As far as I know, they are still there and you add them together to get the total level adjustment for a character. Although, in some cases one might want to consider lowering the LA, as the power of the base classes has gone up.
As far as I know, they are still there and you add them together to get the total level adjustment for a character. Although, in some cases one might want to consider lowering the LA, as the power of the base classes has gone up.
Surely you mean races, right: "the power of the base races has gone up."?
I agree.
In fact, I think that many of the LAs were miscalculated in the first place and set ridiculously high.
But now, I think races like tiefling, aasimar, and other similar races might be more in line with the new Pathfinder base races, and deserving of no LA.
Personally, I have always found the LA/HD rules in 3.5 to be a bit overencumbering. One of the things I feel that 4E did right was getting rid of them all together and I hope that Pathfinder does the same.
I say do away with Level Adjustment!
Yikes!
If we get rid of LA, then how does a DM respond when a player wants to make up an ogre barbarian, or a half-celestial monk?
The answer must be "No, you can't do that" or the DM will have to balance stuff on the fly: "Gee, Fred, if you want to be an ogre, you can't be the same level as everyone else. How about, oh, say, 3 levels lower?". Of course Fred will argue, wanting to have his cake and eat it too (I have hardly ever seen anyone take a powerful race/class combo for pure RP reasons - make a dryad fighter or an ogre wizard, and I'll believe it's RP, but an ogre fighter is almost always a powergaming choice, even if the player also likes the RP angle).
No way we can comfortably say "OK, Fred, your 4th level ogre fighter is equal to Dave's 4th level half-elf fighter." Clearly they are not equal, and that monk will be overpowered in the group unless his level is adjusted downward to compensate for his racial power.
How about "OK, Fred, your 4th level storm giant fighter is equal to Dave's 4th level half-elf fighter."
LA isn't too complicated, and it provides a handy way to allow non-standard races without arguing with powergamers, disappointing players who think the DM overcompensated, or overpowering the race/class combo and letting that one character take too much spotlight away from everyone else.
I am not sure we want to do away with it entirely, but I'm all aboard with a plan to re-evaluate all the LAs and try to set them to more accurate values, using the new Pathfinder races as the baseline.
If we get rid of LA, then how does a DM respond when a player wants to make up an ogre barbarian, or a half-celestial monk?
You'll have to do it off the top of your head.
And by "it" I mean calculating the sum the player needs to bribe you with ;-)
The answer must be "No, you can't do that"
That's probably best - until Paizo has developed the replacement system. I think they're planning for a "monstrous characters" supplement where they will give this some serious thought.
In the meanwhile, you can play it by ear, or use the old values, or tell the player to get real and play a standard race.
LA isn't too complicated, and it provides a handy way to allow non-standard races without arguing with powergamers, disappointing players who think the DM overcompensated, or overpowering the race/class combo and letting that one character take too much spotlight away from everyone else.
It's a good system. It only has one flaw: It doesn't work.
It can be a workable solution for races that are just a bit too good for normal characters - like dwarves or drow or planetouched.
But if you go with more powerful stuff with a high LA and many racial HD, no single value will be really useful because you'll end up either making most classes useless with that race or some classes too powerful. Or a mix of both.
A hill giant barbarian or fighter could work well, but a hill giant wizard will not be that good an idea, for example.
DM_Blake wrote:
LA isn't too complicated, and it provides a handy way to allow non-standard races without arguing with powergamers, disappointing players who think the DM overcompensated, or overpowering the race/class combo and letting that one character take too much spotlight away from everyone else.
It's a good system. It only has one flaw: It doesn't work.
It can be a workable solution for races that are just a bit too good for normal characters - like dwarves or drow or planetouched.
But if you go with more powerful stuff with a high LA and many racial HD, no single value will be really useful because you'll end up either making most classes useless with that race or some classes too powerful. Or a mix of both.
A hill giant barbarian or fighter could work well, but a hill giant wizard will not be that good an idea, for example.
Oh, I agree, it doesn't work well at all.
It's designed for the power-gamer in mind.
If you want to play a hill giant wizard, you're already handicapping yourself in many ways, and you don't deserve the full LA that a hill giant fighter would get.
But the LA system doesn't take that into account. It just assumes you will pick a class that takes advantage of the benefits your non-standard race has to offer.
If you do that, the LAs are, usually, fairly appropriate. Some seem to have missed the mark by a level or two.
And with Pathfinder's enhanced races, the non-Pathfinder LAs are even farther from accurate than before.
I tried my hand at a solution to the LA problem, brewed from the rules of Weapons of Legacy. I asked myself: What is Level Adjustment? Answer: the cost of playing something more powerful than "base" races.
So we need a cost. Okay. How is this cost implemented with normal rules? You stay behind the rest of the party in level. But what does that actually mean? You have lower base attack, lower base HD (and thus lower base HP), lower saves, and lower skill points and skill caps, and lower base spell DCs and caster level.
But a lot of these are countered by the bonuses to ability scores many LA races give. And then there are any of the other racial abilities. I did a mathematical breakdown of the half-troll template. For a +4 leve adjustment, you get over 500k GP in power, all non-dispellable or removable. Yes, 500,000gp, one half of a million.
But lets look at the flaws that often come up. Lower HD means HD dependant effects can screw you while only annoying the rest of the party (Blasphemy comes to mind). Your own lowered caster level makes being a spellcaster difficult at best, and thats assuming you make choices to get around it, like No SR spells, and spells with fixed damage rather than level dependant. Your lower saves means you are often at a disadvantage against incoming spells, especially will based effects, as very few races boost Wisdom.
So how did I try to solve it? Penalties. Using a combo of the Savage Species level breakdowns, and a system of level based penalties similar to those from Legacy Weapons. The penalties are meant to be equal to what you would get on average from a level of the class you just took, spread out over 2 levels. Confused? Example time. NOTE-My examples are from 3.5 mechanics, not Pathfinder. But they should be easy enough to convert.
So lets look at a drow. LA+2. Lets say a drow sorceror, running on that high charisma. Each level of sorceror is d4 Hp, 2 skill points, poor base attack, good will save. He needs to take a penalty of -5 hp (2.5 x 2), -4 skill points, a -1 penalty to his attack rolls, and a -2 penalty to his will saves. Usually, I have this be broken up over levels equal to twice the amount of level adjustment, but I also allow PCs to "finish it off" early if they want.
Lets try a half-troll barbarian. d12 hp, 4 skill points, good base attack, good fortitude. LA +4. So thats -26 hp (6.5x4), -16 skill points, -4 penalty to attack rolls, -3 to fortitude saves, -1 to reflex and will saves.
Im sure you will find aspects of these numbers odd. I'm trying to sum up several pages of math into a single post, so there is bound to be confusion. And it's true, I penalize attack rolls, but not caster level. This does hurt the physical types more than the casters, but part of the point was that level adjusted casters usually sucked worse than level adjusted physical types.
Here is what I have found, having used this system in 3 adventure paths and several shorter campaigns/one shots.
First: This math is based around 25-28 point buy. I would reccomend for 32 point buy rounding all fractions up. So a LA +2 penalty to attack bonus for an average base attack class would be -2 to attacks (rounded up from the 1.5 base attack the class should have). This will generally offset the higher ability scores at base construction. Or you could simply limit the 32 point buy to non-level adjusted races.
Second: use of Savage Species breakdowns is not absolutely neccessary, but it is extremely helpful. You may consider making similar breakdowns for the abilities of flat level adjusted templates, like half-dragon, half-celestial, and half-troll. Otherwise, even with the penalties, they tend to dominate low level combat. Current Age of Worms game has a half-troll, and since the player is new I didn't want to saddle her with extra rules, so I just give the penalties level by level, and she got the full template out the gate. Very strong in melee, as you would expect. Skill points are practically nonexistant, due to intel penalties and level adjustment penalties (the latter of which can reduce skill point gains to 0).
Third: overall, this system works. Granted, I don't have players who try to munchkin or break my house rules, but this has done a good job of making players of level adjusted PCs look at their character and go "Hmm, do I really want to do this? Hmm. Yeah, I think so." Which to me means its a success. It has the feel of a cost, but it is an acceptable cost, despite being very steep in some cases.
If anyone wants the full rules breakdown of this, I can send the text file. Or maybe post it elsewhere. Or, this can just fade into obscurity. Whatever works.
Black Bard,
It feels a little arbitrary. One of the neat things about picking a non-standard race is that you can do things others cannot. You can feel superior, because you probably are.
But, LA is there to slow that down, make you pay a price that doesn't detract from the race in any way.
Want to be a drow? Great, you get whopping high CHA, some other nice racial ability scores, some neat magic tricks and immunities and eyesight in the dark.
Taking that away from them undermines the reason they want to play a drow.
On the other hand, taking away two levels lets them be a drow, but they're just a bit younger than the rest of the PCs in the group, a bit less experienced.
But at least they're a drow.
I once made a half-dragon sorcerer. Lots of CHA, and his breath weapon was pretty sweet when we were low level. Everyone else was 4th level and I was first, but I had nice AC for a sorcerer, and a breath weapon, and great ability scores. It was great.
Until we were all 15th level, except me, I was 12th level. My breath weapon could barely damage CR 15+ encounters at all. My AC meant nothing to the stuff we were fighting. Worse, the wizard in the group had 8th level spells but all I had was 6th level spells - awfully weak for killing CR 15+ encounters.
That race turned out to be a huge liability at higher level. At least, it was for a sorcerer. Maybe it would have been better for a fighter.
No, what we need is a Level Adjustment system that:
1. Correctly represents the added racial abilities at the lowest level they can be played (drow is +2, so you can't actually be a drow unless the rest of the group is 3rd level, unless the other players want to watch you dominate the game or unless your DM let's you add a few bits of drow racial stuff each level instead of all at once, in which case, you're still 3rd level before you have it all). Maybe that one is right compared to Pathfinder races. Every LA for all races needs to be reevaluated against the new, improved Pathfinder races to ensure they have the correct LA.
2. LA needs to be bought off. And not the lame version in the optional rules in SRD that really only benefits the races with tiny LAs. A real buy off, but something simple, like every 4 levels you lose enough XP to drop 1 level, but you reduce your LA by 1 until it's gone.
Note: that method of buying off the LA doesn't work in Pathfinder's flat XP tables. It would work in 3.5 (it's what I houseruled, in fact, and playtested). In 3.5, if your level is lower than the rest of the group, you get more XP from each encounter until you catch up. However, this is not how Pathfinder XP works, so that would need to be fixed before this kind of buyoff would work.
Maybe for Pathfinder, a simple replacement might be add a +25% XP modifier to the character after he drops a level and reduces his LA. If I understand the Pathfinder XP table right, this would be just right so that the character would catch up just in time to drop off his next LA 4 levels later, in which case he gets the XP modifier again because he drops a level again. This XP modifier goes away for good when he catches up in level to the other characters and has no LA left.
No, that would let them catch up completely, something the 3.x system didn't truly allow.
So, maybe instead of a flat +25%, we say the bonus is +10%/LA (before reducing the LA). Thus, a drow at 4th level would become 3rd level with a LA of 1 and a +20% XP modifier. When he reaches 8th level (about the same time his non-drow friends do), he drops the remaining LA and becomes 7th level with a +10% XP modifier. It will take him until 18th level to really catch up, and by then, a few points of ability scores and the other drow things will be very inconsequential compared to meteor swarms and power word kill and fighters getting 4 iterative attacks dishing out over 100 damage.
Something like that would let the race be the race without overpowering the other members of the group.