There have been complaints about LA making certain character builds too weak for adventures of their character level at certain levels.
Here comes quest-master to save the day with a rules replacement that performs a more efficient job of balancing powerful races.
Replace the Level Adjustment with an equivalent number of racial hit dice but make the hit dice count towards level-variable class abilities for the race's favored class.
The ECL would be the same but the power of a formerly LA character would be more balanced against non-LA characters of equivalent character level.
The Aasimar for example have an LA of +1. The favored class for an aasimar is paladin. Give them 1 racial hit die instead of LA +1. A 2nd level Aasimar paladin would only have the class abilities of a 1st level paladin (aura of good, detect evil, smite evil) but his smite evil would deal +2 points of damage instead of +1. As a result the aasimar paladin would have enough hit points for encounters designed for characters of his level and his abilities (taking both racial and class abilities into consideration) would remain on par with a non-LA paladin of equivalent character level.
Effective caster level for a spellcasting class would also count if the class were favored by the race. (cast spells at +#racial hit dice but does not count towards spells per day or spells known)
Or at the very least special race-dependent feats can be created that allows this.
NOTE: This will not work for classes without level-dependent effects unless you add good feats that require a minimum level in a given class, or that can only be acquired by a cretain race(s) combined with a certain favored class. The fighter-only feats in the SRD are an example of this.
NOTE: This would also make it easier to create "racial levels" to tone down LA+ characters so that they can be played earlier.
For example, an ECL 1 Aasimar character can not use Daylight as spell-like ability and does not have +2 racial bonus on Spot and Listen checks but may take a racial level later on instead of a class level to gain those benefits. The racial level still counts as a level of the favored class for level-variable abilities.
Um, not for me. Have you taken a look at outsider hitdice lately? +2 to all saves, for one thing, plus 8+Int skill points, plus +1 BAB; I mean, if you add it to caster level, why wouldn't an player want one of those?
Joseph Le May wrote: Um, not for me. Have you taken a look at outsider hitdice lately? +2 to all saves, for one thing, plus 8+Int skill points, plus +1 BAB; I mean, if you add it to caster level, why wouldn't an player want one of those? aasimar get no outsider Hit Dice.
quest-master wrote: Here comes quest-master to save the day with a rules replacement that performs a more efficient job of balancing powerful races.
Replace the Level Adjustment with an equivalent number of racial hit dice but make the hit dice count towards level-variable class abilities for the race's favored class.
Let's take an example: a centaur. Under your suggestion, a 6 HD centaur 1st level fighter would be the equivalent of a level 7 fighter, but the centaur gets a big boost to physical stats, a better movement speed, large-sized weapons (which do more damage), natural attacks, natural armor, 2 good saves instead of 1, and some other stuff in exchange for three fighter feats, a +1 on attacks, and a +1 to AC. That doesn't seem balanced to me.
I think a better solution is to remove all LAs above +2 (say) and replace them with "DM's discretion".
I like this idea, but I think it needs a more generic benefit across the board, such as d6 hit dice, poor BAB, all poor saves, 2+ skill ranks, counts normal towards level based benefits.
No class level boosting benefits or anything else as your just adding even more benefits to them, which I think is counterproductive. LAs need to be brought to a balanced point, not made to be even more appealing. And if you start stacking spellcasting or level-based ability boosts and everyone will always play LA races.
This is of course IMHO, but I'm going to give this a try in my games.
Why not as on AD&d, XP penality?
hogarth wrote: quest-master wrote: Here comes quest-master to save the day with a rules replacement that performs a more efficient job of balancing powerful races.
Replace the Level Adjustment with an equivalent number of racial hit dice but make the hit dice count towards level-variable class abilities for the race's favored class.
Let's take an example: a centaur. Under your suggestion, a 6 HD centaur 1st level fighter would be the equivalent of a level 7 fighter, but the centaur gets a big boost to physical stats, a better movement speed, large-sized weapons (which do more damage), natural attacks, natural armor, 2 good saves instead of 1, and some other stuff in exchange for three fighter feats, a +1 on attacks, and a +1 to AC. That doesn't seem balanced to me.
I think a better solution is to remove all LAs above +2 (say) and replace them with "DM's discretion". Just to clarify things a bit, by level-variable class abilities I don't mean access to new class abilities.
At first glance the Centaur is much more powerful than the Human but if you remember the minimum level that the Centaur can be played at, the Human balances with the Centaur overall because of better skills, almost twice as many feats, and better EQUIPMENT. This is assuming you multiply item costs for a Large character by 2 including magic properties, which should be done if the DM wants to maintain credibility (It only makes sense that it takes more magical energy and resources to imbue a larger object with magical powers).
The balance should exist as long as the DM takes care to give appropriate levels and types of treasure.
By the way, a centaur's favored class is ranger, not fighter.
quest-master wrote: This is assuming you multiply item costs for a Large character by 2 including magic properties, which should be done if the DM wants to maintain credibility (It only makes sense that it takes more magical energy and resources to imbue a larger object with magical powers). Do you 1/2 the cost of magic items for small PCs? Personally, I'd feel that that would be too large of an advantage. You could do this for large PCs, but note that you're adding in yet another curve (Centaurs would be rather strong at low levels, and pretty weak at high levels due to the equipment gap - it's close to a +3 modifier on weapon and armor each alone).
My opinion for ECL would be to consider the following:
1) Have a total XP cost instead of ECL. That XP cost is constant, and shifts the XP table (or to think of it another way, it's subtracted from your present XP total to determine when you level).
2) Consider a small HP boost at low levels for ECL. Maybe 3/ECL, or (if you use suggestion #1) 1/1,000 XP)
quest-master wrote:
Just to clarify things a bit, by level-variable class abilities I don't mean access to new class abilities.
At first glance the Centaur is much more powerful than the Human but if you remember the minimum level that the Centaur can be played at, the Human balances with the Centaur overall because of better skills, almost twice as many feats, and better EQUIPMENT. This is assuming you multiply item costs for a Large character by 2 including magic properties, which should be done if the DM wants to maintain credibility (It only makes sense that it takes more magical energy and resources to imbue a larger object with magical powers).
The balance should exist as long as the DM takes care to give appropriate levels and types of treasure.
By the way, a centaur's favored class is ranger, not fighter.
that isn't a very clear verification, are you counting skill points as class abilities? saves? feats?
having had a 4th level centaur fighter in my game (dude,favored class is only important in multiclassing, a centaur fighter is perfectly valid for an example) I know that it is not any weaker than a 12th level elf fighter. It wasn't behind in feats or skill points enough to be noticable and the size difference in weapons and high stats made a signifigant advantage especially on saves. he is behind 3 feats, not twice as many. and the doubling cost of magic properties is a houserule, not applicable in the discusion.
Okay, here's a better clarification using the previous example of an aasimar paladin.
An Aasimar (LA +1) paladin 1, character level 2, has aura of good, detect evil, and smite evil but does not have divine grace and lay on hands, being paladin 1. However, the damage for smite evil treats the aasimar as if he were a paladin 2, dealing 2 points of damage instead of 1.
The aasimar receives skill points, saving throws, and hit points as if he were a multiclassed character with one level of outsider as his first level and one level of paladin as his second level.
Of course an adjustment needs to be made to the LA considering how good having first level as an outsider is (HD d8, full BAB, all good saves, 8 + Int mod. skill points x 4).
LA +3 ought to do it, after comparing the aasimar to the redone races in Alpha. In this case LA +3 meaning three levels of outsider.
As for the centaur, if magic properties are given to Large creature items as normal, then perhaps an adjusted ECL of +10 rather than +6. 10 levels of monstrous humanoid + class level. A ECL 11 centaur ranger 1 vs. a LA +0 ranger 11 might be better balanced this way.
This is a work in progress. Ultimately I think this could be a better way to go and relieve a lot of the qualms that people have about LA.
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