Post/Author/DateTime	Post
fenderbassman2009 01-27-08, 02:33 AM	how would you guys (figure of speech of course) recommend canceling out LA? for a race with as high a LA as doppelganger, stonechild, and half ogre, how would you take of a +4 LA without ringing it dry of all the things that make it stand out. do you think a doppelganger could be brought to LA +0 or +1 without taking away change shape or detect thoughts? and this is possibly a dumb question but how about canceling, mullifying, or buying off racial HD and the like? thanks everyone for the help
Fireclave 01-27-08, 03:06 AM	The Changling race in the Eberron Campaign Setting are decended from doppelgangers and are LA +0. Might want to check that book out.
fenderbassman2009 01-27-08, 03:31 AM	yeah i have seen that but what r the difference between their shapeshifting abilities? what about replacements for stonechild and halfogre?
Fireclave 01-27-08, 03:51 AM	Well, the big difference is that the Changling's shapeshifting ability is essentially Disguise Self at will, while the doppelganger's is more like Alterself at will. Plus, the changling lacks most of the doppleganger's speacial abilities, immunities, and high ability adjustments. I'm not familiar with the stonechild or the half-ogre, unfortunately. For mitigating LA, you might want to look at the UA LA Buy-off varient (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm). I don't know of a similar system for eliminating racial HD. You might also want to check out some of the template classes in the Savage Progressions (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/sp) articles. The concept of those is to not get rid of LA or HD, but rather turn a template into what's effectively a prestige class, staggering the "goodies" a creature would get from a template so a player can ease into the template instead of gaining a huge ECL boost all at one time and unbalancing the party. Hope that helps.
fenderbassman2009 01-27-08, 04:59 AM	yeah man thanks. stonechild is in races of stone and half ogre is in races of destiny. stonechild is basically and stony-humanoid, medium size, +4 nat armor. half ogre is a large size ogre with +4 nat armor.
smeagol_lied 01-27-08, 08:08 AM	Seeing as you have both races of stone and races of destiny, RoS has the stonechild monster class and RoD has the doppelganger monster class. Both are pretty good, the doppelganger more so than the stonechild, because most core-melee monster classes end up with less BAB and hp than a wizard of their level, whereas a doppelganger, which isn't core melee, end up with +4 BAB and 4d8 hp over 8 levels.
fenderbassman2009 01-27-08, 02:10 PM	yeah theyre good but i dont want them to be "+4 LA" good. do you reccomend any way to balance them out?
Captain_Kobold 01-27-08, 02:58 PM	I'm afraid the only way to lower the LA is to hack chunks off them until they are less powerful, and thus require less LA to balance them. Unfortunately, the abilities that make them special are generally also the ones that make them more powerful, so there is a limit to what you can take off them before you just end up with an LA+0 human with funny looks. LA buyoff might work, although it performs best when applied to lower LAs.
RobbyPants 01-27-08, 07:23 PM	yeah i have seen that but what r the difference between their shapeshifting abilities? what about replacements for stonechild and halfogre? I made a LA +1 half ogre once, based strongly off of the goliath. I don't remember the exact stats, but basically, they got something along the lines of +4 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Con, and perhaps -2 Cha. I can't remember if I gave them -2 Int or not. They also got powerful build. The trick is to leave natural armor out of it, or drop it to something really low like +1. Natural armor is worth a lot more than some people think. When doing these types of things, basically try to figure what makes the race stand out. Obviously, some things just can't be brought down to LA +0 or +1, but with a bit of comprimise, you can often get close.