In my experience, Level Adjustments as they currently stand in both 3.5E and Pathfinder RPG are not a terribly good way of balancing power, as characters advance in levels, because the penalty stays the same, yet the relevance of the abilities/powers leading to the Level Adjustment decreases.
This has manifested in my games several times. For example, one of my players wanted to play a Djinn (the party was at an appropriate level for that) and I allowed it, but some levels later, the character was inevitably grossly underpowered.
I would like to see this issue addressed in Pathfinder if possible. I have three suggestions:
1) Make LA into a permanent negative level (or levels)
This would soften the blow of LA, but would not really solve the underlying problem of the abilities provided getting less useful with levels
2) Make LA into XP penalty
This would solve the problem, I think, but might be too radical a solution.
3) Implement a mechanism to enable the character to buy-off LA - perhaps something like in Unearthed Arcana
I disagree, I think changing it to work as an XP penalty is perfect.
From your example, "at the level the LA seems appropriate", there is no difference.
After that, the (effective) LA would gradually decrease using an XP adjustment system.
It would be relatively straightforward to convert all 3.5 Level Adjustments to XP adjustments, since you just look up the XP required for the number of Adjustment Levels. No biggee.
You *COULD* implement a system where you can "buy off" the LA (thru XP? Feats? yuck!), but it ultimately seems like a more complicated way to achieve the exact same thing. Since converting 3.5 LA to XP Adjustment is trivial, I just can't see the argument against it.
So, I'm disagreeing because I like your idea...? :-)
Thanks, I wasn't familiar with those.
They're interesting, partially because they somewhat follow the 2nd Edition Multi-Classing dynamic, where a fixed XP penalty has less meaning with the increasing XP value of each level.
After reading it, I came up with this idea, which doesn't rely on the fixed "opportunities for reducing your LA":
What if there was both a fixed XP penalty and a percentage based penalty (say, 5% or 10%, depending on LA) This would match the LA at levels where it seems appropriate, but instead of disappearing in relevance completely at high levels (as a fixed XP penalty of low-moderate LA Races would), would do more to ensure that you remain SLIGHTLY behind in level, but not more than 1 level for low-moderate Races.
...But I guess this won't really be covered in the Core Pathfinder RPG, since LA Races aren't covered either...
Level buy-off works well, though it is confusing. I would definitely support a fixed XP penalty, but starting campaigns off at level 1 could get confusing. Does a +1 LA race start off with -1000 XP? Does that make them level 0 or level -1? And other such weird questions.