Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Personally, I think the biggest problem with LA was the +1 races, since most of the advantages petered out after the first few levels, and all of a sudden you're trailing the rest of the party significantly. The second biggest problem was that the whole system was ad hoc similar to the original CR system, and some designers made better ad hoc decisions than others.
Personally I just thought that Savage Species was an absolute mess. I don't even know where to begin with that one, but surely the fact that it was 3.0 and did not benefit from much development time on the system in general was a disappointment. I think they pushed that one out a bit early, and the LA system was an attempt to put a band-aid on a seeping wound.
Folks,
I can virtually assure you that we will get to a monsters as PCs book. Yes, these rules were available in the core system, but you either had to use the utterly broken LA system or the designed-before-its-time Savage Species rules, both of which sucked.
Neither the LA system nor Savage Species "sucked".
Maybe they are not perfect, but they are not that bad.
Feral template... nuff said... *ugh*
Folks,
I can virtually assure you that we will get to a monsters as PCs book. Yes, these rules were available in the core system, but you either had to use the utterly broken LA system or the designed-before-its-time Savage Species rules, both of which sucked.
Rather than put a secondary rules subsystem at the heart of our monster book, we decided to leave the monster book a monster book and wait for monsters as PCs until we can give it the attention it deserves.
I can understand why some folks are disappointed with that, but then some folks want psionics and epic level rules immediately, and we are only just getting started developing the core rules.
Stick around a while. We will get to the corner cases and oddball stuff eventually.
Unless I am miss-reading the posts, people generally are being rather civil. Lots of good discussion really IMHO. But if you see a problem OK.
Looking forward to the book! YAY!
Feral template... nuff said... *ugh*Folks,
I can virtually assure you that we will get to a monsters as PCs book. Yes, these rules were available in the core system, but you either had to use the utterly broken LA system or the designed-before-its-time Savage Species rules, both of which sucked.
Neither the LA system nor Savage Species "sucked".
Maybe they are not perfect, but they are not that bad.
Oh the feral template was horrifically miss-understood. It was based on racial hit dice, not character, for one. So unless you have racial hit dice you got NOTHING associated with hit dice. That by it self was well worth the +1 LA with out being broken.
Savage Species was very uneven in quality, and it was readily apparent that different sections were done by different people. Most of it wasn't "broken" per se, unless the monster had no business being a PC. All the same, using the book for NPCs/adversaries that scaled with the party before getting class levels was great. So pretty much the monster class appendix (Thanks Sean) was where the book had it's value.
Really, I think the only WTF stuff in Savage Species (for its time) were the anthropomorphic animals. Those guys were ridiculous. Anthropomorphic bats and other small anthropomorphic animals made fantastic Druids, especially under the 3.5 Wild Shape rules where physical stats were replaced so Str penalties didn't matter. And the medium/large AAs had racial hit dice, all but ruling them out for ever being used.
The equipment section, as I recall, was also pretty useless, since everything was really specific in a book full of monsters that were way more interesting than the ones for whom the equipment was designed.
And the half ogre was overpowered, especially just looking at the balance guidelines in that book. I feel like it fills a niche, though, and it was barely tweaked for its inclusion for creating new races that were actually contained in one of the "Races of..." books.
I think the guidelines in the Bestiary are pretty good, a compromise of the old LA system and a recognition that not all levels are created equal. A level adjustment at one or two may not mean much, but especially for spellcasters, each level at higher levels represents considerably more power. Unearthed Arcana did that as well, providing rules for buying off level adjustments (which is where I think may have been the seed for the Bestiary guidelines).
I think there are enough rules out there that anything less than a whole book with a lot of playtest time would be an extreme disservice to the topic.
I'm all for Paizo taking their time and getting it right, it just seemed for a day or two there like there was open hostility to doing such a book, which was highly disappointing to say the least. This post makes me feel much better! Thanks!If there was hostility, it was probably due to me being defensive in the face of what I felt to be a sudden deluge of unnecessarily antagonistic or overwrought complaints that the Bestiary didn't do something that it was never intended to do in the first place.
And in the hopes of managing expectations... it will probably be more than a couple years before we get to this topic. If things change and we get to it by 2012, then that's cool... but we're not yet committing to an actual release date for this (or any other often-requested rules expansion) quite yet. Note that, as Erik says, that's not the same as saying never.
No worries, and sorry if I came off as defeatist too. :) Text, as said often, makes it hard to get fine nuances across.
Personally, I'm hoping Paizo grows over the next year or so due to fantastic sales and thus has more resources. :) I don't want a book every other month like was happening before, but, one per quarter would be hitting my personal sweet spot. :)
Personally, I think the biggest problem with LA was the +1 races, since most of the advantages petered out after the first few levels,
seconded, by level 3 it was no longer an advantage and by level 5 or so it was a disadvantage
Personally I think that the LA could be somewhat ballanced out by not giving the more powerful races a feat at certain level.
For example the Drow under 3.5 rule wouldn't get any feats on levels 1 and 3 for their LA +2.
Certain races (Kobolds and Goblins come to mind) could have negative LAs IMO.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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Well, if you did a couple things with 3.5 rules I don't believe LA monsters were bad at all in 3.5:
1) Allow buy off as per U.A. Reducing Level Adjustment rules (slow but worked great for LA+1 and maybe LA+2.)
2) Examined the LA to make sure it was balanced, sometimes it was too small (should be higher for a PC with Greater Teleport at will.)
I played a number of LA races, many as spellcasters. I've played ONLY Spellcasting Pixies, Played Centaur, Assamir, Aventi (LA+0), Murrack (jackle like from Sand), and countless others.
I've played a number with racial hit dice and frankly, I think the way Bestiary combined with some new rules couple make the best of both worlds (3.5 and 3.p) by translating everything to hit dice. The only thing about LA that ever made it really bad was the reduced hit dice. For instance the Pixie in 3.p is so much better because it has 4 Fey HD (crappy as they are) and real HD are much better than 4 LA.
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from a guy who ran a game where one of my players wanted to play a vampire (right, nothing unusual sounding). He knew the territory we were getting into, so we stuck it out. He played fighter, he didn't powergame, and we both played for the story of it.
The problem erupted when we noticed a few things:
One...this is a great example b/c in 3.5 vamp's had a +8 LA. Fairly extreme and required a min of what...6 HD? Any way, by the time he counted as a 20th level character, he had 12 HD. Way to weak to take on a Pit Fiend. At 5th level (we bended the rules a little) his DR and regeneration was so powerful that nothing could kill him. I sent 5 trolls against him without a party (so 5th lv fighter vamp vs 5 CR 5 trolls). I'll give you 3 guess who won in 7 rounds and the first 2 don't count.
The problem is an
LA too high = low-level character are invisible
LA too high = high-level character at too weak (or glass)
LA too low = nice at low-level
LA too low = worthless/disadvantage at high-levels
now, one thing we want to try again (mainly to bring that character back, sense he was fun) is to give him 7 levels of vampire; in these levels he should get:
at least 5d8 + Cha mod of hit die
2 dead levels (no hit die) for power (like a super noble Drow)
vampire bonuses and weaknesses
ability score bumps
undead traits
now. We know this isn't perfect. But it will help with the glass problem and still give us our vampire fighter. Also, because undead no longer replace class HD playing a fighter has benefits beyond BAB.
Anyway, I hope our ideas might inspire someone somewhere to think outside the box as well, try a few things, post on the boards, and see what works, what failed, and what we should all try.
It would suck to be a hairy Monster PC and get a bad case of fleas.
In 3.5, one of things I have considered doing for the LA (empty levels) is basically make them commoner levels:
This way ECL = total HD.
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In 3.5, one of things I have considered doing for the LA (empty levels) is basically make them commoner levels:
d4 hd + con
2+Int skills (no skills are considered class, this is the change from true commoner)
all poor saves This way ECL = total HD.
Personally, I'd just use the default warrior class since it's what they use in the Bestiary/MM
I would have made that not just Commoner, but any NPC Class. A half-ogre rogue could take levels of expert, a githyanki wizards might have levels of adept.In 3.5, one of things I have considered doing for the LA (empty levels) is basically make them commoner levels:
d4 hd + con
2+Int skills (no skills are considered class, this is the change from true commoner)
all poor saves
1/2 BA This way ECL = total HD.
Well that depends on what you think the LA (empty levels) were meant to represent. While a warrior is certainly weaker than a fighter, are they that much weaker to counter balance some powerful abilities the race gets?
The use of other NPC classes might be something that would work for replacing the racial HDs, but I'm not convinced it would be appropriate for the LA (empty levels).
I'm in sort of a unique position here, so I'll chime in. I've recently begun playing D&D again after a seven year hiatus (I stopped about a year after 3rd edition came out, and hadn't even heard of 3.5 until 4.0 was on its way), simply because I moved away from my friends. With the advent of Internet technology, however, I now Web cam with them weekly to play, and have even started a group up here.
I've tried 4th edition and just can't love it, with it throwing out so many of the things that I've enjoyed since the red box, through advanced, 2nd and even 3rd. I stumbled onto Pathfinder and really like the changes, as well as the change in mindset!
At first, the extra power given to all the characters seemed a bit like power gaming, but then I realized that it was meant to balance out and away the need to computer-game D&D (stat boosting items, min/maxing everything, trading up with magic items). Plus, the new freedom of choice just really sold me (and pretty much drive a stake through the few 4E defenders I meet).
But one thing always confused me about 3.5, and that was the way level adjustments were handled. A Human, Half-Orc, Elf, Dwarf, etc. with class levels had challenge ratings equal to their level. Easy and it makes sense. But when converting a monster to a PC, the challenge rating was thrown out the window. A 20 HD critter might have a challenge rating of 13, indicating equivalency to a 13th level character, but it would have a LA of +5, equating it to a 25th level character according to the base rules. What?
Now, pointing out that CRs were calculated because they were one-time opponents vs. constant presences makes sense in a way, but not for a level discrepancy of 12, I would imagine.
I've had players try to play monster PCs for as long as I've been playing D&D (well, almost), some did it because the race was interesting, some did it because they wanted to be, well, combat monsters. And it has always needed a brain behind the game for the rules element. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but at least you can have fun playing it. After all, the play's the thing (and let's be honest, we were doing this when we were kids long before we rolled dice or had rule books).
Part of the other reason I liked PF was the boost in power level of base races (more stat, more powers)-- When I looked at the Tiefling, I realized that it very nearly wiped out the power difference of LA 1 monsters like them and Lizardfolk, which seems to open doors up pretty easily.
(Though I wondered why humans didn't get more of a boost, but then realized after reading all the arguments on the topic that they probably hit a very nice balance for them.)
I think that Monster PCs always require special handling no matter the game, and that leaving it up to the DM with a bit of a nod towards the CR and adjustments to xp is much better than a blanket and confusing statement and the endless hours of 'huh' I spent staring at level adjustments.
My two cents on this crazy topic. Oh, and, for what it's worth, I came into PF a little hesitant, but I love what you've done with everything so far!