Empirate
First Post
The worst offenders, in my book, are both the very low and the very high LA creatures. Vampires have LA +8, making them unplayable, period. Nothing more to say about that. On the other hand, Hobgoblins are just ever-so-slightly better than Humans or what-have-you. However, since the only measure we have is a scale whose sole points of measurement are exptremely far apart (i.e.character level), Hobgoblins PCs get stabbed in the face with a level adjustment, which makes them all but worthless. Would you rather be a first level Barbarian with Darkvision, +2 Dex, +2 Con, or a second level Barbarian with a bonus feat and five bonus skillpoints? Yeah, right.
What's needed to work out level adjustment rules that don't suck is one of the following:
a. a much finer measure for gauging a race's power, which might express itself in certain restrictions where ability score point buy is concerned, or XP gain per encounter, or social drawbacks to not being [most prevalent race], or increased equipment cost for more unusual anatomy, or a metagame resource that's decreased for more powerful races (e.g., reduced action points if you use those), etc. This requires massive tweaking and fine-tuning so nobody feels their favorite race, be it Slyths or Whisper Gnomes or Dusklings, got handed the short end of the stick.
OR
b. a sudden, revelatory insight into the already established fact that the game is not balanced, and some races (and classes, and feats, and spells...) are better than others, and screw minor-benefits-for-major-suckage packages like the +1LA Hobgoblin! This is the sane approach.
What's needed to work out level adjustment rules that don't suck is one of the following:
a. a much finer measure for gauging a race's power, which might express itself in certain restrictions where ability score point buy is concerned, or XP gain per encounter, or social drawbacks to not being [most prevalent race], or increased equipment cost for more unusual anatomy, or a metagame resource that's decreased for more powerful races (e.g., reduced action points if you use those), etc. This requires massive tweaking and fine-tuning so nobody feels their favorite race, be it Slyths or Whisper Gnomes or Dusklings, got handed the short end of the stick.
OR
b. a sudden, revelatory insight into the already established fact that the game is not balanced, and some races (and classes, and feats, and spells...) are better than others, and screw minor-benefits-for-major-suckage packages like the +1LA Hobgoblin! This is the sane approach.
