Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Jim Johnny 03-26-07, 08:41 AM	Am I the only one here thinking that there are unfair level adjustments? For instance is it right for a Genasi to have a +1 LA because of a minor boost in abilities, a simple spell like ability and one or two more bonuses while a Thri-Kreen has the same LA and has a major boost in abilities, +3 natural armor, 4 hands and a couple other smaller bonuses (like very good jumps etc)? Does this look fair? Also races like the Drow, with +2 LA also suffer because all the bonuses they gain cannot match up the drawback of having only 1 Hit Dice when they begin while the humans and the elves of the party will have 3 Hit dices. I would like to hear your opinion.
runestar 03-26-07, 08:59 AM	Unfair? Sure, wotc has more than its fair share. There are quite a few who have fairly-priced LAs though. Genasi are definitely too useful to be had at LA+0, though they are too weak for LA+1 either. You will either want to add some abilities or take some away. Alternatively, try the lesser planetouched variant in Player's Guide to Faerun, which lets you play a LA+0 genasi(which is now arguably too strong). Don't forget that thrikeen has 2 racial HD, for a total ECL of 3. Though it is quite strong for its ECL nonetheless. Drow have LA+2 because you need to pay for all their extra special abilities. I suppose you could argue that they are slightly underpowered for their LA, though they would then be too strong for LA+1. Not sure how to manage this.
Jim Johnny 03-26-07, 09:15 AM	Exactly you get my point. There should be another scale with option between LA of 1 and 2. Although this needs some thinking before being applied. One idea i have, but i haven't tried to make something out of it yet is to give HD to races with LA equal to their Level Adjustment. And these Hit Dices to be very weak (something like commoner levels). In this way a Drow compared to a Human won't have 2 dices less Hit Points, 2 levels less skills and saving throws. It will be a bit weaker but the special abilites will bring him/her to equal power status. If the characters will be overpowered slight changes can be applied like half the LA number in bonus HDs. I believe that characters should have the same amount of HDs. The other option is the Dm to give some extra bonuses or reduce some others in order to level things but again this can only minimize the problem, it won't solve it. I believe that characters should have the same amount of HDs.
runestar 03-26-07, 10:14 AM	I have no idea how fractional LA should be adjudicated, though it sounds like it might go a distance in resolving this issue if it can be implemented properly.
Joesph_kurr 03-26-07, 10:52 AM	the problem is that some race with LA like the drow and genasi is they are best discribed as a LA of 1.5 and .5 but LA dose not work like that so I find the best way is to slightly change the race a bit two things to help balance the drow that have been talked about recently is to reduce there SR to 5+LV or replace it with a +2 or +4 Vs magic and then drop there LA to +1. As for the genasi and other plantouched is to use the lesser version that runestar mentioned. But that is just my 2cp
RobbyPants 03-26-07, 11:01 AM	One idea i have, but i haven't tried to make something out of it yet is to give HD to races with LA equal to their Level Adjustment. And these Hit Dices to be very weak (something like commoner levels). In this way a Drow compared to a Human won't have 2 dices less Hit Points, 2 levels less skills and saving throws. It will be a bit weaker but the special abilites will bring him/her to equal power status. If the characters will be overpowered slight changes can be applied like half the LA number in bonus HDs. I believe that characters should have the same amount of HDs. I've toyed with this idea (and variations thereof) before. It would certainly help at lower levels, but it may be a bit too powerful. If they actually get commoner levels, then a level 1 drow wizard with the Practiced Spellcaster feat would have the spells per day of a level 1 wizard, but the caster level of a level 3 wizard. Maybe that's not so bad after all... I would think that if you used this system, then you couldn't use the LA buy-off system presented in UA (or at least you'd have to modify it to remove the commoner levels as well). Has anyone else thought about this?
DarkSorcerer 03-26-07, 11:28 AM	If you are concerned that the Drow lvl1 Drow will be at a major disadvantage to the lvl3 characters in the party, try the following. 1) Why is the drow only first level? in the 50+ years the young drow has spent surviving the underdark hasn't he learned enough to have earned second level? Start him at 2nd level (ECL4) and he will fit into the party more easily. 2) Establish a Half CR as valued at +4 HP. 3) The third option is to change the way you are thinking about Level Adjustment. Don't consider him a drow a third level character anywhere other than xp awards. You compute the xp separately for each character: first the 3 lvl1 humans, then the lvl3 drow. The drow will get less xp than the humans and they will level slightly faster. Everyone still is only first level and everyone levels up at 1000xp. However the drow will level up more slowly because he is getting less XP. This will keep their HD closer in the early levels where it matters most. Besides, how often does the SR really help the lvl1 drow?
Zumarai 03-26-07, 11:30 AM	When I started my Planescape campaign at ECL 3, all the players except one (he chose drow) chose LA +0 races and it's working out just fine (The party is now ECL 11). I guess we can safely assume that not everyone has the horrifying experience with LA's that some people do?
Kursk 03-26-07, 11:36 AM	Am I the only one here thinking that there are unfair level adjustments? 1st one has to assume that the entries in the MM's were designed to play as PC's. (they weren't) they were designed for PC's to fight. If you want to have a perfect LA system then redesign ALL the monsters as PC races with correct LA's. That way all LA +1's will be equal, etc. Until then, you will have to adjust the monster abilities to make it fair. And no, I don't think WoTC should expend resources on such a silly project.
Nadaka 03-26-07, 12:06 PM	A +1 LA can be simulated by a 1000 XP penalty per level (including 0). A +2 LA can be simulated by a 3000 XP penalty per level (including 0). Essentially the first 1000 or 3000 xp the character earns at each level is lost, and not added to xp total. Therefore a fractional simulation is possible. .5 LA = 500xp must be payed each level. 1.5 LA = 2000xp must be payed each level. example: to reach third level an unadjusted character must have 3000xp. For a +1 la character, he must have 6000xp. using this simulation the two characters would both reach level 3 at 3000 xp. However the +1 character has to pay 1000 xp for levels 0, 1 and 2 as well. The effect is the same
Jim Johnny 03-26-07, 12:43 PM	That's a hell of replies! 1st one has to assume that the entries in the MM's were designed to play as PC's. (they weren't) they were designed for PC's to fight. If you want to have a perfect LA system then redesign ALL the monsters as PC races with correct LA's. That way all LA +1's will be equal, etc. Until then, you will have to adjust the monster abilities to make it fair. a bit wrong i guess. Genasi and all planetouched characters did not start out as monsters but playable character. Especially in planescape and any plane-traveling campaigns. And yet these are the races with the most problems. So i guess W*****s should pay more attention. But this will cost time and money, so it is not worth the trouble. When I started my Planescape campaign at ECL 3, all the players except one (he chose drow) chose LA +0 races and it's working out just fine (The party is now ECL 11). We once, quite a few years ago, played a campaign and one of us played a Drow character. We all had 20 to 30 hit points and he had a mere 8. He was the one beaten to death after every battle. LAter on, when we won some levels he could stand better. But again at higher levels his bonuses weren't so cool as in 1st level (even the SR) so again he was the weak. It was a demanding campaign and you could easily see the weaknesses of each character. I've toyed with this idea (and variations thereof) before. It would certainly help at lower levels, but it may be a bit too powerful. If they actually get commoner levels, then a level 1 drow wizard with the Practiced Spellcaster feat would have the spells per day of a level 1 wizard, but the caster level of a level 3 wizard. Maybe that's not so bad after all... I would think that if you used this system, then you couldn't use the LA buy-off system presented in UA (or at least you'd have to modify it to remove the commoner levels as well). The idea from the UA is very good. I have tried it and it is great. It should be in the main rules because in the high levels the LA is really a burden. The problem is that this thing only makes the situation less worse but i does not erase the problem. Such slight problems like practised feat etc can easily be avoided. It will simply do not count for these specific commoner levels, they will just be part of the LA of the creature to give him some boost in saves, skills and Hp so as to be near the other players of the party. 1) Why is the drow only first level? in the 50+ years the young drow has spent surviving the underdark hasn't he learned enough to have earned second level? Start him at 2nd level (ECL4) and he will fit into the party more easily. 2) Establish a Half CR as valued at +4 HP. 3) The third option is to change the way you are thinking about Level Adjustment. Don't consider him a drow a third level character anywhere other than xp awards. You compute the xp separately for each character: first the 3 lvl1 humans, then the lvl3 drow. The drow will get less xp than the humans and they will level slightly faster. Everyone still is only first level and everyone levels up at 1000xp. However the drow will level up more slowly because he is getting less XP. This will keep their HD closer in the early levels where it matters most. Besides, how often does the SR really help the lvl1 drow? 1) That is a way to diminish the problem which is huge in the 1st lvl. But the problem still exists. 2)didn't get that, can you be more specific 3)This makes the drow powerful, enough at first levels. I have tried it. In general: The idea of cut or add some abilities so as to make a more correct LA is a good idea. Another thing is have these characters pay some XP like Nadaka siad but not at every level. It will be best to be a specific amount, but that is almost what UA suggest to get rid of the LA as you become more experienced. Finally i believe the idea to give a few very weak Hit Dices is interesting. A race should be more powerful than the other in matters of spaecial abilities/qualities but it should have the same HD. A fighter of 3rd lvl with 30 hit points will manage to make a well-placed hit against a 1st lvl Drow with 9 hit points and probably kill it way before the Drow makes the fighter sweat. example of the idea: A Drow will keep the LA of +2 with all the abilites and also gain 2d4 HD, 2xskill points for a commoner lvl without the (3x) that you gain at the beginning and that;s all. A bonus feat could also be an idea but most of the races that have LA already have some bonus fetas so it is not necessary. Let the DM judge.
DarkSorcerer 03-26-07, 12:56 PM	2)didn't get that, can you be more specific If you feel that drow are only LA +1.5 then you can give them some extra HP to make up for the lack. While it certainly isn't much, a flat 4 HP added to their total will help them to get through the first couple of levels. By then their abilities will start to become effective.
Jim Johnny 03-26-07, 01:08 PM	That is a good idea. It 's similar to what i said about the 2 bonus commoner HDs. the average of 2d4=4 to 5 hit points. And the few bonus skills from the commoner class are also very important. A 3rd lvl human or Elf will have a lot more skills than the Drow. Of course that 's the penalty the Drow pays for all its race bonuses and abilities. There should be a golden way, in order to keep the Drow (and every other race) from being powerful and overpowered compare to the basic races but at the same time capable to make it through in combats. The few bonus hit points might be the way, as skill and feat bonuses might already be part of the Drow race benefits. I haven't thought about it, i am just thinking of it right now and that's why i make minor changes in my opinion all the time.
Nathreet 03-26-07, 01:23 PM	Yes, some races have LAs that are too high, some have LAs that are too low. It might be intentional, to limit PCs to PHB races and a few monsters. I keep a list of playable MM races: Very Powerful (> PHB races): Grimlocks (melee combatants, combat rogues) and pixies (rogues). Decent (~= PHB races): Orcs (combatants), araneas (monk/sorceror/other disablers), lizardfolk (meat shields), satyrs (ranger/rogue/bard scouts), goblins (rogues) Weak: Too many to list. There are probably other good ones too. I didn't include subraces of the standard races, like drow. And almost any LA 0 race can make a decent caster.
enygmatic_me 03-26-07, 01:35 PM	I recently came across the rules for Associated and Disassociated class levels for monsters in regards to CR. The information can be found here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#addingClassLevels) . Basically, WotC states that a monster that advances in a class that does not play to it's strengths only advances it's CR by 1/2 for every level of a class. So a Minotaur that takes levels in rogue (or even ranger according to these guidelines) only increases their CR by .5 for every level they take. A minotaur rogue 8 would be a CR 8 but would be an ECL of 16. That seems skewed to me.
malisteen 03-26-07, 01:38 PM	I find giving up the first level character feat to be a decent 'half level adjustment' cost. Thus genasi would be LA+0, but would not gain a feat at first level (their first normal feat would instead be at level 3). Drow would be LA+1, but would likewise not gain the normal feat at first level. Of course, this doesn't work so well in faerun, with all the regional feats that have to be taken at first level. Even though it doesn't make much sense, I would allow such characters to buy 'only at first level' feats at third level, when they gain their first normal feat.
sigma999 03-26-07, 01:51 PM	Most LA+1 races could stand to be reduced to LA+0 and still be balanced with PHB races. Just the same, most higher LA could be reduced by 1-2.
Jim Johnny 03-26-07, 01:53 PM	We are not talking about monsters with classes and their CRs. That is another story and probably far more complicated. Its best for the DM to decide the exact CR of a monster to which a class has been added. The feat thing is another option like the one with the few bonus hit points we discussed earlier. It would be good for races like genasis and Drows who seem to have 0.5 and 1.5 LA instead of what wizards suggests. Another idea for the 0.5 LA the genasis seem to have is to start all party members as 1st lvl characters and give to the rest a 500 xp bonus if someone does not want to make any changes. -------------------------------------- In general i do not want to cut bonuses from the races because most bonuses play an important role in defining the identity of each race. --------------------------------------
Platstud 03-26-07, 03:31 PM	A +1 LA can be simulated by a 1000 XP penalty per level (including 0). A +2 LA can be simulated by a 3000 XP penalty per level (including 0). Sweet-a$$, Nadaka! It took me a minute to work out the logic on this, but you're right. That's a very clever way of thinking of it and it makes it perfect for 1/2 LA characters.
enygmatic_me 03-26-07, 03:57 PM	We are not talking about monsters with classes and their CRs. That is another story and probably far more complicated. Its best for the DM to decide the exact CR of a monster to which a class has been added. The point I was trying to make is that WotC says that a PC's CR is the equivalent of their ECL. WotC's own rules on monsters with classes though contradicts this statement. This has led me to believe that the rules for LA have been designed as almost a contradiction to their own rules of how CR and ECL are supposed to equate. If a monster (such as the Minotaur) using these rules only has a CR of 8, and is thus only a challenge for an 8th level party with 4 members, then why is their effective character level a 16 when they have the same over all stats?
Tectorman 03-26-07, 04:02 PM	Here's a simple solution (so simple, in fact, that it must be both wrong and ill-considered:D): just put in HD. Hypothetical situation (I say hypothetical because I have nowhere near enough experience playing the game to be able say this based on anything other than RAW {which have proven to be more than capable of being flawed:mymy:}): a human is an LA +0 creature. He takes 3 levels of Human Paragon. He gains a plethora of abilities. If he had been granted all of those abilities just by virtue of being a human, then he'd have to be an LA +3 creature, but he also took an appropriate amount of HD, so he's balanced. Now, next hypothetical situation: a catfolk is an LA +1 creature. Suppose we take away +2 to Dex and +1 to natural armor. She should now be an LA +0 creature, right? So if we give her a virtual paragon level that gives her +2 to Dex and +1 to Natural Armor, plus *1 HD (d8), proficiency with simple weapons, (2 + Int modifier) x 4 skill points (have the DM pick class skills), a BAB of +0, a good Reflex save progression (in this case, +2), and possibly proficiency with light armor (the benefits mentioned after the * are based on the Humanoid type in the SRD), then such a catfolk should be balanced. Do the same thing for the drow. Give them 2 HD (d8), prof. with simple weapons, (2 + Int modifier) x 5 skill points, BAB of +1, Reflex save of +3, armor prof. as mentioned in the race description, and the drow should be balanced against any other 2nd level character with no LA. Any thoughts?
pukunui 03-26-07, 04:24 PM	For instance is it right for a Genasi to have a +1 LA because of a minor boost in abilities, a simple spell like ability and one or two more bonuses while a Thri-Kreen has the same LA and has a major boost in abilities, +3 natural armor, 4 hands and a couple other smaller bonuses (like very good jumps etc)? Don't forget that thrikeen has 2 racial HD, for a total ECL of 3. Though it is quite strong for its ECL nonetheless. EDIT: My bad the psionic thri-kreen LA is +2 but the regular thri-kreen is only +1. However, I still think it would be better to compare genasi to hobgoblins. They get +2 Dex, +2 Con, Darkvision 60ft, +4 racial bonus to Move Silently, and LA +1. This is similar to the planetouched, but hobgoblins are humanoids, so they're subject to all sorts of spells that the planetouched aren't by virtue of being outsiders. Also, don't forget that thri-kreen reach middle age at 16 and have a total lifespan of just under 30 years - so chances are a thri-kreen PC will get old and die long before any of its humanoid companions do.
Nadaka 03-26-07, 04:25 PM	Sweet-a$$, Nadaka! It took me a minute to work out the logic on this, but you're right. That's a very clever way of thinking of it and it makes it perfect for 1/2 LA characters. glad you liked it. I would note that I use the average of the bounding LA xp values for the half LA portion. Its not precise, but will work for most people. If anyone is interested in using this method for other LA's the value per level for any given integer LA is the same as the formula for calculating minimum xp for any given level: n = LA sigma(1000 * k) k = 1 also note that to be a identical simulation, the LA character would recieve xp as a character of his simulated level + his LA. You could even theoretically handle negative LAs using this method as well, simply give bonus xp at first level and every level he earns after that.
Kresalak 03-26-07, 04:39 PM	Here's a simple solution (so simple, in fact, that it must be both wrong and ill-considered:D): just put in HD. Hypothetical situation (I say hypothetical because I have nowhere near enough experience playing the game to be able say this based on anything other than RAW {which have proven to be more than capable of being flawed:mymy:}): a human is an LA +0 creature. He takes 3 levels of Human Paragon. He gains a plethora of abilities. If he had been granted all of those abilities just by virtue of being a human, then he'd have to be an LA +3 creature, but he also took an appropriate amount of HD, so he's balanced. Now, next hypothetical situation: a catfolk is an LA +1 creature. Suppose we take away +2 to Dex and +1 to natural armor. She should now be an LA +0 creature, right? So if we give her a virtual paragon level that gives her +2 to Dex and +1 to Natural Armor, plus *1 HD (d8), proficiency with simple weapons, (2 + Int modifier) x 4 skill points (have the DM pick class skills), a BAB of +0, a good Reflex save progression (in this case, +2), and possibly proficiency with light armor (the benefits mentioned after the * are based on the Humanoid type in the SRD), then such a catfolk should be balanced. Do the same thing for the drow. Give them 2 HD (d8), prof. with simple weapons, (2 + Int modifier) x 5 skill points, BAB of +1, Reflex save of +3, armor prof. as mentioned in the race description, and the drow should be balanced against any other 2nd level character with no LA. Any thoughts? It's better than the current system, but you still run into the problem of overcharging people. Drow, for example, don't really get anything noticeable in exchange for 2 levels. Double distance darkvision, +2 to basically all Will saves, and Spell Resistance could be OK as a class level, but not two. I've ignored the stat bonuses since getting +2 to 3 stats and -2 to another is unimpressive compared to getting +OMG to Hide for no reason, especially since there's no synergy between the stats. Honestly, I just prefer Races of War. (http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewthread?forum=1&thread=723)
Pyke_Moonshadow 03-26-07, 04:51 PM	Honestly, I just prefer Races of War. Ugh, I find that Races of War churns my stomach.
The Livewire 03-26-07, 06:48 PM	I think one of the other issues with some of the LA is they're nice at 1st level, but not at higher levels. Let's take our friend the Tiefling for example. a Tiefling at LA +0 at 1st level is too good. A Tiefling Wizard is going to be a feat down from a human wizard, same number of skill points, a little tougher spells, proficient in all martial weapons, and resistance to fire/cold/acid 5. If all else fails, the Tiefling could pour alchemists fire on himself and then grapple :-) Assuming Con 12 for our mages, both the Human and the Tiefling get hit for 9 points of acid damage. Human's in the negatives, Tiefling is looking for a cleric, but at least still mobile. So I can see LA+1 here. Scourge of the Howling Hoard spoilers: In scourge of the howling hoard, that acid resistance 5 makes fighting the black wrymling a lot easier on the tiefling, as he can shrug off most of the damage So a LA+0 Tiefling is too good at 1st level, depending on class, possibly through 3rd level. Now our 10th level characters. with +1 LA That Energy resistance doesn't mean much when we're talking about 52 points of damage. (Empowered Fireball) Human has 36 (roughly) HP, Tiefling has 32 (roughly) Human Wizard: Ah crap, I'm at -16! Tiefling Wizard: Hah! energy resistance baby! I'm at, ah crap, -15 :rolleyes: And yes, as a solution I use the LA buy off rules from UA as well. now don't get me wrong, that energy resistance 5 is nice for fluff text (scantly clad tiefling in the artic, or desert, takes baths in boiling hot water, etc.) but is that worth a level?
pukunui 03-26-07, 07:03 PM	Scourge of the Howling [Horde] spoilers: In scourge of the howling [horde], that acid resistance 5 makes fighting the black wrymling a lot easier on the tiefling, as he can shrug off most of the damage I'm running this adventure and one of the PCs is a tiefling, so I know what you mean ... And yes, as a solution I use the LA buy off rules from UA as well.Me too, but I also allowed my player to start at 1st level with 0 XP along with the other LA+0 PCs ... but in order to reach 2nd level, the tiefling PC has to get 3,000 XP instead of 1,000 XP. It works in Neverwinter Nights 2, so I figure it'll work in my campaign too. When he gets to 3rd level, he can buy off his LA and level up properly with the rest of the group. EDIT: Although, now that I think about it, that might have been a dumb thing to do because by the time he can afford to buy off his LA, he'll already be behind the others in level. Hmm ... I had actually told the player he could have the LA +0 "lesser" tiefling, but he insisted on being "fair" and keeping the LA +1 even though I said I was sticking with the "humanoid (planetouched)" type instead of "outsider (native)".
Jim Johnny 03-27-07, 08:00 AM	Here's a simple solution (so simple, in fact, that it must be both wrong and ill-considered:D): just put in HD. Hypothetical situation (I say hypothetical because I have nowhere near enough experience playing the game to be able say this based on anything other than RAW {which have proven to be more than capable of being flawed:mymy:}): a human is an LA +0 creature. He takes 3 levels of Human Paragon. He gains a plethora of abilities. If he had been granted all of those abilities just by virtue of being a human, then he'd have to be an LA +3 creature, but he also took an appropriate amount of HD, so he's balanced. Now, next hypothetical situation: a catfolk is an LA +1 creature. Suppose we take away +2 to Dex and +1 to natural armor. She should now be an LA +0 creature, right? So if we give her a virtual paragon level that gives her +2 to Dex and +1 to Natural Armor, plus *1 HD (d8), proficiency with simple weapons, (2 + Int modifier) x 4 skill points (have the DM pick class skills), a BAB of +0, a good Reflex save progression (in this case, +2), and possibly proficiency with light armor (the benefits mentioned after the * are based on the Humanoid type in the SRD), then such a catfolk should be balanced. Do the same thing for the drow. Give them 2 HD (d8), prof. with simple weapons, (2 + Int modifier) x 5 skill points, BAB of +1, Reflex save of +3, armor prof. as mentioned in the race description, and the drow should be balanced against any other 2nd level character with no LA. Any thoughts? Exactly, You get my point. ANd not only mine, others have expressed a similar opinion. Giving HD to LA charactrers and possibly a few skills is necessary. There are LA races that give bonus HD and they probably do not need any correction. But the rest need at least a minor hit point boost. I would note that I use the average of the bounding LA xp values for the half LA portion. Its not precise, but will work for most people. If anyone is interested in using this method for other LA's the value per level for any given integer LA is the same as the formula for calculating minimum xp for any given level: n = LA sigma(1000 * k) k = 1 also note that to be a identical simulation, the LA character would recieve xp as a character of his simulated level + his LA. Nadaka can you explain that. I do not get what sigms thing is. And k is to determine the level? Also this means all characters start from 1st level right? But in the 1st level a LA+5 character will be a lot stronger than a human. Finally the LA buy off option from Unearthed Arcana is also a must. Tiefling was a +1LA but there is the other version of a +0 LA. Tiefling is actually a native outsider if you play a forgotten realm based campaign and you do not begin from the planes, so he/she can be affected like every other character plus spells that affect outsiders like banishment affect him/her as well. So i consider it to be a con. Thri-Kreen is a +1LA in the Shining South FR book, and indeed the +2HD make it a +3 LA. But again a 1st lvl Thri-Kreen fighter will be by far more stronger than a 2nd level Drow fighter. And do not forget that both have an effective character level of 4. ------------------------------------------------- enygmatic_me you are right. Both have contradictions. But in the LA case it affects the whole game and a player character while in the Cr case it only affects a battle and by means of giving more or less xp to the party. The second case can be solved if the Dm can decide on his/her own a more suitable CR for the monster. The first case needs deeper thinking.
Needle 03-27-07, 08:25 AM	You have to take into account racial hit dice. Racial hit dice hurt badly.. especially for casters. They're -blank levels- that you cant buy back like an LA> So.. Genasi and Drow etc? Those have a clear advantage over the Thri-Kreen (which is fine for its LA imo) since they can buyback their LA but they will always have those two levels which set them behind, which makes up for their stat/NA adjustements. (Jump is always a joke, nice from a fluff perspective but theres so many flying races / flying spells it comes to be worthless)
runestar 03-27-07, 08:51 AM	Tiefling is actually a native outsider if you play a forgotten realm based campaign and you do not begin from the planes, so he/she can be affected like every other character plus spells that affect outsiders like banishment affect him/her as well. So i consider it to be a con. I keep hearing that. But tieflings are native to the material plane. As such, banishment would have no effect on them. I cannot think of any spells which would affect them negatively in this aspect. Does anyone have any examples?:confused:
Jim Johnny 03-27-07, 08:53 AM	Indeed a Thri-Kreen cannot buy off the 2HD, but that's a small problem. The bonuses of the Thri-Kreen are not a +1 LA only, and the 2HD i agree suck but together with the very good bonuses from the +1 LA make a final LA of +3 which is ok. Drow need some hit points to survive at first levels, not to mention the lack in skills. I will be waiting to hear Nadaka's idea. I agree that giving not HDs makes the character capable of paying off the LA which is very good. Because in that way you finally become equal to the rest of the characters and you have only paid an amount of XP as an exchange for the bonus abilities. I just believe that their is a problem in the first level. Take for instance the Vampire template. At 1st level it will have 12 hit points while a human fighter of same ECL would have 9d10+con bonus hit points. I know that Vampire has all the cool abilities and is powerful but really.... a 12 hit point creature against a 80 hit point one???? Does this sound equal? Not to mention that a Vampire will never manage to pay off the LA so it will remain unequal in higher levels as well, of course the problem there will be highly diminished. In general I guess the weak part is the first few levels. When you start paying off everything is good. But sometimes you might wait for the paying off thing for an eternity. Like our Vamp friend. Of course he has the time to do so:D But a Drow will manage to last til level 6? And the Genasi will feel inferior for the first 2 levels, until he/she gets some hirt points and stand on his/her feet.
Jim Johnny 03-27-07, 09:02 AM	A Native outsider can be affected by banishment and i will explain why. He is a native outsider and as such he cannot be affected by spells who target an outsider and take him back to his home plane do not affect such creatures (planetouched) because they have the material plane as their home plane but spells like banishment which simply remove the outsider from the caster's plane will affect a tiefling. Also other spells that target outsiders like sword of the planes work just fine. I just show, though, that spells that target humanoids like charm person and hold person do not work against planetouched creatures, so Pukunui was right about the humanoid targeting spells. But again banishment is a lot more dangerous compared to a charm.
Needle 03-27-07, 09:06 AM	Well, the Drow just needs to be careful. I dont think most LA creatures were really meant to be properly played at their first class level. All the same, those early levels go by quite quickly, the Drow player in that case would just need to hang back with a bow/crossbow or whatever.
Jim Johnny 03-27-07, 09:14 AM	Again i believe most LA need correction. A suggedted Vampire in MMI is a 13th level half-elf Monk/Shadowdaner with CR 15 If i make a Vampire half-elf character of ECL 15 he will only be a 7th level Monk because of the high LA. Is in't there something wrong? Or contradictory at least and possibly controverisal?
Zumarai 03-27-07, 09:33 AM	I keep hearing that. But tieflings are native to the material plane. As such, banishment would have no effect on them. What if they got banished while cruising around the Outlands with their homies? Damn, I'm back in the Pomarj!
RobbyPants 03-27-07, 09:40 AM	The point I was trying to make is that WotC says that a PC's CR is the equivalent of their ECL. WotC's own rules on monsters with classes though contradicts this statement. This has led me to believe that the rules for LA have been designed as almost a contradiction to their own rules of how CR and ECL are supposed to equate. If a monster (such as the Minotaur) using these rules only has a CR of 8, and is thus only a challenge for an 8th level party with 4 members, then why is their effective character level a 16 when they have the same over all stats? You're right in that this example doesn't make much sense with their system. When looking at something like a minotuar (or ogre, or anything with relatively few special abilities), the CRs and ECLs don't seem to match up right. The reasaon for a different LA and CR (thus a different ECL and CR) is largely due to special abilities. This system is designed from the point of view of players, fighing monsters. Not so much of players fighting players, and espescially not monsters fighting monsters. It's the latter case that shows this point the best. Certain special abilities are much more potent in the hands of players than in the hands of monsters. Consider the ability to turn etheral or incoporeal at will: A monster that can do this at will has some nice hit and run tactics available, and may require ghost touch weapons and the like to be effectively fought, but that's about the extent of it. The monster could just hide from the PCs entierly and totally avoid the fight, but why would the DM waste the time statting up a monster that the PCs will never encounter? You have to remember that this game is played from the point of view of the playres. Now give one of the PCs this ability at will. In addition to the tactics available to monsters, the PC could entirely avoid encounters (both monsters and traps). Such a PC could pass though an entire dungeon without having a single encounter, get some objective or piece of treasure, and then return. It's abilities like these that make the ECL different from CR.
Broken vacuum 03-27-07, 10:41 AM	CR and ECL are not the same thing. CR is applied to things going up against a party while ECL is applied to things that are in a party and encounter things with CR. The system is quite simply not symmetric, nor does it have to be to make sense. The baseline PC travels in a pack of four equal level PCs that all have class levels and the wealth and resources of PCs. They generally encounter things with CR and resources that are at best equal with that described for NPCs in the DMG. As mentioned in a recent post, a lot of special abilities can be utilised a lot better by PCs, but PCs - especially those with a number of class levels - can generally also capitalise on the advantages of a monster form much better than the monster itself. In the case of big bruisers with bonuses to strength and constitution and not much else it is often the case that they are rather lacklustre at minimum ECL but get considerably better later on. At first they have nothing but high strength and low hp, but later on the bonus hp makes up for the hp-loss from the LA and abilities acquired from taking class levels start to really synergise with the inherent abilities of the base form. When comparing a monster PC with a same monster NPC, remember that the PC will generally have better stats (elite array or whatever you go with) and considerably more wealth.
Nadaka 03-27-07, 11:00 AM	oh sorry: sigma is the symbol for summation, it looks kinda like a capital E where the "back" is shifted to the right and there is no middle bar. essentially it is the sum of every number between 1 and the LA (1 + 2 +3 .... + (LA-1) + LA) times 1000. Yes my simulation is just that, a simulation. For instance in the normal game a level 3 drow wizard has a larger xp pool to craft items from, in my simulation he doesn't. I suppose thats the price one has to pay if you want non-integer level adjustments. the effective level of a +LA character is still hit dice + LA so a first level +0 LA compared to a first level +5 LA is going to show the +5 LA as being more powerful a human and a +2 LA creature may both start at level 1 with 0 xp with the way I worded it. However the +2 LA creature "owes" 3000xp as well, so they wouldn't really be balanced. Once that 3000xp is payed off, the level 1 human will be level 3 and they will both be equal in power (if the LA is accurate). The question in this case becomes should the DM allow +LA characters that have not yet payed off their xp debt? The answer is probably not, so no +LA races at first level in most games. However, some DM's might start with higher xp totals. In this case the +LA character first has to pay his debt for level 0, then add remaining xp to level, being shure to pay debt again every time he increases his characters level. For instance if the game starts at 10k xp (level 5): the human is level 5. the +2 LA creature first pays 3k xp and has 7 left. then it levels to 2nd and has 6k left "unspent". then it pays another 3k and has 3k left. then it levels up to 3rd level and has 1 k left. this 1k xp is then consumed by its debt and it now owes only 2k xp for his current level. does this make sense? In that case the human will have 3k xp and be level 3 and the +2 LA would looser that 3k and start at level 1 with 0 xp.
Jim Johnny 03-27-07, 12:52 PM	Ok now i got it. You see i am from Greece and sigma is part of our Alphabet and that is why o got confused. I did your idea for 20k starting xp but i show that although at the beginning it goes well, later on it turns against the LA character because instead of the difference of the 2 levels if you go by the book, now the difference grows bigger. On the other hand if you use the pay off system from the UA things might become better. ----------------------------------------------- You are correct about the ECL and CR that do not have to be the same. As player characters use their special qualities and abilities in better ways than monsters. But again the same should be for NPCs because NPCs are actually characters played by the DM but if you go to the Vampire example on MMI you will see that the vampire 13th lvl half-elf Monk/Shadowdancer is CR 15. SO my Vampire character can only be 7th lvl Monk and thus having an ECL of 15 to be an equal enemy of the NPC Vampire. Is this right?????? mmmm OF course if we think that the CR is calculated so that the monster will be able to contend with a party of 4 player characters as equal then it might be correct. But then again: A party of 4 15th level fighters (ECL of 15) will deal better against the CR 15 Vampire instead of a party of 4 vampire characters of 7th fighter lvl (ECL 15 though). Try it out with some friends and see. I believe the problem is in LA again. If we think that the bonuses the Vampire gives will be of a great advantage to the player outside battles as well then here is the excuse for the high LA. But during battles such a high LA is a problem because the character will have very few hit points and skills.
Broken vacuum 03-27-07, 04:29 PM	You are correct about the ECL and CR that do not have to be the same. As player characters use their special qualities and abilities in better ways than monsters. But again the same should be for NPCs because NPCs are actually characters played by the DM but if you go to the Vampire example on MMI you will see that the vampire 13th lvl half-elf Monk/Shadowdancer is CR 15. SO my Vampire character can only be 7th lvl Monk and thus having an ECL of 15 to be an equal enemy of the NPC Vampire. Is this right?????? mmmm OF course if we think that the CR is calculated so that the monster will be able to contend with a party of 4 player characters as equal then it might be correct. But then again: A party of 4 15th level fighters (ECL of 15) will deal better against the CR 15 Vampire instead of a party of 4 vampire characters of 7th fighter lvl (ECL 15 though). Try it out with some friends and see. I believe the problem is in LA again. If we think that the bonuses the Vampire gives will be of a great advantage to the player outside battles as well then here is the excuse for the high LA. But during battles such a high LA is a problem because the character will have very few hit points and skills. You are not considering the difference in abilities that exist between the players and NPCs. PCs get more wealth and they encounter things with CR. NPCs get less wealth and they encounter the PCs. See the difference? Now, take the Vampire template and look at it closely. Vampires have DR 10/silver and magic which is not much of a problem for the PCs to overcome, but for the vast majority of creatures in the MM it is a pretty serious problem. They do not really have access to magic silver weapons. The special version of fast healing the Vampire has can be something of a pain for PCs to handle in an opponent, but for a lot of the creatures PCs encounter it essentially means that a character that has it is unkillable. The energy drain effect on the Vampire's slam can be nasty for PCs, but they can be counted on to have access to protection from it (Scarab of Protection, Death Ward from the cleric or something along those lines) or if push comes to show at least a source of restoration. The things PCs encounter generally do not have as easy access to these. Now consider what a PC can do with the Create Spawn ability. LA exist precisely because these sort of things. The impact of different abilities hit PCs and monsters/NPCs differently. As for the 4 15th level fighters against that vampire being so much better than 4 7th level vampire fighters against him, that really depends on the circumstances. While pure fighter really does not synergise that well with the vampire template, there is the fact that the special attacks of vampires do not really work against undead (which would include our vampire fighters). The vampire fighters run very little risk of having to expend any resources beyond possibly some healing, while the ordinary fighters will have to take steps to protect themselves from level-draining and domination. However that may be, the important thing here is that this is not really an encounter that favours being a vampire. Whatever you happen to be, some encounters will be harder than others.
Jim Johnny 03-27-07, 05:23 PM	I have heard the wealth thing too many times and i think it is a mistake. NPCS possess far more wealth than the PCs and that is because they are controlled fro mthe DM. The DM can give them whatever items and money he thinks suits in every situation and therefore the NPCs can be made from the DM in such a way to be quite challenging against the players. PCs on the other hand have a specific amount of wealth. Now, if you play a campaign with monsters as characters then things change. The DM won't use the usual encounters, fighting ordinary magical beasts and fiendish creatures. He will mainly use NPCs and special monsters to match the monstrous PCs. It is up to the DM to make the correct choices. Nevertheless, you are right that one encounter won't be the same as another. There will be easier ones and more difficult ones. And i also agree that some monster abilities can be found extremely beneficial to the PCs at small levels (like winds, fast healing...) and that explains some LAs. But most of the people taking part in this thread, and they are many as you can see agree that there is problem with the power of LA races at first levels because of the small amount of HP. Not to mention some LAs that needs changes in order to be correct like the genasi;s and the Drow;s which tend to be more of a +0.5 and +1.5 instead of +1 and +2.
Broken vacuum 03-27-07, 05:43 PM	I have heard the wealth thing too many times and i think it is a mistake. NPCS possess far more wealth than the PCs and that is because they are controlled fro mthe DM. The DM can give them whatever items and money he thinks suits in every situation and therefore the NPCs can be made from the DM in such a way to be quite challenging against the players. PCs on the other hand have a specific amount of wealth. There is a wealth chart for NPCs in the DMG just as there is one for PCs. By the book, NPCs have less wealth than PCs. The DM can of course do what he wants, but he is supposed to adjust CR accordingly. Now, if you play a campaign with monsters as characters then things change. The DM won't use the usual encounters, fighting ordinary magical beasts and fiendish creatures. He will mainly use NPCs and special monsters to match the monstrous PCs. It is up to the DM to make the correct choices. The DM can use whatever he wants. LAs are there to provide an approximate power level of monster characters within the framework of 'standard' encounters. But most of the people taking part in this thread, and they are many as you can see agree that there is problem with the power of LA races at first levels because of the small amount of HP. Not to mention some LAs that needs changes in order to be correct like the genasi;s and the Drow;s which tend to be more of a +0.5 and +1.5 instead of +1 and +2. This is not really a problem. That playing a particular monster at minimum ECL is a bad idea does not mean that the LA is to high, it merely means that you should not introduce the character until it has a couple of class levels. And you have to draw the line somewhere in order to have a system that does not require a couple of extra volumes to explain. The only way to make things precisely balanced is to make everything exactly the same and that would in my opinion not be a good idea. Both Drow and Genasi are viable as characters, so it is not like something is fundamentally wrong with their LAs.
Tytalus 03-27-07, 05:59 PM	I have heard the wealth thing too many times and i think it is a mistake. NPCS possess far more wealth than the PCs and that is because they are controlled fro mthe DM. The DM can give them whatever items and money he thinks suits in every situation and therefore the NPCs can be made from the DM in such a way to be quite challenging against the players. PCs on the other hand have a specific amount of wealth. The DMG (and to a lesser extent, the MM) has very clear guidelines on how much money/wealth NPCs (and monsters) have. And it's considerably less than typical PC wealth (also found in the DMG). Of course, a DM is at liberty to increase an NPC/monster's wealth, but that can also affect its CR.
Jim Johnny 03-27-07, 07:41 PM	Just do not go by the book so many times people. I reminish the days back in 2nd ed when there was more space for Role Playing. OF course 3rd is more improved. Any way do not start this conversation because we will ruin the thread. That is what i meant. A DM can balance things easily. So i do not consider wealth a factor of comparison. And it is not. That is why it is not taken under account when calculating CR and other things. And that is a rule. You are right about not starting LA characters from first level. Another good idea, partially similar to what Nadaka suggested is to start all characters from 1st level (we are talking about small LA of +1 or +2, do not think of Vamps) and while the rest will advance in 1000 xp the LA character will need 2000 or 3000. In this way you give a kind of bonus to the LA character because he will be of a higher ECL compared to the rest characters but the others will advance faster and acquire more HDs than the LA character. It is like giving the LA character some xp in order to balance the lack of hit points he/she would have had otherwise. for the LA +1 character is only 1000 xp and for the LA +2 3000. Or in the LA +2 case you can start the rest of the party as 2nd level instead of 1st as i suggested (or 3rd which is pointed by the rules). Let the DM decide.
MingT 03-28-07, 09:14 AM	The system is quite simply not symmetric, nor does it have to be to make sense... When comparing a monster PC with a same monster NPC, remember that the PC will generally have better stats (elite array or whatever you go with) and considerably more wealth. It sorta kinda DOES need to make sense. See for instance... A Troll PC has 6 hit die and +5 LA. So he like is level 11 with 6 hit die. And is expected to fight single CR 11 enemies with a reasonable chance of winning.. Which could include an NPC Troll with the elite array (+0 CR with class levels) level 11 NPC Equipment (free with class levels, not too far of PC equipment), and up to oh say... 5 levels of druid, AND 5 of some Prestige class Or more simply an NPC Troll with the elite array, NPC gear and 5 levels of Barbarian. An NPC troll like either of those eats the 5 missing hit die PC for breakfast, because ECL and CR not being equitable makes for dumb junk like that. Edit: Misread CR as HD, corrected accordingly. Happy?
runestar 03-28-07, 09:29 AM	Your explanation is so convincing, that I am almost prepared to throw in the towel.... Had that actually been what ECL had been designed to represent...;) First off, a troll is ECL11. It gets 66000gp of eq, which is thrice what a cr11 foe gets(21000gp), not really a small difference if you ask me. No one really fights one on one. A troll's ECL of 11 represents its usefulness in a standard party, not how well it fairs in a PvP situation. Else, a wizard's ECL should be much higher than a fighter's ECL, considering how the former will always trash the latter in a fight at higher lvs.
Jim Johnny 03-28-07, 09:38 AM	Stop talking about money people!!!!! The rules say that money do not get into account when calculating CR and ECl. It is only for purposes of making things easier for the DM. The DM can give whatever thinks is appropriate forn an NPC to be a challenge to the PCs. Pleaseeeeeee Your Troll example is the same as my Vampire example. But we both forgot (although i mentioned it somewhere near the end) that the CR is a scale to see if a monster is of equal power to 4 player characters of the same ECL. So i guess 4 troll characters might have a chance against the NPC Troll. The only problem is the lack of HP in the first levels. So DMs go ahead and spare some HPs at the beginning. It will have no difference in the higher levels and will make the party members equal in the first levels. Of course if a DM has strong indications that a LA is wrong he can add one or two extra minor abilities to balance things or reduce the LA by 1 and cut one or two abilities.
MingT 03-28-07, 09:39 AM	Your explanation is so convincing, that I am almost First off, a troll is ECL11. It gets 66000gp of eq, which is thrice what a cr11 foe gets(21000gp), not really a small difference if you ask me. He has cash, 1/3rd cash is massively better than like NONE. Heck he may well still get his treasure entry as well. He also gets to ignore expenditure on stupid utility items, can buy single or limited use stuff without worries and never has to blow cash on frivolous junk like collectible trading cards. No one really fights one on one. Yes they do. I'm so confident of that I would find it demeaning to elaborate. A troll's ECL of 11 represents its usefulness in a standard party, not how well it fairs in a PvP situation. Else, a wizard's ECL should be much higher than a fighter's ECL, considering how the former will always trash the latter in a fight at higher lvs. Gosh there might be a problem there to. Maybe, just maybe, fighters are significantly under powered compared to wizards. Nah. Someone would have noticed that by now...
Broken vacuum 03-28-07, 10:03 AM	It sorta kinda DOES need to make sense. It does make sense. It just does not have to be symmetric to do it. See for instance... A Troll PC has 5 hit die and +5 LA. So he like is level 10 with 5 hit die. Actually 6 HD (and therefore ECL 11), but in principle, yes. And is expected to fight single CR 10 enemies with a reasonable chance of winning.. No. Even apart from everything else characters are supposed to be part of a group. They are balanced as part of a group, not as a single individual. Which could include an NPC Troll with the elite array (+0 CR with class levels) level 10 NPC Equipment (free with class levels, not too far of PC equipment), and up to oh say... 4 levels of druid, AND 4 of some Prestige class, AND 2 of some other Prestige class.... Or more simply an NPC Troll with the elite array, NPC gear and 5 levels of Barbarian. Not too far of? NPC gear is less than a third of PC gear at level 10. An NPC troll like either of those eats the 5 missing hit die PC for breakfast, because ECL and CR not being equitable makes for dumb junk like that. Which is not really a problem, since our character is not supposed to go at it alone. This early in the characters career things with lots of class levels is usually a problem, other things often not so much (there are of course exceptions). Now high LA monsters are usually not particularly good at minimum ECL, especially not melee types, but they often make up for it as they level. The troll's problematically low hp will for example increase nicely as it levels. The reason for the high LA of the troll is probably at least in part the regeneration ability. A lot of the critters PCs encounter just cannot deal with it. Just do not go by the book so many times people. I reminish the days back in 2nd ed when there was more space for Role Playing. OF course 3rd is more improved. Any way do not start this conversation because we will ruin the thread. That is what i meant. A DM can balance things easily. So i do not consider wealth a factor of comparison. And it is not. That is why it is not taken under account when calculating CR and other things. And that is a rule. None is of course forcing you to go by the written rules, but LA does not exist in a vacuum. It does not make sense to first change the rules and then complain about LA not being appropriate. The LAs as written are determined by the system as written, not your personal rules. Again, it is not a question of you being somehow 'wrong' by utilising house rules; it is merely that the LA rules were not written for your house rules, they were written for the rules as is. When you change something about the rules, however minute, it sometimes has far reaching secondary effects. This is something you should consider when changing rules.
MingT 03-28-07, 10:13 AM	Stop talking about money people!!!!! But we both forgot (although i mentioned it somewhere near the end) that the CR is a scale to see if a monster is of equal power to 4 player characters of the same ECL. 15% of your ECL 11 trolls encounters in any adventure are expected to be as difficult, or more as encountering that one CR 11 troll on his own or four of him against four of them. Well thats off the 3.0 DMG, I couldn't be bothered getting the 3.5 version from my car at night. Either way any encounter level up to 4 greater than your ECL is to be expected as regular in an adventure, and you are generally supposed to survive adventures.
Jim Johnny 03-28-07, 10:27 AM	Now high LA monsters are usually not particularly good at minimum ECL, especially not melee types, but they often make up for it as they level. The troll's problematically low hp will for example increase nicely as it levels. Again, it is not a question of you being somehow 'wrong' by utilising house rules; it is merely that the LA rules were not written for your house rules, they were written for the rules as is. When you change something about the rules, however minute, it sometimes has far reaching secondary effects. This is something you should consider when changing rules. The problem is that rules need changing other L characters are very weak at minimum ECLS. ------------------------------------------------------------------ I do not understand why you began tis thing with ECLs and CRs. I do not think there are any problems there. About the ECLs i just said that an encounter of the same level is if you have a monster of CR 11 fighting 4 ECL 11 characters. Of course the characters have to do well against stronger opponents as well, like a CR 14 monster. But if you put 4 ECL 11 characters against 4 CR 11 monstrers then the encounter level of this battle will be 15 (according to a DMG table). This is an uneven combat. 4 encounter levels higher
Broken vacuum 03-28-07, 10:29 AM	15% of your ECL 11 trolls encounters in any adventure are expected to be as difficult, or more as encountering that one CR 11 troll on his own or four of him against four of them. Not really. Again, a PC is supposed to be part of a group which is supposed to provide those things (abilities, equipment, knowledge etc.) it does not have itself. A group of 4 PCs encountering a a CR +4 monster is not at all the same as a single PC encountering a monster with a CR equal to his ECL.
Jim Johnny 03-28-07, 10:52 AM	If you check the tables you will see it is almost the same. DMG page 49 And in general it is not fair for a 1st level fighter Vampire to have ECL of 9. While a CR 3 Orc alone can easily manage to kill the Vamp. It will be agood hit or possibly two. I guess theres should be a variable LA, so that in minimum ECLS LA characters won't have problems.
Pyke_Moonshadow 03-28-07, 11:12 AM	And in general it is not fair for a 1st level fighter Vampire to have ECL of 9. While a CR 3 Orc alone can easily manage to kill the Vamp. It will be agood hit or possibly two. How is he killing him exactly?
Jim Johnny 03-28-07, 11:22 AM	Ok , not killing Him. defeating him. The Vampire will have 12 hit points. The Orc fighter around 30. In all probability it won't manage to do it, but it is possible (we are talking about an orc PC, so it will have silver stuff etc. I kinda overdid it with the 3rd lvl Orc. If the Orc was fighting a 9th level human fighter won't stand a chance at all. What i wanted to say is the 1st level fighter Vampire is weaker to a 9th level human fighter because of his hit points.
maskimus 03-28-07, 12:23 PM	NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE DOING THIS THREAD ALL WRONG!!! I know because I was just reading another LA thread and they were being all rude and insulting to each other! You all are having a civil discourse, and being polite, and reasonable. What kind of precident does this set? What if every thread was like this? People might think that all gamers are decent, civilized and*shudder* Intelligent. SO KNOCK IT OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) As to the subject at hand, I kind of like JJ's solution. It seems like it should work fairly well for low LA's (+1 to +3). That's the other thing I like about this thread. People are actually offering solutions to a problem instead of just complaining. One question: if monster X(or template X as has been debated elsewhere) is LA +4, and you think it's too high, what LA do you think it should be?
Clearly_Toughpick 03-28-07, 12:24 PM	Take for instance the Vampire template. At 1st level it will have 12 hit points while a human fighter of same ECL would have 9d10+con bonus hit points. I know that Vampire has all the cool abilities and is powerful but really.... a 12 hit point creature against a 80 hit point one???? Does this sound equal? Your suggested vampire doesn't exist in the rules as written. I don't have the rules in front of me, but as I remember, a creature with fewer than 5 HD cannot become a vampire (becoming vampire spawn instead?). If that's so, then your average starting vampire has 36hp before taking any class levels; throw in an additional +18 total to ability score bonuses (including Str +6), energy drain for 5 temp hp, fast healing (5) and finally gaseous form as an escape hatch and it doesn't look so feeble! And those extra HD are apply to many (all?) other high LA monsters: they all have racial or class HD apart from that darn pixie! Yours, Clearly
Jim Johnny 03-28-07, 01:39 PM	You are right but i am not talking about a vamp spawn. But a Vampire as a player character. SO when you start you are actual a 1st level whatever class you have chosen vampire with only one HD (a d12) and a LA+8. Like a Drow, the others will be 3rd lvl with 3 HDs and you only one. The lack of hit points is a great burden for starting characters. Later on, i agree, things become better as you get more hit points. If one LA looks kinda big, you can either give some HP to the player, or make it +3 (instead of +4) and cut one or two minor abilities if you find it appropriate, or give Him some extra abilites to balance things. Generally speaking, in this thread we have collected many many alternative ption in order to balance LA for low level characters. So players can choose what fits them best and enjoy the game.
MingT 03-28-07, 08:02 PM	Not really. Again, a PC is supposed to be part of a group which is supposed to provide those things (abilities, equipment, knowledge etc.) it does not have itself. A group of 4 PCs encountering a a CR +4 monster is not at all the same as a single PC encountering a monster with a CR equal to his ECL. Righto. Lets cover a few things in explicit detail then. EL is encounter level. CR is effectively monster ECL. ECL is equivalent character level. Lets not get those mixed up. Now four CR 11 monsters are an EL 15 encounter. Which the DMG rates as "very difficult". But an ECL 11 party is expected to fight 15% of their encounters of every adventure against encounters as hard as that. And 5% against EVEN HARDER encounters. Its in table 3-2 in the DMG. So lets paint a picture of an adventure. A party of four iconic characters, all trolls, walk into a dungeon, just like four iconic elfs might. Of course at ECL 11 they all look a lot alike each other being 6 hit die trolls with minor variation mostly in attriibutes and skill ranks. They are, among other things, expected to consider an encounter with a regular 6 hit die troll as easy, really easy. One troll on its own is just barely on the experience scale, to make it an even matched EL they need to fight 7-9 of them at once. And all they have over being outnumbered two to one is slightly improved attributes and gear. And about 30% of their encounters can be less than 7 trolls to qualify as "easy" at once and that is apparently fine. Then 50% of their encounters are "challenging", which means either the one classed troll, like the 6 hit die five barbarian levels troll, or up to 9 classeless regular trolls. Thats 50% of their encounters, they might win them, or most of them but they will have a HUGE casualty rate. THEN they get 15% of their encounters as "very difficult" which is FOUR classed NPC trolls with anywhere up to 5 "associated" class levels over the party, each, or 10 "unassociated" class levels, each. They could seriously be fighting FOUR trolls that each have 5 cleric levels and 5 PRC levels, in 3 out of twenty fights. THEN they get 5% of their encounters as even harder than that. Thats what the DMG calls a well balanced adventure for your four ECL 11 trolls.
Kresalak 03-28-07, 08:06 PM	Or, let's look at it this way. According to the rules on Challenge Ratings, a fight at APL+4 is about even-you're assumed to have a roughly 50% chance of winning. If you halve the number of PCs, the APL drops by 2. If you have it again, it drops by 2 more. This means that the APL of a single troll is 11, and he's expected to go 50/50 against a CR 11 encounter-which includes a Troll Barbarian 5.
tetebetson 03-28-07, 08:16 PM	Am I the only one here thinking that there are unfair level adjustments? For instance is it right for a Genasi to have a +1 LA because of a minor boost in abilities, a simple spell like ability and one or two more bonuses while a Thri-Kreen has the same LA and has a major boost in abilities, +3 natural armor, 4 hands and a couple other smaller bonuses (like very good jumps etc)? Does this look fair? Also races like the Drow, with +2 LA also suffer because all the bonuses they gain cannot match up the drawback of having only 1 Hit Dice when they begin while the humans and the elves of the party will have 3 Hit dices. I would like to hear your opinion. tri kren have a +2 LA and 2hd at 1st leval 4 being a monterous humanoid i also think drow shold have +1 LA but then again they do have +2 dex +2int +2cha tip ,get High born drow feat which gives u spider climb & levitate ,cant remember where it is thogh
DarkRhystar 03-28-07, 08:46 PM	Am I the only one here thinking that there are unfair level adjustments? D&D has some unfair everything. Fix what you need to and move on. For instance is it right for a Genasi to have a +1 LA because of a minor boost in abilities, a simple spell like ability and one or two more bonuses while a Thri-Kreen has the same LA and has a major boost in abilities, +3 natural armor, 4 hands and a couple other smaller bonuses (like very good jumps etc)? Does this look fair? Of course not, you forgot to include the racial hit die. Also races like the Drow, with +2 LA also suffer because all the bonuses they gain cannot match up the drawback of having only 1 Hit Dice when they begin while the humans and the elves of the party will have 3 Hit dices. Give the Drow SR a +2 bonus (making it 50% instead of 40%), give races with LA an additional 3 HP per point of LA, and call it a day.
tetebetson 03-28-07, 09:18 PM	D&D has some unfair everything. Fix what you need to and move on. Of course not, you forgot to include the racial hit die. Give the Drow SR a +2 bonus (making it 50% instead of 40%), give races with LA an additional 3 HP per point of LA, and call it a day. well said
Judging Eagle 03-28-07, 09:37 PM	You could also try this: Drow "Time to die for the Spider Queen." The Drow are perhaps the most overused bunch of villains ever. Their entire ability set is one that is supposed to neutralize the advantages of player characters so that characters can have mirror matches against NPC parties without doubling their treasure. With magic items that turn off once they are brought out of Drow controlled regions, spell-resistance, and spell-like abilities designed to specifically negate common player-character tactical advantages, they can easily compete with Player Characters with massively more permanent magical equipment. And that means that they can be fought and killed several times without supercharging party treasure. But if you want to play a Drow character, you don't want any of that crap. In fact, if you want a Drow character, probably the maxim you are looking for is "WWDD?" and the answer is probably "Fight with two scimitars." But more than that, there are a number of abilities that Drow characters in stories exhibit that people want. And then there are the game mechanical abilities in the rulebook that the characters in stories obviously don't have (like Touch of Fatigue, what's up with that?) So here it is, the LA +0 Drow that people actually want to play: Medium Size 30' movement. Humanoid Type (Elf subtype) Darkvision 120' +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution Daylight Sensitivity: While in brightly lit surroundings (such as a daylight spell), a Drow suffers a -2 penalty to attack rolls and precision-based skill checks. Drow with a Charisma of at least 10 may cast deeper darkness (duration 4 hours), and fairie fire as spell-like abilities with a caster level equal to their character level once per day each. +2 bonus to saving throws against spells and spell-like abilities. +2 bonus to Spot, and Listen checks. Drow never sleep and are immune to sleep effects. Drow must still perform their 4 hour daily trance to stay coherent and rested. Drow live an exceedingly interesting life and every Drow has proficiency with the rapier and an exotic ranged weapon of their choice. Favored Classes: Cleric and Wizard Automatic Languages: Elvish Bonus Languages: Abyssal, Beholder, Common, Draconic, Drow Sign Language, Dwarvish, Gnome, Kuo-Toa, Terran, Undercommon. Copied from: This Post (http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost.php?p=9776626&postcount=3); from This thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=681572). Also, Pyke, what about Races of War actually gets your stomach all churned up? The fact that the Barbarian is able to be as useful as the Wizard, Rogue, Cleric or Druid? Or is it the fact that the Fighter* is meant for the normal Wizard-player to pick up and use instead of his normal spellcaster role ? *:Stupid/uncreative melee-hungry players? Please line up by the Samurai, Knight or Barbarian sign-up booths please. Barbarian is lots of fun, bashy bashy. Samurai are for killing hordes of unhonourable foes and killing cowardly wizards. Knights are party-tanks, there`s nothing that will ignore a knight that tells you to attack him, nothing that is still alive anyway. Fighter is for people who feel that they must seethe raw combat training and ability and are willing to select equipment, training and tactics that give them overwhelming advantages in a manner that no one expects from a `fighter`.
sigma999 03-28-07, 11:01 PM	I read Races of War last night, and must say it's one of the best D&D "books" I ever read, even if it's not WOTC, even if it's not even a book. The part about goblin culture made me grin :D And the armor section is incomplete but I love it so far. I hope more here take time to read it and bring new perspectives to discussions such as this.
Judging Eagle 03-28-07, 11:11 PM	Check out the Dungeonomicon and Tome of Fiends. Dung explains why dungeons exist. And presents a working monk, assasin base class and a Jester. Tome of Fiends makes giving PCs infinite gold or Wishes, not-broken. I'm also seriously positing an Awakened Badger Jester Berzerker-Magus as a PC (or... NPC) [NOTE: Berz-MAgus is a PrC to replace Rage-Mage and is of my own creation, so of course I'm biased on it; Jester's just a funny class, and actually a balanced one to take all the way to lvl 20]. I have no idea how I'll write up his history though. Oh snap! He's one of dozens, if not hundreds of Animals that the Elven Druids Awaken over their long years of existance. So he hung out in the Elf homelands and worked as a travelling comedian, eventually working as part of a show for petty nobles (let's be realistic here, only in stories does the protagnist actually perform before the King and Queen). Eventually he taps into his badgerly rage and progresses as a Berzerker-Magus. Which, while cool, is probably a dumb build since Jester 20 is more than good enough, since it gives Sneak attack dice. And SA can be used when said character gives people nips or paws at them. Also, don't read the supplements in one sitting. They melt your brain with information overload.
Jim Johnny 03-29-07, 04:34 AM	I am happy to hear that so many people share my idea that the LAs are in need of fixing. Now, to answer a few things. About Thri-Kreen i indeed forgot to add the HDs but that does not change anything because every HD is an extra +1 in LA. IN Forgotten realms (Shining South) Thri-Kreen are a +1 (++2 from HDs) monster. CR is not actually ECL for monsters. It is just a scale to calculate xp rewards and what is "challengeable". That is why a CR X monster is of equal power to 4 PCs. But you did a pretty good and thorough description there. !! -------------------------------- Giving additional hps sounds like the best idea. Instead of a fixed number (although the ehp idea is good or a +d4 per LA is also a good idea) the other option is to give an hp bonus that derives from the racial HD of the race or the CON bonus: like give the CON bonus times the LA, or half the racial HD (usually a d8) or if you go by class HD (half the HD minus one eigth the HD) The last one sounds like a joke. But i thought that if a Vampire gets hald a d12 per LA it will get around 24 bonus hit points (which is bad) but by the previous rule it will get 6-1,5=4,5 rounded down = 4 per LA (a good number) A wizard Drow will get 2-0.5=1 per LA (or you can give 2 to the poor guy) A fighter will get 5-1.25= 4 per LA A rogue will get 3 - 0.75= 3 per LA a Cleric 3 per LA as well Or an even grearter idea, a table: for d12 HD give +4 hp per LA modifier for d10 give for half the LA modifier +4 hp and for the other half +3 for d8 give +3 hp per LA modifier for d6 give +2 for half and +3 for the other half for d4 give +2 per LA It is a bit towards the smaller dices but i consider this to be fair because it is an alternative to the fixed number of hp per LA. So you do not want to overpower charaqcters with good dices (like a Vampire) but neither make fun of your Drow Wizard by giving him 1 hp per level to reach a maximum of (let's say) 7 hit points and send him out:)
Pyke_Moonshadow 03-29-07, 07:51 AM	I read Races of War last night, and must say it's one of the best D&D "books" I ever read, even if it's not WOTC, even if it's not even a book. The part about goblin culture made me grin :D And the armor section is incomplete but I love it so far. I hope more here take time to read it and bring new perspectives to discussions such as this. How do you not see that stuff as overpowered? Did they used to write for Mongoose? I still don't see any problem with LA either. I am going to pick 4 monster types (one being the succubus since she is so contended here) and run them through a published adventure tonight just to see how they play out.
Steely_Dan 03-29-07, 08:09 AM	I still don't see any problem with LA either. I am going to pick 4 monster types (one being the succubus since she is so contended here) and run them through a published adventure tonight just to see how they play out. They play out fine. I'm in a campaign with a Drow Psion, Half-Celestial Human Psychic Rogue, and a Succubus Aristocrat and it's working out marvellously. The other characters are a Human Spirit Shaman, Half-Orc Barbarian/Ranger and a Gold Dwarf Divine Bard/Fighter/Battlesmith/Deepwarden/Dwarf Paragon/Hammer of Moradin. The whole party is ECL 13.
MingT 03-29-07, 08:11 AM	OK so you clearly want to solve the whole LA crisis, which frankly, won't happen. LA puts your character behind in lots and lots of ways, you lose skill ranks, hit points, saves, DCs, spell levels, spells known, class abilities, etc... You can't really JUST give back a portion of the hit points and solve that problem. You need to do more. But ultimately there are two pretty much insurmountable problems that really require you to scrap the lot and rebuild monster characters from scratch. 1) Monster hit die and whatever you replace LA with might eventually produce characters that are equal in power to ECL 0 races. But not anything ressembling the versatility of those races. And for it to be a functional PC race it MUST be versatile, you have to be able to have a differentiated unique party of the same race and see it work, thats pretty vital. And the all troll party is pretty samey right now. 2) Monsters as presented in the MM are just not viable as a basis for PCs in any way. Steal the names, steal the looks, steal the general themes, but the second you try and use them as a mechanical skeleton for functional PCs by any means then things will break. Every time.
tetebetson 03-29-07, 08:31 AM	Medium Size 30' movement. Humanoid Type (Elf subtype) Darkvision 120' +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution Daylight Sensitivity: While in brightly lit surroundings (such as a daylight spell), a Drow suffers a -2 penalty to attack rolls and precision-based skill checks. Drow with a Charisma of at least 10 may cast deeper darkness (duration 4 hours), and fairie fire as spell-like abilities with a caster level equal to their character level once per day each. +2 bonus to saving throws against spells and spell-like abilities. +2 bonus to Spot, and Listen checks. Drow never sleep and are immune to sleep effects. Drow must still perform their 4 hour daily trance to stay coherent and rested. Drow live an exceedingly interesting life and every Drow has proficiency with the rapier and an exotic ranged weapon of their choice. Favored Classes: Cleric and Wizard Automatic Languages: Elvish Bonus Languages: Abyssal, Beholder, Common, Draconic, Drow Sign Language, Dwarvish, Gnome, Kuo-Toa, Terran, Undercommon. i think this is a great idea my fave combinatin is dark elf /monk but always get narked off whn you get to around leval 10/12cos i fell you fall behind im gonig to put this to the rest of my group and see what they think
Steely_Dan 03-29-07, 08:35 AM	2) Monsters as presented in the MM are just not viable as a basis for PCs in any way. Steal the names, steal the looks, steal the general themes, but the second you try and use them as a mechanical skeleton for functional PCs by any means then things will break. Every time. Once again – your personal opinion. For some us, our experiences with LA's/monster PC's have been just dandy. …I really wish people would stop stating their opinions as fact.
Jim Johnny 03-29-07, 08:43 AM	But this thread did not start in first place to solve the Monsters as characters thing. It was made in order to give ideas about the problems faced by characters with LA races Genasis, Tieflings, Drows, svirfneblins and other races plus some templates were meant to be characters either playable or just NPCs. And there are problems with these races. Some have high LAs like the Drow (already overanalyzed by many people in this thread) others have nice LAs. But all have a lack in hps, that is obvious in small ECLs were hps aren't much for normal races as well. Of course they lack in skills (in feats, i won't say they do because some races have bonus feats), they also lack in spellcaster levels etc etc but these are the price of being more powerful than the other races. And after paying off the LA everything becomes normal. In small levels it is not actually a problem because they have the bonuses like spell-like abilities, saves, armor class bonus, to make up their fewer skills, BAB, Savings, feats etc Nut the HP is really a problem. In 1st level and for one or two levels thereafter the lack of HP is a huge problem. And that is where a few bonus hps really make things balanced. Later on, these few hps won't be really an extreme bonus. And that is what this thread was about. More powerful monsters as characters like Trolls, Dragons Vampires etc etc probably need a lot more thought and can;t be solved just by giving a few HPs (or perhaps they can). But at least it is something. If the DM wants to run such a campaign then let him make the choices when creating thew characters for a balanced party. I Hope I was understood
MingT 03-29-07, 10:08 AM	Its pretty much observable fact that many, if not most, MM monsters are unplayable. You go giving out zany glass cannon, jack in the box powers to these one off NPCs and that sorta almost kinda is OK. But the LA system itself is FOUNDED on the recognition that that just doesn't work for PCs. On the other LA thread someone is moaning on how any alternate to the LA system means full twenty level ogre mage progressions and how thats bad for the game. And yeah, at some point just getting free powers from the MM for your character is CRAZY. Every polymorph thread, article, FAQ and revision ever produced for 3rd edition is proof of that. That is absolute established fact, not opinion. Recognise it when you see it next time. Now the current solution to prevent you from just getting free power from the MM, without polymorph, is to let you have the stupid power then make you pay in really massive stupid and crippling ways. And that is utterly fundamentally flawed. Characters STILL have potential one off game breaking powers, though often too late for the powers to be even usable, while at the same time suddenly flying into the territory of being game breakingly weak in other, if not all other areas. Just getting a medusa gaze attack or storm giant stats for free from level 1 isn't exactly highly doable. Burning every other part of a viable character for its entire life span just to get something dumb like a medusa gaze is even less doable, the dumb storm giant attributes or whatever are STILL there and now the character is also on fire. So maybe if you wan't to make a medusa or giant playable you shouldn't try and write it up from the MM.
runestar 03-29-07, 10:20 AM	MingT seems to have missed an earlier observation made by me in another thread directed at him, so I will regurgitate what I had said.:) MingT, you continue standing by your original opinion despite people having actually played out those SS progressions for themselves. Those very same monstrous races which you claim to be so obviously broken using your impressive powers of observation. However, they have found out for themselves that certain races, such as the ghaele(yes, the same LA+10 race which you decried so vehemently) are actually very strong choices. I am not necessarily insinuating that you are incorrect. However, how do you justify and account for the existence of these people who somehow inexplicably enough claim to have had contradictory experiences? Would their findings not constitute empirical evidence that said races are far from being underpowered and unplayable? Surely unplayable must mean "unplayable" for everyone, not just a select few, and broken for the rest.:confused: This is just a query I would like clarified. Personal game experience cannot lie. So unless you are somehow insinuating that it is those people who are lying...
Jim Johnny 03-29-07, 11:21 AM	MingT seems to have missed an earlier observation made by me in another thread directed at him, so I will regurgitate what I had said.:) MingT, you continue standing by your original opinion despite people having actually played out those SS progressions for themselves. Those very same monstrous races which you claim to be so obviously broken using your impressive powers of observation. However, they have found out for themselves that certain races, such as the ghaele(yes, the same LA+10 race which you decried so vehemently) are actually very strong choices. I am not necessarily insinuating that you are incorrect. However, how do you justify and account for the existence of these people who somehow inexplicably enough claim to have had contradictory experiences? Would their findings not constitute empirical evidence that said races are far from being underpowered and unplayable? Surely unplayable must mean "unplayable" for everyone, not just a select few, and broken for the rest.:confused: This is just a query I would like clarified. Personal game experience cannot lie. So unless you are somehow insinuating that it is those people who are lying... I think MingT claims that playing MM characters is unbalanced and crazy and overpowered because of people gaining extraordinary abilities like the medusa gaze you said. Not underpowered. He is partially right. Having a party of a Dragon, a frost giant, a Solar and a hell knows what else really isn't DnD anymore (at least not what those guys back in 1st edition had in mind). Nevertheless MingT is wrong when saying that LA was not made for creating characters. It was actually made for that reason. For races like Drows, planetouched etc. Later on people cried that they wanted to play as monsters so Wizards in 3.5 made some expansions towards that field. The result was problematic because it was made in a clumsy way. There are also problems in the LA (1 or 2) races like the Drow. And that is where i suggested after hearing so many ideas the bonus hit point procedure. But even for the monster as characters idea, thre might be a Dm somewhere who has in mind the idea of a campaign in which a player will be a Vampire (which i believe is a playable character in a dark gloomy adventure) and the rest Drows and deep Gnomes. And the LA needs to be reasonable and correct so as not to ruin that campaign. So we should discuss about it and hear other opinions.
Kursk 03-29-07, 11:28 AM	But this thread did not start in first place to solve the Monsters as characters thing. It was made in order to give ideas about the problems faced by characters with LA races Genasis, Tieflings, Drows, svirfneblins and other races plus some templates were meant to be characters either playable or just NPCs. "Monster" doesn't mean only non-humanoid. It is a term meaning something PCs fight and kill. "Races" with LA's weren't generally designed to be played as PCs. NPC doesn't mean intended as PC. There is a "problem" as the trend towards playing "monsters" as PCs breaks the underlying premise upon which D&D the game was designed, thus the "problem". I don't see a problem. "Monsters" aren't as flexible as non-monsters and thus don't make good adventurers. I let my players decide but they have to live with their choices.
feraltibbit 03-29-07, 11:36 AM	Correction, my friend. Thri-Kreens have higher and specific LAs: Non-Psionic (ECL3), Psionic (ECL4) Check MM2 and Exp Psi Handbook.
Jim Johnny 03-29-07, 11:40 AM	I do not see your point Krusk. About the monster thing. Ok. I do not want to open a debate about a word. You are right about the playing monster thing. Nevertheless Drows, planetouched and all these guys are among the Forgotten Realms basic races, from which you could choose one. And that is where the LA thing was first mentioned. So it was actually made for the PCs. Later on, in 3.5 every MM had a reference with an LA for every monster. You speak about monsters and non-monsters. But at the beginning you said that monsters is everything faced by the PCs. So if everything is a monster then, non-monsters are olny the PCs. :confused: And you say that the PCs are more flexible than everything else... well..... The thing that the LA needs fixing, at least in minor details is obvious. Forget about monsters with huge LAs. Our focus was races with slight more power than humans and Elves. These races are usually played as characters. And i just ended up that a few hps solve the problem. If you want to discuss about playing a one quarter fined-one quarter dragon - vampiric - troll then go open another thread. As i said, this is thread to discuss some minor additions to the LA in order to have a more balanced game experience. (it is like the LA removal option in page 190 in Player's guide to Faerun. It is just an alternative to help the game flow) That's All
Kursk 03-29-07, 11:48 AM	I do not see your point Krusk. About the monster thing. Ok. I do not want to open a debate about a word. You are right about the playing monster thing. Nevertheless Drows, planetouched and all these guys are among the Forgotten Realms basic races, from which you could choose one. I'll explain. Drows, etc, etc. may have been thrown into a published setting. That is irrelevant. They are still "monsters" as far as the D&D game design is considered. A rose by any other name situation. 1st Ed (which is still the basis for the underlying D&D design concept) stated very well what was meant by "monsterdom". In order to "fix" the situation you have to redesign the whole game from the ground up. Maybe that'll be 4.0
Jim Johnny 03-29-07, 12:30 PM	we 'll see. I get your point. But also i hope you get mine. That LA was designerd together with the addition of suck races (in Forg. Realms) to make things balanced
Kursk 03-29-07, 12:39 PM	we 'll see. I get your point. But also i hope you get mine. That LA was designerd together with the addition of suck races (in Forg. Realms) to make things balanced I totally understand. It just will never be a good system overall unless D&D is redesigned. I can weld a camper top to my coupe but it will not work well no matter how I jury rig it. I really need a totally different chassis to accommodate that additional feature.
Kresalak 03-29-07, 12:58 PM	Yes, monster characters are totally unusable and require a complete redisign. But that doesn't mean you can't try to patch the system.
Kursk 03-29-07, 01:00 PM	Yes, monster characters are totally unusable and require a complete redisign. But that doesn't mean you can't try to patch the system. Yep, just make sure you watch out for high winds! ;)
Jim Johnny 03-29-07, 01:01 PM	I totally agree. It has to be redesigned. That is why updates come out, or even new edition. Nevertheless, we all, can suggest ideas to improve the given situation. Such ideas are discussed in this thread. And i believe the bonus hp system makes the low LA races balanced somehow.
Kursk 03-29-07, 01:19 PM	I totally agree. It has to be redesigned. That is why updates come out, or even new edition. Nevertheless, we all, can suggest ideas to improve the given situation. Such ideas are discussed in this thread. And i believe the bonus hp system makes the low LA races balanced somehow. Possibly. Needs to be play tested.
Steely_Dan 03-29-07, 01:20 PM	Yes, monster characters are totally unusable and require a complete redisign. Once again- opinion, and an incorrect one in my opinion. …But wouldn't this world be boring if we all agreed on everything?
Judging Eagle 03-29-07, 05:07 PM	Yes, that's interesting. However we can also look at how the CR system, says that a PC Troll is not CR 11; while the lvl 11 Deep Dwarf Fighter is CR 11. Okay, that's good, both are PC races and the Troll has an LA to adjust his high stats and abilities (which don't take into account his HD). The problem is that the LA system breaks down when monsterous NPCs aren't built on the ECL system and are built on the CR system. The CR 11 Troll Cleric has 6 Troll HD, 5 levels of Cleric and 5 Levels of Spellcasting PrCs or 21 hit dice. Alternatively, the CR 11 Troll Barbarian has 6 Troll HD and 5 Levels of Barbarian for 11 HD. The ECL 11 PC Troll has... 1 class level and 7 Hit Dice. If you can really explain how the ECL 11 Troll PC on his own, is able to fight a single Troll NPC of a CR equal to his ECL; I'd love to see it. It should be noted that encounters with monsters that are your CR and are equal to your party are Difficult; and 15% of your encounters from 1-20 should be this level of difficulty (DMG p. 49). Even with 1/3 the Gold that the PC has, the NPC has either nearly double the HD, that are in a real class to as much are triple the HD in a real class that can have 25% more gold for items if it's a spellcaster. Plus, the NPCs will get their Monster Treasure as wealth (at least it seems that way). In any case, I really feel sorry for the ECL 11 Troll Fighter 1. Hopefully he'll make a Deep Dwarf next time and benefit from the +3 to all saves (save versus mechanical traps), 90' darkvision and all the other features that Dwarves get. The Deep Dwarf; it should be noted has LA +0, just like the Dwarf; when it really should be a +1 LA if compared mechanically to something like the Drow or Hobgoblin.
Jim Johnny 03-29-07, 05:45 PM	I believe we have said what it is to be said on the matter. The reason the PC troll will have trouble defeating the NPC one is the LA. As we said LAs were not meant to be used for so powerful races. This was a later addition The lack of hit points for the PC troll will make the battle uneven. On the other hand, if you add in the gold pieces of both creatures, the better stats the PC troll will have and the fact that we are talking about a difficult encounter (difficult means a distinct possibility of defeat) then things are not so bad for the PC troll. Do not forget that it has a few racial HDs, other races do not even have that. Although i have come to believe that the racial HDs heart the character as they are weaker compared to class HDs and increase the LA, one point per HD. Am i not correct? Nevertheless, the difference is 5 HDs between the PC and the NPC. I think it is normal if we take into consideration the above. Alternatively, give some bonus hit points to the PC, as we suggested earlier, play test it and if the results are what should be for a difficult encounter then it is ok! We must also think that an encounter of normal moderate difficulty will have the CR 11 NPC troll fighting 4 PC ECL 11 trolls. In this case the PCs will have the last word i believe. (In the case of the 4 Vampires against the NPC one because of the even worst lack of Hps things are more difficult) It is mainly a matter of HPs, all the rest (lack of skills etcetera, are paid off somehow by the bonus powers and abilities. But everything comes back to the fact that LA needs redesign to fit powerful races as well. Perhaps ECL equivalence to CR needs redesign too. If someone feels that is true, he can send a mail to Wizards asking for an errata on the subject. PS: I think you made a small mistake in the ECL. It is 1 (class level) + 5 (LA) + 6 (racial HDs) = 12
Judging Eagle 03-29-07, 09:26 PM	Well, it doesn't really matter if you have the Class Level or not. You could very well have him as LA +5 HD + 6 = ECL 11, then take class levels when you get enough XP for level 12. The NPC Trolls will always have 5 or 10 HD more than the PC trolls. The NPC Trolls will also cast spells as if they were level 10 in a CR 11 creature. In any case, the best solution that I've seen and that I've tried is to have players play characters of the same CR, not the same ECL. So, the Troll is a CR 5 Creature with 6 HD... Perfect, with character wealth his CR will go up by one, so he's a Troll with 6 levels (HD) in the Troll Racial Class. He's got all the stock Troll stuff, but he also has to be compared to his companions: 1. The Deep Halfling rogue 6 2. The Human Cleric 5/Divine caster PrC 1 3. The Grey Elf Wizard 5/Caster PrC 1 All of which are definately CR 6 characters. Trollie gets to play tank; with his Regeneration 5, 63 HP and three natural attacks he can keep enemies away from his buddies. In a larger party, with a Deep Dwarf Barbarian 4/Fighter 2, a Deep Dwarf Cleric and a Half-Elf Wizard 5/Caster PrC 1; the Troll will be working with the Raging Dwarf and the Rogue to take down enemies or protect the casters while the 4 casters buff, battlefield control and kill enemies. Really, level 6 game play is where the Troll should start, level 11 leaves him looking useless, which he will be.
runestar 03-30-07, 12:45 AM	I think I can safely say that a troll would be overpowering in a lv6 party...
MingT 03-30-07, 02:31 AM	I think I can safely say that a troll would be overpowering in a lv6 party... Compared to what? The nearly identical CR 5 trolls the party is now supposed to consider an "easy" encounter?
Jim Johnny 03-30-07, 05:04 AM	I also think it will be overpowered. It will be like the players in mattters of hit points etc. but you forget about his bonuses. Regeneration of 5 per round is a great bonus. It is like erasing an attack that got him per round (almost). Of course i also agree that keeping the LA of +11 (5 and 6) is also like sending the troll to the gallows. What if you gave him a few extra hp the way we mentioned earlier. Or remove the racial HDs and start him as LA+5 Or start him as an LA-1 (one minus what is said in the MM) If the Troll starts out with the others at level 6. The Troll if you think about the LA. It is actually more powerful. The MM suggests a +11 and you use a +6 following only the HDs and not the powerful abilities he gains. He should pay the price for them as well. To all of you: You see that more and more people find that their game is balanced if the LA characters have similar HP to the others. JEagle kept the LA of the racial HDs in order to have a balanced and good game (his personal view which we respect) So i come more and more to believe that, despite the fact LA PCs need to pay the price for their powers, and to pay in platinum actually. They should not stay back in matters of HP. It is obvious why have the Drow at 8 HP and the rest at 30? Has he a health problem? Ok , I agree he is stronger. But at the same time he has fewer skills, BAB, saves, he is behind the others in the class levels and less stronger as a spellcaster. Why have less HP as well? I believe we have nailed the problem. Give him a few extra HPs and playtest it. It is correct to say that the benefits from the powerful race he has chosen have penalties in all the above things. He is less experienced in his class choice compared to the rest of the party and that is because he is a more powerful race, in order to fit well. A 3rd level Drow will be stronger than the average party member. There is one solution... playtest it and come and tell us. Others might judge that a few skills are also a must. I do not know.
runestar 03-30-07, 07:36 AM	Compared to what? The nearly identical CR 5 trolls the party is now supposed to consider an "easy" encounter? Compared to just about everything a PC of 5th-6th lv can normally access. The benefits of a troll alone(regeneration, phenomenal physical stats, scent, NA) far outstrips what a 6th lv fighter can access/replicate using class features and eq. Plus, normal npcs are not designed to overcome regeneration, so that is another plus for a troll.
MingT 03-30-07, 07:57 AM	Compared to just about everything a PC of 5th-6th lv can normally access. The benefits of a troll alone(regeneration, phenomenal physical stats, scent, NA) far outstrips what a 6th lv fighter can access/replicate using class features and eq. Plus, normal npcs are not designed to overcome regeneration, so that is another plus for a troll. Aside from being blatantly incorrect and glossing over the significant weaknesses of massive stat penalties and 6 enforced lamo giant "class" levels the most utterly glaring fiction there is that NPCs are not equipped to deal with regeneration. Almost EVERYONE is equiped to deal with regeneration, because almost everyone doesn't care! Regeneration is a second rate defensive ability. If you remove opponents by dealing hit point damage its less powerful than DR and if you remove them without using hit point damage (like all the kool kids do) then you entirely ignore it. If you don't know that sort of basic stuff, well no wonder you hate and fear troll PCs.
Pyke_Moonshadow 03-30-07, 08:19 AM	Aside from being blatantly incorrect and glossing over the significant weaknesses of massive stat penalties and 6 enforced lamo giant "class" levels the most utterly glaring fiction there is that NPCs are not equipped to deal with regeneration. Almost EVERYONE is equiped to deal with regeneration, because almost everyone doesn't care! Regeneration is a second rate defensive ability. If you remove opponents by dealing hit point damage its less powerful than DR and if you remove them without using hit point damage (like all the kool kids do) then you entirely ignore it. If you don't know that sort of basic stuff, well no wonder you hate and fear troll PCs. Ah, I see, so we are looking at the troll PC in a vacuum eh? So the other party members aren't there I see. The NPCs all have time to work around the Trolls fair defensive abilities? I am running a troll in a 4 monster pc party by the normal LA rules and he is doing well. He is even better off than many on his Will save thanks to steadfast determination and his huge con bonus so save or dies are less of a worry for him.
runestar 03-30-07, 08:24 AM	Aside from being blatantly incorrect and glossing over the significant weaknesses of massive stat penalties and 6 enforced lamo giant "class" levels the most utterly glaring fiction there is that NPCs are not equipped to deal with regeneration. I can argue that -4int and cha is moot to a fighter. +14str, +4dex and +14 con far surpasses what any fighter can manage at 6th lv, and more than makes up for any perceived shortcomings of 6 giant HD(their base saves will be the same as any fighter). NA makes up for the inability to use fullplate effectively. What sort of weaknesses are you exactly talking about? It would have helped if you had bothered to be more specific, rather than simply brushing me off with such a general and non-committal reply.:confused: Almost EVERYONE is equiped to deal with regeneration, because almost everyone doesn't care! Yes, and I suppose they are not going to care when they realize that in addition to being immune to lethal damage, my troll PC is also immune to non-lethal damage(I can't cite any sources offhand as they escape my memory at the moment, but I know I have definitely see a few). Someone help me out here?:P Plus, having regeneration also means that the troll is immune to a large variety of conventional traps designed to kill or incapacitate a typical PC. Falling off a cliff, run over by a boulder, hit with a spiked trap etc...Normal traps which might otherwise mean certain death to a PC are of little avail to a troll.:)
starfire311 03-30-07, 08:56 AM	I recently came across the rules for Associated and Disassociated class levels for monsters in regards to CR. The information can be found here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#addingClassLevels) . Basically, WotC states that a monster that advances in a class that does not play to it's strengths only advances it's CR by 1/2 for every level of a class. So a Minotaur that takes levels in rogue (or even ranger according to these guidelines) only increases their CR by .5 for every level they take. A minotaur rogue 8 would be a CR 8 but would be an ECL of 16. That seems skewed to me. The LA system is designed with the idea that players will make teh best decision possible when creating their character, no one thinks that a Gnome Wiz 10/Barb 10 is a great build and is probably much weaker than most level 20 characters, but you do not get a reduction in LA to make up for you playing a gimped character. Although that would be interesting, given the above Gnome wiz 10/barb 10 build if you reduced LA by 1 for every 2 non-associated levels the character would be ECL 15. Very interesting, especially since if I was DMing this as an NPC, I would be tempted to call it CR 15.
runestar 03-30-07, 09:07 AM	I can see some potential abuse for the whole non-associated class rule system though(it can be quite broken for npcs as is) though. I am not sure if allowing it for PCs is that great an idea. A gnoll or lizardfolk with 2 lvs in cleric is a cr2 challenge, same as a human cleric 2, but superior in just every aspect. Lets not even go into an elder earth elemental, where one with 24 lvs of cleric is a cr24 challenge...:P It was probably meant as a guideline, nothing more.
Jim Johnny 03-30-07, 02:47 PM	1)You should not take systems made for NPC and monsters and apply them to PCs. 2) I do not see any point in discussing this thing further. We have reached 100 posts. This thing can go on forever.
starfire311 03-31-07, 10:02 AM	1)You should not take systems made for NPC and monsters and apply them to PCs. this is exactly what LA does, takes a system made for NPCs(monsters in particular) and allows PCs to use it. Sometimes it does a bad job, sometimes it is passable, but I keep thinking their must be a better way.
sigma999 03-31-07, 05:19 PM	I believe that removing racial hit die is the best course of action for most monster races. As JJ mentioned, the troll is a good example of one to benefit. LA is a broken fix for an old problem that started when some designers, years ago, chose to seperate NPC from PC, which was a big mistake. Yet, some parts of 2nd Ed. made a little progress towards allowing monster PCs but somehow we slid backwards in looking for better ways to balance the power between 'normal races' and 'monster'. It's important and I expect only improvements to come from these threads. Maybe we'll find a good fix within a month, but that's pushing it. So in response: #1: Any system regarding characters should be applied to PC and NPC equally, and as an effect any NPC may become a PCor PC into NPC with minimal to no difficulty. Within the game of D&D there should be no arbitrary distinction between "monster to be killed" (aka Little Bundles of Experience Points) and "the hero" other than the pilot behind the wheel. #2: And this topic is being discussed until solutions, and GOOD solutions at that, are found and tested, so no use in saying "this discussion is over" or any pessimism like that.
Judging Eagle 03-31-07, 07:47 PM	How do you not see that stuff as overpowered? Did they used to write for Mongoose? I still don't see any problem with LA either. I am going to pick 4 monster types (one being the succubus since she is so contended here) and run them through a published adventure tonight just to see how they play out. Remember to run the same adventure with 4 LA +0 PCs with optimized builds. Compare the two.
Judging Eagle 03-31-07, 08:48 PM	I can argue that -4int and cha is moot to a fighter. +14str, +4dex and +14 con far surpasses what any fighter can manage at 6th lv, and more than makes up for any perceived shortcomings of 6 giant HD(their base saves will be the same as any fighter). NA makes up for the inability to use fullplate effectively. What sort of weaknesses are you exactly talking about? It would have helped if you had bothered to be more specific, rather than simply brushing me off with such a general and non-committal reply.:confused: Yes, and I suppose they are not going to care when they realize that in addition to being immune to lethal damage, my troll PC is also immune to non-lethal damage(I can't cite any sources offhand as they escape my memory at the moment, but I know I have definitely see a few). Someone help me out here?:P Plus, having regeneration also means that the troll is immune to a large variety of conventional traps designed to kill or incapacitate a typical PC. Falling off a cliff, run over by a boulder, hit with a spiked trap etc...Normal traps which might otherwise mean certain death to a PC are of little avail to a troll.:) He's talking about PCs or creatures with Save or Dies. Like a Wizard, or almost any Outsider. Or something that's CR 11 that can cast Blasphemy and just kill the ECL 11 Troll PC; b/c it didn't have 11 hit dice. Like the Hezrou Demon. 15% of all lvl 11 encounters could serously be four Hezrou Demons versus 4 PCs. Heck, he might have to face 6 normal Trolls on his own (b/c there are 24 Trolls that are attacking the 4 man lvl 11 party). And you bloody well know that the ECL 11 Troll can't kill 6 Trolls which are the same CR as him -1. A level 11 PC should be able to beat this easy encounter however. Seriously, when you can write up an LA system that allows a Troll to fight a Hezrou demon at level 11 and have a 50/50 chance of winning, that would be good. As it stands, it will lose, but not b/c it's a melee class. It will lose b/c it has enough HD less than anyone else it's level that Blasphemy; the spell that's meant to disable or kill low level cohorts; will autokill the Troll PC with no save. And that's wrong.
runestar 03-31-07, 09:36 PM	And you bloody well know that the ECL 11 Troll can't kill 6 Trolls which are the same CR as him -1. A level 11 PC should be able to beat this easy encounter however. And you are sure that a 11th lv fighter or bab can take on 6 trolls at the same time? :confused: I concur that certain situations may disadvantage the troll more than conventional PCs. However, there are some scenarios where it may excel in. They would cancel each other out. If you face a hezrou and fear blasphemy, then simply have the cleric cast silence on you. You have the benefit of a party, turn to them for any help for whatever you deem necessary. They have no incentive to see you die. Plus, the troll can only get more powerful at higher lvs, when it has had the chance to take some class lvs(to truly maximize the benefits of a high con score). You have to think long term as well.:)
MingT 04-01-07, 01:08 AM	And you are sure that a 11th lv fighter or bab can take on 6 trolls at the same time? :confused: Maybe, certainly he has a better chance of it. But still, heck lets just balance a level ELEVEN character against what by that time is pretty much the weakest class in the game. That'll just rock. I concur that certain situations may disadvantage the troll more than conventional PCs. However, there are some scenarios where it may excel in. They would cancel each other out. What exactly does the troll excell at? He is a big fat bruser, but in that example he is trounced by an "easy" melee encounter. How sucky is that, melee specialist loses at easy melee encounter! If he can't do that what DOES he do, eat 1 hit die commoner orphans? Is that where he is really in his element? ECL 11 Wizards can do that without even casting spells. If you face a hezrou and fear blasphemy, then simply have the cleric cast silence on you. Sorry he can't, he is also an ECL 11 monster and hasn't been allowed to take any cleric levels yet, heck he can't even use a wand of silence yet, he will get back to you in several levels time with that whole silence thing. You have the benefit of a party, turn to them for any help for whatever you deem necessary. They have no incentive to see you die. They have a very big incentive. Because its a supposed to be a two way street, and you are certainly NOT sending back any silence spells, or any sort of resource at all back their way. They CAN'T turn to you for help and if they stop wasting resources propping you up and resurrecting you again and again maybe they might get a new character who pulls his own weight and contributes back to the party again. Plus, the troll can only get more powerful at higher lvs, when it has had the chance to take some class lvs(to truly maximize the benefits of a high con score). You have to think long term as well.:) So then you get to suck for 11 monster class levels (or alternately 11 levels of not existing at all). You suck at level 11, you suck for several more levels, and then, magically you don't suck at around maybe ECL 16 or 18 when no one cares any more? Two problems with that. 1) There was too much sucking, you know, over the long term 2) You are assuming that you ever really catch up from 5 to 11 missing class levels when the only additional advancment you gain is infact of LESS value (being lower class levels) than the same advancement gained by someone who didn't miss out on those 5-11 class levels, thats rather large of an assumption. In fact its blatantly ridiculous.
Jim Johnny 04-01-07, 04:05 AM	this is exactly what LA does, takes a system made for NPCs(monsters in particular) and allows PCs to use it. Sometimes it does a bad job, sometimes it is passable, but I keep thinking their must be a better way. I got bored of saying that the LA began as a way for the PCs to play a bit more powerful races like Drows and Genasis (having in mind the PCs). It was not for the NPCs. Later on, it was expanded to include MM monsters. I agree with Sigma in the PC and NPC thing. In my campaigns the NPCs share strong similarities with PCs. And if i judge they should have more wealth, I give them more wealth. Now about the 2nd thing. As I am the one starting this thread, I know exactly for what reason is was created - to throw in solutions and ideas about how LA characters could fit well in a party and not be the weak part of the team. Many ideas were heard and I think there is nothing else to be said. The last few posts discuss different things. Similar but different. It is ok by me but the thing tis thread was thoroughly discussed. Eagle gave a good example about how PCs with high LA are actually the weaker members in their party. Runestar is right. That in higher levels the Troll will catch up with the rest of the party. To conclude. For the last 30 posts noone has suggested an idea. Something that happened frequently in the first 50 posts. You all sit and post things like the Tropp PC sucks. and then : No he will be ok! Go ahead suggest things or just stop saying the same things again and again. This post is for those that agree that LA needs changing. The rest who feel it is fine, do not actually need to read any alternatives.
sigma999 04-01-07, 09:36 PM	What? Someone agrees with me!?! I can now rest in peace -_- .. April Fool's day. haha But I got your point there, there is a lot of repetition. I scan the other "LA" threads that have popped up this week because, frankly, it's a topic long overdue to be discussed this thoroughly. It's my element, so to speak, something I was yelled at in high school by my fellow gamers for trying to fix and yet with so many here on these forums with so many opinions I know now that I am not meant to "just shut up and play D&D!" Progress starts with innovation and this is it. As far as I've seen this week, the "Races of War" by Frank Trollman and K seems to be the most distanced from traditional TSR/WOTC inventions and mistakes, and just might be the spearhead of a major change in this area.
MingT 04-01-07, 11:52 PM	As far as I've seen this week, the "Races of War" by Frank Trollman and K seems to be the most distanced from traditional TSR/WOTC inventions and mistakes, and just might be the spearhead of a major change in this area. Actually the Tome of Fiends stuff, also by Frank and K is more distanced and even better. Certainly a better way of playing a succubus, or any other sort of fiend. But only for fiends. So far. Still not perfect but if all those wasted monster classes in Savage Species and since had material like in the Tome of Fiends, well, lets say I for one would have a very different attitude towards 3.5 and WOTC. Instead my current attitude is that for a start they owe me and a lot of people their money back on that book.
Kresalak 04-02-07, 12:48 AM	Actually the Tome of Fiends stuff, also by Frank and K is more distanced and even better. Certainly a better way of playing a succubus, or any other sort of fiend. But only for fiends. So far. Still not perfect but if all those wasted monster classes in Savage Species and since had material like in the Tome of Fiends, well, lets say I for one would have a very different attitude towards 3.5 and WOTC. Instead my current attitude is that for a start they owe me and a lot of people their money back on that book. I think Tome of Trees will have fey, and Tome of Tiamat might have dragons. I'm not sure on any of this, though.
magmer2 04-02-07, 01:34 AM	Remember to run the same adventure with 4 LA +0 PCs with optimized builds. Compare the two. And of similar builds. So Succubus~beguiler or something
sigma999 04-02-07, 09:36 PM	Actually the Tome of Fiends stuff, also by Frank and K is more distanced and even better. Certainly a better way of playing a succubus, or any other sort of fiend. But only for fiends. So far. Still not perfect but if all those wasted monster classes in Savage Species and since had material like in the Tome of Fiends, well, lets say I for one would have a very different attitude towards 3.5 and WOTC. Instead my current attitude is that for a start they owe me and a lot of people their money back on that book. Interesting, and I agree confidence is down all over the place from the recent series of crap-splats WOTC has put out lately. I haven't bought a book since Tome and Blood, and even that disappointed me. But thanks, I'll check out the other F&K publication now. Hope they have races for half-devil/half-fey, or something similar >_<
Kresalak 04-02-07, 09:39 PM	Interesting, and I agree confidence is down all over the place from the recent series of crap-splats WOTC has put out lately. I haven't bought a book since Tome and Blood, and even that disappointed me. But thanks, I'll check out the other F&K publication now. Hope they have races for half-devil/half-fey, or something similar >_< Frank and K's stuff is free, so all it would take is some time. The feytouched are slated for Tome of Trees, and half fiends are a reworked Tiefling. For extra fiendishness you can take levels of True Fiend. EDIT: I think they might have previewed the feytouched somewhere, but I can't recall where.
Judging Eagle 04-04-07, 11:26 AM	..
Judging Eagle 04-04-07, 11:35 AM	links in my Sig btw. Also Jim Johnny, check out Races of War, press Ctrl+F (the find command in most web browsers) and look for Powerful Races. It has rules on using an Ogre, Bugbear, Drow, Aasimar, Teifling and even a Fire and Frost giant into playable races. All have racial HD, so there's only certain levels you can use certain things, but whatever. You don't expect to have a fire giant in a group of people lower than lvl 10 anyway. The Tome of Necromancy has rules for playing a very, very balanced Vampire (it's worth letting players have it with the +0 LA), which can take levels in Vampire Paragon to gain associated Vampire abilities. Make sure that you read the [Dark minded] and [Unliving] additional subtypes if you use such a vampire. Since they remove a ton of commonly associated immunities that don't make sense in a vampire from say, literature. And you are sure that a 11th lv fighter or bab can take on 6 trolls at the same time? :confused: Actually, yeah, I have. I wrote up a lvl 12 straight fighter that could easily take on most non-casting enemies (and even then, some of the casters out there). At lvl 11 all that he'd lose is Robilar's Gambit, which I grabbed only b/c someone might get within 10 feet of him after passing the outer 30 feet. It's pretty much an AoO abuse build, 9 AoOs and every feat that allows you to make an AoO on people doing things that don't normally provoke an AoO (5 foot step, ready an action, move into your threatened squares). Then keeps the affected creature 'in place' by giving up damage in order to force the target to make a reflex save of DC (10+ Damage that would have been done) and if they fail they lose the rest of their movement [this is handy versus most fliers and allows the build to solo 'ambush' dragons as it makes them fall out of the sky] The Troll can't really do anything like that at all. I concur that certain situations may disadvantage the troll more than conventional PCs. However, there are some scenarios where it may excel in. They would cancel each other out. If you face a hezrou and fear blasphemy, then simply have the cleric cast silence on you. You have the benefit of a party, turn to them for any help for whatever you deem necessary. They have no incentive to see you die. However you're wasting your parties time and either the players or their characters mgith not know to do this until after the troll got killed. Again. Plus, the troll can only get more powerful at higher lvs, when it has had the chance to take some class lvs(to truly maximize the benefits of a high con score). You have to think long term as well.:) Exept that's a bad analogy and a bad way of creating a character class or playing a creature. This isn't a game of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest or Fallout, where you can paly for an hour or so in your off time. This is a game where you need several people to make time in their potentially busy schedules in order to play a game that they will interrupt with jokes, social commentary, political arguments and anyhting else that isn't the game. So, saying that some build "X" will see say... +16 BaB or 9th lvl spells at levels.... 18 or 19 is a fallacious statement. That character will never see those break points, b/c the game won't often last that long. A game may last a school year, or two or a few months or whatever, before it has to get shelved or re-scheduled. In such a case, a character and their player has to see something useful, every level. If not, then they're wasting their playing time using a ****** character class who can only use a +1 light crossbow and deal 1d8+1 points of damage per round; at level 6. Saying that the Troll will get better at higher levels is a half-truth at best and a lie at worst. Since he may not even see that level of gameplay, where he becomes any good, at all.
Jim Johnny 04-04-07, 02:47 PM	Thanks JEagle. I am very curious to see this Races of War book and the suggestions it has about playing a few LA races. Thanks for the ctrl+F thing too, I didn't know that :) I will also check the Frank and K's stuff. Most of these books though, have suggestions in playing LA races as PCs without having the unbalanced problems that come from using the typical LA system but they are specialised in specific types of monsters as you said (tome of trees - feys, tome of necromancy - vamps etc) and have the space to analyse each race and make it PC-playable. Wizards couldn't include such thing in MM because it would be 500 pages thick. Of course i am not trying to redeem them. But i believe that a simple system of making LA races playable for PCs (and not creating and troll and be forced to think that ...mmm ok it will get better in higher levels... for the reasons JEagle explained) can be created and is not impossible. Or is it? Because every monster has different abilities and powers that need to be checked exclusively for that Monster. Of course for low LA races it is easy to make a system that will work well for all. And the suggestions in this thread are very good to have balanced +1 or +2 LA PC characters.
sigma999 04-04-07, 03:56 PM	This isn't a game of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest or Fallout, where you can paly for an hour or so in your off time. This is a game where you need several people to make time in their potentially busy schedules in order to play a game that they will interrupt with jokes, social commentary, political arguments and anyhting else that isn't the game. So, saying that some build "X" will see say... +16 BaB or 9th lvl spells at levels.... 18 or 19 is a fallacious statement. That character will never see those break points, b/c the game won't often last that long. A game may last a school year, or two or a few months or whatever, before it has to get shelved or re-scheduled. In such a case, a character and their player has to see something useful, every level. If not, then they're wasting their playing time using a ****** character class who can only use a +1 light crossbow and deal 1d8+1 points of damage per round; at level 6. Saying that the Troll will get better at higher levels is a half-truth at best and a lie at worst. Since he may not even see that level of gameplay, where he becomes any good, at all. So true! I had one campaign last until levels 12-16 (the party range, mine L15) and then it ended spectacularly. But sadly, the next 20 or so campaigns with some or most of the same guys rarely lasted longer than a few weeks to months. Then, after high school and a new assortment of gamers, no campaign has lasted more than a month or two except for one, which made it to level 10-12 before crapping out but the "rotating DM" plan was probably the only thing keeping it going as long as it did (about 2 years, off n on through other campaigns). Now, yeesh... hardly 3 sessions before it falls apart, people leave, my bro gets bored, college interferes again, or work schedules go haywire. It sucks and I'm starved for PnP RPG but I get by. But true, true, true, that those early levels are so vital when you simply must make do with what you get for every level between 1-6, which is about all I get now. Fighters are a shining exemplar of dead levels and "ability deficiency" but there are many more, and I avoid them at all cost. Barbarian is a fun alternative, and now Sword Sage. And yet, my favorites are still the monster races. Start out exotic, run along a bit with unusual powers and traits, and end with a bang! Sickening that so many simply suck. I played a prototype half-troll years ago in AD&D but would never play a full troll or half-troll now with such horrible "balance" between monster and PC race. Well I don't have a point with this but I just wanted to share the story. And now I'm done.
MingT 04-04-07, 07:26 PM	Two small points. Of course for low LA races it is easy to make a system that will work well for all. And the suggestions in this thread are very good to have balanced +1 or +2 LA PC characters. Just because +1 or +2 LA zero hit die races suck far less obviously, doesn't mean they don't suck just a bit, which is more than they need to. If its that damn close just crimp a few abilities or not and just fudge the LA till they come out at LA 0 because frankly anything else is just kidding ourselves for no real benefit to the game. I cannot imagine any ability or set there of currently considered to be worth LA +1 or +2 that you would be better off either just giving out for free or cutting/nerfing rather than bothering with. I mean BLUES are LA +1, just give that junk out for free, Drow are LA +2, either givem out for free or knock something like their mediocre SR off and give them out for free. Really, save all your players the time and annoyance of fiddling about with lame little LA issues. Wizards couldn't include such thing in MM because it would be 500 pages thick. OK. So now imagine wizards produced an additional 220+ pages of material dedicated to monsters as PCs and wrote stuff on the back like... This supplement for the D&D game provides everything you need to play a monster as a character They did that, they called it savage species it was a waste of my time and money and the blurb on the back has since been revealed as an outright lie. Now had they used that space they'd be running into the territory of 500+ pages of monster related material you are suggesting they need to make monster characters work. Think about the minor tragedy for table top gaming that happened there for a minute or two.
Zumarai 04-05-07, 07:04 AM	Wow, I can't even see this horse anymore…
Pyke_Moonshadow 04-05-07, 08:41 AM	Wow, I can't even see this horse anymore… :rofl:
Jim Johnny 04-05-07, 09:44 AM	Just because +1 or +2 LA zero hit die races suck far less obviously, doesn't mean they don't suck just a bit, which is more than they need to. If its that damn close just crimp a few abilities or not and just fudge the LA till they come out at LA 0 because frankly anything else is just kidding ourselves for no real benefit to the game. Really, save all your players the time and annoyance of fiddling about with lame little LA issues. True...True! Although the idea of giving them a few HP and anything that the DM finds appropriate and starting them from lvl 2 or 3 is nice too. But yours is easier and faster. They did that, they called it savage species it was a waste of my time and money and the blurb on the back has since been revealed as an outright lie. Now had they used that space they'd be running into the territory of 500+ pages of monster related material you are suggesting they need to make monster characters work. Think about the minor tragedy for table top gaming that happened there for a minute or two. Indeed. But it is neither the first, nor the last tragedy that happens. I alm also not saying that a 500+ pages supplement for powerful races (not half-stupidities, paragons bla bla bla... but real races) cannot be published. Its just that it needs a lot of work and its cost will have earnings far below what a book should be bringing in order to be published. We are talking about a company that belongs in H4S8R0... Which is more profitable; releasing planescape, dark sun and other difficult to play worlds in 3rd edition or make a new one more approachable to new players? Make a flawless, analytical system for playing powerful races as PCs or create an easy but flawed LA rule and go and release pre-painted DnD minies? Do not be surprised if in 4th ed. there will be no roleplaying at all, just a dice game for quick fun.
feraltibbit 04-05-07, 10:21 AM	Good point. Some of these do need a look-see. For example, a tibbit (small-sized monstrous humanoid [shapechanger], transforms from halfling-sized feline-looking human to tiny-sized cat)--ECL0 VS. catfolk (medium-sized feline humanoid w/camouflage)--ECL1. Why is that?
Pyke_Moonshadow 04-05-07, 11:39 AM	I just ran my party (troll barb, lamassu cleric, pixie rogue and succubus marshal) through an 18th level adventure (age of wyrms) and they yet again powned. the troll did go down once but the rest of the group just rested until he was fully healed. No biggie. LAs work fine from what I have seen.
MingT 04-05-07, 07:59 PM	LAs work fine from what I have seen. SO to recap, you decided that LA works fine. Declared you would run some ECL 13 succubus/troll etc.. party to prove it (to yourself). Ignored the only suggestion that might have even begun to make the test meaningful (ran a comparitive LA 0 party). Then instead ran an ECL 18 party in an undisclosed way that proved to yourself what you believed all along. That inspires any confidence, belief or substantive proof for ANYONE else why? You are wasting our time with your anecdotal "it works 'cause I say so" trash.
Dracomortis 04-05-07, 08:53 PM	Alright, I'll admit that I haven't read through all five pages of the thread, so I apologize if any of this has been mentioned before. For simplicity, I am going to use a party of 4th-level characters throughout the following post. According to the CR system, a party of 4th-level humans can take on four CR 4 creatures in a day. Logically, then, a 4th-level human party could take on an opposing "party" of four CR 4 creatures once per day, with roughly a 50/50 chance of winning. From this, we can conclude that a single 4th-level human should be able to go toe-to-toe with a single CR 4 creature with the same chance of winning. This makes sense, because a 4th-level human is a CR 4 creature, just like the creature he/she is fighting. So, for a level adjustment +0 race, ECL and CR are equal, and there are no problems. However, with races that have a level adjustment, ECL and CR are no longer equal. In fact, their CR begins to lag behind their ECL, sometimes dramatically. A 1st-level vampire fighter, for example, is ECL 9, but only has a CR of 3. By the CR system, a 9th level character should be able to go head-on with a single CR 9 creature - but it is quite obvious that the vampire would lose, because despite his apparent "level", he's still really only a CR 3 creature. A 4th-level human character (CR 4) would walk all over him, and reasonably so - yet this vampire is supposed to be on-par with a 9th-level human character (CR 9)? My suggested fix to the level adjustment system: drop it entirely. If a 4th-level human is CR 4, then it stands to reason that any other CR 4 creature should be roughly the equivalent of a 4th-level character. There isn't much of a need for level adjustment once you break it down. To help keep monstrous characters from overpowering standard races, they receive a reduced amount of treasure. A monstrous character gets no wealth for the levels that are effectively "taken up" by his monstrous features. For example, a creature that is normally CR 3 that then takes a class level (and thus becomes a 4th-level character under this suggested system) would only have the wealth gained between 3rd and 4th level - he would not have any from those first three "levels", because they were not class levels. Essentially, a character is buying off their monstrous features. Logically, this system should be balanced, but it would probably need to be playtested.
Judging Eagle 04-05-07, 09:51 PM	Alright, I'll admit that I haven't read through all five pages of the thread, so I apologize if any of this has been mentioned before. For simplicity, I am going to use a party of 4th-level characters throughout the following post. According to the CR system, a party of 4th-level humans can take on four CR 4 creatures in a day. Logically, then, a 4th-level human party could take on an opposing "party" of four CR 4 creatures once per day, with roughly a 50/50 chance of winning. From this, we can conclude that a single 4th-level human should be able to go toe-to-toe with a single CR 4 creature with the same chance of winning. This makes sense, because a 4th-level human is a CR 4 creature, just like the creature he/she is fighting. So, for a level adjustment +0 race, ECL and CR are equal, and there are no problems. However, with races that have a level adjustment, ECL and CR are no longer equal. In fact, their CR begins to lag behind their ECL, sometimes dramatically. A 1st-level vampire fighter, for example, is ECL 9, but only has a CR of 3. By the CR system, a 9th level character should be able to go head-on with a single CR 9 creature - but it is quite obvious that the vampire would lose, because despite his apparent "level", he's still really only a CR 3 creature. A 4th-level human character (CR 4) would walk all over him, and reasonably so - yet this vampire is supposed to be on-par with a 9th-level human character (CR 9)? My suggested fix to the level adjustment system: drop it entirely. If a 4th-level human is CR 4, then it stands to reason that any other CR 4 creature should be roughly the equivalent of a 4th-level character. There isn't much of a need for level adjustment once you break it down. To help keep monstrous characters from overpowering standard races, they receive a reduced amount of treasure. A monstrous character gets no wealth for the levels that are effectively "taken up" by his monstrous features. For example, a creature that is normally CR 3 that then takes a class level (and thus becomes a 4th-level character under this suggested system) would only have the wealth gained between 3rd and 4th level - he would not have any from those first three "levels", because they were not class levels. Essentially, a character is buying off their monstrous features. Logically, this system should be balanced, but it would probably need to be playtested. Read. Races. Of. War. You'll like it. Especially the "powerful races" section (use Ctrl+F and type: powerful races). Which talks specifically about that. Doing a straight CR change can have some problems as you can have a giant with 15 HD, but only not +15 BaB as a CR 12 creature. So trimming the HD and replacing them with a higher HD (D10, or 12) and full BaB, with the same save types (less HD will bring his saves to an acceptable level); basically he's a fighter or barbarian; who didn't gain any class features and go stats and size instead.
Wayne 04-05-07, 10:08 PM	If a 4th-level human is CR 4, then it stands to reason that any other CR 4 creature should be roughly the equivalent of a 4th-level character. There isn't much of a need for level adjustment once you break it down. Basically. If you accept the CR system as "balanced,"* then it logically follows that monsters of a given CR are fair game against PCs of the same level (since, after all, NPCs with class levels have a CR equal to their level). * Which it's not; anyone who believes a 20th level Druid is the same "challenge" as a 20th level Swashbuckler is living in a fantasy world, not just playing in one. To play Baatezu's advocate a bit, the LA "system" presumes the following: -That "monsters" also have full access to PC advantages, such as higher stats and customizable equipment, -That the typical DM runs campaigns designed for "normal" races, and thus discourages monsters (explicitly) and their powers (and to be fair, being, say, an incorporeal undead, really does make you laugh at most modules), -That the players of "monstrous" PCs are munchkins who don't deserve nice things. So if you throw all that out (I wouldn't start "monster" PCs with no wealth at all; having them use the NPC table should be fair), and "being a troll" is essentially no different from "being a Wizard polymorphed into a troll," you're basically good to go. Though, like Eagle pointed out, you do have some issues in that monstrous hit dice simply aren't balanced against each other-- undead, construct, and giant HD really suck and thus creatures with those types tend to have huge piles of HD; while outsiders and dragons are hardcore-- and the CR tables aren't really balanced. But for the most part the "simple fix" (as opposed to a more complex one (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=822801)) should work in most cases.
Pyke_Moonshadow 04-06-07, 07:53 AM	SO to recap, you decided that LA works fine. Declared you would run some ECL 13 succubus/troll etc.. party to prove it (to yourself). Ignored the only suggestion that might have even begun to make the test meaningful (ran a comparitive LA 0 party). Then instead ran an ECL 18 party in an undisclosed way that proved to yourself what you believed all along. That inspires any confidence, belief or substantive proof for ANYONE else why? You are wasting our time with your anecdotal "it works 'cause I say so" trash. I ran them through 2 seperate Dungeon modules, assuming that modules in Dungeon mag, being "official" and not written by me would be the most unbiased. I used the elite array for stats. I used wealth by level and the item cap limits set in the magic item compendium. I could not think of a fairer way to test it. One module I had run before the other I hadn't. What else should I have done?
starfire311 04-06-07, 08:26 AM	I ran them through 2 seperate Dungeon modules, assuming that modules in Dungeon mag, being "official" and not written by me would be the most unbiased. I used the elite array for stats. I used wealth by level and the item cap limits set in the magic item compendium. I could not think of a fairer way to test it. One module I had run before the other I hadn't. What else should I have done? don't waste your time, nothing you can say will sway his opinion, it is already deadset against anything you say, given the tone and words of his last post.
Wayne 04-06-07, 10:51 AM	I could not think of a fairer way to test it. He's not saying to just test a "monster" group, but a "normal" one (using ECL 0 races) too, and compare them. Note how similar roles or builds played out... did the Lammasu (casting as a Cleric 13 at best) really do better than an 18th level Cleric (who qualifies for PrCs more easily and has 9th level spells)? Was the Succubus Marshal 6 noticeably better than an 18th level Beguiler (with Dominate Monster and Mass Charm), a Bard (with 6th level Bardic spells) or Marshal (who has twice as many auras and whose major auras are two points better)? Not knowing your group, this is mostly a shot in the dark; but it's quite possible that your players actually do better with playing monsters, because it protects them from poor build choices. I mean, we all know how powerful Druids are; but one girl in my campaign four years ago was easily the weakest party member, since she actually spent Wildshape uses to turn into cats and thought [i]flame blade was about the coolest thing ever. If she'd just rolled up a nymph or dryad she'd possibly have been better off. I mean, let's be serious... none of those PCs have the capability of casting shapechange, which any LA 0 18th level Wizard or Druid can do to become any of those monsters and still cast 9th level spells. So when Ming and I read that and roll our eyes*, that's probably why. * That being said, thanks for sharing that, Pyke. Any anecdotes about things you think that group did particularly well, or had problems with?
Pyke_Moonshadow 04-06-07, 11:08 AM	* That being said, thanks for sharing that, Pyke. Any anecdotes about things you think that group did particularly well, or had problems with? Well, I guess my question wasn't "are they just as good as normal pcs?" but "can they function at the level they are supposed to with LAs?" Since they did, I felt that answered my question fine. Um, basically the marshal attempted to charm, if that was not possible the buffed lamassu, raging troll and invisible pixie could kill it in a round or two. Their hit points were a little low for what they were fighting but then it never mattered too much. The troll was knocked to something like -48 once but it was by a mindless monster so once the rest of the party dealt with it he was fine.
MingT 04-06-07, 07:26 PM	Um, basically the marshal attempted to charm, if that was not possible the buffed lamassu, raging troll and invisible pixie could kill it in a round or two. Their hit points were a little low for what they were fighting but then it never mattered too much. The troll was knocked to something like -48 once but it was by a mindless monster so once the rest of the party dealt with it he was fine. Bunch of twaddle. Two points in particular jump out at me. 1) Why was only the TROLL knocked to -48, sounds suspiciously like you were targetting your hit point damage against him only. 2) At ECL 18 how the flipping heck is your pixie (and lamassu) still invisible to the vast majority of things it encounters, near anything should be able to see it or counter its invisibility one way or another. Failing that anyone or anything with a listen check should be able to pinpoint you since your ranks are significantly lower than theirs. (I mean you INSIST that there is NOTHING WRONG WITH LA, so you ARE being a man and using the LA +6 pixie, right?) Nearly every CR 18 monster in the MM one is a dragon (call of WYRMS wasn't it?) and is effectively immune to invisibility to the range you need to be at to use sneak attack. Frankly I believe that A) You cheated, B) You clearly don't know the rules properly C) You may as well be lieing for all we know, and probably you are, and most of all D) It really doesn't matter regardless.
Argaud 04-06-07, 09:02 PM	You know, so many pages of opinions, sprinkled with a little bit of honest personal experience at times and still... Nobody has even bothered to check if a party of 4 PC trolls can take out a larger group of NPC trolls? All I see is talk, talk, talk and many empty, meaningless statements. No numbers, no logic, nothing. Yes, a group of 4 PC trolls can utterly destroy a very large group of normal trolls. It is not even hard. 4 fighters can too, but the trolls will have it even easier thanks to the regeneration. AND NOBODY, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY HERE HAS EVEN BOTHERED IN CHECKING THE NUMBERS. Think about it for 5 minutes before sputtering the first piece uninformed opinion that goes through your heads, and you will easily discover why. And why NPC trolls are basically irrelevant at level 11. Additional information: 1 troll=CR5=EL5, 2 trolls=EL7, 4 trolls=EL9, 8 trolls=EL11, 16 trolls~EL13, 32 trolls= irrelevant, the system breaks for this large number of little critters (DMG page 39) – CR5 monsters don’t give xp to high level adventurers, anyway. One troll = CR5. One elite troll CR6. One elite troll with PC gear CR8 at the -very- least
Argaud 04-06-07, 09:09 PM	Frankly I believe that A) You cheated, B) You clearly don't know the rules properly C) You may as well be lieing for all we know, and probably you are, and most of all D) It really doesn't matter regardless. Wow, just wow. I have rarely seen such a piece of abusive crap in these forums. "Your personal experience contradicts my opinion, so you are lying" I am sure Pyke is not lying. Many players have had experience with high LA races and have repeatedly told you most of them do fine. You are just discarding all arguments that do not fit your narrow viewpoint. Just like you did in the other thread. By the way, we are still waiting that level 12 dwarf bearwarrior that was soooo much better than any troll with 6 class levels.
sigma999 04-06-07, 10:36 PM	I agree that MingT went too far. Seems like impatience and/or a vendetta, but that's none of my buisness. Oh, and as for the "every monster can deal with invisibility" thing, that's hogwash. Assuming you use ONLY the MM, yes it MAY BE TRUE but new races are made every day and with each new monster to kill flooding in, the percentage of those able to cast See Invis, or use Blindsight/Blindsense, Blindfight, massive Listen check, dragon-sense or whatever crap is actually difficult to find. "Read more monster books" is my advice to you. And to stop assuming. Cut the ego, and leave questions in your mind unanswered. I'd like numbers for comparing NPC monster to PC too but I think most here aren't capable of planning that out and preparing some form of easily understood comparison. Some people in this forum most definitely are, and they can be found in the Optimization boards. They also don't give a *** about "new" situations like this because we are discussing OUTSIDE OF THE GAME at this point! Changing how CR and LA works is beyond the comprehension of a kid that knows nothing beyond how to get the most damage in a round or the best PrC combo for gish or the best spikechain wielding Deathgod of Babylon, they simply don't care to rework the fundamentals of D&D. This is a job for accountant-type players (which I unfortunately downright suck at), not powergamers, and if you are a hot headed munchkin I recommend not bothering yourself with these topics. The best I have created was a point system that a meager few have bothered to comment or even read. I spent years dissecting D&D and other d20 games to find common elements, then reduce them to mere point values for direct comparison. The 'empyrical balance' of race, class, and equipment IS THERE and I have found it. However, my presentation is probably the downfall, and in that weakness and disorganization my potentially game-altering 'research' collects dust. This topic is one of my most favorite, next to making spells and combining races, as it has been an aspect of D&D I have struggled with for about 10 years now (yes even in AD&D it was problematic but in different ways) and I'm not giving up any time soon. I agree that Pyke's info has merit but my advice is to do that kind of thing even more. Sure the raging troll took most hits, it's the most visible threat; chose not to deal with that in-your-face threat and you have some deadly AoO coming your way as you scrounge for the invisible one. But for future sessions, throw some equally exotic monsters and also very bland traditional LA+0 PC races, and even some powerful mixtures gathered from the Char Opt boards. Hell, throw the whole MM series at them, draining undead, dragons, PC, adamantine golem, everything. Do everything you can and keep us posted on the results.
Jim Johnny 04-07-07, 03:46 AM	I just ran my party (troll barb, lamassu cleric, pixie rogue and succubus marshal) through an 18th level adventure (age of wyrms) and they yet again powned. the troll did go down once but the rest of the group just rested until he was fully healed. No biggie. LAs work fine from what I have seen. For an 18th level campaign????? Yeah ok. Even my one-legged, CON 10 hypothetical Wizard will do well in a 18th level campaign. THE PROBLEM IS BASICALLY IN THE STARTING LEVELS FOR EACH RACE. In so high levels were each PC has a few HPs to spare and the possesion of powerful items and wealth makes a difference things are not so bad. Try the same Campaign with the Troll and the rest beginning the game from the minimum possible ECL. Argaud, before deciding to take part in the thread you have to read it first. Or at least, use a more moderate tone against others who have already posted replies. And do not say thing like "Nobody has even bothered". Yes, we 've used numbers (I for instance did this thing with 4 Vampire PCs) and LA characters do have problems. This thread goes on for more than 100 posts, 50% of the posts in races forum is about LAs and there are still people who believe that LAs work fine and are balanced?? PS: Many people do this mistake over and over agaIn, so I am pointing it out (it is in the DMG): A CR X monster is a balanced encounter for 4 ECL X characters, not one on one! A one on one Cr equal to ECL challenge is considered a tough encounter, still a possible encounter though!
Jim Johnny 04-07-07, 04:19 AM	I was reading Wayne's ideas for LA 0 races, and the LA 0 versions of some powerful races. And it is nice! It gives balance to the game and at the same time lets players enjoy playing different and exotic races. Listen to an idea I had while reading Wayne's stuff: Most people here, We believe that LA lack something and do not work so well. And so We try to diminish or make disappear the LA, which is good but has a fee. By taking off a monster's LA, a few abilities that give identity to the monster and are distinctive features of It are removed together with the LA, because they are to powerful for LA 0 races (like a Trolls regeneration, a Vampire's level drain etc) ANd that is bad. (It lacks taste and variety) Now, what I thought: racial HDs are similar to class HDs in the way that you gain hps, skills, possible feats .... but they are weaker than class HDs for sure. Now if we add the special abilities of each monster to the weaker racial HDs won't we find a sweet number on which a normal race PC with that number in class levels will be balanced and an equal encounter to a powerful race with that many racial HDs? Well this number will be that monster's LA? In that way every race will have HDs equal to his/her LA, so will have HDs equal to his/her ECL. Everything goo! Some races have better HDs and others weaker. The first will get more racial HDs in order to reach an appropriate LA, the second will need less racial HDs to bring their special abilities to a balance. Of course some abilities might have to go because otherwise some races will have huge LAs. An altered version of the above is to give half the earnings of a racial HD (half hps, skills etc) so there is more room for the special abilities to balance the races with the rest LA 0 races. This is for "ordinary" powerful races. If a guy wants to play a pit fiend character or a great wyrm then this system won't suit him very well. But if He wants a balanced genasi, Drow, werewolf and even a Vampire or a Troll it might work well. What do you think?
Argaud 04-07-07, 06:33 AM	Argaud, before deciding to take part in the thread you have to read it first. Or at least, use a more moderate tone against others who have already posted replies. And do not say thing like "Nobody has even bothered". Oh, I read the whole thread. I just posted about the thing that caught my attention the most. The problem I saw that some fool said "a PC troll can't handle 4 NPC trolls! A level 11 fighter can't handle 4 NPC trolls!" which is completely false. And everybody took his word as if it was true, just because he said it very loud, many times, sprinkled with a good deal of arrogance and personal attacks against all that disagreed with him. Clue in: Troll main attack is a +9 claw. No slas, no special attacks. What is the normal AC of a level 11 character, given mostly thanks to a fraction of those 66,000 gold? Right. 20s only. Some posters have been really dense. :rolleyes:
MingT 04-07-07, 09:09 AM	One troll = CR5. One elite troll CR6. One elite troll with PC gear CR8 at the -very- least In, the, exact, same, post, you, moan on, about, people, spouting, uninformed, opinions, without, running, numbers... Read the monster advancement rules. One troll = CR5. One troll with elite stats = CR6. One troll with ONE level of a warrior type PC class AND elite stats and AT LEAST NPC gear for his CR. ALSO = CR 6. One troll with TWO levels of a caster type PC class, AND elite stats, AND at least NPC gear for his CR, STILL = CR 6 CR 8 = One troll, Elite, NPC equipment, 3 to 6 class levels. Numbers, facts. As usual, not something you get along with, or talk about, or understand. I agree that MingT went too far. Seems like impatience and/or a vendetta, but that's none of my buisness.Impatience, the main reason I, and most people with half a clue, don't play here in the WOTC kiddy pool when I want to talk D&D. Also a general vendetta against rank stupidity. Allow me to produce an informative demonstration, and might I add the LAST material I have to say on the exceptionally stupid matter of anecdotal evidence. Why Noughts and Crosses is perfectly balanced "Dear" poster X. Your arrogant proclamations and "straw man" argument that by analysis of the potential moves noughts and crosses is a fundamentally flawed game that can never be won if properly played with simplistic and child like strategies by both opponents. Well your ignorance abounds! I played many games with my friend who you do not know and who will not post here. But trust me she not only exists (and is a supermodel) but both she and I can swear that we had lots of fun and both won plenty of times! Clearly this and the hundreds of thousands of people around the world still enjoying this game is evidence that it is perfectly winnable and balanced! Why Russian Roullete is perfectly safe for players of all ages Contrary to your ludicrous claims that there is something like a one in six chance of horrible death I had lots of fun playing russian roulete with my entirely non imaginary supermodel proof companion last night. I pulled the trigger SIX WHOLE TIMES and never died at all! The gun may or may not have even contained a bullet, or functioned. And its design was made to be published by, like, someone, and by a guy who may not even have gotten paid to make it! AND those were almost the same people who invented Russian Roulette and told us it was safe so you KNOW they never screw up! My companion also pulled the trigger 4 times, and she almost never died even once! So clearly it is a safe and cheerful game that anyone can play lots and lots without any untoward risk of sudden death. Your posts on naughts and crosses game play are of value, please post more! Your posts are excellent evidence or material for something, I'm not sure what, but we probably need more, for some reason. Your game play experiences are valid and informative, and further details can only help us all to better understand how naughts and crosses is best played. I also found your Russian Roulette experiences highly vindicating of my point of view on that matter as well! And that guy who all like said you were very possibly lying, cheating, incapable of pointing a gun at your own head or didn't actually load it in the first place is a meany, and clearly goes too far! Its ENTIRELY POSSIBLE you could have those experiences and your stories are as valid as any actual analysis of their actual likelyhood of occuring! And since I said thats all I'll say on this one last tangent Plenty of people have "no problem" with LA and ECL as it stands. Plenty of people also have no problem with Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler movies. That does not mean that we might not get significantly better movies if we stopped putting Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler in them. Now I know I used some zany parable/metaphor type techniques here, but my points are fairly clear. Using anecdotal evidence as a crutch is only for the lame. I could produce my own anecdotal claims, but I don't, and won't because they would be as worthless, well OK, NEARLY as worthless as those made already.
Alder_Fiter_Galaz 04-07-07, 10:02 AM	I wonder if simply add 2 hitdice to a LA+2 drow evens the odds at low levels. At high levels you simply pay XP to low your LA. (it's an OGL rule read http://www.d20srd.org plus /sdr/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm ) I read a lot about CR,LA,and ECL Some people says that the CR-LA-ECL was made taking into account the 28 point buy system to make characters. For me it's makes a lot of sense. But i long as I know most partys use better chars than those of 28 point buy system. I read a lot about CR,LA,and ECL Some people says that the CR-LA-ECL was made taking into account the 28 point buy system to make characters. For me it's makes a lot of sense. But i long as I know most partys use better chars than those of 28 point buy system. Some people say that money must take into account. Look http://www.immortalshandbook.com/sermon3.htm for an example full revision of the CR-LA-ECL rules
runestar 04-07-07, 10:08 AM	http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/ecl_vs_cr.html The official word from the designers about ECL being higher than cr is because those special abilities granted by powerful races will likely be used more over the long run, as compared to comparatively fewer times by an NPC, and thus must be given greater weight. I dunno...
Jim Johnny 04-07-07, 10:31 AM	Cut the stupid cockfight and say what you think about newly designed ideas on LAs. MingT was correct although He was kind of absolute, it is just that he expressed his opinion in an extreme and offensive by some way or He might have an anger management problem. It's his life :P We do not have to fight about the way he expressed his opinion but get what he says and continue the discussion. The thing is that the test Pyke did (whether he cheated or not) was not complete as He did not tried noLA PCs in the same campaign as LA PCs and his PCs were of not the minimum ECL were the lack in balance is more obvious. What is your opinion about my idea? Alder, I believe that giving to racial HDs to the Drow will make it a balanced LA +2 character. Drow's abilities are already too few for a +2 LA, so the 2 HDs really make thigs even ( I think)
Alder_Fiter_Galaz 04-07-07, 10:34 AM	http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/ecl_vs_cr.html The official word from the designers about ECL being higher than CR is because those special abilities granted by powerful races will likely be used more over the long run, as compared to comparatively fewer times by an NPC, and thus must be given greater weight. I dunno... What is your opinion about my idea? Alder, I believe that giving to racial HDs to the Drow will make it a balanced LA +2 character. Drow's abilities are already too few for a +2 LA, so the 2 HDs really make thigs even ( I think)... Well I master a 21lv party with a drow. The male drow with 19 levels and +2 LA have MR 30. It's not few MR, it's fair for a 21lv character. And without LA he has 32 MR. And he use a lot his Magic Resistance. So Jim Jhonny, use additional HD until the drow get enough level to simply pay XP to low his/her LA. (it's an OGL rule: read http://www.d20srd.org plus /sdr/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm ) and not forget to copy and paste the link in a new window of your browser
Dracomortis 04-07-07, 01:08 PM	Basically. If you accept the CR system as "balanced,"* then it logically follows that monsters of a given CR are fair game against PCs of the same level (since, after all, NPCs with class levels have a CR equal to their level). * Which it's not; anyone who believes a 20th level Druid is the same "challenge" as a 20th level Swashbuckler is living in a fantasy world, not just playing in one. To play Baatezu's advocate a bit, the LA "system" presumes the following: -That "monsters" also have full access to PC advantages, such as higher stats and customizable equipment, -That the typical DM runs campaigns designed for "normal" races, and thus discourages monsters (explicitly) and their powers (and to be fair, being, say, an incorporeal undead, really does make you laugh at most modules), -That the players of "monstrous" PCs are munchkins who don't deserve nice things. So if you throw all that out (I wouldn't start "monster" PCs with no wealth at all; having them use the NPC table should be fair), and "being a troll" is essentially no different from "being a Wizard polymorphed into a troll," you're basically good to go. Though, like Eagle pointed out, you do have some issues in that monstrous hit dice simply aren't balanced against each other-- undead, construct, and giant HD really suck and thus creatures with those types tend to have huge piles of HD; while outsiders and dragons are hardcore-- and the CR tables aren't really balanced. But for the most part the "simple fix" (as opposed to a more complex one (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=822801)) should work in most cases. Oh yeah, I know. Anyone who has read through the Monster Manual II or played C.o.D.zilla knows just how wrong some CRs can be. My theory was based on the assumption of a balanced CR system...so it should be accurate by about, oh, version 8 or so.
sigma999 04-08-07, 09:00 PM	I believe the cause of this whole LA problem is that D&D has grown from a "feels right" system of creating monsters/classes/items into something trying to be passed off as "balanced". It's not. And I seriously doubt it will without drastic revision. Once every accountable factor of D&D can be reduced to a common scale, and every point of damage, game-altering spell, and trait can be accountable (as in, nothing slips through the cracks during character creation to make a slightly more powerful character) only then can anyone reasonably claim we're making progress. You can't make a logical system out of a can of worms like this, and if we did it won't be D&D. Removing Polymorph as players have known it for years was a good start. It removed the unaccountable randomness of providing mages the ability to become any monster they find (or can dig up in a MM) and, by nature of the added capability to buff oneself/alter reality, inherently trump any normal monster that they had copied in the first place. I always had a problem with this and wondered why fellow gamers didn't think of anything to correct this until now, I guess it was taken as "well that's what Wizards do!" and you work the encounter around that. Like... uh... Anti-Magic fields. In most of the encounters. So with the whole CR-being-unbalanced, that was a given from the start. I saw it as slapped on by whim of the designers when I cracked open the first MM back in 2001, and it disappointed me. Still does but now we have proof why CR is such a bad idea. If I had some influence in the creative process of 3.0's roots, I'd base CR off of individual encounters, as in a 1v1 scenario. Hell, I'd balance all the classes against each other in 1v1 situations. Would that make arranging groups easier? You won't have to assume 'party balance' with your Joe Schmoe cleric/wiz/fighter/rogue combo cuz you just say "we have 4 players" and 4 monsters will be a manageable encounter, easier if lower level and harder if higher. But it didn't work like that because a few key designers refused to drop the old AD&D misconceptions. D&D would have been much better off with a fresh start.
Dracomortis 04-09-07, 10:54 AM	I believe the cause of this whole LA problem is that D&D has grown from a "feels right" system of creating monsters/classes/items into something trying to be passed off as "balanced". It's not. And I seriously doubt it will without drastic revision. Once every accountable factor of D&D can be reduced to a common scale, and every point of damage, game-altering spell, and trait can be accountable (as in, nothing slips through the cracks during character creation to make a slightly more powerful character) only then can anyone reasonably claim we're making progress. You can't make a logical system out of a can of worms like this, and if we did it won't be D&D. Removing Polymorph as players have known it for years was a good start. It removed the unaccountable randomness of providing mages the ability to become any monster they find (or can dig up in a MM) and, by nature of the added capability to buff oneself/alter reality, inherently trump any normal monster that they had copied in the first place. I always had a problem with this and wondered why fellow gamers didn't think of anything to correct this until now, I guess it was taken as "well that's what Wizards do!" and you work the encounter around that. Like... uh... Anti-Magic fields. In most of the encounters. So with the whole CR-being-unbalanced, that was a given from the start. I saw it as slapped on by whim of the designers when I cracked open the first MM back in 2001, and it disappointed me. Still does but now we have proof why CR is such a bad idea. If I had some influence in the creative process of 3.0's roots, I'd base CR off of individual encounters, as in a 1v1 scenario. Hell, I'd balance all the classes against each other in 1v1 situations. Would that make arranging groups easier? You won't have to assume 'party balance' with your Joe Schmoe cleric/wiz/fighter/rogue combo cuz you just say "we have 4 players" and 4 monsters will be a manageable encounter, easier if lower level and harder if higher. But it didn't work like that because a few key designers refused to drop the old AD&D misconceptions. D&D would have been much better off with a fresh start. Quoted for truth.
starfire311 04-09-07, 11:18 AM	So with the whole CR-being-unbalanced, that was a given from the start. I saw it as slapped on by whim of the designers when I cracked open the first MM back in 2001, and it disappointed me. Still does but now we have proof why CR is such a bad idea. If I had some influence in the creative process of 3.0's roots, I'd base CR off of individual encounters, as in a 1v1 scenario. yes because the game is ussually handled in 1v1 Scenarios, amkes logical since that is how you should balacne the CRs. CRs have never IMO opinion been unbalanced, but then again I have never seen tehm as hard and fast, I give ad hoc bonuses and reductions to xp payouts all the time, I throw in a lot of environments, that there is o way to possibly account for in a CR system. Hell, I'd balance all the classes against each other in 1v1 situations. Would that make arranging groups easier? You won't have to assume 'party balance' with your Joe Schmoe cleric/wiz/fighter/rogue combo cuz you just say "we have 4 players" and 4 monsters will be a manageable encounter, easier if lower level and harder if higher. But it didn't work like that because a few key designers refused to drop the old AD&D misconceptions. D&D would have been much better off with a fresh start. OMG this would be one of the worst ideas of all time, you would make it so that every character was able to handle every type of challenge equally. The only way to really achieve this is by making every charcter the same.
Pyke_Moonshadow 04-09-07, 11:51 AM	Bunch of twaddle. Two points in particular jump out at me. 1) Why was only the TROLL knocked to -48, sounds suspiciously like you were targetting your hit point damage against him only. 2) At ECL 18 how the flipping heck is your pixie (and lamassu) still invisible to the vast majority of things it encounters, near anything should be able to see it or counter its invisibility one way or another. Failing that anyone or anything with a listen check should be able to pinpoint you since your ranks are significantly lower than theirs. (I mean you INSIST that there is NOTHING WRONG WITH LA, so you ARE being a man and using the LA +6 pixie, right?) Nearly every CR 18 monster in the MM one is a dragon (call of WYRMS wasn't it?) and is effectively immune to invisibility to the range you need to be at to use sneak attack. Frankly I believe that A) You cheated, B) You clearly don't know the rules properly C) You may as well be lieing for all we know, and probably you are, and most of all D) It really doesn't matter regardless. Wow, I don't like you. That being said. Age of Wyrms spoilers ahead! I was running the adventure Lords of the Rift or some such from the Age of Wyrms campaign. Most of the enemies were giants with class levels. There were a fair number of dragons. The thing that knocked the troll to the negatives was some behemoth of a carrion crawler that had like over 600 hp. He drew all the AoO and then the horde of charmed and diplomacied giants charged in. Funny thing, dragons can be charmed too. Well, most of them. Plus, there are magic items that allow you to resist detection or haven't you heard of those? If I was a perpetually invisible rogue I certainly would look into it. General strategy: The succubus tries to charm it. She then diplomacies it to helpful. Failing that the party wanks on it with the aid of any new allies they might have (no not all the charmed creatures follow them around as I know they aren't dominated.) Anyway, what I did was moot to a point. I still satisfactorally answered the question, can 4 LA creatures effectively function at the level the game intends? Yessir they can. are they as effective as 4 PCs from normal races? Probably not. But then, I still feel that is the point, great at what they do but not as versitile. If someone can think of a more valid test, and not just number crunching, then I would be more than happy to explore it.
Jim Johnny 04-09-07, 02:25 PM	A simple and basic test (this one is for vampires, but can be made to fit every LA race): Create 4 Vampire PCs at 1st level. ECL (8+1=9) Have them encounter an NPC Vampire (CR 8, 6th level a class of your choice) Then use the same stats but have the 4 PCs human (so at 9th class level) See the difference (Also for the test to be more complete use the same class for all 4 PCs and for the NPC Vamp and do the same test for all classes, so you can see how this encounter works for every class.) Now Sigma you are right to an extend but not at all. CRs are not as bad as LAs, but they do need improvement. But I believe it will be bad if wizards make a new CR system full of tables, maths and a whole bunch of things to find the exact CR for an encounter, in a specific place/environment, taking into account the status of the PCs at the given time and the items held by those taking part. 1), such thing won't work flawlessly 2), It is best some things been left for the DM to choose. No need for so many dense rules. About things left unspotted, I agree there were bad things that remained from 2nd ed to 3rd. But there are also things that were altered and turned to worse compared to how they were back in 2nd ed. All the simplification of some rules, I believe, had bad effects on the game. --------------------------------- Of course, I agree about Polymorph (although I do not like the 15HD limit) but other changes they have made to other spells ruined them. Time Stop for instance. I agree it was very powerful, enabling you to attack face to face to others. And I agree with the idea that you cannot harm others (although it cannot be explained, You move faster, so instead of hitting someone with an arrow for instance, you can hit him with 5 arrows, what's the difference a wound is still a wound) Were i disagree is that you take normal damage from fires, acids and other environmental dangers. Why??? You move so fast that your attacks do not harm others, so why be harmed by things like fire? You move so fast you can pass through fire and do not even feel it. Like flash. Am I not right? ALso, you can pick an item from the ground, but you cannot take (let's say) the pouich with the gems from the belt of someone? Why again??? anyway.... Do not give them ideas for a new revised edition so fast:P Despite the fact that It is needed.
Zuractai 04-09-07, 02:50 PM	I just wanted to coment about the 6 Trolls vs 1 Troll PC. It may be true that the Troll PC might not win, but neither would he realy be in danger of losing... Trolls don't generaly carry around fire and Acid to kill off other trolls. Plus trolls in general can realy mess with certain chars if they are not prepared, regeneration is one of the most godly abilities for a PC, it alows you to do lots of crazy things. Not all LAs are perfect. Not all Monster HD are good, or even not bad, but they are very useful gidelines for DMs, who can nudge them to make things fair for all those playing. Also 8 Trolls = CR 11, but that would be an encounter level for 4 ECL 11 Players. 4 Would be a CR 9, and closer to what one ECL 11 player should handle.
Argaud 04-09-07, 03:08 PM	I just wanted to coment about the 6 Trolls vs 1 Troll PC. It may be true that the Troll PC might not win, but neither would he realy be in danger of losing... Trolls don't generaly carry around fire and Acid to kill off other trolls. The PC would win. It is very easy to raise the troll PC AC to 29+. The normal trolls can hit the PC only with 20s. While the PC troll, armed with a magical weapon, hits their AC16 with 2s. The PC trolls wins, and it is not even a real challenge. Any normal level 11 PC wins easily. The troll PC not only wins, but walks away without any missing hp, since he will regenerate the little damage the NPC trolls did with 20s before the fight ends. A normal PC warrior might walk away with ~20 hp less (which is like nothing, of course). Create 4 Vampire PCs at 1st level. ECL (8+1=9) Have them encounter an NPC Vampire (CR 8, 6th level a class of your choice) You can't apply the vampire template to a creature with just one HD. 5HD is the absolute minimum.
sigma999 04-09-07, 04:49 PM	OMG this would be one of the worst ideas of all time, you would make it so that every character was able to handle every type of challenge equally. The only way to really achieve this is by making every charcter the same. Meh OK I have some hasty judgements, but what I mean is that if everything is tallied DURING CREATION of a character, and abilities are measured before an encounter or the sum-character-unit is finalized, it just might be better than 'throwing stuff to the ceiling and seeing what sticks'. For instance Feat A =/= Feat B due to inherent power levels or applications of each, and as such they won't be worth the same. How to decide what the worth is? Have a range, first of all, for all possible feat costs, and then compare each to the others. What's the greatest numeric effects? The most possible uses in an encounter/day? Then from there, a level is made of these measured feats and features, and totaled to the same amount for each level; any more, less, you fill with little abilities or save points from previous levels for minor feats every now and then. At least, that's how my character point system works, but it's all chaos and in progress.... Sure, everything can't sanely be accounted for (that's ideal) but as D&D is today nearly nothing is measured until a class/race/item combo is taken for a romp in the CharOp boards here and WOTC then bangs down whatever offending spell, race, or feat caused the problem in the first place. GURPS, for instance, has variable point values for everything. It's also a pain in the butt to make a character in GURPS. I'd prefer something in between, which is wha got me smitten with Anime d20 aka BESM d20 even though the designer(s) went a little nuts with the untested custom rules. And essentially yes every character would be the same in my vision of a better D&D, but in the sense that they are all starting off with the same resources and ending up with varying specialties, capabilities, and objectives. With the same "character resource" in whatever type, be it feats or points or levels to use, everyone is following the same rules, both monster and PC. And JJ I know this all would require more reading and all but it wouldn't be necessarily more complex than D&D is by default. D&D is full of tables right now... look at what a player must do to find the amount of weight they can carry! Is that even a formula or is that just random numbers on a chart? It would be additional rules if you wish to adapt, say, the d20 SRD to character points/feats progression like the Tome of Fiends demon levels for making new monsters (feat progression), which a lot of people are reluctant and/or lazy to do, and I can't blame em, it's just more words for not much gain, right?
starfire311 04-09-07, 05:35 PM	And essentially yes every character would be the same in my vision of a better D&D, but in the sense that they are all starting off with the same resources and ending up with varying specialties, capabilities, and objectives. With the same "character resource" in whatever type, be it feats or points or levels to use, everyone is following the same rules, both monster and PC. I have no problem with a system that lets everyone start off witht the same resoruces to make their character, but the big rpoblem comes in the pricing of abilities, exactly how many skill points is an average feat worth?? and who is to say some skills are not worth more than other skills.
Judging Eagle 04-09-07, 08:51 PM	There's always the issue of this: "You usually get 1 to 7 Class Levels/CR/ECL to spend on your character upon creation in most games." What do you spend those levels on? Are you getting the same "value" per level if you took a level of wizard as if you took a level of fighter? Are you getting the same "value" per level if you split your levels among Wizard and Fighter? Are you losing or gaining if you take wizard over fighter levels or fighter over wizard levels? Those are some serious questions to ask. You should know that your game will end at levels 7 to 16 (lvl 20 builds are a one of the worse products of the char op boards; level 5, 10 and 15 builds should be touchstones, not some imaginary build that will probably never see game play), will you play a charcter that will be fun and effective to use? Anyway, we've got about 3 years till 4.0 gets announced (every 10 years has been the method so far). Hopefully designing fighting characters and monster characters in a vacum; while casting characters are in the same book and are created in their own cosmos; will not happen again. Personally; I'm perfectly all right with playing almost any character and any class. I've played effective characters (for their level) at almost every stage of lower-level play and some mid-level play characters, and I've seriously had my wizard successfuly do things that have nothing to do with casting (grappling a rogue sorcerer's raven familiar to make the sorcerer surrender; the dumbass rogue was too scared). The problem is that most casual players don't know all of the rules, mostly b/c they're pretty byzantine; look at grappling. I mean, sure, I've learned the rules for grappeling and I could run a grapple between any number of creatures now. However, it's still a pretty obtuse system and could sue with tons of trimming before most people will use it. Mostly b/c if something can't be explained in 2 minutes or less*, it won't be able to be explained at all. *: Two minutes is really, the utter limit to describe a concept to someone else, I try to work myself down to 30-60 seconds and use very rough analogies when I descrbie my D&D game to people who don't know what's going on, but are curious, those are few and far between however. Argaud, how were you going to build that Troll? Strip the LA via the RoW method I was talking about? or use the ECL system? The dwarven bear war isn't too bad of a build, needs some rather specific gear that I had to raid the SS and the MIC for since Bear-shape's a bit of a pain to use normally, but it's really all about being a damage output machine (I mean, it's got 38 str and 11 BaB at lvl 12; which isn't too bad, wizard's dont hit thats with their sort of Int until past lvl 20 normally; however, your str isn't as useful to you as a wizard's int is to them). The ECL troll's more about tankage and relying on magic gear and str to hit things, not BaB. The RoW Troll is heavy on tankage and Iaimeki's Grog the Troll Knight was a bit of lateral thinking that makes the race's most powerful features synergize amazingly with a tanking class. Anyway I've gotta get back to work.
sigma999 04-09-07, 10:00 PM	I have no problem with a system that lets everyone start off witht the same resoruces to make their character, but the big rpoblem comes in the pricing of abilities, exactly how many skill points is an average feat worth?? and who is to say some skills are not worth more than other skills. 1 basic noncombat feat = 4 skill points, as by the +2/+2 skill bonus feats that redundantly absorb wasted space in the PHB and similar books. IMHO. And I say all skills are worth the same, as there are new uses for old skills with every splat book... in time they may quite possible all be useful even in potential combat/combat avoidance situations!
MingT 04-10-07, 03:16 AM	Wow, I don't like you. What will we tell the children? Most of the enemies were giants with class levels. So starting at about 5 to 10 CR behind the curve before the adventure writer adds the class levels required. Depending on implementation then MAYBE coming up to the par of CR 18 give or take a bit monsters, the vast majority of which that matter all should by then have invisibility negating abilities, flight, SR, immunities, crazy melee and probably even notable spell casting or high level save or die spell likes. Remotely believable you might beat them. Maybe. If they were push overs. Mind you then you could be facing PILES of these guys per encounter, in which case your charm one at a time strategy sees a pretty dead succubus pretty dang fast, unless they all stand around watching her mind control their allies one by one... But heck mostly there is too much variation to really care about. Well except for this... Failing that the party wanks on it with the aid of any new allies they might have (no not all the charmed creatures follow them around as I know they aren't dominated.) So you didn't always solve all your problems by arbitrarily and stupidly giving your party all the monsters from the previous encounters as unrestrained combat allies in a supreme stretch of credibility and against most if not all guidelines for charm and diplomacy. You just mostly did. Even though assuming such vast DM generosity any LA zero character could do that just as well or infinitely better, and not even have to stretch charm so much what with, just for a start, you know DOMINATE and stuff. The thing that knocked the troll to the negatives was some behemoth of a carrion crawler that had like over 600 hp. He drew all the AoO and then the horde of charmed and diplomacied giants charged in. To viciously kill their own ally against all guidelines and in a way which actually makes your entire party irrelevent to any discussion of its actual effectiveness. Your point here is what again? Oh thats right... ah best not say hey? Plus, there are magic items that allow you to resist detection or haven't you heard of those? If I was a perpetually invisible rogue I certainly would look into it. Did you know that any such splatty items you might dig up are ALSO available to LA zero characters? Did you know that by ECL 18 items to grant you greater invisibility have been available at low low prices since for ever and are very widely known about? Did you know that at some point before ECL 18 maybe even at the same ECL your ottos dance pixie enters the game on one hit die improved invisibility is available to many LA 0 characters as a free interchangable class ability as often as they care about? Did you know that one obscure splatty effect that ignores a dragons blind sense also grants invisibility and is available to psions from before your pixie even could enter the game? (bit about there being a fair amount of dragons, blah blah, that giant bit blah blah)... Funny thing, dragons can be charmed too. Well, most of them. Not by you though. What did he just say? Yes. Not by you. So the very first CR 18 dragon on the list, the not the most powerful Very Old Black Dragon has a will save of +19 (vs your DC what 28? maybe 30) effect to save most of the time, which is relatively little of the time because he FIRST gets SR 23 against your mere +6 caster level for your spell likes (yeah ONLY monster hit die count for spell like caster level) so you need to roll a 17+ before you get a shot at a maybe 50% will save at best to then get a second rate effect that does not despite your belief to the contrary defeat the dragon or make him your body guard and loyal foot soldier. While talking about that lets consider a few other things about dragons. The black dragon has 28 hit die. He has listen, spot and sense motive as class skills. The advice even insists on maxing out listen and spot and prioritizing sense motive. His wisdom is a bit mediocre, for a dragon, but not horrific at 17. So he gets to make spot, listen and sense motive at +33. So to SPOT an invisible creature that is active at 30 feet, with normal senses, you need to make a flat DC 20 spot check to pinpoint him for attacks (other than your pixie melting breath weapon) you need to make that check at +20 DC. No modifiers for size, no hide checks, its a flat DC. Thats a 40 DC check against your +33, hmm. To HEAR an invisible creature engaged in combat is a DC 0 check +1 per 10 foot range. To pinpoint it for direct attacks its +20 DC. With a +33 check... Assuming your GM has half a brain and doesn't use the exceedingly dumb influencing NPC attitudes table I'd suggest the +33 sense motive is probably also bad news for your back up tactic after the failed charm attempt, especially if any sane situational modifiers for attempting the full round action while being eaten by a dragon you just failed a hotsile mind control spell against apply. Meanwhile the black dragon has an attack bonus so damn high he is GOING to hit with basically every attack ever and deal an average damage (at a rate actually fairly weak for that level) of about 70+. Which like I said, isn't much but considering everyone stood still for a round while the succubus failed to charm him and she averages somewhere in the LOW hundreds of hit points she is already half dead, if lucky, before the party gets ONE round to kill the dragon, somehow, before it finishes eating her. The pixie is even worse off when it fails at stealth assassination. Even the troll and the lame-ass-oo are in serious trouble if they cop a single round of attention. He even has various area effecting attacks that could easily hit silent hiding inactive invisibles he hadn't deigned to notice. So anyway, now that you lowered your self from your vaunted anecdotal tower enough to mention what amount to your actual arguments in favour of your l33t group of monsters its fairly clear your methodology is as flawed as expected.
Jim Johnny 04-10-07, 07:24 AM	LA characters HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS! I have to say that MingT's example with the dragon is a very good one! And always compare it to LA 0 characters, and how they will stand against that fight. Where is this rule that Vampires with LA+8 should start the game as 5HD creatures????????? You mean the part where it says that if the creature has 4 or less HD it returns as a spawn and 5 or more as a Vamp? What i suggested is a hypothetical encounter to see the LA difference. Have the test with spawns at lvl 1. Again This does not change anything for the test i suggested. Or Have 4 Vampire characters at 5th class level each (so 5 HDs) (ECL 8+5=13) against an NPC Vampire (CR=13, this one will have 11 class levels... !!!) And then take four 13th level humans. I guess what will happen is obvious to the most clueless of players. Or make the same test with another race with no HD requirement. I suggested doing it with the lowest ECL possible (that's why i said only 1 HD) to see the huge differences and the problems. Do it with 4 Drows (level 1, ECL+3) against a CR 3 monster and then do the same with Humans. Drow will have 6 to 10 hps while humans 15 to 30hps (rough estimation). The Drows will be one hit kill for the monster will the humans will have it for warm up. Or will the Drows use their dancing lights and faerie fire ability to even the battle, or their +2 Cha, or their mediocre SR (a 3rd level wizard has a 50% chance to overcome, which i must admit is quite a con but for low levels) Or or, an even better idea, thanks to their light blindness ability, the monster will take pity on them and let them live!!! so lame There's always the issue of this: I've played effective characters (for their level) at almost every stage of lower-level play and some mid-level play characters, and I've seriously had my wizard successfuly do things that have nothing to do with casting (grappling a rogue sorcerer's raven familiar to make the sorcerer surrender; the dumbass rogue was too scared). The problem is that most casual players don't know all of the rules, mostly b/c they're pretty byzantine; look at grappling. I mean, sure, I've learned the rules for grappling and I could run a grapple between any number of creatures now. However, it's still a pretty obtuse system and could sue with tons of trimming before most people will use it. Mostly b/c if something can't be explained in 2 minutes or less*, it won't be able to be explained at all. *: Two minutes is really, the utter limit to describe a concept to someone else, I try to work myself down to 30-60 seconds and use very rough analogies when I descrbie my D&D game to people who don't know what's going on, but are curious, those are few and far between however. ... I agree about the rules. I am running a campaign right now were most of the players are not so well familiarized with the rules and they do not know most of the complicated ones. It is much more easier to handle them though, I must say. This is a problem, but on the other hand, Do you prefer older editions were many things were pretty obscured and the Dm had to make up rules at the moment to fit every situation? In some things thorough rules are needed. In others Dm should be the one deciding how a situation will be played.
Pyke_Moonshadow 04-10-07, 07:45 AM	So anyway, now that you lowered your self from your vaunted anecdotal tower enough to mention what amount to your actual arguments in favour of your l33t group of monsters its fairly clear your methodology is as flawed as expected. Ok champ, what method do you suggest since you only decided to tear down my attempt? I would like some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism please. What method of testing should I use (again not just number crunching since there are far too many variables to look at and it can be rather obtuse to talk about things in a purely statistical manner)? Anyone? (side note: the succubus has a caster level of 12)
MingT 04-10-07, 08:36 AM	Ok champ, what method do you suggest since you only decided to tear down my attempt? Perhaps rather than methodology I should have said the argument itself, for in the end I see no point in engaging the tactics you talk about as anything other than an argument rather than some sort of "test". What method of testing should I use (again not just number crunching since there are far too many variables to look at and it can be rather obtuse to talk about things in a purely statistical manner)? No, sorry, it really does have to be number crunching. That and logic, reason, comparison those sort of things. The media of the discussion and the subject itself pretty much require it, not much can be done about it. (side note: the succubus has a caster level of 12) Side note, not according to savage species. So I'm digging round the d20SRD to figure the caster level of her spell likes and it says by hit die, but its not at all clear, it specifically says that monstrous hit die advance that sort of thing and that class levels don't advance it but the not advancing bit was a touch generic. So I went to the monster book itself, after all its the core of whats being discussed. And it very explicitly outlined it like this. A critter who casts spell likes "as a character of class X" can advance those spells by advancing class X. But a character that just has spell likes cannot advance them EVEN by taking levels of a class that advance general spell casting that includes their spell likes. So IF The succubus cast "as a sorcerer of level whatever" you could advance her spell likes casting ONLY by taking sorcerer levels (or possibly by taking prestige levels, though that MIGHT require at least one level of sorcerer first) but since she doesn't get that she gets some one off spell likes you can ONLY advance them if you advance her monstrous hit die, which maybe you can but oddly SS or anywhere doesn't really give rules for advancing PC monstrous characters beyond standard monster hit die (aside from the implied rules of treating it as a new monster of the targetted level for ECL or monster class calculation). Hey I wonder if she could earn a size increase...
runestar 04-10-07, 08:44 AM	Well, on a side note, the succubus could take SU ability(charm monster?) - the ability which turns your SLA into a SU ability. The only problem of its caster lv stagnating at caster lv12 is that it cannot overcome sr at higher lvs, and making it a SU ability works around this limitation just nicely.:) I have no idea what the heck MingT is trying to say about the succubus casting as a sorc and advancing in HD?:confused:
starfire311 04-10-07, 09:23 AM	I have no idea what the heck MingT is trying to say about the succubus casting as a sorc and advancing in HD?:confused: I think he was trying to prove that the succubus only has CL 7 because it had 7 HD, I think he should have spent mroe time looking at the succubus entry, rather than looking up obscure rules. BTW, succubus has 6HD and has CL 12, it also has +6 LA, so a PC is level 12 with a CL 12.
Argaud 04-10-07, 10:27 AM	Argaud, how were you going to build that Troll? Strip the LA via the RoW method I was talking about? or use the ECL system? I am not going to use RoW. This is about comparing a level 12 character with a troll with 6 class levels, not using your houserules. Houserules have no place when we are testing the official game. Remember: Your statement was that the LA+0 character was a superior warrior than a troll with 12HD using the official rules because class levels were so much better than anything monsters got.
Pyke_Moonshadow 04-10-07, 12:17 PM	No, sorry, it really does have to be number crunching. That and logic, reason, comparison those sort of things. Fine MingT, when you have finished crunching the numbers then please, post them here in detail so we can all see your validation. Argaud, are you simply going to make builds and see if they compare stat-wise? (BAB, Saves, average damage per round, etc.)
sigma999 04-10-07, 03:34 PM	Heh... byzantine... haven't seen or heard someone use that word for about 7 years.
Judging Eagle 04-10-07, 05:39 PM	I am not going to use RoW. This is about comparing a level 12 character with a troll with 6 class levels, not using your houserules. Houserules have no place when we are testing the official game. Remember: Your statement was that the LA+0 character was a superior warrior than a troll with 12HD using the official rules because class levels were so much better than anything monsters got. You seem to be selectively reading what I wrote. I said that even using RoW rules, you're better off making a straight no racial HD character. Since effective builds and real class levels beat monster HD, even if the monster's LA is removed using the RoW material. The removal of LA is only done by a specific method; simply stripping it and doing nothing else still won't get you a playable race. Which is what I also said. You seem to think that I'm saying "remove LAs completely"; but it's really a bit more complex than that. What RoW presents is a method to turn monsters into "classes"; with their CR giving you their new HD total and stripping most of the powers most people don't want to see for a "Monster Paragon" class. Sort of how the ToN Vampire was re-written into an LA + 0 template tobe given to 5HD creatures. New Rules for Undead and a discussion about how while people don't want the Undead type to simply be pruned heavily and then have more subtypes; people are perversely okay with simply having more subtypes to be used to removed stuff from the stock Undead Type. Also describes the Darkminded and Unliving Subtypes if you read the Vampire Entry 1st and want to know what the big deal about those tw subtypes is. New rules: The interaction of Undead with the rest of the rules is often less than satisfactory. Part of this is that the undead type itself is extremely overzealous in the game effects it provides. The fact that all undead don't need sleep means that vampires don't have to sleep in their coffins. The fact that undead don't have a Constitution score means that Ghouls can run for exactly zero rounds before they have to make a Con check (that they automatically fail) to continue (and also says it can &quot;run on indefinitely&quot;, a base contradiction that makes us sad). The fact that undead are immune to critical hits means that a vampire can't be staked through the heart (even if it was sleeping, which it isn't). But even beyond that fundamental error, the multitude of authors that compromise the Dungeons and Dragons design staff never seemed to get on the same page as to exactly what being undead means – so a surprisingly large number of contradictory statements pepper the products. And I'm not just talking about how they made an entire Deathless Type when there's already Ghosts (Alignment: Any) right in the core rules. Subtypes The obvious, and slickest, way to handle the excesses of the Undead type would be to simply rewrite the Undead type with a lot less in it and throw down a number of subtypes (mindless for skeletons, amorphous for shadows, and ponderous for zombies) to put in the abilities that each type of undead is supposed to have. But polls have shown that people aren't willing to play with optional rules that do that – but perversely they are willing to add new subtypes to monsters to remove rules instituted by the base template. I don't know why, but DMs are honestly more likely to use an additional subtype that removes an inappropriate game effect from a monster than they are to use a modified base type that doesn't have the inappropriate effect in the first place. So that's how we're going to do it here. Dark Minded (subtype) Undead creatures with an intelligence score have an intelligence that can be influenced, though they are dead and cannot be influenced by appeals to emotion. A dark minded creature has the following traits: - Not immune to mind affecting affects. - Immune to morale and fear effects. - Heals normally - Any Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate attempts to influence a dark minded creature are made with a -10 penalty. - A Dark Minded creature continues to advance in age categories, growing older and wiser over time. It does not accrue any penalties to its attributes for advancing in age categories, and a Dark Minded creature has no maximum age. Unliving (subtype) An Unliving creature is an undead that mimics many of the capacities of a living creature without truly being alive. An unliving creature has the following game effects: - Unliving creatures have a metabolism of sorts, and thus have a Constitution score. - Unliving creatures require food (often blood or flesh) and sleep, and are vulnerable to magical sleep effects even if they are otherwise immune to mind affecting effects. - Unliving creatures have at least one vital organ, and are subject to critical hits from attackers with at least one rank in Knowledge (Religion). - Not destroyed upon reaching 0 it points, though its existence still ends if it reaches -10 as normal. - Subject to subdual damage, but can benefit from the Regeneration ability as normal. Sample creatures with the [Dark Minded] subtype: Liches Nightshades Vampires Sample creatures with the [Unliving] subtype: Ghouls Necropolitan Vampires Undead and Aging Undead don't age. They don't get any older or more decrepit over time, that's the whole point. A creature with the undead type does not grow older at all, unless further modified by the Dark Minded subtype. This probably should have been in the Monster Manual. +0 LA Vampire Template and the Vampire Paragon Class Becoming Undead The basic rules for transforming into Undead were never intended to be playable by player characters. And thus it is unsurprising that the legions of the damned are not only unsatisfying, but actually unplayable when placed in a game. The following are templates that can be added to a character to make them into an Undead without actually changing their Level Adjustment. If a player wants to explore the legendary powers available to some of these creatures, they are encouraged to take Prestige Classes available to undead or to take one or more [Undead] feats that can grant the character these abilities within the normal level progression context. Each undead creature type has access to a special class that characters may take to advance their special abilities. ... [Stuff on revenents] Vampires &quot;An eternity of loneliness and betrayal is, ultimately, an eternity.&quot; A vampire is an unliving mockery of life that lives by cruelly consuming the blood of the innocent. Only characters slain by a vampire's Constitution Drain rise as vampires, and even then only if they have 5 hit dice or more. Characters with less hit dice become monstrous vampire spawn and do not retain their abilities. Character Modifications: Type: The character's type changes to Undead and the character's former type becomes a subtype with the &quot;augmented&quot; modifier. The character also gains the Dark Minded and Unliving subtypes. Hit Dice: The character's Hit Dice, BAB, Saves, and skills are all unaffected. Ability Scoress: The character gains a +2 bonus to his Strength and Charisma. Alignment: The character's alignment changes to Evil. Special Attacks: The character can drain blood from a helpless or willing victim, inflicting 2 points of Constitution Drain per round. The character heals 5 points for each point of Constitution drain in this way, and consuming 4 points of Constitution from intelligent creatures is considered enough &quot;food&quot; for one day (and the vampire gains no sustenance from any other food). Humanoids slain by this Constitution Drain may rise as vampires or vampire spawn (though the character has no control over them unless granted by another ability). Special Qualities: The character gains Turn Resistance +2. The character suffers 2d6 damage and is considered staggered every round he is exposed to direct sunlight. This damage cannot be healed by any means until the character is in a place with no light at all (such as a coffin). A vampire character is vulnerable to Light effects. Level Adjustment: +0 Vampire Paragon Hit Die: d6 BAB/Saves: BAB: Poor (as Wizard); Fort: Bad; Reflex: Good; Will: Good Class Skills: The Swordwraith Paragon's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Gather Information (Cha), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (all skills, taken individually) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Speak Language (n/a), Spellcraft (Int), and Swim (Str). Skills/Level: 4 + Intelligence Bonus Level, Abilities: 1 Blood Pool, Gaseous Form, Flaw, +1 Spellcaster Level 2 Hypnotic Gaze, +1 Spellcaster Level 3 Command Spawn, Regeneration, Flaw, +1 Spellcaster Level Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: The Vampire Paragon gains no new armor or weapon proficiencies. Spellcasting: Every level, the Vampire Paragon casts spells (including gaining any new spell slots and spell knowledge) as if she had also gained a level in a spellcasting class she had previous to gaining that level. If the character does not have any levels in any spellcasting classes when she takes her first level of Vampire, this class feature gives her levels in Sorcerer spellcasting. Blood Pool (Ex): A Vampire Paragon may &quot;store&quot; blood she has drained from intelligent creatures against future need and draw upon this blood to power her body or her magic. If a Vampire Paragon consumes the Constitution of an intelligent creature after she has already fed for the day, excess Constitution drained adds to her Blood Pool. A Vampire Paragon's Blood Pool can never exceed her character level plus her class level of Vampire Paragon. Constitution drained after the Blood Pool is filled is wasted. A Vampire Paragon may spend a point of her Blood Pool to heal herself of five points of damage. She may spend 4 points of Blood Pool to forgo needing to feed for one day. A spell being cast may be enhanced with any metamagic feat the Vampire Paragon knows by spending a number of points of Blood Pool equal to the number of extra levels the metamagic would add to the spell. Using Blood Pool is a free action, but no more than 4 points may be spent in a single round. Gaseous Form (Su): A Vampire Paragon can assume gaseous form as the spell at will. Flaw: Increasing the power of the blood within a Vampire is not without difficulties. As the potency of the Vampire's blood grows, so too does the power of her curse. At 1st and 3rd level of Vampire Paragon, the vampire gains an additional weakness related to her blood. Appropriate vampiric weaknesses are too numerous to be listed here, but could include: Inability to enter consecrated or hallowed ground; helplessness in water; repulsion (as the spell) by garlic; vulnerability to silver; daylight powerlessness (as a specter); dazed by spilled grains (2d4 rounds); nauseated by Holy Water (1d4 rounds); Inability to enter a hearth unless invited. Hypnotic Gaze (Su): At 2nd level, a Vampire Paragon gains the ability to hypnotize creatures which meet its gaze. The Vampire Paragon may make use its gaze on one creature within short range each round as a Swift action. Creatures are affected as by a hypnotism spell except that there is no hit die cap. The hypnotism effect ends if the Vampire Paragon no longer maintains the gaze (for example, by attempting to hypnotize a new victim). This is a Mind Affecting Enchantment effect, the DC is Charisma based. Command Spawn: Vampire Spawn created by a Vampire Paragon of 3rd level are under the Vampire Paragon's control. Regeneration (Ex): At 3rd level a Vampire Paragon regenerates, healing subdual damage every round equal to her character level. Damage from critical hits, fire, positive energy, aligned weapons, or wood inflict lethal damage on a Vampire Paragon. Giving the vampire +2 str, +2 cha and having to keep his Con score as an undead is definately more viable than the current MM vampire template. Half-Dragon and Half Celestial/Fiend could afford the same treatment. If you want people to delay class levels to gain a racial thing; make the racial stuff part of actual levels; every HD should be one level in a PC and you should never gain a level (or equivalent) without gaining a new HD. Really, if people want to play monsters, we need completely new rules to make that idea viable. Which is what the next edition should definately have. Complete universality and no double standards for anything. Fighters (and fighting classes) have to be designed to play in a game where: winged horses fly, Wizards can learn any spell, badgers can talk, Clerics can achieve fighter BaB, Druids are actually 2-3 characters, Balors can cast certain spells at will, Stone Golems can pummel you into paste unless you can side-step it's crushing damage potential, Shadows can pop out of the ground and tickle you to death (literally), Rogues are well known for using stolen magical wands and staffs and Paladins can hurt undead by brushing up against them. After all, it was creating the Fighter while not looking at the Wizard that results in all of the "fighters are weak" threads. If every creature is a race with or without Racial HD (in which case, your race is also your class for a level or more) you'd see more parity when introducing a mosnter PC to the group. If, in each monster manual entry you get 'stock' monsters of each race; a few levels of a 'paragon' class that each monster can take levels in to further their racial dynamic (3 levels is usually more than enough for a Paragon Class); suddenly you can have Chewbacca the Hobgoblin Fighter or Leonardo the Crucian Ninja as viable characters without someone having to cheat or have to swallow bad rules to do so. While those would be easier to do, Gumbercules the Phasm Theif Acrobat and Lestat the Vampire Paragon specifically can't be created as viable PCs unless we throw out the rules as they are and restart somewhere. Then again, I'm a DM who is fine with having the players sweat out every challenging combat or waste time arguing the finer points of slavery over indentured servitude. What I'm not fine with, is someone wanting to be a minotaur, and sucking compared to ... everyone else. He's already paying enough for his minor stat and natural armour boosts from racial HD.
Pyke_Moonshadow 04-11-07, 07:39 AM	I guess "better" rules for monster characters wouldn't be that bad. It would make it easier for monster npcs to womp on the party I suppose. Of course I would have to find a new way to discourage my players wanting to take them. I like keeping monsters, well, monsters. PC minotaur walks into town with his group. Commoner 1: oh crap a minotaur! quick, let's form a mob then we're CR8! Commoner 2: Are you nuts, let's do what we always do when a monster shows up. Commoner 1: What's that? Commoner 2: Hire adventurers to kill it!
Jim Johnny 04-11-07, 07:46 AM	Ok champ, what method do you suggest since you only decided to tear down my attempt? I would like some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism please. What method of testing should I use (again not just number crunching since there are far too many variables to look at and it can be rather obtuse to talk about things in a purely statistical manner)? Anyone? (side note: the succubus has a caster level of 12) What the heck? Are my posts invisible??? At last, after years of research as a commoner i have done it!!!! What am I saying in the last too many to remember their number posts? I have suggested possible tests to check the LA with any race you like. ---------------------------------------- The 6HD Succubus in MM has a caster level of 12. So Pyke is right the CL for the SPELL LIKE ABILITIES and only for them is 12. The problem is that this thing cannot be increased by class levels since it does not stack. the CL 12 is because of the demon racial HDs. And only if you increase the character in HDs instead of class levels the CL of her abilitiers will rise. Important notice: If your succu started the game with no racial HDs then forget the CL 12. -------------------------------------------- byzantine ... I was wondering what this means. I know about the empire as I live in Greece but I did not know the metaphorical meaning of the word. So I looked it up in a dictionary. = excessively complicated and detailed ----------------------------------------------- The paragon races suck, as do some things from Libris Mortis like the wight class, the vampire class etc. It is blasphemously stupid. Imagine seeing and Elf with class levels as wight and dwarf paragon. It has no meaning. Cannot be explained by nature. ANd I try to be reasonable. Half-breeds are ok, most templates like half-golem, lycanthrope are ok. Dragonkin ok But wight levels???????????????? adventurer 1: I am a better Wight than you are. adventurer 2: Hell no! wight: $*%#* Hey, tha's unfair! I want human class levels. If you want to be a Vampire, fine. Create a Vampire. If you try to play a vampire but want not to be undead, have no LA and a God knows what more then NO you are not a Vampire. Go to the far realm and play with the creatures hanging there. They are closer to you than anybody else. It is stupid what the creators of the game do to appeal to any unearthly desire of the players. Instead of fixing the problematic LA, creating a more stable CR calculation system and balanced feats and spells and everything they publish books with alternative spell casting systems, paragon races and scroundles. . .
Steely_Dan 04-11-07, 07:56 AM	From practical experience I am in a group with: -Drow Psion (seer) 9 (ECL 11) -Human Spirit Shaman 11 (ECL 11) -Hafl-Orc Barbarian 2/Ranger 9 (ECL 11) -Half Celestial Human Psychihc Rogue 7 (ECL 11) -Gold Dwarf Divine Bard 4/Fighter 1/Battlesmith 1/Deepwarden 2/Dwarf Paragon 1/Hammer of Moradin 2 (ECL 11) And it seems to be working out just dandy – we don't see the problem/imbalance with LAs.
Jim Johnny 04-11-07, 08:00 AM	Because at 11 ECL everyone has enough levels to stand on his own. How about in minimum ECL when the Half Celestial had one HD and the human 5???
Steely_Dan 04-11-07, 08:02 AM	Because at 11 ECL everyone has enough levels to stand on his own. How about in minimum ECL when the Half Celestial had one HD and the human 5??? It was still fine, thanks to the fat Con (and Dex) bonus that the Half-Celestial template grants.
Judging Eagle 04-11-07, 03:17 PM	It was still fine, thanks to the fat Con (and Dex) bonus that the Half-Celestial template grants. Lvl 5 Deep Dwarf Fighter or Barbarian Assume 15 con +2 (let's add +1 from levels) = Con 18 mod +4 HP= 5 HD + Con mod =10+2 + (4*5.5) + (4*4) =12 + 22 + 16 =50 Which is reasonable HP for a tank to have at his lvl (usually, "tank HP" is about level * 10) Lvl 1 Half Celestial Deep Dwarf Fighter or Barbarian Assume 15 Con +4 = +4 con mod HP = 1 HD + Con mod =10 + 4 =14 Two good hits should knock the Half-Celestial guy over at lvl 5. Yeah, that makes me cry. Let's make the template more reasonable. People want to "play" non-humans sometimes. That doesn't mean you have to give them inhuman statistic modifiers. Seriosly, if you simply strip a template down to a bare minimum and then tell people that they can .... well, ****. This is a good example of what a Paragon class can do. Half-Celestial Sometimes really smoking outsiders meke bebies with non-outsiders. Half Celestials are the products of these pairings. Note: Half-Celestials can be the result of any outsider/non-outsider pairing, so Succubi/Non-outsider Pairings lead to Half-Celestials, b/c Half-Celestials are beautiful, Balors and ugly outsiders create Half-Fiends; Couatl/Non-Outsider pairings are an example of a Lawful Good Half-Fiend result. The terms half fiend and half celestial are simply the terms used to tell the rough differences between the two types. As many Half-Fiend paladins who take down their foes with cold benevolent fury exist as do Half-Celestials that command massive armies of undead, monsterous humanoids and savage humanoids agaisnt civilized lands. Grabbed the d20SRD Half-Celestial to look-over and modifiy/comment. Creating A Half-Celestial "Half-celestial" is an inherited template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature with an Intelligence score of 4 or higher and nonevil alignment (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A half-celestial uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here. Size and Type The creature’s type changes to outsider. Do not recalculate the creature’s Hit Dice, base attack bonus, or saves. Size is unchanged. Half-celestials are normally native outsiders. Speed A half-celestial has feathered wings and can fly at twice the base creature’s base land speed (goodpoor maneuverability). If the base creature has a fly speed, use that instead. [Ok, whatever, a 4th lvl druid or a 1st lvl hafling/gnome wizard can get "combat flying". Edit: I screwed their fly speed to equal land and poor manuevrability, Paragon levels will fix this] Armor Class Natural armor improves by +1 (this stacks with any natural armor bonus the base creature has). Special Attacks A half-celestial retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following special abilities. Daylight (Su) Half-celestials can use a daylight effect (as the spell) at will. Smite Evil (Su) Once per five (5) Hit Dice a half-celestial can make a normal melee attack to deal extra damage equal to its HD (maximum of +20) against an evil foe. If using Iaimeki's Paladin of Kantian Philosophy in your game, you instead smite evil as if you were a a Paladin of half your level. This bonus stacks if you are a Paladin. [Hmm, okay... not amazing; tweaked it so that a Half-Celestial Pally inmy game would "work" at being able to kill evil, not play second fiddle to the barbarian] Spell-Like Abilities A half-celestial with an Intelligence or Wisdom score of 8 or higher has two or more spell-like abilities, depending on its Hit Dice, as indicated on the table below. The abilities are cumulative Half-Celestial Gain the Half-Celestial Sphere HD Abilities 1-2 Protection from evil 3/day, bless 3-4 Aid, detect evil 5-6 Cure serious wounds, neutralize poison 7-8 Holy smite, remove disease 9-10 Dispel evil 11-12 Holy word 13-14 Holy aura 3/day, hallow 15-16 Mass charm monster 17-18 Summon monster IX (celestials only) 19-20 Resurrection Unless otherwise noted, an ability is usable once per day. Caster level equals the creature’s HD, and the save DC is Charisma-based. Special Qualities * Immunity to disease. [h'okay] * Resistance to acid 10, cold 10, and electricity 10. [too much, save this for the Paragon class] * Resistance to acid 5, cold 5, and electricity 5. [[i]noticable, but you won't shrug off every 5th lvl fireball with 1-5 damage on a successful save] [chamged my mind, no resistances] * Damage reduction: 5/magic (if HD 11 or less) or 10/magic (if HD 12 or more). [It 'scales', and at lvl 10 creatures that don't have magic weapons isn't a threat anyway] * A half-celestial’s natural weapons are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. [Cool at 1st lvl, if you're a monk, otherwise useless to most people, and +1 weapons show up at lvl 4 anyway] * Spell resistance equal to creature’s HD + 10 (maximum 35).[too much, save for the paragon class] * Spell resistance equal to creature’s HD + 5 (maximum 35) If the Character has an other source of Spell Resistance, this adds +2 to that value, unless this is greater. [more managable, and it's only a 'miss chance' now, not a decent defens vs. spells] * +4 racial bonus on Fortitude saves against poison. [uhm, ok?] Abilities Increase from the base creature as follows: Str +4, Dex +2, Con +4, Int +2, Wis +4, Cha +4. [Too bloody much, we want him to be roughly the same power level as most PCs [i]and have it noticable as a half-celestial] Let's add those stat mods to a 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10 character; then subtract the elite array from that. 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10 +4, +2, +4, +2, +4, +4 15, 13, 15, 12, 14, 14 Elite array = 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 15, 13, 15, 12, 14, 14 - 15, 10, 14, 8, 13, 12 ______________________ +0, +2, +0, +4, +0, +2 Dex +2, Int +4, Cha +2 [Much more reasonable, and they're noticable stat mods; I'll make them have to take 2 outsider HD. The problem is that people want personable and tough half-celestials, not smart ones] Stat Modifiers: Str or Con or Dex: +2, Int or Wisdom or Cha +2 [[s]I dunno, it's closer to being playable, it gives players some choice over where their Stat mods go, but whatever... nevermind; I'l do so that you can put +2 to one physical and one +2 mental stat, that's better than +8 to stats overall and definately better than the +20 overall to all stats that the MM half-celestial has] Hit Dice A Half Celestial must start with one Outsider Hitdice, this hit dice cannot be traded out for a class level and is their first hit Dice and must be added to any racial hit dice that the creature starts with. They gain a d8 Hit Dice, all good saves, 8 + int Modifier skill points to spend amoung the base creature's skills, and proficientcy with all simple weapons, light armour and any weapons, armour and sheilds that their Outsider Parent is normally equipped with. [The fact that High level Alienists and Yeth Hounds can use great swords is part of the unbelievably dumb act of making Types to cover far too much. Light armour, simple weapons proficiency and then racial specific weapons use makes more sense] Skills A half-celestial gains skill points as an outsider and has skill points equal to (8 + Int modifier) × (HD +3). Do not include Hit Dice from class levels in this calculation—the half-celestial gains outsider skill points only for its racial Hit Dice, and gains the normal amount of skill points for its class levels. Treat skills from the base creature’s list as class skills, and other skills as cross-class. [Okay, w/e this only applies to stuff like Bugbears that have racial HD] Challenge Rating HD 5 or less, as base creature +1; HD 6 to 10, as base creature +2; HD 11 or more, as base creature +3. [useless now at most it's CR +1; I stripped the Half-Celestial Sphere] Alignment Always good (any).[Scrapped] Good or Evil (any) (the Good/Evil axis part of alignment must reflect the creature's outsider progenitor; so a Half-Celestial of an Achon parent would be Good (any), while a Half-Celestial with an Erineyes parent would have would be Evil (any)) Level Adjustment Same as base creature +4. again, scrapped LA +0 Pretty Rough Half-Celestial "Template"; you have to pay 1 HD to be one, the mods are lower, but a +0 LA seems fine. Creating A Half-Celestial "Half-celestial" is an inherited template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature with an Intelligence score of 4 or higher and nonevil alignment (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A half-celestial uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here. Size and Type The creature’s type changes to outsider. The Bse creature gains its first hit dice as an outsider; gaining a d8 Hit Dice, +1 Bab, All three saves are good for this level, light armour and simple weapon proficiency and 8 + int mod skill points. This hit dice replaces the creature's first hit dice and cannot be replaced with class levels. Do not recalculate the creature’s other Hit Dice, base attack bonus, or saves. Size is unchanged. Half-celestials are normally native outsiders. Speed A half-celestial has feathered wings and can fly at the base creature’s base land speed (poor maneuverability). If the base creature has a fly speed, use that instead. Armor Class Natural armor improves by +1 (this stacks with any natural armor bonus the base creature has). Special Attacks A half-celestial retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following special abilities. Daylight (Su) Half-celestials can use a daylight effect (as the spell) at will. Smite Evil (Su) Once per five (5) Hit Dice a half-celestial can make a normal melee attack to deal extra damage equal to its HD (maximum of +20) against an evil foe. If using Iaimeki's Paladin of Kantian Philosophy in your game, you instead smite evil as if you were a a Paladin of half your level. This bonus stacks if you are a Paladin, thus giving a Half-Celestial Paladin 1.5 Paladin levels. Spell-Like Abilities A half-celestial has all the special qualities of the base creature, plus the following special qualities. * Darkvision out to 60 feet. * Immunity to disease. * A half-celestial’s natural weapons are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. * Spell resistance equal to creature’s HD + 5 (maximum 35) If the Character has an other source of Spell Resistance, this adds +2 to that value, unless this is greater. * +4 racial bonus on Fortitude saves against poison. Abilities Str or Con or Dex: +2, Int or Wisdom or Cha +2 Hit Dice A Half Celestial must start with one Outsider Hitdice (as listed above in their Type). This hit dice cannot be traded out for a class level and is their first hit Dice and prelaces the first racial hit dice that the creature starts with. They gain a d8 Hit Dice, all good saves, 8 + int Modifier skill points to spend amoung the base creature's skills, and proficientcy with all simple weapons, light armour and any weapons, armour and sheilds that their Outsider Parent is normally equipped with. Skills A half-celestial gains skill points as an outsider and has skill points equal to (8 + Int modifier) × (HD +3). Do not include Hit Dice from class levels in this calculation—the half-celestial gains outsider skill points only for its racial Hit Dice, and gains the normal amount of skill points for its class levels. Treat skills from the base creature’s list as class skills, and other skills as cross-class. Challenge Rating: +1 Alignment Good or Evil (any) (the Good/Evil axis part of alignment must reflect the creature's outsider progenitor; so a Half-Celestial of an Achon parent would be Good (any), while a Half-Celestial with an Erineyes parent would have would be Evil (any)) Level Adjustment LA +0 Favored Class: Half-Celestials have Paladin and Cleric as favored classes. Half-Celestial Paragon Pre-Req: Must be a Half Celestial Class Features HD: d8 BaB: Full (1/1) Saves: Fortitude (Good); Reflex (Good); Will (Good) Skills: Any previous Racial or Class skills Skill Points: 8 + int modifier Resistances 5, Healing Psalms Flying 1.5x Speed (Average), Damage Reduction (5) Resistances 10, Blessing Psalms Flying 2x Speed (Good); Spell Resistance HD + 10; Damage Reduction (10) Proficientcies: The Half Celestial Paragon gains one armour proficiency feat that they qualify for, one sheild proficiency feat that they qualify for and one weapon proficiency feat that they qualify for. Resistances: At 1st level the Half-Celestial Pagagon gains energy Resitance 5 against Acid, Cold and Electricity. This improves at level 3 to 10. Healing Psalms: The Half Celestial Gains access to serveral spell like abilities via the non-evil version of Spheres; Psalms. In this case the Healing collection of Psalms. Flying: At second level, the Half-Celestial's Flying improves to one and a half times their land speed and average manueverability. This improves to double their creature's land speed and Good manueverability at level 5. Damage Reduction: At third level, the Half-Celestial gains damage reduction at a rate of 1 per hit dice that they have, that is negated by magic and has a maximum cap of DR 5/Magic (5). At 5th level this maximum increases to 10 and is negated only by magic weapons that are evily aligned; thus a maximum of DR 10/Evil and Magic. Blessing Psalms: The Half Celestial Gains access to serveral spell like abilities via the non-evil version of Spheres; Psalms. In this case the Blessing collection of Psalms. Spell Resistance:At fifth level, the Half-Celestials Spell resistance increases to their HD + 10 (maximum of 35). This can be added to any existing spell resistance and instead adds +3 to the existing spell resistance if it is greater than this provided Spell Resistance. Psalms Psalms are the non-evil equivalent of Sphere (http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost.php?p=9285363&postcount=5) [scroll down to half-way down the post] The Spheres/Psalms Fiends (and some of their minions and associates) cast magic primarily through spell-like abilities. While many signature fiends have arbitrary lists of spell-like abilities, the Tome of Fiends offers a method to advance Fiends into thematically appropriate spell-like abilities when they advance. When a fiend has access to a sphere, she is able to use all of the abilities within that sphere up to her character level. If she gains more levels, more powers of the sphere become available. In this way the spell-like abilities of fiends created with the rules in this tome should always be aesthetically and level appropriate. Basic Sphere Access: When a creature has basic access to a sphere, she can use any of the spells listed in the sphere may be used once per day (each) as spell-like abilities, provided that their listed level is equal or lower to the creature's character level. Advanced Sphere Access: When a creature has advanced access to a sphere, she can use any of the spells listed in the sphere may be used 3 times per day (each) as spell-like abilities, provided that their listed level is equal or lower to the creature's character level. Expert Sphere Access: When a creature has expert access to a sphere, any spells listed in the sphere may be used at will as spell-like abilities, provided that their listed level is equal or lower to the creature's character level. Creating new spheres: The following list of spheres isn't intended to be comprehensive, and we fully expect that some players and DMs will want many more spheres than we have scribed. All new spheres must be approved of by the DM, and should represent some actual (indifferent or evil) trait like "intoxication" or "badgers" rather than a game mechanical notion like "kicking ass and being totally sweet" or something praiseworthy like "generosity". A good place to start is actually Domains, as these are already a source by which a character gain a spell at every odd-numbered Spheres and Spell Levels: Spell-like abilities used out of spheres re considered to be cast as a spell level equal to half the minimum needed character level to use the ability (rounded up). The save DC of a spell-like ability granted through Sphere access is Charisma-based. Thus, the save DC for a spell-like ability which becomes available at character level 5 is 12 + Charisma bonus. Blessing Special: As a standard action you may invoke a divine blessing upon any target within close range; they gain a bonus to their next roll equal to half your hit dice[/b] 1 Bless 3 Prayer 5 Good Hope 7 Recitation 9 Holy Smite 11 Dispel Evil 13 Hallow 15 Summon Monster VIII (Outsiders of your alignment only) 17 Ressurection 19 Miracle (Non-xp costing miracles only Healing Special: As an immediate action you may channel positive energy on any target that you touch. You can heal and amount equal to your character level per use. This is a spell-like abilitiy and you may use it to harm undead, but they get to make a will save for half damage (the DC is based on 10+ 1/2 Hit Dice + Charisma Modifier)[/b] 1 Cure Light wounds 3 Delay Poison 5 Neutralize Poison 7 Remove Disease 9 Insignia of Healing [Maximized] 11 Heal 13 Mass Cure Critical Wounds 15 Mass Heal 17 True Ressurection 19 Miracle (May only be used to heal or revive a creature) Coming up with 'good' non-boring choices for the healing psalms was annoying. Anyway, yeah, you can turn anything into a low/no LA class. Mechanically it looks different, but from a flavour point of view it's pretty much the same. An above average individual with feathered wings and certain elements that show it's extra-planar heritage. With levels in the paragon class, more of the templates abities are availible and you get HD and stuff for it. I really should put full caster progression in it as well. That makes people shout "hax", but as it stands, taking Half-Celestial Paragon levels are actually better for the DM since he's not gonna have to worry about Sacred Exorcists, Icantrixes or Archmages showing up. Jim Johnny, did you lok at the +0 LA Vampire and the Vampire Paragon class? The Vampire template is for people who want to be a vampire. The Vampire Paragon is for people that want to have all the cool things that vampires normally have as well as some of their flaws. Plus, the flaws come in different flavours as well; garlic does nothing to core vampires, neither does dropping grains on the ground, nor does a vampire. need to be invited into a dwelling under the core rules; but both are known to keep vampires back).
Judging Eagle 04-11-07, 03:42 PM	What the heck? Are my posts invisible??? At last, after years of research as a commoner i have done it!!!! What am I saying in the last too many to remember their number posts? I have suggested possible tests to check the LA with any race you like. ---------------------------------------- The 6HD Succubus in MM has a caster level of 12. So Pyke is right the CL for the SPELL LIKE ABILITIES and only for them is 12. The problem is that this thing cannot be increased by class levels since it does not stack. the CL 12 is because of the demon racial HDs. And only if you increase the character in HDs instead of class levels the CL of her abilitiers will rise. Important notice: If your succu started the game with no racial HDs then forget the CL 12. -------------------------------------------- I'd never let anyone get away with dumping Racial HD; since those are the "levels" that they took to get their above human average stats and special abilities byzantine ... I was wondering what this means. I know about the empire as I live in Greece but I did not know the metaphorical meaning of the word. So I looked it up in a dictionary. = excessively complicated and detailed ----------------------------------------------- The paragon races suck, as do some things from Libris Mortis like the wight class, the vampire class etc. I was talking about the Tome of Necromancy Undead Creature Paragon levels. Libris Mortis is okay. Except that the True Necromancer is usually worse commander of undead than the Neutral Cleric of Obad-Hai. Casts spells as if he was a side-kick's sidekick, which is inexcusable. It is blasphemously stupid. Imagine seeing and Elf with class levels as wight and dwarf paragon. It has no meaning. Cannot be explained by nature. ANd I try to be reasonable. Half-breeds are ok, most templates like half-golem, lycanthrope are ok. Dragonkin ok But wight levels???????????????? The way Paragon levels are, you have to be of that race to take a level of it and you can take the levels almost any time. So, the Elf is stuck with Elf Paragon levels; Wight Paragon would only be availible if he got turned into one. Think of it as "Racial hit dice"; that give you cool stuff based on your race or like Racial Substitution levels. adventurer 1: I am a better Wight than you are. adventurer 2: Hell no! wight: $*%#* Hey, tha's unfair! I want human class levels. If you want to be a Vampire, fine. Create a Vampire. If you try to play a vampire but want not to be undead, have no LA and a God knows what more then NO you are not a Vampire. Go to the far realm and play with the creatures hanging there. They are closer to you than anybody else. It is stupid what the creators of the game do to appeal to any unearthly desire of the players. The ToN vampire gets... +2 str, +2 cha; has to drink blood to live (4 con per day; which is an actual rule, the core vampire has no rules on how often or how much they have to feed); gets screwed in daylight (damaged really); can get critically hit, needs to sleep, isn't immune to mind-affectin effects; can be affected by subdual damage... The list just keeps going on with the things that the undead type would 'normally' have that are removed sicne vampires are blood-drinking humans, not tireless zombies or magically animated skeletons. The more 'powerful' vampire abilities (flying, shape changing, mind-control) and some of their more severe flaws are part of the Vampire Paragon class. Instead of fixing the problematic LA, creating a more stable CR calculation system and balanced feats and spells and everything they publish books with alternative spell casting systems, paragon races and scroundles. . . Nah, the real problem is this: "Wizards of the Coast doesn't have a unified design principle" If it did, then fighters wouldn't suck, LA would be obvious at being okay (and not being sneaky at being bad, like it is now), spells would be designed a certain way. You wouldn't have designers do stupid **** to purposfully sabotague the game mechanics: like Andy Collins removing the 15,000 gp cap on magic items that you could get with Wish (he thought it would be "fun"? WTF, leave that choice to the GM) and Ed Stark changing Shapechange to give you Supernatural abilities. I think that Andy wanted an easier method to screw his spellcasting players, and if they got something over the now "invisible" 15,000 gp cap, he's screw them somehow. Ed on the other hand wanted his level eighteen druid to be more powerful. I mean, wtf? A more powerful Druid? Since everyone knows that a Druid changing into a Balor with a Vorpal Weapn Sword makes piles of sense both flavourfully and mechanically. :rolleyes: Ed Stark makes most munchkins look like kitten for doing something like that. I mean, Balor-Druids? No one would allow that.
sigma999 04-11-07, 07:12 PM	Hey nice Half-Beautiful-Outsider, Eagle! "Smite Evil": I dunno about this, if it can be the child of a succubus or a Tulani eladrin they aren't necessarily part of the Good vs. Evil debacle... How about "Smite Ugly" where they can Smite anything with less Charisma than it? ;)
Judging Eagle 04-11-07, 07:34 PM	Same thing. A fiend-borne Half-Celestial benefits as much from being able smite Evil as a celestial-borne one does. It needs some more work, but it's a start. Yes, I utterly raped it's stat mods. They did nothing but increase it's LA too much and don't say "outsider" at all. All the half-celestial stat mods were telling me were: "above average, in everything" which can be done by giving any mental and any physical a +2 each. Being a creature with: "+8 Str, +8 Con, -4 Int, -4 Cha" ...can give you a race that can actually can have flavour written about it, since it's got obvious strengths and weaknesses (it's a rough for a troll's stats; really high str, really high con, dumb and would rather lash out than tell you off). The +4 or +2 to all stats on the 1/2 celestial seemed bleh; it's abilities are what makes it interesting. Also, backstory is what makes it useful. Just like Tieflings are more awesome than Aasimars (flavourfully); a Half-Celestial with an Erineyes mom and a human blackgaurd dad is definately some good material for an actual game. Mom could have you come help her on the job, or get you started yourself (yeah, you know what I mean by "helping her on the job" or maybe you don't; that's fine too). While your Dad's all like "hmmmff! Why don't u come help meh killz bebies and raid pplz thatch-roofed cotages wit my fiendish bugbear raiders? ...D: <"
sigma999 04-12-07, 02:58 AM	Example Half-Celestial then: http://www.maps4heroes.com/heroes5/pictures/olivier_ledoit/O_LEDROIT_Inferno_Succubus.jpg Someday, when I'm done this redoing-D&D-rules madness, I'll reinvent outsiders as we know it. Make grey out of black and white, so to speak. I've been looking at good outsiders and devils and wondering how different player reactions would be if their appearances were slightly... mixed... like the same "racial" origins but different cultural styles more than alignment polarities, like the differences between Chinese and American. What if there was no Evil Empire for devils and instead they are simply trying to get by? No malicious goal, just a race trying to survive. How different would their abilities and lifestyle be as opposed to an existence hellbent (harhar) on domination? How different would the spell ability selections be? What if dead humans were destined to become either Archon or Devil, and one must chose or accept a mediocre, factionless existence in the Outlands or elsewhere? And what if the "tanar-ri" were instead inducted into the fold of a greater, more influential, elusive, and powerful race/organization... the Unseelie? >:}
Jim Johnny 04-13-07, 02:48 PM	Lvl 5 Deep Dwarf Fighter or Barbarian Assume 15 con +2 (let's add +1 from levels) = Con 18 mod +4 HP= 5 HD + Con mod =10+2 + (4*5.5) + (4*4) =12 + 22 + 16 =50 Which is reasonable HP for a tank to have at his lvl (usually, "tank HP" is about level * 10) Lvl 1 Half Celestial Deep Dwarf Fighter or Barbarian Assume 15 Con +4 = +4 con mod HP = 1 HD + Con mod =10 + 4 =14 Two good hits should knock the Half-Celestial guy over at lvl 5. Yeah, that makes me cry. Let's make the template more reasonable. People want to "play" non-humans sometimes. That doesn't mean you have to give them inhuman statistic modifiers. Seriosly, if you simply strip a template down to a bare minimum and then tell people that they can .... well, ****. This is a good example of what a Paragon class can do. Half-Celestial Sometimes really smoking outsiders meke bebies with non-outsiders. Half Celestials are the products of these pairings. Note: Half-Celestials can be the result of any outsider/non-outsider pairing, so Succubi/Non-outsider Pairings lead to Half-Celestials, b/c Half-Celestials are beautiful, Balors and ugly outsiders create Half-Fiends; Couatl/Non-Outsider pairings are an example of a Lawful Good Half-Fiend result. The terms half fiend and half celestial are simply the terms used to tell the rough differences between the two types. As many Half-Fiend paladins who take down their foes with cold benevolent fury exist as do Half-Celestials that command massive armies of undead, monsterous humanoids and savage humanoids agaisnt civilized lands. Your example with the lack of HP problem is ideal. That is what I try to say from post 1. ------------------------------------- Why exactly don't you like true necromancer? He needs only a few levels in wiz/cleric but later on he advances in both equally. ? -------------------------------------- You are right about paragons and the fact that they can only be of the same race to get a paragon level. I sat down and read the unearthed arcana paragon section and it has a nice and interesting explanation. That those characters with paragons levels are actually strong individuals of that race. So we can see the paragon levels as racial HDs (in a way). Of course I do not see the idea why take paragon levels (racial HDs) if your class has 0HD as a starting option. And it changes the whole aspect of the game. When you will go to an elf village all those charismatic characters should have some paragon levels because they are more powerful than the other members of the race and superior in many ways. It makes no sence go to the village and see a 5th level druid (the healer of the village) abd his wife...a 2nd level wizard with 3 paragon elf levels. They have the same power but the wife is more charismatic from her race.... I do not know if you get me. I does not sound good. As it says in UA the linjhe between races and classes becomes blurred. I am not sure if We want that. We need clarity in this game, not obscurity! Nevertheless if we talk for maximum 3 paragon levels, it is not so bad. Although I would onbly accept them from the beginning of the game. If we create a ECL 4 party you can take 3 paragon levels and 1 class if you want, or 2 - 2. If we start a game from ECL1 you can start with 1 paragon level but then advance as a class. That way the paragon levels will be considered as racial HDs, as it should be. You should get more power through advancement in classes not in race, if you get me. ----------------------------------------------- I do not like the idea of vampire levels and wight levels (i talk about Libris mortis, which apart from that is an exceptional book). Either you are or you are not a vampire. You cannot become gradually. It is a race we are talking about. You can become a better fighter or a greater wizard, but a better vampire???? It makes no sence. Again either you are or not. So No. --------------------------------------------- I am not sure if a succubus and a human will give birth to a half-celestial (unless this is a house rule of yours) It will be a half-fiend. It is not a matter of beauty. Half-fiends can be beautiful too. They have demonic blood and the rest but they do not have to have dogfaces. And couatl.... Couatl might be an outsider but it is more of a magical beast being an outsider. (the outsider template is the dominant) I do not think it can mate with humans. Of course now you will tell me that dragons do using polymorph. Something that Couatl can do too. But again It sounds kinda ...strange. Brings images of horses being ridden on the fields. if you get me:cheer: It is sick... I always considered dragons exceptional and magical creatures, and that is why I accept the idea of dragon-human bond. One thing I know, is that I do not want to bother myself thinking which creatures can mate with humans and which cannot.:bored: ------------------------------------------------- You get my point I hope. Racial HDs should be gained from the beginning, not gradually. Then we talk about classes. We alter the game to an extend where if we look back we see nothing but mists. The key is to fix the LAs, not try and find alternative routes to avoid them like races-classes, butchering special abilities to bring the LA down to 0 and simultaneously destroy the identity of the race etcetera I hope their are people that agree with my point of you :lop: <--liked the emoticon
sigma999 04-14-07, 04:27 AM	More blurring is what this tired old cliche'd game needs! And I'm all for the devil-child using half-celestial, while the son of a Guardinal (awww the pooor lame-ass angel-wannabes :3) is 'half-fiend'. Maybe we need new names, helps ease the transition in mind as something new. Fiend and celestial bring images with the words and that's hard to get rid of. Could be... brute and beatific? ... OK I am tired, I admit. I give up for the day.