Vermin are animals in real life
Same with your animal/vermin comparison. They simply are not alike at all.
Ah, I think that a lot of "vermin" should be categorized as "animal".
I automatically jumped to the train of thought that vermin = insects, arachnids and other bugs of dubious origins.
Vermin are animals in real lifeSo are humans. :)
Nuh-uh, we're a virus with feet.
Level adjustments were considered crap - by Paizo and tons and tons of 3e players - so they left it out rather than have it in.
I know for a fact that not everyone at Paizo hated LA. Sean K Reynolds posted in this very thread, and he put a lot of work into Level Adjustment, monster classes, and so on. But maybe he moved on to whatever magical new system they're working on.
They didn't want to do a half-assed job to put a player resource into a GM book, so they left it out in favour of a later book - which has already been announced, by the way.
So many other parts of the system were done half-assed by Paizo. In all those other cases though, the standard Paizo answer was "leave it alone, for the sake of compatibility". Why they should deviate in the case of level adjustment, I have no idea.
Do they have some brilliant revolutionary idea about how to do monsters as player characters? I'll believe it when I see it. More likely they just have some vague plan like "let's make a book that does a better job at monster characters". Meanwhile Level Adjustment STILL WORKS.
I am looking forward to seeing what Paizo does with their new monster-PCs book, but I'm skeptical as to whether they can produce something as balanced and simple as Level Adjustment.
Not without drinking heavily and taking lots of drugs. Because "as balanced as LA" would mean "quite crappy and only really useful for very special cases."
What I'm expecting from Paizo is a new system that's a lot more complicated than LA, and ever so slightly more balanced.
The system was even deliberately overcharging in several situations to discourage players. What's so balanced about that? "Let's give vampires LA+8 so nobody will want to play one!"
It's not so simple, and it never will be, no matter how much you, I, or Paizo wishes for it to happen. Monsters were not deliberately overcharged. It was a byproduct of certain monster abilities being extremely useful for Player Characters. That problem still exists with Pathfinder.
We can go in circles now, because I have one style, and you have another.
Okay, we can do that: My style doesn't work with LA, because it just didn't work.
Guess what: Paizo caters to my style. :P
Your style is restrictive and unimaginative. And LA does work.
I beg to differ. Unless we're only counting post-Pathfinder material. But if you look at Wizards + 3rd party material + websites + people's homebrew material, you will literally find thousands of aberrations.
I'm going to need proof of that. Anecdotal evidence doesn't count.
What, you're stealing my material now? ;-P
'Great minds think alike.'
Or
'Fools never differ.'
Or
'A bit from A, a bit from B'
?
Level adjustments had several major problems:
1. They were hard to assign accurately and consistently. Not all SLA's or special abilities are equal even if they are the same level. Some abilities which make a creature a greater combat challenge for the PC's aren't as useful for a PC and vice-versa. WOTC had a fairly rigid (and often ridiculous) system for assigning Level adjustments.
2. The value of some abilities ( e.g.higher ability score bonuses) vary by class. The floating +2 that all human and half-human characters get is more flexible than static bonuses. And how valuable are those bonuses relative to class levels? An ogre with +6 strength makes a good fighter or barbarian, but is that worth a cost in class levels?
3. The value of some abilities change with time. An extra +1 Natural Armor or resistance of 5 to an energy type may be useful early on, but is much less useful later. At medium to high levels, having an extra class level is probably more powerful.
That said, I felt that the problem wasn't the idea of level adjustments as much as how it was implemented.
Meanwhile Level Adjustment STILL WORKS.
It doesn't work very well. As a player, I love the idea of playing a monstrous character.
But, the LA system only allowed me to do that somewhat efficiently if I wanted to play a combat-focused character. If I wanted to play a spellcaster, the LA (+ Racial Hit Dice) system was totally crippling. None of the benefits to any race were worth giving up so many caster levels.
I was very happy to see Paizo give the LA system the boot, even though I want to be able to play monstrous characters.
Creative Director
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Ouch! Talk about talking down to your customers! I just came here to gauge the attitude around Paizo and see if it was any better than WotC. Clearly, it's not.
I get that your feelings are kind of hurt by being accused of bad design, but let's be honest: no one at Paizo put actual design effort into the aasimar. It's just copied over from D&D. (incidentally, that's how I like it) So why get defensive about it?
And while I understand why Paizo felt the need to remove level adjustment, you haven't replaced the system with anything better. Level adjustment may have been a kludge, but at least it was something.
Finally, the reason I post this: in case you haven't noticed, DMs like to create their own races and monsters. Maybe YOU haven't made a zero-HD abberation, but there will be thousands of them out in homebrew land. It's quite reasonable for DMs to assume that the creature type grants all the associated abilities, and I'm sure that's how most people will have been treating their aberrations for homebrew purposes. Your interpretation, that such abilities only come with actual Hit Dice, is counter-intuitive, and not how it's written. And now you jump down your customer's throat when they ask for clarification?
Heh... interesting. While Ravingdork DOES indeed have a reputation, I think you're reading way too much spite into my reply. I honestly DON'T think we've done any zero HD races that aren't humanoid or native outsiders, but what we've published exceeds my ability to keep all of that information in my brain. My offer to provide information was honest and legit, although looking back at it I do see how saying "desperately needed clarification" might seem heavy-handed. I said that partially out of jest and partially for real based on how eager and important sounding previous posters (particularly Ravingdork, with his love for errata and FAQ additions) were making the whole subject.
As for the removal of the level adjustment system from our version of the game, I still stand by that removal as a good thing. Level adjustment took power away from the GM. It didn't work as advertised (just compare a 1st level pixie barbarian and a 1st level pixie sorcerer and you'll see what I mean).
Remember as well that when 3rd edition came out, the concept of level adjustments was NOT part of the core game. They came along several years later. But since the game's compatible, you can STILL USE level adjustments if they're familiar and workable to you. We just didn't want to preserve something in the game that we felt was broken and caused more problems than solved them (such as by giving bullying players the ammo they need to push a GM into allowing them to play a pixie sorcerer, honestly).
Turns out we've got a big book about races coming up next year, and there'll be some more information about how to play more powerful races in that book. We're still many months away from being in a place to talk about that book in detail though.
And finally... we did in fact put design effort into the aasimar. We put design effort into every single monster in the Bestiary, in fact. I personally put design effort into each of them, as did our design team. In some cases, that meant looking at what had been done with the monster in 3.5 and deciding to leave things alone—while the end result on the page might look identical to that which appeared in the Monster Manual, we STILL did design work as part of the updating for the monster to Pathfinder.
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Creative Director
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And because it kinda got buried in my last post...
Next Spring we'll be publishing the Advanced Race Guide. That book will have a system for GMs and players who want to play tougher than zero HD races, if we do our job right. It's not yet a system we're willing to talk about, but that's mostly because Gen Con is only a few weeks away...
Gen Con is a really good time to make announcements about RPG stuff.
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The Level Adjustment system was horrible. If you were a spellcaster, you never got any serious spellcasting power. If you were a melee character, you couldn't survive due to being down HD, making your HP total suffer. Using racial HD as LA instead off adding LA on top of racial HD would have been a much better idea.
Yeah! It's like they weren't even designed to be a PC race!Yeah, I'm not sure you get what I'm saying, here -- maybe it wasn't as obvious as I thought it would be -- my bad.
When looking at the Races in the Bestiary that have a "(Race) as a PC" block and a CR that, in theory, makes them equal to the Races in the Core, Aasimar is badly designed.
Now, the first thing we see, and I probably should have included this in my OP, is that Aasimar is CR 1/2 not 1/3 -- Huge.
Still, comparing that to the Tiefling one must ask, "WTF?!"
Sample stat block is CR 1/2 instead of 1/3 because the sample aasimar is a cleric, not an NPC class.
the reason that most level adjustments were deliberately made so absurdly high is so that nobody would be tempted to play these races that they wanted to make NPC exclusive.
the reason that most level adjustments were deliberately made so absurdly high is so that nobody would be tempted to play these races that they wanted to make NPC exclusive.
IF they wanted some races to remain NPC exclusive, then they would of just put a "-" in the Level Adjustment spot instead of some number(Which, in some cases, they did). Level Adjustments were only used for PCs. It had no effect on NPCs at all, as the only time it came into effect was determining how much experience you got and hope much you needed to level. NPCs aren't built like that - they are whatever level is needed by the DM.
(Well, level adjustment was used for NPCs that were cohorts/followers for PCs with the Leadership feat. That is the only time I can remember having to have a level adjustment noted for a NPC.)
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And because it kinda got buried in my last post...
Next Spring we'll be publishing the Advanced Race Guide. That book will have a system for GMs and players who want to play tougher than zero HD races, if we do our job right. It's not yet a system we're willing to talk about, but that's mostly because Gen Con is only a few weeks away...
Gen Con is a really good time to make announcements about RPG stuff.
DEM RACE CREATION RULES
Want so much.
Heh... interesting. While Ravingdork DOES indeed have a reputation, I think you're reading way too much spite into my reply. I honestly DON'T think we've done any zero HD races that aren't humanoid or native outsiders, but what we've published exceeds my ability to keep all of that information in my brain. My offer to provide information was honest and legit, although looking back at it I do see how saying "desperately needed clarification" might seem heavy-handed. I said that partially out of jest and partially for real based on how eager and important sounding previous posters (particularly Ravingdork, with his love for errata and FAQ additions) were making the whole subject.
As for the removal of the level adjustment system from our version of the game, I still...
My apologies for jumping down your throat in turn. I did happen across what looked to me like a dev being needlessly sarcastic toward a player. RD didn't seem to be fazed, so no harm done there. And maybe I did read too much into it.
I'm not necessarily interested in whether you've published other zero-HD monsters, although that would be really awesome if you did. I just see that the rules are there, there's design space, and if you're doing any creature type that isn't humanoid, it's probably something that needs to be considered. I recommend doing the work only once so you don't have to reinvent the 1-HD monster every time you make a new one, and so players and DMs can get a handle on how it's done consistently.
As for me, I stand by LA as a good thing. It's been a while since I looked at the pixie, but I don't think it's broken. A pixie sorcerer has huge DCs at the expense of two levels of spells. That seems fair to me.
And a pixie barbarian will require some creative thinking to preserve those precious hp, but having an awesome AC really offsets that. And maybe the extremely low damage output is kind of a balancing factor for the pixie that never gets hit. So does the fight devolve into a slugfest between a pixie doing a million tiny cuts while the monster misses on everything but a 20? Perhaps, but that's assuming that the goal is to get the monster down to 0 hp (which a pixie naturally has a few alternatives), and it's also assuming no input from the rest of the party. Can the pixie barbarian keep the (let's say) troll busy while the rest of the party does their thing with fire, acid flasks, or whatever?
As for Pathfinder's version of Savage Species, I guess I probably can't get much more out of you. I'm expecting a fun and cool product, with some ideas that I haven't thought of. But I'm also expecting a system that will be more complicated than level adjustment. There's never going to be a system as simple as "You are treated as if you are a character 3 levels higher". I expect to see something like the monster classes, and that's fine, but it also makes it harder for players to make their own. Not that this will matter to me, because I own Savage Species and I know how to make a monster class.
I just fear that this way of thinking will be lost. That any time you want to play a monster character, you have to look to a professional gaming company to see if they've published a "monster class progression" for it.
Lastly, about the design thing: I apologize for taking a cheap shot. I believe you when you say you did take a design look at the aasimar. I can think of a lot of things I'd like to change about the aasimar, but all of them involve adding a lot of material that wouldn't fit in a Bestiary, but should probably go into something like the Complete Book of Aasimars and Planetouched.
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I know for a fact that not everyone at Paizo hated LA. Sean K Reynolds posted in this very thread, and he put a lot of work into Level Adjustment, monster classes, and so on. But maybe he moved on to whatever magical new system they're working on.
I'm sure in any industry, you'll find people who look back and say, "well, it was a good idea at the time." LA is one of those things.
LA is really only needed for players and GMs who insist "OMG EVERY PC MUST BE BALANCED AGAINST THE OTHER." But that's a pipe dream--you can't even balance the damage output of a human bard vs. a human sorcerer.
There's no reason why you can't have a level 1 human, level 1 werewolf, level 1 drow, and level 1 kobold playing in the same group... as long as the players agree to it and everyone is having fun. If the players can agree on that, you don't need an LA mechanic. And if the players can't agree on that, no LA mechanic is going to prevent some minmaxer from creating a super-cheesed monster PC that'll blow an "equivalent" level human PC out of the water.
There's no reason why you can't have a level 1 human, level 1 werewolf, level 1 drow, and level 1 kobold playing in the same group... as long as the players agree to it and everyone is having fun. If the players can agree on that, you don't need an LA mechanic. And if the players can't agree on that, no LA mechanic is going to prevent some minmaxer from creating a super-cheesed monster PC that'll blow an "equivalent" level human PC out of the water.
YAY FOR COMMON SENSE!
It is as if marginal imbalances between players is going to wreck the party or something; players should be more concerned about the group doing well, rather than individually being the superstar.
Ha Ha!
Scored a racial HD! And a d6 at that! Suck on that you d4 kobolds!
What? the Kobold in the book has a d8? Damn it!
Ok, ok, so what did get for 1 HD of Fey... proficiency with all weapons? Crazy immunities? True seeing? Breath weapon?
Ok, here it is...
SRD- "Fey
A fey is a creature with supernatural abilities and connections to nature or to some other force or place. Fey are usually human-shaped."
That's it? I wanna be a plant or undead or something!
EDIT:
And apparently the picture used for me in the book wasn't a mite- it was Mark Moorland!
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Creative Director
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the reason that most level adjustments were deliberately made so absurdly high is so that nobody would be tempted to play these races that they wanted to make NPC exclusive.
Not true.
They were high because they generally tried to skew the level adjustments to the BEST possible combination. But it's a fundamentally flawed idea, because you can't summarize how good a race is for all possible character options with a single number.
I return to the pixie.
In 3.5, it had a Level Adjustment of +4.
Which, if you were playing a sorcerer, was either about right or too generous—the pixie sorcerer I saw in play, who had greater invisibility going all the time and a +6 racial bonus to Charisma had spells that few bad guys could ever make saves against and who never provoked attacks of opportunity by spellcasting. WAY powerful.
That said, if the same Pixie was a barbarian or a fighter, the level adjustment of +4 was WAY too much, because her strength penalty and size penalty to melee damage is crippling.
And then back to rogue—a pixie rogue gets sneak attack damage on every single attack, pretty much—and with a +8 Dex racial and her +1 from size for all attacks, she pretty much hits as often as a fighter anyway (since she's invisible and thus aiming at flat footed ACs). Suddenly that's VERY good, and we're back with a level adjustment of +4 probably being too low.
To work well, something like Level Adjustment needs to address not only a race's powers, but how those powers interact with different types of character classes. And each time you print a new character class (which you've balanced, most likely, to work ONLY with the core races) you make the Level Adjustment problems even more complicated.
The game is designed for the core races. That's a baseline assumption that causes the game itself to break down the further from a human that you get.
There's only one Material Plane. The universe is big enough to hold pretty much every single campaign setting.
I dunno, how do you have Earth-616, Earth-2, Earth-DCNU, Freedom City Earth, and Gamma World (never mind the variants from different editions) all orbiting Sol in the same universe? It must be very crowded, and we just haven't noticed yet. ;)
I dunno, how do you have Earth-616, Earth-2, Earth-DCNU, Freedom City Earth, and Gamma World (never mind the variants from different editions) all orbiting Sol in the same universe? It must be very crowded, and we just haven't noticed yet. ;)
That would be if they were in the same solar system.
How many suns in a universe?
Thats still all the same Plane
Yar.
There's only one Material Plane. The universe is big enough to hold pretty much every single campaign setting.I dunno, how do you have Earth-616, Earth-2, Earth-DCNU, Freedom City Earth, and Gamma World (never mind the variants from different editions) all orbiting Sol in the same universe? It must be very crowded, and we just haven't noticed yet. ;)
You're thinking Solar System. That is, the collection of celestial bodies orbiting a single star. There can be trillions of solar systems in a single Galaxy, and countless trillions of full blown Galaxies in a single universe (a.k.a. the Material Plane). I'd say that's more than enough room for Earth-616, Earth-2, Earth-DCNU, Freedom City Earth, Gamma World, Oerth, Krynn, Toril, everything from star wars, everything from star trek, everything from star gate, and variations of each, and still be barely even a scratch on a single micron of the possibilities for new worlds and campaign setting material all in the same Universe/Material Plane.
~P
Ninja beat Pirate!
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How would you design a celestial/fiendish template that DIDN'T boost power? I am not asking rhetorically, I want to know how you'd do this.Take a human. She gets +1 skill point a level, a bonus feat, and an ability score bonus with no penalties. Simple, but in its own way, powerful and versatile.
Add a template to that that even JUST adds a single feature of a planetouched creature--a single drop of energy resistance, a spell-like ability, an additional ability score bonus--that human+template will be more powerful than just a human.
The only way you can balance that is to trade off abilities--trade the feat FOR racial resistances, for example. But do that enough--and you're back to something that's identical...
A feat chain that over three feats could give you a celestial/fiendish/resolute/entropic template, a few cosmetic changes to your appereance, and perhaps shift alignment with every feat taken after first one step toward template's alignment. First feat would require to be taken at first level probably, but otherwise it's here and it scales with level...
DMs like to create their own races and monsters. Maybe YOU haven't made a zero-HD abberation, but there will be thousands of them out in homebrew land. It's quite reasonable for DMs to assume that the creature type grants all the associated abilities, and I'm sure that's how most people will have been treating their aberrations for homebrew purposes.
And? An official answer isn't needed for homebrew purposes. Whichever way the DM rules it for his campaign, the race needs to be balanced for that answer. If an official answer comes down the other way at some point, the homebrew race can always get a race-specific note that reverses the official ruling for purposes of that race, to leave the balance for the DM's campaign intact.
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Yar.
There's only one Material Plane. The universe is big enough to hold pretty much every single campaign setting.I dunno, how do you have Earth-616, Earth-2, Earth-DCNU, Freedom City Earth, and Gamma World (never mind the variants from different editions) all orbiting Sol in the same universe? It must be very crowded, and we just haven't noticed yet. ;)
You're thinking Solar System. That is, the collection of celestial bodies orbiting a single star. There can be trillions of solar systems in a single Galaxy,
/nitpick
Only if all of the stars are named "Sol" would there be that many solar systems. There is only one solar system, all the rest are, in fact, star systems.
/nitpick
And then back to rogue—a pixie rogue gets sneak attack damage on every single attack, pretty much—and with a +8 Dex racial and her +1 from size for all attacks, she pretty much hits as often as a fighter anyway (since she's invisible and thus aiming at flat footed ACs). Suddenly that's VERY good, and we're back with a level adjustment of +4 probably being too low.
It's been my experience that a rogue generally does hit as often as the fighter does. And yes, she adds sneak attack to every hit, but with 2 less dice than a human rogue. Is it perfectly balanced? Probably not. But it's not crazy broken either.
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And then back to rogue—a pixie rogue gets sneak attack damage on every single attack, pretty much—and with a +8 Dex racial and her +1 from size for all attacks, she pretty much hits as often as a fighter anyway (since she's invisible and thus aiming at flat footed ACs). Suddenly that's VERY good, and we're back with a level adjustment of +4 probably being too low.It's been my experience that a rogue generally does hit as often as the fighter does. And yes, she adds sneak attack to every hit, but with 2 less dice than a human rogue. Is it perfectly balanced? Probably not. But it's not crazy broken either.
But the pixie is highly more likely to hit with sneak attack than a human rogue would be (or even a halfling rogue) and to have to do less work to maintain the ability to sneak attack, as well as having the option to get ranged sneak attacks much easier the baseline races could.
Hench if it didn't have an LA for rogue then it would be much more powerful than anything a baseline race could do as a rogue.
The fact the same could not be said for a pixie fighter points out the problems with the old LA system -- namely it didn't work as an exception based system -- each and every race/class combination required its own LA in order to be truly balanced.
At which point a single number representing the LA of a race was in effect useless.
Gotta admit that I really want to play an aasimar paladin for the flavor, however.
Ifrit Cleric of Fire, with your choice of (Smoke/Fire)for the party starter, or (Fire/Ash) for the party ender?
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Do they have some brilliant revolutionary idea about how to do monsters as player characters? I'll believe it when I see it. More likely they just have some vague plan like "let's make a book that does a better job at monster characters". Meanwhile Level Adjustment STILL WORKS.
I for one don't believe the LA system really helped anybody. Much like Sean and James said, it was often used just to bully the GM. What's more, it almost always led to crazy weak or crazy powerful characters. It was very rarely appropriately balanced. I myself got away with terrorizing my GM's campaign world with a pixie rogue who wielded a pair of short swords of subtlety for a time. It was fun (for me), but not at all balanced.
I much prefer Paizo's "let the GM handle it the way he wants" free form attitude (which makes sense as every campaign and character is different) and I sincerely hope that they stick to this philosophy, even in the new book. Another system as stringent as the LA system would only fail again, perhaps in the same ways, perhaps in different ways, but it WILL fail.
With the way they have it now, anyone bullying their GM to play a monster character is more readily identified as a bully, and the GM now has all the power to say yes, no, or yes, but. Want to play a genie? Ask the GM. He tells you how to go about it, and if you end up too weak or too powerful, the two of you can adjust it as you go. Simple and elegant. Most important of all though? IT WORKS. IT'S FUN. AND NOBODY FEELS STRAIGHT-JACKETED BY THE RULES.
That's awesome! And the way it should be. Even for a hardcore Ruleslawyer from Hell like me.
RD out.
With the way they have it now, anyone bullying their GM to play a monster character is more readily identified as a bully, and the GM now has all the power to say yes, no, or yes, but. Want to play a genie? Ask the GM. He tells you how to go about it, and if you end up too weak or too powerful, the two of you can adjust it as you go. Simple and elegant. Most important of all though? IT WORKS. IT'S FUN. AND NOBODY FEELS STRAIGHT-JACKETED BY THE RULES.
If I or another player in my group wants to play a genie, the first place I'm going to go is Savage Species. I'm still open to trial and error, but at least part of that work of deciding where to put the genie is done for me. That's what I like about level adjustment, and its accompanying rules and advice about monster classes and such. Maybe it can be tweaked according to the circumstances and synergies of certain classes, but at least it's a baseline. Really, that's how I treat ALL the rules in D&D/Pathfinder. Give me that baseline, and in my own individual campaign, I will determine what's a good fit.
If I or another player in my group wants to play a genie, the first place I'm going to go is Savage Species. I'm still open to trial and error, but at least part of that work of deciding where to put the genie is done for me. That's what I like about level adjustment, and its accompanying rules and advice about monster classes and such. Maybe it can be tweaked according to the circumstances and synergies of certain classes, but at least it's a baseline. Really, that's how I treat ALL the rules in D&D/Pathfinder. Give me that baseline, and in my own individual campaign, I will determine what's a good fit.
Well I like the current system because it allows you to do what you just described....or not. :D
@Jawish: The LA system was good at the time, but it really failed in the end. But saying PF does not have alternative is wrong. There is one in the Core rulebook (reprinted in the Bestiarys) and I have to say it works leaps and bounmds better than the LA system of old.
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The Level Adjustment system was horrible. If you were a spellcaster, you never got any serious spellcasting power. If you were a melee character, you couldn't survive due to being down HD, making your HP total suffer. Using racial HD as LA instead off adding LA on top of racial HD would have been a much better idea.
not always.
there was an abberation race (came in red, white, black) in fiend folio that had 18 hd and a +2 LA. it got casting as per 20th level wizard, +20 int And a good bonus to all other stats. d8 hd. it was like taking 20 levels in wizard but getting +20 to int and a d8 hd in exchange for specializing, a familiar, and multiclassing
Ghaele's (the outsider) 1st 5 levels were broken. it was cleric casting+good bab+ 3 good saves+ d10hp+ 6+int mod skill points +other bonuses according to savage species. in a low level campaign they crap on everyone else. and at high levels they were just unstoppable
@Jawish: The LA system was good at the time, but it really failed in the end. But saying PF does not have alternative is wrong. There is one in the Core rulebook (reprinted in the Bestiarys) and I have to say it works leaps and bounmds better than the LA system of old.
I agree. Even with those "guidelines" the books make it absolutely clear that the GM should deviate as needed.
@Jawish: The LA system was good at the time, but it really failed in the end. But saying PF does not have alternative is wrong. There is one in the Core rulebook (reprinted in the Bestiarys) and I have to say it works leaps and bounmds better than the LA system of old.
If I have read it correctly, it's basically this: a monster's Level Adjustment is equal to its CR.
Huh. So I guess they did leave LA in the game after all. They just changed the name and how it's calculated. Weird that they talk about how they "removed" it.
I can't say they've done any better at describing how it works, but then it took a while in 3rd edition to write a clear explanation for how LA worked, and even now people are still getting it wrong.
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@Jawish: The LA system was good at the time, but it really failed in the end. But saying PF does not have alternative is wrong. There is one in the Core rulebook (reprinted in the Bestiarys) and I have to say it works leaps and bounmds better than the LA system of old.If I have read it correctly, it's basically this: a monster's Level Adjustment is equal to its CR.
Huh. So I guess they did leave LA in the game after all. They just changed the name and how it's calculated. Weird that they talk about how they "removed" it.
I can't say they've done any better at describing how it works, but then it took a while in 3rd edition to write a clear explanation for how LA worked, and even now people are still getting it wrong.
It is not exactly LA....though.
For instance regular Drow are considered powerful enough that it says you should increase the a 1st level drow is equal tyo a 2nd level core race character.
So in a campaign I play a drow that started at 3rd level my drow rogue started at 2ned level. But the difference is not level but exp. I will always trail behind by 2,000...which mean as we gain levels I'll be pretty much equal in level with a slight lag that will get less noticeable as time goes on. We are about 8th level now and the lag is usualy a session or two.
Now by biggest issue with LA was not at low levels...but at higher levels where what you got as a race becomes more and more meaningless. Yes I know they later came out with aa optional rule to 'buy off' LA which was very cumbersome and needlessly complex. What is going on PF is much more elfarant version of LA. I personaly wonder what they will do in Advanced Races Guide. But right now with a little cobbling their...quick solution is alot better than LA(in my opinion)
@Jawish: The LA system was good at the time, but it really failed in the end. But saying PF does not have alternative is wrong. There is one in the Core rulebook (reprinted in the Bestiarys) and I have to say it works leaps and bounmds better than the LA system of old.If I have read it correctly, it's basically this: a monster's Level Adjustment is equal to its CR.
Huh. So I guess they did leave LA in the game after all. They just changed the name and how it's calculated. Weird that they talk about how they "removed" it.
I can't say they've done any better at describing how it works, but then it took a while in 3rd edition to write a clear explanation for how LA worked, and even now people are still getting it wrong.
Those guidelines also allow one to catch up somewhat. The LA system stuck you X levels behind FOREVER.
Aasimars are monsters. From a design perspective, they are balanced the same way as any other monster. They weren't designed as player characters, so they aren't any more unbalanced than minotaurs or trolls in that regard.
@Jawsh: Level Adjustment never was an exact science because monsters have almost never been designed to be used as player characters. Pathfinder's guidelines for monsters as characters are far different from the LA + racial hit dice + class levels = Effective character level formula, which did not make sense because monsters were not designed with this system in mind.
@Jawsh: Level Adjustment never was an exact science because monsters have almost never been designed to be used as player characters. Pathfinder's guidelines for monsters as characters are far different from the LA + racial hit dice + class levels = Effective character level formula, which did not make sense because monsters were not designed with this system in mind.
Can I just say: design shmesign. A lot of people have weighed in here about how aasimars were not designed to work as a PC race. That's fine, but during the course of 3rd edition, they clearly evolved into a player option. WotC even gave them a Player's Handbook style write-up in the Planar Handbook, with no mechanical changes.
Monsters were not designed to be used as player characters, but Level Adjustment was designed. Level Adjustment was invented to solve the difference between what was designed and what some players wanted to do (and some DMs wanted to allow their players to do).
Pathfinder's system is designed to solve exactly the same issue. If the problem is with the actual mechanical design of the race, then no system can perfectly solve it. If Level Adjustment didn't make sense, then neither does Pathfinder Adjustment.
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@Jawsh: Level Adjustment never was an exact science because monsters have almost never been designed to be used as player characters. Pathfinder's guidelines for monsters as characters are far different from the LA + racial hit dice + class levels = Effective character level formula, which did not make sense because monsters were not designed with this system in mind.Can I just say: design shmesign. A lot of people have weighed in here about how aasimars were not designed to work as a PC race. That's fine, but during the course of 3rd edition, they clearly evolved into a player option. WotC even gave them a Player's Handbook style write-up in the Planar Handbook, with no mechanical changes.
Monsters were not designed to be used as player characters, but Level Adjustment was designed. Level Adjustment was invented to solve the difference between what was designed and what some players wanted to do (and some DMs wanted to allow their players to do).
Pathfinder's system is designed to solve exactly the same issue. If the problem is with the actual mechanical design of the race, then no system can perfectly solve it. If Level Adjustment didn't make sense, then neither does Pathfinder Adjustment.
No, the CR=LA is a suggestion for those who want to try and figure out how to play that Minotaur PC. It's not a hard rule, it's not tested, balanced and whatever. Pathfinder design doesn't pay any attention to LA issue beyond the "CR=LA might work, maybe".
If you want to use 3.5 LA, fine, but it was an abortive, poorly written system for all the reasons outlined in posts above. Being one level behind the rest of the party because I have resist 5 to two things and can cast acidic fart three times per day? Craptastic. What's that going to do me good when I'm level 20? Nothing. But for the first X levels I get to be a fifth wheel.
I am not sure there is a real problem here, aasimar tiefling and some other creatures in the bestiary might be a little more powerful than core characters, but not enough to raise the CR.
A goblin might be weaker than an orc, though not enough to change the CR notably, though having all humanoids be equal is not a design choice Paizo will go with, because balance is a secondary issue and in the case of races described in the bestiary possibly not even desirable to make all races equally powerful.
Instead of level adjustments you might decide for optional races to give up one or two traits to balance them out, or might decide that particular race does not play to the chosen class strengths and leave it be as is.
Giving up two traits, a bonus feat and extra skill points, compared to a human, might balance an Aasimar out fine.
That's actually the approach taken for tieflings in the Council of Thieves Player's Guide. I really hope that concept gets revisited.
Instead of level adjustments you might decide for optional races to give up one or two traits to balance them out,
God I HATED that. I hope they drop the idea in its entirety.
I just don't see the imbalance for Aasimar.
Tiefling are markedly better, but then again I dont see them as particularly over powered either.
I thought the CoT rules for Tieflings was actually pretty harsh, especially in light of the fact that they were worse off in social situations, explicitly so. The social modifiers are particularly punitive.
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God I HATED that. I hope they drop the idea in its entirety.That's actually the approach taken for tieflings in the Council of Thieves Player's Guide. I really hope that concept gets revisited.
Instead of level adjustments you might decide for optional races to give up one or two traits to balance them out,
Why so much hate for a single trait? :P
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I just don't see the imbalance for Aasimar.
Tiefling are markedly better, but then again I dont see them as particularly over powered either.
I thought the CoT rules for Tieflings was actually pretty harsh, especially in light of the fact that they were worse off in social situations, explicitly so. The social modifiers are particularly punitive.
I'd have to reread them all again since we didn't actually use them in CoT(we ported some of it into Kingmaker for one character and one NPC). I can't remember the social hit in that trait though. What was it?
I don't see the big deal, you get a number of additional powers, that might be a little better than other races and you give up a trait in return. If you want to play a tiefling and not give up a trait, I'd call you a tiefling and give you human stats, use a trait to get darkness 1/day and maybe another to give you resistance vs fire 5..