Post/Author/DateTime	Post
LordofIllusions 09-30-04, 10:27 AM	Good morning everyone, I have some issues with races that have adjusted ECLs in the Dungeons and Dragons game. My first being that they say the DM has to set a maximum amount of XP that players can start with before characters are generated for the campaign; for instance: Right now I am running a v.3.5 Dragonlance campaign along with a 3.0 Ravenloft campaign(See my sig below.). My Dragonlance campaign is an epic campaign and hence the players, if they survive, should make it to somewhere around 21st level when theh campaign is over. How do I handle players that cannot show up for every session ? I have cameo appearances where the players can make up a PC that is one level lower than the lowest level PC in the group. My question is this should a character with an adjusted ECL of +10 be allowed to be brought into play where the highest character level is 3 ? And if it should be allowed then what do I do to make it balanced ? Should I start the PC out with the amount of XP that it would take to make that character of the same level as the others then institute the ECL XP chart(Thus making it harder for them to gain levels.) or no ? ~~~
Eightbitmage 09-30-04, 10:34 AM	If the highest character level is three the answer is simple no. If the person really wants to play the race, something from savage specices will probably let him start at ECL 3 and go up levels that way until he hits 10.
LordofIllusions 09-30-04, 10:40 AM	If the highest character level is three the answer is simple no. If the person really wants to play the race, something from savage specices will probably let him start at ECL 3 and go up levels that way until he hits 10. That is what I figured, so basically the ECL has to be equal to the highest character level in the game ? ~~~
Moon-Lancer 09-30-04, 12:12 PM	yes. You may know this already but it stands for efective charicter level. So they are as good as a charicter of said actual level. you may beable to fudge two above the avage party level but not 7. thats crazzy. its easyer to start out as savage speciase stuff when thiers already been some leveing. Its harder at level one. I played an anthro tiger right off the bat at level 1. it has an ecl of 3. a level adjustment of 1. it had 2 monster dice. so it was a ecl of 3. we house ruled that i would take a -2 to to everything. ac, saving thoughs, skills, hits, That would go down every level untill i dident take negatives (when everyone else is at 3). i started out without a class too. It worked out. No one cared becuse my hit dice sucked at level 3. also my bab hasent gone up. So it works out. But its alot more managable with a level adjustment of around two then a 10 or whatnot.
LordofIllusions 09-30-04, 12:15 PM	So do they start out with zero XP and then they have to build themselves up to said level or do they start out with enough XP to meet the ECL ? I would think that it should be the former rather than the latter because this would balance the game. ~~~
Lordofthebean 09-30-04, 08:22 PM	No, they start out with XP depending on their ECL. Here is an example: A while back I created a Githzerai monk. The campaign started at third level, and the Gith has a leven adjustment of +2. With 1 level of monk, that gave him an ECL of 3. Perfect. I will refer to him as Bob, because it's funny to think of a Githzerai named Bob :D . Bob, despite being a 3rd level character, has 1 hit die. He will not get a stat point until the rest of the part reaches level six, and no more feats until the rest of the party is about level 5. Bob does not level up any faster than the other characters, he starts with a 3rd level character's xp. When he gets enough XP to advance to 4th level normally, he can take a second level of monk. This means that not only do ECL adjusted characters start with less stuff, they advance slower.