Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Exposed_Wires 01-16-08, 04:00 PM	I'm certain this has been asked before, but google didn't turn up any relevant posts for me. I've even searched around manually but I haven't been able to figure out why racial hitdie lowers LA. I've only read that it does. Adding hp to a creature sounds to me like it makes it better. Heck, half the reason high LA critters aren't that great is because they don't have a lot of health. I know the racial classes are worse than real classes, what with not having any class abilities, but that doesn't seem to make the other bonuses any less amazing. Are there limits to how much racial HD can lower LA? I'm sure most of this is in Savage Species, but I don't have that book, and even if you can't copy paste the rules into here, I'd love a bit of clarification because this is throwing me through a loop. It might just be some simple math I'm missing, but I'd love to hear what it is.
vegetalss4 01-16-08, 04:17 PM	to the first racial hitdice lower LA because they count as class levels like LA does f.eks. a lizardfolk has 2 racial hd and 1 La so a level 1 lizardfolk barbarian has the same ecl as a level 4 human barbarian, and racial hitdice aren't nearly as good as class levels (exept dragons/outsiders hitdice, they are nearly as good)
Exposed_Wires 01-16-08, 04:24 PM	OH! So they still count for LA. Totally makes sense now. Thanks a ton.
AtsuiShoto 01-16-08, 06:28 PM	No, they count for ECL. HD + LA = ECL. Class HD and racial HD are both counted, so having more racial HD means having less class HD at the same ECL. Because of losing out on so many class hitdice (with all those good class abilities), it may be balanced for a race to have less or no LA when its racial HD are high.
Jaxgaret 01-16-08, 10:53 PM	Good thread for you to take a look at: ECL vs. CR (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=12120162#post12120162).
Neutronium_Dragon 01-16-08, 11:26 PM	And racial hit dice generally have the effect of lowering LA because racial hit dice are pretty much universally far weaker than a class level, even though you're charged a full level for them as far as your progression is concerned. The exact degree to which this happens is something you have to work out on a case by case basis.
Tsuul 01-18-08, 06:38 PM	Hit dice never ever ever ever ever ever ever lowers LA. All those people saying that are talking about something completely different then you are Exposed_Wires. Check out the link Jaxgaret posted.
runestar 01-18-08, 08:04 PM	Racial HD should have a mitigating effect on LA. Whether that is actually practiced is still debatable (though I can think of at least 1 example - the ethergaunts in fiend folio, where the more powerful versions had a lower LA than the weaker ones, suggesting that the sheer amount of abberation HD had some role in lowering what would otherwise have been a higher LA). Consider this scenario. You are playing an ogre PC (4 giant HD, +2LA = ECL6). If you were to strip away its 4 giant HD, the LA would need to increase to compensate, because you could now take 4 superior class lvs in place of those racial HD (Imagine an ogre with 4 lvs of barb or fighter in place of those 4 sucky giant HD). Likewise, consider the half-ogre (+6str, LA+2). It would make no sense to play one if you could just choose an ogre sans the racial HD.
Exposed_Wires 01-18-08, 10:03 PM	I understand how it works now. I did after the first reply, I just used incorrect vocabulary. I see that both LA and HD count towards ECL. Makes sense, i think. Except that if I do understand it, saying that racial HD lowers LA is incorrect. But i still see people use it that way. why?
runestar 01-18-08, 10:21 PM	Except that if I do understand it, saying that racial HD lowers LA is incorrect. But i still see people use it that way. why? Why would it be incorrect? What we are saying is that it would lower what is otherwise a much higher LA. Meaning the LA you see at the end of the day is the final, mitigated value. For example, the astral deva's LA of +8 is what it is after taking everything into consideration (all its special abilities etc, and its 12 outsider HD). It is not (or at least, should not be) determined solely in a vacuum.
Exposed_Wires 01-19-08, 12:33 AM	Now I'm confused again. what is the Astral Deva's ECL? 20, right? Then racial HD didn't lower it. Maybe it appears lower, but i saw people adding HD to a +3 LA and dropping the LA without losing any of its awesome abilities.
Wharin 01-19-08, 12:55 AM	I am going to see if I can't throw my hat into the ring and see if I can't come up with an answer. OK... So there is talk about how "Racial HD 'lowers' LA". Alright... to an extant that is true, but only for building a (powerful) race from scratch or taking an existing creature/race and modifying it so that it is more palatable to a player playing said powerful creature/race. Say for example I am creating a race called "Widget" and it has the following stats: +2 STR, +10 DEX, +4 CON, +2 INT, -2 CHA Medium Flight (perfect) 30 ft Darkvision 120 ft. Spell-like ability- Fabricate, at will Alright... so this race is obviously insanely powerful, and would be totally unfit for a first level campaign. SOOOooo there are a few ways to do it... First we can give him some insanely high LA... While completely Abritrary and probably innaccurate, lets say its LA +8. So that means at level 12 he only has, like 4 HD from class levels, making him something of a glass canon; fairly powerful, but a total glass canon. Another thing we could do is give him nothing but monster HD, of say... I dunno 17, which means, at first class level he is already level ECL 18, but at least he has alot of hit points and a relatively decent Attack bonus, at the cost of never gaining any neato class abilities save for epic games. And finally we can do a mix and match of both... so lets say we want to bring down the LA to +4. Alright... and to that we can give him, lets say, 8HD, for a total ECL of 12; Higher than the first example, but lower than the second. Which means when the rest of the group is at level 12, he has 8HD (instead of only 4 with the first example) which means hes a bit beefier, BUT those levels that he has doesnt give him any the abilities actual class levels do (save for those standard feats every 3 levels and stat boest every 4), and the attack bonus is typically inferior to that of a standard fighter. And it also means that you can play him earlier than you could with the second example as he is only playable at level 17 (again, there are ways around this, as shown in Savage Species and subsequent books) While long winded, I hope that helps straighten those matters out.
Exposed_Wires 01-19-08, 03:28 AM	+2 STR, +10 DEX, +4 CON, +2 INT, -2 CHA Medium Flight (perfect) 30 ft Darkvision 120 ft. Spell-like ability- Fabricate, at will Alright... so this race is obviously insanely powerful, and would be totally unfit for a first level campaign. SOOOooo there are a few ways to do it... First we can give him some insanely high LA... While completely Abritrary and probably innaccurate, lets say its LA +8. So that means at level 12 he only has, like 4 HD from class levels, making him something of a glass canon; fairly powerful, but a total glass canon. Another thing we could do is give him nothing but monster HD, of say... I dunno 17, which means, at first class level he is already level ECL 18, but at least he has alot of hit points and a relatively decent Attack bonus, at the cost of never gaining any neato class abilities save for epic games. And finally we can do a mix and match of both... so lets say we want to bring down the LA to +4. Alright... and to that we can give him, lets say, 8HD, for a total ECL of 12; Higher than the first example, but lower than the second. Which means when the rest of the group is at level 12, he has 8HD (instead of only 4 with the first example) which means hes a bit beefier, BUT those levels that he has doesnt give him any the abilities actual class levels do (save for those standard feats every 3 levels and stat boest every 4), and the attack bonus is typically inferior to that of a standard fighter. And it also means that you can play him earlier than you could with the second example as he is only playable at level 17 (again, there are ways around this, as shown in Savage Species and subsequent books) While long winded, I hope that helps straighten those matters out. I really wish that it did. Are you saying that 17 racial HD plus all those abilities is equal to a +8 LA? I'm not trying to be dense. How much is a HD worth for the purpose of balance and how can adding hp lower the LA? I have seen people ADD HD and then lower the LA without tampering with abilities. I ask why and they tell me that racial hitdie are worse than class levels (duh).
runestar 01-19-08, 09:07 AM	Then racial HD didn't lower it. Maybe it appears lower, but i saw people adding HD to a +3 LA and dropping the LA without losing any of its awesome abilities. Can you elaborate on this? I have no idea just what the heck you are trying to say here...:(
Wharin 01-19-08, 11:02 AM	I really wish that it did. Are you saying that 17 racial HD plus all those abilities is equal to a +8 LA? I'm not trying to be dense. How much is a HD worth for the purpose of balance and how can adding hp lower the LA? I have seen people ADD HD and then lower the LA without tampering with abilities. I ask why and they tell me that racial hitdie are worse than class levels (duh). Well thats the thing... There is no magic formula that says "2 Racial Hit Dice = LA+1" or anything like that particularly since there are different types of Racial Hit Dice, all with varying degrees of usefulness. Its more of an ad hoc method you have to use. All I can say for sure is that to maintain the same power level of a creature, if you are going to get rid of/reduce LA +X, you are going to have to give him *more* Hit Dice than the amount of LA that you are lowering/removing. In my example I made the assumption that 2 of whatever type of Racial Hit dice I was using was, in effect, worth the lowering of a single point of Level Adjustment. Just as they tell you that Racial Hit dice are worth less than class levels, they are also worth more than the simply dead void that is LA; so simply replacing Level Adjustment with Racial hit dice (even if was the worst possible type of Racial hit dice) on a one for one basis is clearly unfair, or at least changing the power level (because even crap is better than the absolute nothing you get from LA). The trick is to find out how much it is worth for each creature/character.
Jaxgaret 01-19-08, 04:12 PM	Okay, Wharin has it right, but I'm going to try and boil this down for Exposed_Wires so as to make a complicated concept a bit more simple. Each effective character level that a PC character has can be taken up by one of three things: a level in a class, a racial hit die, or a level adjustment. Here's the part that is a bit tricky: of those three possibilities, racial hit dice are just not as good as class levels, BUT losing the hit die completely to a level adjustment is even worse. So, if you have a monster that has 3 racial hit dice and a +3 LA, its starting ECL is 6. If you take the same monster, and make it start with 6 racial hit dice and an LA of +0, it has the same starting ECL, but it is now stronger because it did not lose 3 hit dice to a level adjustment. However, if you increase that monster's number of hit dice to 9, for example, those extra racial hit dice take the place of three class levels that that monster PC could have taken. And since racial hit dice are weaker than class levels, the monster as a whole is considered weaker than if it had less racial hit dice. So the exact same monster, at either 3HD/+3LA or more HD/+0LA is balanced. The exact number of HD to add and the amount of LA to subtract is up to debate, of course. Adding 2 racial HD for every drop in LA by 1 is the most common formula.
Exposed_Wires 01-19-08, 04:49 PM	Thank you much. That cleared up a lot, assuming I have it right. It's just another variable factor in balancing equations. I realize that most of my confusion originated from not noticing that LA isn't ECL. Then it was that even though LA and Racial HD contribute to ECL equally, they are, in fact, not equal. Thanks again for your patience.
Jaxgaret 01-19-08, 11:02 PM	Thank you much. That cleared up a lot, assuming I have it right. It's just another variable factor in balancing equations. I realize that most of my confusion originated from not noticing that LA isn't ECL. Then it was that even though LA and Racial HD contribute to ECL equally, they are, in fact, not equal. Thanks again for your patience. You're welcome! I'm glad I could help :)