I'm pretty sure this has been answered before but I'm having a hard time following along with some of the other threads due to the acronyms being used. I'm new to the game (both 3.5 and Pathfinder), so please keep that in mind when responding, thanks!
So, I've been having fun converting races from various 3.5 campaign settings to Pathfinder. By using the preexisting races and alternate racial traits found in the Advance Race Guide I've been able to convert every race with a Level adjustment of 1 or 0 with no problems.
Now that I have finished with the easy ones I'm having some difficulties with understanding how level progression works if a race is too powerful to gain class levels normally. It's my understand that they gain monster levels for a while and then class levels? How exactly does that work? How are Hit Points determined by a monster race that doesnt have class levels yet?
Here is the specific race I am working on right now for reference:
Orog (Deep Orc)
+6 to strength, -2 to dexterity, -2 to wisdom, +2 to charisma
medium size
Land Speed: 30 feet
Darkvision: 120 feet
Proficient with greatsword and throwing axe
+2 racial bonus to craft armor smithing and weapon smithing
+2 natural armor
Light blindness abrupt exposure to bright light like sunlight or the daylight spell blinds the Orog for one round. In addition they supper a -1 penalty on all attack rolls, saves and checks while operating in bright light
Resistances: Fire resistance 5 Cold Resistance 5
Level adjustment: +2
Clearly I need to have some kind of leveling penalty with the +6 strength and no intelligence penalty they outshine the normal Orc race by quite a bit. Can somebody please explain to me without acronyms how such a race would gain levels and what feats, skills ect they would have and how to determine HP and saving throws. Thanks!
Well in the ultimate race guide they suggest not messing with Level adjustments and must making more challenging encounters when players play more powerful races. I don't have my Rage guide in-front of me but that bad-boy looks to be around 20 racial points (Rough guess on my part) which means you would have to make encounters 1 cr higher.
Also when converting keep in mind that they don't need to be exact conversions so long as they keep the spirit of the race. Its ok to power them down a bit if you think they are unbalanced.
Tome of Horror complete has the Path finder conversion of the Orog