ECL Races, EVER worth it?

So I, like many people maybe, occassionally get confused about playing "Monsters" as PCs. Most non-PC races have a "Level Adjustment" ... which logic suggests adjusts their level. But it doesn't, what adjusts their level as PCs is their "Effective Character Level" or ECL which is equal to their LA + their Hit Dice.

Thing is, "hit dice" are definately NOT worth 1 level apiece ... they're just a little weaker than NPC classes, really, and I don't think anybody would want to play, say, a Warrior4/Fighter4 in an 8th level game.

So are ECL races EVER worth it? Level Adjustment accounts for the "special abilities" of these races, so you're generally not paying for that with ECL.

One of the local GMs opened up all sorts of ECL races for his game, so I went through and plotted the "true" CR adjustment based on Upper_Krust's CR calculations and they're almost all worth much less than what you pay in character levels. Meaning that they're never worth it. And in game-play I've found that to be true, as the guys with the ECLed races seem to drop like flies. You generally lose HP, BAB, saves, spell levels, etc etc for what amounts to a handful of levels in an NPC class and a couple big abilities that, by themselves, don't add up to the price on the tag.

--fje

There was a Tiefling Fighter/Rogue in my group and he was pretty effective.

Ya, they are worth it a lot of times. THere are great role playing oppurtunities and stories to explore with many of the ecl races.

As far as mechanically, generally no you'd better off sticking with a LA0 race, but that depends on what archtype you are going to fill with a character. It's not bad to do with that a warrior type, but a caster or skill character will probley be worse off.

Some LA+1 or LA+2 are more than worth the trade off (eg Tiefling, Aasimar and Drow) but others are just meh.

Playing by core rules, they are hardly ever worth it. Any spellcaster is hosed big time by them. Some of the races can be good for fighter types, when they have enough STR and CON bonuses to offset the BAB and HD hit, but that's about it.

If you use Savage Species rules, things change a bit (spellcasters are still screwed though). With racial levels, you can decide exactly how many HD and LA you're going to take. Most race classes have a bunch of "sweet spots" where for maybe an effective LA+1 or +2 you get huge stat bonuses and good special abilities. Since you don't have to take the full race, you can stop there and start taking fighter or barbarian instead. Natural armor is a big problem there; eg. outsiders tend to get a whole bunch of natural armor and no real reason not to wear metal armor on top of it. You can get to very high ACs easily that way.

I use the buy back option in Unearthed Arcana, seems to work so far.

EyeontheMountain said:

Umm you might want to reread that part. You do have to finish off the monster levels first. It is quite explicit

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Eek. Ok, if you're right then the scope of what I said before is vastly limited, since you'll be forced to pay back the power boosts at the "good" levels afterwards.

HeapThaumaturgist said:

So are ECL races EVER worth it? Level Adjustment accounts for the "special abilities" of these races, so you're generally not paying for that with ECL.

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If you consider a spellcasting character, an ECL race worth the cost is very difficult to find. It is of course possible to be a few levels behind the rest of the party for many reasons, and at high levels it's not that bad, but if you purposefully delay yourself 1-2 levels of spellcasting in order to get some extra benefits, those benefits should better be good . I don't have many races/monsters source, but I cannot mention anyway a single race whose ECL is worth paying because it gives a benefit for a caster (I don't think a +2 to spellcasting stat alone is worth +1 ECL anyway).

Unfortunately the ECL rules are too easy to take into account how really the race is worth the level lag. At least, there should be two ECLs, one for combining the race with combat classes and one with spellcasters, and it would still be unfair to many characters.