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[Hawken]

It means different XP Gain tables, but I like the Idea.

Not really any extra tables, just one extra note on the character sheet. The math is fairly basic. LA +1 is 10th - 9th (10 - 1LA) or 9,000xp. Spread over 10 levels, that's only an increase of the required XP by 900. Fairly easy to keep track of.

I didn't design it for LA +11 races, and really, it doesn't work too well for anything over an LA of +5. And that's all there really is for PC races anyway. Anything generally above a +4 is a monster race and with those, you're almost always dealing with racial HD, which is something PC races don't typically deal with.

I've never liked the idea of racial HD counting as a full class level. It just doesn't equal a class level and there's no reason why it should.

However, I think with my idea, it makes things easier. There may be exceptions and just some monsters that don't work, but lets try this as an example. A succubus is a monster with 6 racial hd and LA +6. So we do this:

10th - 6th = 4th (6000xp); 45000-6000 = 39,000. 39,000 split over 6 levels is 6,500xp. Her 6 racial HD make her a 6th level character, and we'll spread her 39,000xp over 6 levels instead of 10--6hd = 6 lvl spread. So she begins play at 6th level with 15,000xp (normal for 6th level), but to get to 7th, she'll have to earn 27,500xp instead of 21,000xp--6,500 more than an LA+0 character needs. And she'll have to do this through her next 6 levels, into her 12th level where she'll need 72,500 instead of 66,000. From there, she'll advance normally, hitting 13th at 78,000 like everyone else.

Is she more powerful than an LA+0 character of equal level? Maybe. But that's relative to the scenario at hand. A 6th level character is going to have 6 class levels worth of abilities, while the Succubus will have her MM entry. And even when she 'pays off' her LA by 13th level, she's still only going to have 7 class levels, where other LA+0 races are going to have 13. Yes, she's got a lot of powers, defenses, etc., but a 13th level character is going to have more powerful class abilities, feats, and more.

This is my point about LA. They aren't equal to class levels and racial HD sure as hell aren't either. And the "that's the price you pay if you want to play that" is a bullcrap reason! Unless I got it wrong, 4e got rid of LA and pretty much equalized all the races. That's a step in the right direction that 3.5 should have taken or that any incarnation of 3.75 needs to take. The only thing is monsters are monsters, not PC races. And they shouldn't be. The DM should have to make a house rule for letting players play monsters (pretty much anything with racial HD).

Oh, and I just went through the Draconomicon and read the section on Dragons as PCs. The highest LA I saw in there was an LA +6, so, my formula could still work as I just wrote on the Succubus. I'm sure this could be refined, but the idea and spirit behind it is to let characters of equal level play together. If someone wants a Succubus in the game and the PCs are 6th level, it can work, she'll have no class levels and will take a lot longer to advance than the others. In fact, by the time she reaches 7th and gets her FIRST class level, the others will be just about into their 8th class level. So, it seems to work out nicely to me.