also makes it easier to judge monsters that don't line up well with any single class (like the Naztharune). Heck, there are plenty of monsters where the proper class is hard to rate, and it seems like "Should we compare this monster to a fighter or a rogue?" or even "Should we compare this monster to a paladin or a cleric?" are going to be much harder to resolve than "Should we compare this monster to a warlock or a bard?"

Also, for people arguing that we'd have to rebalance the core game to make a T3 monster balance point make sense...we really wouldn't. We could just assume the monsters' party would stick to the wide variety of T4-2 classes that cover every major role; there's nothing wrong with such a party.

Yes,. If you take a monster stat block (made by WotC), look at the "Level Adjustment" value (made by WotC), and change the single, numerical value, to something of your own design, then I suppose that's "homebrewing".

Just saying, publishing a MMI with all of the monster stat blocks, and only the LA changed, is probably enough to get you sued by WotC. I consider it more of an "analysis" than "homebrew" for that reason.

Um...I'm pretty sure that publishing the MMI with any alterations that leave it recognizably a MMI would get you sued, even if you had an all-new set of rules for each monster. That's kind of a stupid argument.

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.)

I agree with both of these points. So I'm quoting them to show my support.
...This action makes sense to me.

[Caelestion]

Um...I'm pretty sure that publishing the MMI with any alterations that leave it recognizably a MMI would get you sued, even if you had an all-new set of rules for each monster. That's kind of a stupid argument.

If you reprint the MMI, sure, but not if you print the Monsters section of the SRD.

[TiaC]

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.

Of course it's beyond the scope of this project; I'm not actually saying we should do it.

Clericzilla has the same niche as Paladin, but is amazingly better at it. Is the Paladin unplayable compared to the Cleric? If yes, then we can't use them both as balance points. If no, then it won't be a problem if we produce monsters that are worse than tier ones, people will play them for the same reasons they play a paladin over a cleric.

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.

So now you're saying that every monster should come with a comparison? "LA +1 vs. Rogue?" That seems to be expanding the scope of this project massively.

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).

So, you are saying both that balancing things to mid-tier makes a nymph useless and that most people don't find tier differences to be a problem? It won't be useless, because you've said that people don't notice a balance difference between the tiers. You used a monster PC with too-high LA in your example. It's clear that the people you're talking about won't have a problem with LA enough to make them weaker than a druid.

Also, a bit of a tangent. I find it telling that all the complaints come from the ~3% of monsters that would be balanced against a tier 1 or 2 class. (And most of those have sorcerer casting anyway.) People play things far weaker than tier ones and are fine. Meanwhile, in higher-op games where tiers differences matter, Option 1 means that we have to explain our point of comparison for every monster for it to be any use.

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).

This just seems like you're making the perfect the enemy of the good. You don't need to rework the game for mid-tier monsters to be alright. I know this because people play mid-tier classes just fine. Tons of monsters can be compared against monsters of wildly different tiers. Most of the outsiders from the big groups (celestials, devils, demons...) are nice beatsticks with either casting or tons and tons of SLAs. Is the pit fiend like a Dragon Disciple/Abjurant Champion or is it more like a warlock?

I actually see your statement as much more of an issue with option 2 than 1.
Optimally with option 1 we can say 'this monster is a gish, lets grab a few gish builds and see how it compares' 'this monster is a beatstick lets use good old water orc barb/warblade as our yard stick', 'this thing looks like a cleric or dread necro lets compare it to both". The goal of this style is trying to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. The fact that I can standardly play a gish, dread necro, cleric, barbarian, and so on without getting an la change is the important point here and what in my head makes this way of giving out la more level.

On the other hand balancing based on tier 3 really has some nasty logic, take the ogre or another beatstick that is well balanced against say a barbarian. Balancing based on tier 3 gives this a -0 la because it isn't powerful enough to hit tier 3 so a dm gives special dispensation to the ogre so it is playable with their group, while treating the standard race paladin as normal. At the same time the monster that is comparable to a druid (lets say has druid spell casting and stats comparable to a druid cruising around in wild shape all day) is also compared to a tier 3 character and it is decided it gets a +3 la. It is also played in the above game with a wizard without any changes.

Are you starting to see the issue here? By trying to hit mythical tier 3 balance point that I frankly only vaguely understand and seems to dramatically change depending on who you ask you end up skewing the LA of monsters in screwy ways to try and find that perfect Goldilocks point that doesn't exist and also isn't being applied to standard classes. On the other hand if we take option 1 and in the final thread say this monster was compared to the following classes and determined to have LA X we are letting the dm say hey that isn't powerful enough for my game I will adjust it or that is too powerful for my game I will add a bit more la.

If the game has a paladin and a wizard in the same party without a problem, then a few points of LA won't make a character unplayable. Also, comparing a monster to a barbarian and a warblade will get different results. If the cleric and barbarian can play in the same party, then something that tries to fit in between can as well.

So you wish to 'balance' monsters because you are converting Eberron content to PF and are resisting the urge to rebalance mundanes? Ya that makes a whole lot of sense...

Well first, rude. I want to balance monsters because I noticed an unconscious bias that was making me very lenient with casters and very cautious with mundanes. I think option one will see us giving LAs to monsters that mimic weak classes and avoiding them on monsters closer to strong ones. Look at the Androsphinx. It's a bad cleric. Straight cleric is better, cleric with PrCs to mimic it is better, cleric/barbarian is better, LA +0. Its a quite good paladin. Better casting, native pounce, native flight, stats, good NA, it's probably at least +2. Depending on which we think it looks more like, it's two levels apart. Now, ECL/CR assumes that +2 levels doubles challenges. So maybe they fight one frost worm, and maybe they fight two.

People keep saying that this project is about balancing monsters but its not. Its just about assigning all monsters playable LAs. This was never (originally at least) meant to be a balancing thing, not directly. Option 2 is counter to the whole idea of this project, because almost all monsters are either beatsticks (which would be below tier 3 and thus be -0) or caster-likes which would be well above tier 3 and have unplayably large LA. This makes almost no monsters playable, which is counter to the entire purpose of the project.

That is why I (the first reply to Inevitably since asking for a vote) chose option 1.

If you don't care about balance, then just use WoTC's LAs. They're fine against CW samurai with a little optimization. Wanting things to be "playable" is balance. Also, tier 3 has some beatsticks in the initiators, wildshape ranger, duskblade (Yeah a bit of casting, but it doesn't do much.) I wouldn't mind tossing in tier 4, but that's not one of the options presented.

[Goaty14]

Um...I'm pretty sure that publishing the MMI with any alterations that leave it recognizably a MMI would get you sued, even if you had an all-new set of rules for each monster. That's kind of a stupid argument.

Either way, you're still looking at a monster stat-block (of which you didn't make), and changing a single number to something else. As far as I know, that doesn't count as homebrew under any sane definition.

Why are you questioning the legality of a hypothetical I made to call my argument "stupid"?

If the game has a paladin and a wizard in the same party without a problem, then a few points of LA won't make a character unplayable.

If a game includes a barbarian and Quertus (a wizard), then the barbarian deserves the LA, being quite massively more OP than the wizard.

[TiaC]

Either way, you're still looking at a monster stat-block (of which you didn't make), and changing a single number to something else. As far as I know, that doesn't count as homebrew under any sane definition.

The monster isn't homebrewed, but the LA is.

If a game includes a barbarian and Quertus (a wizard), then the barbarian deserves the LA, being quite massively more OP than the wizard.

I assume this is a reference to some work of fiction with an incompetent wizard? Are you trying to say that badly made "strong" classes are unimpressive? Well, if we balance monsters against them, those monsters won't have that problem, because the lack of build flexibility will give them very high floors.

[DeTess]

So now you're saying that every monster should come with a comparison? "LA +1 vs. Rogue?" That seems to be expanding the scope of this project massively.

Quite the opposite really. What you seem to be proposing is that we balance everything as part of a 'DnD 3.5 Rebalanced' mod, which is a good thing to do if such a mod is out there. What I'm proposing is that we chose the LA as they correspond to the current balance, and let people know how they are chose so that, if they are rebalancing between the tiers or whatever, they know which monsters they have to change.

The point I'm trying to make is this: If we where to assign LA to a hypothetical monster that's just a human chassis with 10HD and casting as a 10th level wizard, under a 'balance to tier 3' system it'd get a couple of points of LA at least. However, in a game where someone can play a normal human wizard 10, that'd mean this monster is unplayable because it's massively outclassed by a core class. If we balance to the closest comparable class, it'd get no LA and would be comparable to playing a wizard, so both the monster and the wizard are equal choices.

Now imagine someone is instead doing a big rebalancing effort to bring everything in line with his interpretation of Tier 4. If he looks at these monsters and sees that something got +0 LA with respect tot eh wizard, then he knows that he could probably adjust it i the same way as the wizard. If on the other hand this person finds that it got +2 LA with respect to our interpretation of Tier 3, he'd first ave to find out how that translates to his interpretation of the tiers, and then translate that over. By assigning LA wrt to the most comparable class we basically leave all the balancing in the hands of those that want to do that for their game and reduce the amount of reading and understanding of our balancing point they need to do beforehand, while someone who just wants to add all monsters as playable options won't run into any situations where the rogue-monster is far better than the rogue, or the wizard-monster is far worse than the wizard.

[TiaC]

Quite the opposite really. What you seem to be proposing is that we balance everything as part of a 'DnD 3.5 Rebalanced' mod, which is a good thing to do if such a mod is out there. What I'm proposing is that we chose the LA as they correspond to the current balance, and let people know how they are chose so that, if they are rebalancing between the tiers or whatever, they know which monsters they have to change.

I have not said any such thing. Instead, I've been saying that mid-tier monsters are demonstrably fine in a game that hasn't been rebalanced, because mid-tier classes are fine in that game. They are also fine in a game that has been rebalanced, because that's the whole point. Meanwhile, monsters balanced to whatever generally have a high optimization floor, so they aren't great in games where no one optimizes casters, and they're little better than the LAs in the MM for a game that has been rebalanced.

The point I'm trying to make is this: If we where to assign LA to a hypothetical monster that's just a human chassis with 10HD and casting as a 10th level wizard, under a 'balance to tier 3' system it'd get a couple of points of LA at least. However, in a game where someone can play a normal human wizard 10, that'd mean this monster is unplayable because it's massively outclassed by a core class. If we balance to the closest comparable class, it'd get no LA and would be comparable to playing a wizard, so both the monster and the wizard are equal choices.

Except that that monster doesn't exist, and almost no monsters are even close to that monster. Most similar monsters are more like a Dragon Disciple, they have higher stats, NA and better movement. So, even closest class would give them LA. However, the warmage and warlock exist and they are also "massively outclassed by a core class". Therefore, by your logic, we should do 'DnD 3.5 Rebalanced' because those classes are "unplayable". Your argument is basically that if people can play a druid, they'll never play a Monk, Fighter, Barbarian, or Ranger.

Now imagine someone is instead doing a big rebalancing effort to bring everything in line with his interpretation of Tier 4. If he looks at these monsters and sees that something got +0 LA with respect tot eh wizard, then he knows that he could probably adjust it i the same way as the wizard. If on the other hand this person finds that it got +2 LA with respect to our interpretation of Tier 3, he'd first ave to find out how that translates to his interpretation of the tiers, and then translate that over. By assigning LA wrt to the most comparable class we basically leave all the balancing in the hands of those that want to do that for their game and reduce the amount of reading and understanding of our balancing point they need to do beforehand, while someone who just wants to add all monsters as playable options won't run into any situations where the rogue-monster is far better than the rogue, or the wizard-monster is far worse than the wizard.

It's still based on our interpretation of the wizard. We don't magically become more accurate to someone's interpretation of balance and expectations because we use multiple balance points. At least if there's one balance point, we'll explain what it means. If there are many, who knows, maybe we meant this was compared to a basic blaster, maybe it was a decent abjurer or something, maybe it was a God wizard, or maybe it was a Tippy wizard. We won't be explaining what we we expect of the comparable class for every monster and anyone doing rebalancing will still have to revaluate it all themselves.

Also, do you want "LA +1 vs. Rogue?" or not? First you say that that's the opposite of your position, then you say that you do intend to say what the LA was assigned with respect to. If you do, then do we have to go back over every monster and add it in?

[Aniikinis]

Yeah, I'm gonna go with option 1 and +1 LA.

Just because the designers had no clue what the balance point was, doesn't mean we can't use the middle ground for these purposes. In addition, it won't matter what class you compare the monster to as long as it is within the balancing range (though obvious exceptions do and should exist for specific monster), as the monster can be fit to other classes, even if it isn't ideally.

[GreatWyrmGold]

If you reprint the MMI, sure, but not if you print the Monsters section of the SRD.

They also wouldn't be able to sue if you printed that with the LAs changed. What's your point?

Either way, you're still looking at a monster stat-block (of which you didn't make), and changing a single number to something else. As far as I know, that doesn't count as homebrew under any sane definition.
Why are you questioning the legality of a hypothetical I made to call my argument "stupid"?

Because your argument focused on the legality of the hypothetical? If it wasn't important, why did you bring it up and call it the reason you considered it not homebrew?

Quite the opposite really. What you seem to be proposing is that we balance everything as part of a 'DnD 3.5 Rebalanced' mod...

"TiaC wants to balance all monsters at the same balance point. Not all D&D classes are at the same balance point. Therefore, TiaC needs to rebalance all classes before they can balance classes against a specified subset of those classes"?

[DeTess]

"TiaC wants to balance all monsters at the same balance point. Not all D&D classes are at the same balance point. Therefore, TiaC needs to rebalance all classes before they can balance classes against a specified subset of those classes"?

What I'm trying to say is that balancing them all to the same specific 'virtual' balance point seems pointless if everything else isn't balanced to that point as well, while if you balance them to the existing classes you leave all the tools in place for someone interested in doing a full rebalancing to balance them to whatever they consider the desired balance point.

And yes, ideally the monster entries would have something like LA +X, with the chosen balance point listed somewhere in the write-up.

[TiaC]

What I'm trying to say is that balancing them all to the same specific 'virtual' balance point seems pointless if everything else isn't balanced to that point as well

This is what I meant be the perfect being the enemy of the good. What you are saying here is that trying to balance things is a bad idea unless you balance everything. (The less charitable interpretation, which I don't think you're intending, is that rebalancing everything is so hard that it presents an insurmountable obstacle. To flip it around, it would be like if I said that comparing to the most similar class requires evaluation against every possible way of building anything similar, only 200 options or so.)

while if you balance them to the existing classes you leave all the tools in place for someone interested in doing a full rebalancing to balance them to whatever they consider the desired balance point.

If someone is doing a full rebalancing, they'll need to reevaluate all these monsters themselves anyway and probably won't be able to get away with just slapping a new LA on them. Just because we balanced to a wizard doesn't mean that they'll agree with how we reached that comparison or what we expected a wizard to do. Especially because rebalancing a wizard will involve either substantially changing spells, substantially changing wizard casting, or substantially changing most everything else. The first will result in everything with SLAs needing to be completely changed, the second leaves casting monsters with one big ability changed, but a bunch of stuff the same, so they can't be compared to casters, who had nearly everything changed and the third leaves every other monster needing to be reevaluated. Tl;dr, the sort of sweeping changes that would be needed to actually rebalance the game would make the results of this thread useless. There's no useful tools there. In both cases the discussion is useful, but that's it.

And yes, ideally the monster entries would have something like LA +X, with the chosen balance point listed somewhere in the write-up.

So I guess we'll have to go back over every previous monster and add those in.

[DeTess]

This is what I meant be the perfect being the enemy of the good. What you are saying here is that trying to balance things is a bad idea unless you balance everything.

Yep, that's more ore less half of the argument, the other half of it being that if we balance to a balance point of our own devising it's harder for people to adapt our work if they do their own balancing. I think that second bit is where we disagree the most. As I see it, balancing to a particular point like Tier 3 means that anyone trying to adapt it will have to learn how our point compares to theirs and then work from there, while if we balance to the closest class it's more intuitive to see which monsters actually need changing. If someone decides everything needs to be balanced to Tier 4, then a monster that compares at LA+0 to a barbarian is probably fine, while one that is LA+0 with the comparison of wizard obviously needs changing. If these same monsters are listed as LA-0 and LA+3 balanced to Tier 3, it might not be as immediately obvious,e specially because 2 different LA+2 wrt Tier monsters could actually differ in how problematic they might be (If one of them is caster and the other is just a beatstick with very good power/HD ratio, for example).

I think this is the main point on which we disagree. Balancing to Tier 3 will give a result where every monster sits at the same middle-of-the-road power level, but individual monsters can overshadow or under-perform to unmodified classes that are clearly very similar (such as the rogue and this Rakshasa). It's also a bit of balck box as you have to use it as given because changing things becomes more difficult as you'd first have to learn what our exact balance point is.

On the other hand, the 'nearest class' option does maintain the games built-in imbalances, but it fits neatly into any game where wizards and Barbarians are allowed to be in the same party without over or under or over-shadowing classes in the same niche, and someone that does change basic things (such as allowing gestalt in lower tiers, or giving free templates or whatever) it's easy to see which tier a given monster fits in by looking at the chosen balance point).

However, I think this is also a point where we'll have to agree to disagree. I can see why you're arguing for option 2, and I think it'd be great if it was part of a more comprehensive package that also deals with the games in-built class imbalance, but I think it'd be more cumbersome to use as a stand-alone modification.

[Caelestion]

They also wouldn't be able to sue if you printed that with the LAs changed. What's your point?

My point was that your dismissal of his argument was inaccurate. That's all.

[GreatWyrmGold]

My point was that your dismissal of his argument was inaccurate. That's all.

But you failed to notice the actual point of my argument: That whether or not WotC would sue over something has nothing to do with whether or not it's homebrew. His entire argument was:

Just saying, publishing a MMI with all of the monster stat blocks, and only the LA changed, is probably enough to get you sued by WotC. I consider it more of an "analysis" than "homebrew" for that reason.

So I'd say my dismissal of this argument on the grounds that you could release actual homebrew of every monster in the Monster Manual and get sued is reasonable. I could also have rejected it on the grounds that you could just reprint the SRD with different level adjustments and not get sued, but the two arguments aren't mutually exclusive.

[Amidus Drexel]

People keep saying that this project is about balancing monsters but its not. Its just about assigning all monsters playable LAs. This was never (originally at least) meant to be a balancing thing, not directly. Option 2 is counter to the whole idea of this project, because almost all monsters are either beatsticks (which would be below tier 3 and thus be -0) or caster-likes which would be well above tier 3 and have unplayably large LA. This makes almost no monsters playable, which is counter to the entire purpose of the project.

That is why I chose option 1.

I'm going to cast my vote in for option 1, with more or less the same logic here. Option 2 is both counter to what we've been doing so far and unlikely to produce interesting analysis going forward.

[javcs]

It's complicated.


On the one hand, we want to compare like to like as best we can, on the other hand, there are enough monsters and classes that not every monster's main role or primary schtick lines up neatly with one and only one class.
And some are easier to easier to determine a good point of comparison than others - ie, nobody's going to argue that a Trumpet Archon's primary comparison should be anything other than cleric, but assessing what more mundane monsters should be compared to is more difficult, and monsters that fuzz the line between mundane and magical are harder still.


However, while I think we should compare like to like as much as possible, we should also bear in mind that a monster is only ever going to be the way it is - there are no ACFs, class variants, or alternative PRCs, and that those can and do make a significant difference, especially when it comes to the more mundane classes. And the more conventional race character is going to have far more in the way of customized racial support than most monsters, be it in exclusive ACFs, PRCs, and/or feats.
Monsters are generally going to have a higher optimization floor than a base class, but also a much lower optimization ceiling.
In other words, monsters have more of their relative potential realized to start with, but will have less overall potential available, and so cannot be improved as much, either in relative or absolute terms.
A monster might well be a bit better than a baseline base class, especially a mundane one, but a lot of the time, the same role can be filled by a better base class that's a tier up and compares more favorably with the monster, or simply upgrading the original base class through ACFs and/or PRCs.

To make an analogy, if a base class starts at a 1, but its associated builds and optimizations can bring it up to a 5, the monster might well start at a 3, but only go up to 4, but a different base class in the same role might start at 3 and go up to 8 or higher.


As such, I think we should probably give monsters the benefit of the doubt, and err in the monster's favor when it comes to determining the point of comparison and in giving them LA. Especially when it comes to monsters that have roles/main things that line up with more mundane classes, and especially when the role is spread across a broader variety of classes.



I think that whatever we do, there's issues we'll run into, and there are no easy answers (most of the time).

[Hish]

Since the first thread, I always kept up with this project, even though I didn't post much. Then the argument over the Naztharune almost turned me off from the whole thing. I come back a few days later to see that I almost missed the discussion which will have a profound impact on the future of the thread.

This quote best matches my opinion.

Option #1 seems better...
This also works better for most tables, I'd imagine. At my table, a Wizard and a Barbarian play side-by-side. A [Monster than casts like a Wizard] and an Ogre should be able to as well. But if the [Monster that casts like a Wizard] has bloated LA because of its Tier and the Ogre has reduced LA for its Tier, then suddenly I'm running a game for a Wizard some levels lower than Party Level and a Barbarian some levels higher. I feel like that's more problematic. Adjusting balance for Tier should be done on a table-by-table, player-by-player basis if you ask me, since it depends on some level of game mastery and optimization skill.

When someone comes to the D&D table, they generally have an idea of what sort of character they want to play. They may choose to play a normal PC race that fills that role, or they may choose to play a monster race. That decision should not be the decision between being competent or overpowered, or compentent or unplayably weak. If LA discourages someone from playing a monster with T1 casting, they aren't going to select another more balanced monster. They are going to play a T1 caster, and they will be disappointed that they couldn't play the monster they wanted. Likewise, someone who wants to play a human barbarian may choose to play an ogre barbarian instead because it is much stronger, and they will not play the character they actually wanted to play.
Say a party has two barbarians, one dwarf and one ogre. If we take the second option, the human barbarian will be penalized for wanting to play a more ordinary race. The two barbarians are directly comparable, and the dwarf will be left behind.
We must compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. I am voting for Option #1.

[Zaq]

I agree that the inherent imbalance in the system makes it hard to really compare apples to apples when rating hundreds of monsters. I think option 1 is honestly a better choice overall. I can totally see the merit in option 2 (the noted concerns about "this partial-casting monster is worse than a full caster so it gets a lower adjustment than this beatstick monster that's better than a Barbarian" are valid), but I don't think we really have enough unambiguous T3 material to compare things to in order to make it be universal, and relatively few monsters are clean matches there.

To me, the less bad option is to try to match like with like. Anyone using this material is already going to be talking with their GM (or their players, as appropriate) as to why it's appropriate to meddle with WotC's rules in the first place—this doesn't absolve us from doing a good job and coming up with ratings that are as equitable as possible, but realistically, no one's going to treat this as inarguable dogma. The upshot of this is that most folks using this to play monsters will be trying to play to the monster's strengths, and if the player in question is intending to play not to a monster's strengths, I would presume that a GM who's already willing to mess with LA will mess with it a little more to keep the game functioning.

I repeat, merely assuming that a GM can fix a problem does not mean that a problem is not there, and it is not my intent to say that we're free to make nonsensical or imbalanced ratings with the assumption that someone else will fix them. I simply want to argue that it seems reasonable to me to predict that monsters will be used in ways that make sense for them and, therefore, it makes sense to rate monsters relative to PC classes that resemble them. I'm fine with leaning into the high end a bit in an ambiguous case (that is to say, comparing a monster to a slightly more optimized PC build rather than a rock-bottom bare-bones one), but not so aggressively so that we're seeking to nerf things a priori.

I find it reasonable to assume that a player who chooses to take a beatstick monster as their race wants to play a beatstick character and therefore should be given the tools they need to make a character with that monster that approximates what a "normal" beatstick character would be like. Same with a sneaky/roguish monster. Same with a blastery monster, same with a monster who approximates some level of full caster, and so on.

If a GM wants to buff the bottom end or nerf the top end even before taking monster races into consideration, I think that makes perfect sense and I'm cool with that, but I don't think it makes sense to separately bake that into our ratings.

tl;dr I vote for option 1, comparing like to like.

[Mystic Muse]

I vote for option #1 myself.

[tzar1990]

So, here's the thing - the game is broken. Levels do not mean what they're supposed to. And this is a problem, not a feature.

Yeah, we could balance compared to existing core classes. And if 3.5 was the current edition, if it was the version John and Jane Doe could buy at Chapters when they wanted to try that D&D thing for the first time, it would even be a good idea! But we're not dealing with the current edition in this thread. We're not even dealing with Pathfinder, not since we got out of MM1. Anyone still playing 3.5 is either someone who's invested a lot of time and/or money into it over the years, or someone who's actually understood the mechanics and loves the game for what it is.

And at this point, we all know the non-core books, so we actually can have the full range of archetypes in Tier 3. You can have a holy man, a hard-bitten soldier, a dickass thief, and a mage in the same party and all able to contribute to the same degree - you're just going to be running a fair/balanced party with something like Variant Bard or Paladin, Iron Heart/White Raven Warblade, Shadow Hand Swordsage, and Beguiler or Warmage.

I see the argument that rating Melee-focused monsters compared to T3 classes will force people to play them to get the benefits compared to core classes. But that doesn't rule out any character types, just using specific classes to make that character. You can absolutely be a Human barbarian and be balanced against an Ogre - because classes are just arbitrary ability packages, and so you pick a Tiger Claw-using Warblade and you're good! "Barbarian" isn't a specific thing that exists in-universe, it's just a set of rules telling you how to design a character who gets mad and hits things. And better rules have since been published, superseding it.

So that's why I'm voting for Option 2.

tl;dr classes are ability packages, not jobs that exist in-universe. So as long as the monster is balanced compared to a reasonable class doing the same thing, it's fine!

[Lans]

I am voting for option one so we can argue about what the appropriate class comparison is.

[lord_khaine]

tl;dr classes are ability packages, not jobs that exist in-universe. So as long as the monster is balanced compared to a reasonable class doing the same thing, it's fine!

Unfortuntately that then runs head first into the problem, that any monster with spellcasting will be unfairly penalised compared to a plain human wizard. Because one of them is compared to a tier 3 class and slapped with 2-3 points of LA. While the other is tier 1 from birth.

[Thurbane]

See I appreciate you Thurbane, you're often a level head and a steady voice in many a discussion.

That said, could you elaborate? I earnestly just want to know what the point of LA is to you.

I guess it's to compare monsters to each other as much as it is to core/LA +0 races.

If I had a hypothetical monster with 6 HD, and Cleric 6 casting, I would expect this to get a higher LA that a hypothetical 6 HD monster that had no special abilities other than being better in melee than a Fighter 6.

Monsters that are more powerful or versatile deserve higher LA IMHO.

It's not that I don't get the argument for option 1 - it's just that I feel option 2 better sums up what I think LA should represent. I can't see me changing my mind in that regard (I've seen all the debates over the last 4 threads and also in this one).

However, I will abide by majority rules, and the majority seem to prefer option 1, which is entirely their right.