Hail Adventurers! I'm DMing a new campaign and I was dreaming up a Drow Rogue. My friend has studied every D&D book {including all 'splat' books} and told me it was not possible to play a Drow as a 1st level character. My question is this:
*Why can't you play a Drow at first level? Perhaps at second?
Level adjustments are a bit...complicated for me. Thanks ahead for your submissions and blessed be!
Drow have a Level Adjustment of +1, meaning that if a Human character where to be 2nd level, he'd be about as strong as a Drow character of 1st level.
Basically, you deduct the Level Adjustment of your species from the starting level of your campaign to determine at what level your character starts. So, in a first level campaign, a Drow would be 1 (starting level) minus 1 (Level Adjustment) for a 0th level character. Since there is no such thing; you cannot play a Drow.
It's all to keep things in balance; a first level Drow is simply much more powerful then a first level Human.
Drow have a Level Adjustment of +1, meaning that if a Human character where to be 2nd level, he'd be about as strong as a Drow character of 1st level.
I thought the LA was +2? (Which is rather high, but still...)
There's a weaker Drow variant in "Races of Faerun" which is playable at 1st level.
It is? Hmmm. I'm not sure, but if that is so then a 1st level Drow would be equal to a 3d level Human, and in a 1st level Campaign you'd be playing a level -1 Drow :)
Though makes me wonder, if I would pit a human fighter against a drow...commoner? Or expert? Those might be equivalent to regular 1st level character. But I doubt many people would want to play a drow commoner...
Level adjustment refers to better stats and non-typical abilities...some races, like drow or tiefling come off with +1 or +2 meaning they are generally tougher than humans but not too far off.
Some other races, like pixie or cloud giant have notably higher LAs, mirroring such abilities that even though mentally they could be considered as player characters they are really hard to fit into a balanced character group...thus most DMs simply don't allow these races as player characters.
Yeah, Drow LA is +2, so you need to have 3 levels to play with to make it a playable race. Making it an NPC class may work to keep the ECL @ 2, but then you lose the benefits of a 1st level PC class. If your game is starting @ 1st level, you need a no LA race. Go Kobold ;)
Also somewhere on Wizards, they made racial levels for drow; you get a few abils if you go up a level in your "race" instead of "class".
Because I have nothing better to do ;-)
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20040213a
|
Some other races, like pixie or cloud giant have notably higher LAs, mirroring such abilities that even though mentally they could be considered as player characters they are really hard to fit into a balanced character group...thus most DMs simply don't allow these races as player characters.
Buhu! Nobody will let me play my 1st level Cloud Giant Rogue now!
I'm not sure where this came from originally, but it works as a balancing factor for relatively low EL's.
Have the character take a penalty on all d20 rolls (attacks, saves, skills, and ability checks) equal to the character's EL. And each time the character would normally gain a level, instead reduce the penalty by 1.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
|
There's a very large sidebar in the 3.0 Edition Forgotten Realms hardcover that is written in vague terms. I might have misunderstood it. But it suggested to me that the GM might allow characters with positive racial CL, but treat them as higher level characters for experience.
So, a first level party might include a Fire Genassi (+1 Level Adjustment) Sorcerer, but that character would be considered second level and receive less experience, and level-up more slowly.
(I might, in fact, start the character at -1000 experience points....)
There's a very large sidebar in the 3.0 Edition Forgotten Realms hardcover that is written in vague terms. I might have misunderstood it. But it suggested to me that the GM might allow characters with positive racial CL, but treat them as higher level characters for experience.
So, a first level party might include a Fire Genassi (+1 Level Adjustment) Sorcerer, but that character would be considered second level and receive less experience, and level-up more slowly.
(I might, in fact, start the character at -1000 experience points....)
This is how I thought it worked as well. I probably wouldn't hesitate to allow a race with a level adjustment of up to +2, so that a 1st level drow fighter, although starting at 0 XP, is actually considered a 3rd level character and would require 6000 xp to reach level 2. That's a pretty major handicap for a short-term advantage at low levels. Everybody else in the party would be at level 4 at that point.
Holy crap I've been doing it wrong all this time. Well, not actually doing it wrong, because no-one's ever wanted to be a level adjusted race, but if someone had asked me if they could I thought it worked like this:
You make a 1st level Drow just like any other PC, but they don't get to level 2 until they have enough XP to get to level 3, so they start out more powerful than everyone else but are always a level behind. Wonder where I got that from?
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
|
There's a very large sidebar in the 3.0 Edition Forgotten Realms hardcover that is written in vague terms. I might have misunderstood it. But it suggested to me that the GM might allow characters with positive racial CL, but treat them as higher level characters for experience.
So, a first level party might include a Fire Genassi (+1 Level Adjustment) Sorcerer, but that character would be considered second level and receive less experience, and level-up more slowly.
It shouldn't make a difference. IIRC, the xp is the same for character levels 1-3.
(I might, in fact, start the character at -1000 experience points....)
Why? The penalty in terms of levels that most +x ECL races get already makes them a suboptimal choice. If you're worried about their effectiveness when they are operating with characters of a lower level than their ECL (e.g., a first level drow fighter with a bunch of first level human fighters), the xp penalty you suggest doesn't mitigate their effectiveness. Breaking up a multi-ECL race is probably the best way to bring their power into line at levels 1 and 2.
|
Why? The penalty in terms of levels that most +x ECL races get already makes them a suboptimal choice.
Even not making all the party the same ECL probably won't have a huge impact on the game in this case as long as the drow gets the appropriate xp for his ECL.
A first level drow has an ECL of a 3rd level character. They will need 3,000 xp to get to 2nd level.
A first level human fighter needs 3,000 xp to get to 3rd level.
When the drow gets to 2nd level, he will start to get fewer xp than the rest of the group for higher CR encounters. In addition, the rest of the group will get to 4th level with 1,000 fewer xp than it will take the 2nd level drow to get to 3rd level.
So, not only is the drow typically getting fewer xp for each encounter, but they will usually be at least a character level behind the rest of the group.
|
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
|
When I wrote:
(I might, in fact, start the character at -1000 experience points....)
Sebastian asked me in return:
Why? The penalty in terms of levels that most +x ECL races get already makes them a suboptimal choice.
On the sub-optimal choice, agreed. It's called "losing at least one hit die." When you're tenth-level and all your pals are twelfth-level, and something growly and abyssal is gnawing on your thigh, you'd better hope that your once-a-day darkness power and token spell resistance make up for those hit points.
As for the additional penalty, it, too, is token, a way to express my concerns without outright banning the character. Whether I would impose it depends, I think, on the character and the situation. Let's say someone decides to play something absurd like a celestial two-headed Fey'ri ranger. (No, that's not likely to happen...) I think that the character ends up with a +6 Level Adjustment. It will be a long time till that PC rolls another hit die, and maybe the player isn't intending to. Maybe he figures that the character will last for a while and then just succumb to random damage or wander off. Fine.
But if the player's planning to continue that monstrosity along for the entire campaign, (making third level ranger at about the same time the wizard is maxing out her 10d6 Fireballs)then I might decide to employ that 1000 xp penalty, just to make sure the player knows the situation.
Thank you all for your inputs, but I believe this goes a bit away from my original question (though I don't believe I made it clear.):
*How does a DM/Player create a 2nd lv. character using the MM and the PHB? (i.e. A Drow 1st lv.=Human 3rd lv.)
This whole LA+HD+Class lv.=? ? ? thing is confusing me.
Once again, thank you for your time, and hopefully I can understand. (It's been a long month w/o sleep and gold.)
Characters have an Effective Character Level (ECL). For the races in the PHB, their ECL always equals their character level - a Human Fighter 3 has ECL 3.
For races with hit dice already assigned, but no LA, their ECL equals their hit dice + character level. For example, a Gnoll Fighter 3 has ECL 5 (2 HD + 3 Fighter levels).
(Note: I'm working from memory here, so my example might be wrong, if Gnolls don't have 2 hit dice, or don't have LA +0)
For races with no hit dice already assigned, but which do have LA, their ECL equals their LA + character level. For example, a Drow Fighter 3 has ECL 5 (2 LA + 3 Fighter levels).
Finally, for races that have hit dice assigned and LA, their ECL equals their LA + hit dice + character level. For example, a Troll Fighter 3 has ECL 13 (6 hit dice + 4 LA + 3 Fighter levels).
To create a 'balanced' party, everyone should have the same ECL. So, if you start everyone at 3rd level, they can either create a Human Fighter 3 or a Drow Fighter 1 (LA 2 + 1 Fighter level).
And, when creating that Drow Fighter, when writing up the 'race' section, consult the section in your MM about "Drow as Characters". (Or, use the FRCS, which reprints the relevant details.)
|
|
Take a look at the link that Ilaletin gave -->http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20040213a
Basically, pick a class -- say Fighter.
So, at first level, they get the benefits of a 1st level fighter. For racial abilities, they get +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, 30 ft speed, drow weapon proficiencies (hand crossbow, rapier, and short sword), dancing lights 1/day, darkvision 60 ft., Immunity to magic sleep, Light Blindness, +2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot.
After this, at each level they can choose to either advance in a class or in a racial "class".
At the 1st racial class advancement they do not get to advance as a normal class. They instead get to advance racially -- Darkvision improves to 120 ft., faerie fire 1/day, and spell resistance 5 + class level.
At the 2nd racial class advancement, they are "fully" drow and again do not gain a "normal" class level, but they further gain +2 Cha, darkness 1/day, +2 racial bonus on Will saves, and spell resistance improves to 11 + class level.
At least this is how I am interpreting the rules. Hope that helps.
In Savage Species, the rules stated that a character must complete all racial levels before entering a class. Has this changed?Probably not. I was going off of memory.
IIRC Monster Manual (which I don't have by hand) doesn't give racial levels to drow, only level adjustment, so that's why drow follows a bit different rule on advancing racial levels.
This issue of not having racial levels can be a bit of a problem when playing some races with high LA...1st level pixie mage has high Effective Character Level (5 or something) but it still has only 4(+CON modifier) hit points. So when it has encounters of its own level it is very likely to go *splat*.Some races, like giants and satyrs have racial levels as based on MM, and these levels indeed need to be taken before any class levels.
Allow me to give my wondrous advice:
- To play a drow you have a level adjustment of +2. Ignore the fugly Faerun proto-ECL rules on this. How it works now is that essentially, a level 1 drow rogue counts as a level 3 character for the purposes of XP. Upon reaching enough XP to bring a normal character to level 4, your drow rogue would reach level 2.
Essentially, level adjustment are "phantom levels" that grant no abilities (no hit dice, saves, class abilities, nothing) that only count for the purpose of XP, in order to balance out the increased power you begin with from racial abilities.
If you take that "racial progression" that Sean K Reynolds made, it's possible to play a weaker level 1 drow rogue as a level 1 character, then for your level 2 and level 3, take racial abilities for your levels. When everyone else is level 3, you will be equivalent to a full drow level 1 rogue.
Now, with races that have racial hit dice (monsters, mainly), this becomes more complicated, but I'll leave that for another time since it's irrelevant to our drow rogue.