Stonechild Conversion Question

[The Storm of Swords]

Stonechild is a race from Race of Wild 3.5 Material. Pg 92 if your interested in seeing it.
But it has a 2 RHD and +4 LA, now I have noticed in PF anything with a +1 LA should be dropped as the average power level is increased.

So should a Stonechild be a ECL five race? 2 RHD and 3 empty levels or should the empty levels be filled with NPC classes or more HD

[Bob Bob Bob]

First off, you want Races of Stone. Page number is still the same.

Second, Pathfinder has not dropped things with +1 LA. That's equivalent to something with 20 RP points. They've just made the decision (that I agree with) that balancing things with level adjustments is a terrible mess. I think 20 RP points is a level behind until 6th level, then catches up.

As for the details of the race, outsider, +8 str +8 con +2 int -2 chr, medium, darkvision, 2 HD, Blind-Fight, +4 NA, Immunity to Acid and Poison, and magic stone 3/day.

Honestly? If you take away the stat bonuses and the HD it's not that powerful.

Outsider (native) 3 RP
Standard Ability score 0 RP
Standard languages 0 RP
(partial) Duergar Immunities 2 RP?
Natural Armor 2 RP
Improved Natural Armor x3 (1+2+3) RP
Elemental Immunity (acid) 4 RP
Static Bonus Feat (Blind Fight) 2 RP
Spell Like Ability, Lesser (Magic Stone)x3 3 RP

Total of 22 points, about equivalent to a +1 LA. With that you get +2 Str (or Con) +2 Int -2 Chr, immunity to poison, +4 NA, immunity to acid, Blind Fight, and Magic Stone 3/day (with a caster level equal to character level).

The two outsider HD are pretty powerful (all proficiencies, 6+int skill points (and choice of class skills), choice of good saves, don't eat or sleep) and actually buying up +8 Str and Con is expensive as #$%^. It's about as powerful as slapping half-dragon on them. You can do some tweaking with this to bring the value down closer to 10 if you want it to be equivalent to the standard races. If you want to more closely match we can add the rest of the points but it'll get expensive, fast.

Advanced Strengthx3 4+5+6
Advanced Conx4 4+5+6+7

That's 37 total, for way too many extra points. You're better off adding Half-dragon, which with a CR +2 adjustment means that it's equivalent to a +2 LA. But now we're in ridiculous patchwork abomination territory. If you'd like to see where I'm pulling these numbers from it's all here.

So short answer, the version with HD and full powers looks pretty spot on for ECL 4 or 5. It's a +1 LA race Half-dragon Ranger 1 with less features.

[The Storm of Swords]

Yeah sorry posted this right before bed at like 5 am and had just put down RoW so got mixed up.

Indeed it is insanely powerful. But Proficiency and stuff make sense due to the 6 levels till class levels so you need to be able to fight with something more then unarmed strike.

By free +1 La I mean things like Half-Giant from Dreamscarred is now playable from level 1, Aasimar, Tiefling are both playable from level 1. It seems Pathfinder has basically made their races a little stronger, so +1 LA seems to be often ok for play with a PF game.

The Race builder is not exactly perfect as often you need to invent abilities with races to make a exact replica of them from 3.5
Powerful Build for example is not in there but useful.

The reason I brought this up was yes Stonechild has a monster class progression, like I said it seems normally you can drop a LA moving to PF which would allow LA buyoff by level 18 but at level 5 you have 2RHD of d10s if you use PF, but still 2d10+Con modifier twice is still very low HP for a level 5, doable maybe but still very low as well as skill points being low and so forth.

I was wondering if A direct conversion of the monster class minus 1 LA would be alright in terms of curbing power (so a player would have to wait till level 6 instead of 7 to gain a class level) or maybe filling out those LA with NPC classes like Warrior?
Or should I go straight RHD, 5 RHD with no buy off option, or 5 levels of NPC classes with the racial increases of the monster class run interlayed on with the NPC.

I know PF has no LA but I cannot find the Cr for a Stonechild.
EDIT: I found this, but I am not sure if it would work, it says its CR is 3
https://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/chainmail/Stonechild.pdf

[The Storm of Swords]

So looking through I may just make the character take a CR 3 penalty and have 3 RHD (Outsider Native d10s with good Fort and Will saves)
The reason is looking at all the CR 3 monsters they all seem to have more then 2RHD, and of course we have the Drow Noble which is a CR 3, only because the example is a level 3 cleric, so CR 1 with all those At-Wills and Constant Spell-Likes seems to me to be way higher then what the Stonechild gets, immunity to Poison and Acid is nice... being able to de-spell magic once a day is better. At Will Deeper Darkness is better.

So a CR 3 with 3 RHD seems more fair then anything. Any problems with this idea?

Because in PF I think Stonechild might even be a CR 2, as he is mostly muscles and a few proficiency to make a fighter but nothing that would challenge even a low level party who was smart.

[Bob Bob Bob]

As I said at the end of my last post, Stonechild is equivalent to a more powerful than normal race with the half dragon template slapped on (minimum CR 3) and that's without the racial hit dice. Though if we're including half dragon I can probably drop the natural armor and some of the stats to reduce the RP points. If you add racial hit dice then you're increasing the level by that much. Now, if we're just talking CR, all of this is meaningless. Just use this table to find out where your preferred Stonechild would fall and use that as its CR. It'll be worthless for turning into a player race (since CR is a very poor method of doing that) but if you just want them as monsters it's way easier.