Are level advancements good or bad for teh game? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Are level advancements good or bad for teh game? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
BigBigSpiritmonger
12-27-05, 03:17 AM Hey, I have a player who is pestering me to be a creature with a level advancement. I told him I would have to think about it (I.E. come post it here). At first I said they can be anything with a level advancement of 3 or less. That sounded good, until my friend read me the stats for a Centaur (L.A. 2). It sounded very powerful, and at the expense of only 2 levels...

What are your thoughts on level advancements. Good or Bad?

thanks,
BBS
DarknessEternal
12-27-05, 03:26 AM Centaur have racial hit dice in addition to a Level Adjustment*. Note, the term you're referring to is called Level Adjustment, not advancement.

That being said, races with Level Adjustments are almost always vastly underpowered for the huge penalties they are taking for losing levels.

*With 4 racial hit dice, a centaur is actually character level 6 once you include it's +2 adjustment. To repeat, a straight out of the book centaur is a 6th level character.
BigBigSpiritmonger
12-27-05, 03:30 AM So, would you say L.A. of 3 (4?, 5?) or less would be fair, and wouldn't lead to anything degenerate?
20goingon1232
12-27-05, 04:05 AM I don't think you understand the nature of LA and ECL sufficiently for you to allow it in your campaign. You need, I repeat, NEED to understand both those terms implicitly before even THINKING about allowing them.

LA is the levels you "lose" in order to be of the same power as one of no LA. Note that I am of the belief the entire LA system is a crock, but that is another story.

ECL is the TOTAL of your HD and your LA. HD includes your racial HD and class levels.

If you want to allow LA into your campaign, allow creatures whose ECL equals or less than your other characters. Centaur is ECL 6, so unless you have 6th level characters in your campaign's PC party, don't even think it. Sounds like your buddy is trying to run an end round around you. Players like that in my campaigns gets kicked in the nuts and shown the door.
Terraneaux
12-27-05, 04:33 AM Well, it's usually not that big of a deal. The standard rule is that you take the level adjustment and hit dice of a monster, add them together, and get the "Equivalent Character Level" or ECL With the centaur, it's got 4 hit dice of monstrous humanoid and 2 level adjustment, so it's level 6. The racial hit dice represent that centaurs are just naturally skilled and tough combatants, and the level adjustment represents that centaurs have additional bonuses not solely based on hit dice.

(If you already understand this next bit, I apologize). Basically, racial hit dice are like levels in a character class. They have a base attack bonus, good and bad saves, and give you hit points for taking levels in them. They are all summarized in the back of the monster manual. So for effects that affect what level you are (like enervation for instance) you add together the character's racial hit dice and his class levels to figure out what his "hit dice" or "character level" are (those two are basically synonymous terms). So a centaur with 3 levels of fighter would not be killed if he was energy drained for 3, because he has 7 hit dice.

Also note that you add together a character's hit dice and their level adjustment to figure out the rate at which that character gains xp. If a centaur fighter 3 (ECL nine because 4 racial hit dice+3 fighter hit dice+3 level adjustment) gains xp at the end of a session, factor him or her in as if they were a level 9 character.

All the above was rules. Next is my opinion.

Really, the level adjustment system is broken. It tends to create overpowered or (much more frequently) underpowered characters. In my games i try to ignore it to a certain degree; if the other characters dont have a problem with it, i let someone play a drow (LA +2) without counting their xp as if they were two levels higher.

If you've got a player who wants to play a centaur (with the chronicles of narnia having come out recently, i was considering playing one myself, the ones in that movie were pretty cool), I would suggest starting him at level 4 if your campaign allows it and the other players are fine with it. 4 levels of monstrous humanoid gives the character a good solid fighting character base that you could build from into fighter, ranger or barbarian.

If your group is still new and getting a feel for dnd, then ask them and make sure that some social bs doesn't come up here: are they cool with having a centaur in the group who may turn out to be more powerful than their character? I know that when i first started dnd i probably wouldn't have been cool with that, but now that i've mellowed a bit i'm like "whatever."
FriendoftheDork
12-27-05, 07:45 AM Centaur have racial hit dice in addition to a Level Adjustment*. Note, the term you're referring to is called Level Adjustment, not advancement.

That being said, races with Level Adjustments are almost always vastly underpowered for the huge penalties they are taking for losing levels.

*With 4 racial hit dice, a centaur is actually character level 6 once you include it's +2 adjustment. To repeat, a straight out of the book centaur is a 6th level character.

Yup.
Azezel
12-27-05, 08:00 AM First off - yes the LA/ECL system is broken - probably irreprably so, so I wont go further into that, the above posters have already covered the crunchy aspects of playing an LA race.

Have you concidered the RP aspects?

What happens when centaur-boy is confronted with a ladder? How do townsolk react when he clippy-clops into town? can he stay in an inn or must he sleep in the stables? A big Centaur could be anywhere up to ten or twelve feet tall, can he fit into the next dungeon the party wishes to raid? Assuming he can fit, can he turn around in the narrow passageways? What if Dobbin gets injured and healing is not available - will your other PC's be willing or able to drag him to the nearest temple?

Most every LA race has assosiated problems such as these...

Once, many moons ago I asked my DM if I could play a Centaur Bard - 'Not at my table' was his simple (and wise) responce.
Nom
12-27-05, 06:41 PM On LA being "broken":

"broken" refers to mechanics that are either mechanically unworkable or can be applied in ways that cause obviously undesirable effects. "A little unbalanced" is not "broken", just "too powerful". "Exponentionally unbalanced" is broken.

LA are mechanically well defined for the most part. Occasional quirks appear when dealing with becoming Epic (CL or ECL) and a few unusual rules keyed off ECL (specifically leadership, which seems to use CL for the leader and ECL for the cohort, when ECL is appropriate for both).

Some mechanism is needed to recalibrate the game for races whose abilities are out of line with the standard races. The standard power level measure for D&D is the level, which is directly linked to XP. Any recalibration mechanism should work within the level rules, not orthogonal to them.

While the LA system has "features", the real question that should be answered is "what is the alternative?". Sean K. Reynolds has an excellent discussion of why using an XP penalty instead of an LA is fundamentally flawed (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/LAvsXPpenalty.html). Just ignoring the penalty is also broken - while we can quibble about the magnitude of the difference, it is quite clear that a drow is significantly mechanically superior to a regular elf.
ressurrector
12-27-05, 06:45 PM there's also in-game stigma attached to being from an LA race usually.
Like the aforementioned centaur...you need to get magical barding for armor, you're inherantly larger, and you can't even go up stairs easily.
Not to mention how the NPCs treat him.
Just remember to notify him that being LA will affect him in non-combat situations, or he'll probably whine.
Azezel
12-27-05, 07:03 PM Okie Dokie Nom, 'Broken' is probably too strong a word, but I stand by what I said about it being irreperable. The system as it stands is both poorly implimented (some reaces have LA's that are too high or too low, and it is not always apparant which these are or which way the fault lies) and including an LA PC in an otherwise core party almost always upsets the game (at least, in my experience). I have heard of various savage species progressions and the like, but since I don't have that book I'll not comment - I'll merely say that if LA is the best way to handle monstrous PC's then I'd rather not have monstrous PC's in my game (and that don't even take RP in to account).
Nom
12-28-05, 09:08 AM Okie Dokie Nom, 'Broken' is probably too strong a word, but I stand by what I said about it being irreperable. The system as it stands is both poorly implimented (some reaces have LA's that are too high or too low, and it is not always apparant which these are or which way the fault lies)This isn't so much a mechanical fault in the LA system as the difficulty of trying to come up with a single number to represent the effectiveness of a variety of abilities. The CR system suffers from the same problem. If you only have a very limited range of abilities, it's possible to model the effect of all the combinations, but that's just not practical with the scope in question. And assigning weights to individual abilities is only a very rough method, as the whole is often much more or less effective than the sum of the parts would indicate.

Any handicap system will have the same problem.
(some reaces have LA's that are too high or too low, and it is not always apparant which these are or which way the fault lies) and including an LA PC in an otherwise core party almost always upsets the game (at least, in my experience). ... I'll merely say that if LA is the best way to handle monstrous PC's then I'd rather not have monstrous PC's in my game (and that don't even take RP in to account).This may well be an appropriate position to take, but your real complaint is that you can't figure out an effective way to get the numbers right for balance between the races, not with the LA mechanism per se.

The problems with LAs themselves are that at low levels you can easily end up with characters with a wide array of potent abilities but insufficient hp / HD to support them, and that the loss of caster level and spell progression can really hurt spellcasters. Irrespective of whether such races are handicapped with LAs or another method, the first problem is insoluble without some form of Savage Species progression while the second is a general problem with any multiclass caster.
CzarGarrett
12-28-05, 09:22 AM For my personal opinion:

SECL (starting ECL= LA + HD + CL1)
SECL's of +0 and +1 are good for most everyone.

SECL's of +2 until about +4 are okay for melee based characters. No casters.

Anything of +5 and over isn't worth it to play

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
BigBigSpiritmonger 12-27-05, 03:17 AM	Hey, I have a player who is pestering me to be a creature with a level advancement. I told him I would have to think about it (I.E. come post it here). At first I said they can be anything with a level advancement of 3 or less. That sounded good, until my friend read me the stats for a Centaur (L.A. 2). It sounded very powerful, and at the expense of only 2 levels... What are your thoughts on level advancements. Good or Bad? thanks, BBS
DarknessEternal 12-27-05, 03:26 AM	Centaur have racial hit dice in addition to a Level Adjustment. Note, the term you're referring to is called Level Adjustment, not advancement. That being said, races with Level Adjustments are almost always vastly underpowered for the huge penalties they are taking for losing levels. With 4 racial hit dice, a centaur is actually character level 6 once you include it's +2 adjustment. To repeat, a straight out of the book centaur is a 6th level character.
BigBigSpiritmonger 12-27-05, 03:30 AM	So, would you say L.A. of 3 (4?, 5?) or less would be fair, and wouldn't lead to anything degenerate?
20goingon1232 12-27-05, 04:05 AM	I don't think you understand the nature of LA and ECL sufficiently for you to allow it in your campaign. You need, I repeat, NEED to understand both those terms implicitly before even THINKING about allowing them. LA is the levels you "lose" in order to be of the same power as one of no LA. Note that I am of the belief the entire LA system is a crock, but that is another story. ECL is the TOTAL of your HD and your LA. HD includes your racial HD and class levels. If you want to allow LA into your campaign, allow creatures whose ECL equals or less than your other characters. Centaur is ECL 6, so unless you have 6th level characters in your campaign's PC party, don't even think it. Sounds like your buddy is trying to run an end round around you. Players like that in my campaigns gets kicked in the nuts and shown the door.
Terraneaux 12-27-05, 04:33 AM	Well, it's usually not that big of a deal. The standard rule is that you take the level adjustment and hit dice of a monster, add them together, and get the "Equivalent Character Level" or ECL With the centaur, it's got 4 hit dice of monstrous humanoid and 2 level adjustment, so it's level 6. The racial hit dice represent that centaurs are just naturally skilled and tough combatants, and the level adjustment represents that centaurs have additional bonuses not solely based on hit dice. (If you already understand this next bit, I apologize). Basically, racial hit dice are like levels in a character class. They have a base attack bonus, good and bad saves, and give you hit points for taking levels in them. They are all summarized in the back of the monster manual. So for effects that affect what level you are (like enervation for instance) you add together the character's racial hit dice and his class levels to figure out what his "hit dice" or "character level" are (those two are basically synonymous terms). So a centaur with 3 levels of fighter would not be killed if he was energy drained for 3, because he has 7 hit dice. Also note that you add together a character's hit dice and their level adjustment to figure out the rate at which that character gains xp. If a centaur fighter 3 (ECL nine because 4 racial hit dice+3 fighter hit dice+3 level adjustment) gains xp at the end of a session, factor him or her in as if they were a level 9 character. All the above was rules. Next is my opinion. Really, the level adjustment system is broken. It tends to create overpowered or (much more frequently) underpowered characters. In my games i try to ignore it to a certain degree; if the other characters dont have a problem with it, i let someone play a drow (LA +2) without counting their xp as if they were two levels higher. If you've got a player who wants to play a centaur (with the chronicles of narnia having come out recently, i was considering playing one myself, the ones in that movie were pretty cool), I would suggest starting him at level 4 if your campaign allows it and the other players are fine with it. 4 levels of monstrous humanoid gives the character a good solid fighting character base that you could build from into fighter, ranger or barbarian. If your group is still new and getting a feel for dnd, then ask them and make sure that some social bs doesn't come up here: are they cool with having a centaur in the group who may turn out to be more powerful than their character? I know that when i first started dnd i probably wouldn't have been cool with that, but now that i've mellowed a bit i'm like "whatever."
FriendoftheDork 12-27-05, 07:45 AM	Centaur have racial hit dice in addition to a Level Adjustment. Note, the term you're referring to is called Level Adjustment, not advancement. That being said, races with Level Adjustments are almost always vastly underpowered for the huge penalties they are taking for losing levels. With 4 racial hit dice, a centaur is actually character level 6 once you include it's +2 adjustment. To repeat, a straight out of the book centaur is a 6th level character. Yup.
Azezel 12-27-05, 08:00 AM	First off - yes the LA/ECL system is broken - probably irreprably so, so I wont go further into that, the above posters have already covered the crunchy aspects of playing an LA race. Have you concidered the RP aspects? What happens when centaur-boy is confronted with a ladder? How do townsolk react when he clippy-clops into town? can he stay in an inn or must he sleep in the stables? A big Centaur could be anywhere up to ten or twelve feet tall, can he fit into the next dungeon the party wishes to raid? Assuming he can fit, can he turn around in the narrow passageways? What if Dobbin gets injured and healing is not available - will your other PC's be willing or able to drag him to the nearest temple? Most every LA race has assosiated problems such as these... Once, many moons ago I asked my DM if I could play a Centaur Bard - 'Not at my table' was his simple (and wise) responce.
Nom 12-27-05, 06:41 PM	On LA being "broken": "broken" refers to mechanics that are either mechanically unworkable or can be applied in ways that cause obviously undesirable effects. "A little unbalanced" is not "broken", just "too powerful". "Exponentionally unbalanced" is broken. LA are mechanically well defined for the most part. Occasional quirks appear when dealing with becoming Epic (CL or ECL) and a few unusual rules keyed off ECL (specifically leadership, which seems to use CL for the leader and ECL for the cohort, when ECL is appropriate for both). Some mechanism is needed to recalibrate the game for races whose abilities are out of line with the standard races. The standard power level measure for D&D is the level, which is directly linked to XP. Any recalibration mechanism should work within the level rules, not orthogonal to them. While the LA system has "features", the real question that should be answered is "what is the alternative?". Sean K. Reynolds has an excellent discussion of why using an XP penalty instead of an LA is fundamentally flawed (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/LAvsXPpenalty.html). Just ignoring the penalty is also broken - while we can quibble about the magnitude of the difference, it is quite clear that a drow is significantly mechanically superior to a regular elf.
ressurrector 12-27-05, 06:45 PM	there's also in-game stigma attached to being from an LA race usually. Like the aforementioned centaur...you need to get magical barding for armor, you're inherantly larger, and you can't even go up stairs easily. Not to mention how the NPCs treat him. Just remember to notify him that being LA will affect him in non-combat situations, or he'll probably whine.
Azezel 12-27-05, 07:03 PM	Okie Dokie Nom, 'Broken' is probably too strong a word, but I stand by what I said about it being irreperable. The system as it stands is both poorly implimented (some reaces have LA's that are too high or too low, and it is not always apparant which these are or which way the fault lies) and including an LA PC in an otherwise core party almost always upsets the game (at least, in my experience). I have heard of various savage species progressions and the like, but since I don't have that book I'll not comment - I'll merely say that if LA is the best way to handle monstrous PC's then I'd rather not have monstrous PC's in my game (and that don't even take RP in to account).
Nom 12-28-05, 09:08 AM	Okie Dokie Nom, 'Broken' is probably too strong a word, but I stand by what I said about it being irreperable. The system as it stands is both poorly implimented (some reaces have LA's that are too high or too low, and it is not always apparant which these are or which way the fault lies)This isn't so much a mechanical fault in the LA system as the difficulty of trying to come up with a single number to represent the effectiveness of a variety of abilities. The CR system suffers from the same problem. If you only have a very limited range of abilities, it's possible to model the effect of all the combinations, but that's just not practical with the scope in question. And assigning weights to individual abilities is only a very rough method, as the whole is often much more or less effective than the sum of the parts would indicate. Any handicap system will have the same problem. (some reaces have LA's that are too high or too low, and it is not always apparant which these are or which way the fault lies) and including an LA PC in an otherwise core party almost always upsets the game (at least, in my experience). ... I'll merely say that if LA is the best way to handle monstrous PC's then I'd rather not have monstrous PC's in my game (and that don't even take RP in to account).This may well be an appropriate position to take, but your real complaint is that you can't figure out an effective way to get the numbers right for balance between the races, not with the LA mechanism per se. The problems with LAs themselves are that at low levels you can easily end up with characters with a wide array of potent abilities but insufficient hp / HD to support them, and that the loss of caster level and spell progression can really hurt spellcasters. Irrespective of whether such races are handicapped with LAs or another method, the first problem is insoluble without some form of Savage Species progression while the second is a general problem with any multiclass caster.
CzarGarrett 12-28-05, 09:22 AM	For my personal opinion: SECL (starting ECL= LA + HD + CL1) SECL's of +0 and +1 are good for most everyone. SECL's of +2 until about +4 are okay for melee based characters. No casters. Anything of +5 and over isn't worth it to play