Okay.
Truth time: I was sandbagging a bit. A player at our table (not Problem Child. He's gone) wanted to run a Marrowlurk (??) from Sandstorm.
It's an ECL 4, one point of character adjustment and three monstrous levels. He introduced it as an effective ECL 1 by retconning the monster dice into class levels. He said there were rules for that in PHB II.
The stat bumps alone make ECL 4 questionable in my mind, but we agreed to let him run it, at least through one adventure, to see how it plays.
Now since the game, and in fact since my first post in this thread, he's emailed me and acknowledged that he did it wrong. Another DM in another game, ruling on another character for another player had said it was okay to do under the rules for rebuilding class levels.
I guess this is the difference between him and Problem Child: PC could never admit he had done anything wrong. He'd grudgingly acknowledge math errors, but always tried to blame them on a character generator or something like that. And then he'd fail to fix them.
<Tangent>
Our group had fought an arena battle at an ancient temple in the Arabian desert. The prize was enlightenment, a granted bit of divine insight that was for the recipient and the recipient alone.
Here is what followed:
***
After a rest, and receiving their personal insights, the party gathered at the stables.
"Hey, where are the camels that were here?", Jotham asked in surprise. There had been nine mounts present earlier, but now the paddocks were empty, save for the Pegasus that belonged to Faileas.
A stocky man with a young mans face and ancient eyes approached. They group recognized him as one of the stable hands they'd met earlier.
"The owners of thos camels reclaimed them and left a month ago.", he explained, as if in apology.
"A month? But we've only been gone for a few hours!"
"No.", spake the attendant. "One loses track of time in the presence of Thoth, and the insights he grants are never so simple as they seem. It may have seemed like a few moments, but you have been our guest for a full turn of the moon."
As the Warmage digested this shocking news, Katyos, the Pictish Shaman raised a different point: "You allow the dead to claim the possessions of the living? We slew the Settite and his evil company. Your gods themselves witnessed this."
"Again, all is not as it seems. ", the attendant replied. "Any who fall in that arena are taken from the field immediately. If they still live their wounds are attended to. They receive no divine aid, but we've gotten fairly good at battlefield dressings. As you sat in divine audience, they had time to recover. They were fit to travel within a few days."
"So they're still out there, and they still have our friend.", Eee all but snarled, an expression one didn't often see on the Bard's face. "We'll have to hunt them down all over again. They're mounted and we're on foot, and they have a month's head start."
"Then that's what we'll have to do.", Faileas declared with determination.
"Not really. They had no mounts for their slaves, and we wouldn't permit a sacrifice to Set within the temple of Thoth. They left the slaves behind, lest they delay the leaders' escape."
From a side chamber a group of people began to emerge, people of many races and from many lands. Among them was an emaciated looking Arthur, the Welsh knight they had been seeking.
"So I didn't kill anyone at all?", Jotham asked no one in particular, typically oblivious to anything that didn't involve him. "I really need to kill someone."
And Eee began to laugh.
While his friends gaped at him, wondering if their Bard had gone mad, Eee gasped and pointed at the slaves.
One of the ex-slaves, a dark skinned man with the face and head of a jackal, had started to approach the group, his odd countenance making his expression unreadable. Upon hearing the Warmage's lamentation, the jackal headed man had hesitated, then turned back to the other slaves.
"Jotham", Eee began, finally catching his breath, "Your timing was perfect. You scared Anubis himself!"
He quickly explained that, while the desert dweller was clearly not the deity of death himself, the resemblance was so strong, and the irony so sharp it had almost felled the Bard with the pure insanity of it.
</tangent>
Introducing the new PC was a real hoot. I have a feeling he won't stay though.
