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Hey all,
From our Sunday playtest, something was rightfully brought up. The issue of tieflings and assimar as LA +1 races.
Under the SRD, if you play a tiefling, for a 1 level penalty, you gain +2 Dex, +2 Int, and -2 Cha. You gain 5 points of resistance to fire, electricity and cold, darkvision 60 ft, and darkness 1/day as an SLA.
Now, if you took a level of sorcerer with the abyssal bloodline instead, you would gain whatever stats your race granted you (let's say +2 as a human to one stat), 1d6 + Con Mod hit points, 2 + Int mod skill points, 4 0-level and 2-1st level spells per day of your choosing, and your level counts towards total feats, stat increases, and character level.
Clearly, the level beats the race.
Maybe, if we are looking at this, instead of all these monsters, maybe revising how racial hit dice work. So, instead of a level adjustment for a tiefling, what would happen if someone took 1 level of outsider (evil)? If racial hit dice granted a few abilities that scaled, rather than making them inherent to the type, or have the cosmetic race overlay further abilities, might it be worthwhile to link some abilities to racial hit dice?
For example, levels of monstrous humanoid might grant some natural armor bonuses. Levels of outsider or fey could grant SLAs.
Thoughts? Is this a worthwhile experiment?
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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In general, I'd think that it might be easier to simply change all LA +1 races to LA +0, since they're all pretty close in power to the standard PC races now. I haven't done an analysis on them, but that's my general perception.
The follow up to this would be looking at all level adjustments and see which ones should be reduced by 1.
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I have no hesitation in saying that tieflings as they exist in 3.5 should be LA +0 in Pathfinder. In many ways, their statline (+2 Phys, +2 Ment, -2 something) is the archetype of the Pathfinder design. Aasimar are a little trickier, but I think they could be done as well - if you were worried about conversion, though, I'd drop their stat bonuses and give them a single selectable +2, like humans and half-elves get.
With the P-RPG core races, +2/+2/-2 is the standard humanod racial bonus.
Gnomes themselves have SLAs, and are +0 LA under P-RPG.
The resistances are great, but I think about equal to Elven enchantment resistance, overall.
I was going to suggest a way to deal with +1 LA races by taking away their 1st level feat (though they could still get a bonus feat via their class), but I don't even know if that's necessary for the Tiefling. I think taking away a Feat could be a pretty easy/smooth way to deal with other LA races, though.
I wonder if LA rules will be in the Beta?
In general, I'd think that it might be easier to simply change all LA +1 races to LA +0, since they're all pretty close in power to the standard PC races now. I haven't done an analysis on them, but that's my general perception.
I did a brief analysis, and the only ones from the SRD that I thought should get downgraded from +1 to +0 LA were the aasimar, tiefling, hobgoblin, and blue (psionic goblin). Maybe merfolk too, but that's not going to come up very often.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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In general, I'd think that it might be easier to simply change all LA +1 races to LA +0, since they're all pretty close in power to the standard PC races now. I haven't done an analysis on them, but that's my general perception.I did a brief analysis, and the only ones from the SRD that I thought should get downgraded from +1 to +0 LA were the aasimar, tiefling, hobgoblin, and blue (psionic goblin). Maybe merfolk too, but that's not going to come up very often.
Off the top of my head, those are the only ones I can think of. Which ones didn't you think should be changed to LA +0?
Off the top of my head, those are the only ones I can think of. Which ones didn't you think should be changed to LA +0?
Duergar, dromites, half-giants, gnolls, lizardfolk and bugbears are fine the way they are (IMO).
I'd add the locathah to the "not worth a +1" category unless it's an underwater-only campaign.