Zappo
Explorer
Hi all,
The current standard 5e approach is that there is no such thing as 3e's level adjustment, and every playable race must be balanced with each other. This is very reasonable, given that LA had many major issues. That said, I'd still like to figure out how to use as a PC a character belonging to a race that can't be easily handled that way - e.g. something that doesn't make sense without large stat modifiers, or something that has innate abilities beyond what can be balanced as a racial ability.
So, I came up with the following approach, and I'm asking for opinions. This probably won't work for races that are way off the humanoid norm, like dragons or major demons or whatever; also I don't think there's any hope of making things like Regeneration balanced. But I hope it can be used to expand the range of what's playable a bit. Basically, I'm trying to yoink 3e's monster levels, except with a lot more constraints to make them, y'know, not break the game.
The basic premise is that in 5e player characters and NPCs usually don't follow the same rules, and, on top of that, PCs are exceptional by definition. So we're not going to be directly taking the monster stat block and adding things to it. Rather, we're reinterpreting the stat block and abilities in terms of class features. This is basically what you would do if you wanted to make e.g. a Lizardfolk or Grimlock or Hobgoblin playable race: pick a couple of stats to translate to a racial bonus; keep signature abilities; discard the rest. Hit dice, attacks, proficiencies, etc. don't matter; they all get replaced by the PC class.
If the creature has large stat bonuses or abilities that can't be balanced as a PC race, though, that won't work. Let's take a Chain Devil as an example. Ignore hit dice and proficiencies for now. This dude has high stats (let's provisionally call it +2 STR/CON, +1 DEX/CHA), great resistances and immunities, plus a few abilities that are way too powerful for a PC race.
Now, 3e solved this with a bunch of kludges meant to preserve the principle that NPCs and PCs always follow the same rules, so that a PC Chain Devil would have to have exactly the same numbers as the monster Chain Devil. But this is 5e, so we don't really have to do that. It just has to look similar. The question is: how many levels worth of PC class abilities are these? Let's call it... five?
All right then - the playable Chain Devil starts out with those abilities and stat modifiers, 5 HD (d8), and is a level 5 character. He's got the proficiency bonus of a level 5 character. He hasn't got any proficiencies. He'll get those from his PC class, which will be applied according to multiclassing rules. If it's fighter, then the character will be for all intents and purposes a Chain Devil 5/Fighter 1, where "Chain Devil" is at the same time his race, and a class that can only ever have 5 levels, no more and no less.
Is a 6th level character with those abilities too powerful? Fine, just up the Chain Devil levels. Each Chain Devil level you add effectively takes away a level of class abilities - but, and this is key, without taking away hit points or proficiency bonus, which was the main problem with 3e's approach. With this method, you never trade hit dice for abilities; you always trade abilities for abilities. So you don't end up screwed on HD-dependant stats (HP, saves, etc), as you did in 3e.
A special case is for creatures that have spellcasting. For those, I'd just pretend they don't have it, and then declare that all PCs of that race start out with X levels of the appropriate spellcasting class, on top of the monster class. X should be a bit less than what the monster has, because PCs are exceptional and they may be a rare instance of that creature not training on spellcasting very much. This can even work for innate spellcasting, in some cases; for example, a Couatl's innate spellcasting could be replaced with cleric levels and the flavor would mostly work.
Of course, as I mentioned, this won't work for creatures that are just too much overall, and/or for creatures that have abilities that can only balanced within the scope of a single encounter. Still, I think it might be interesting. Thoughts?
The current standard 5e approach is that there is no such thing as 3e's level adjustment, and every playable race must be balanced with each other. This is very reasonable, given that LA had many major issues. That said, I'd still like to figure out how to use as a PC a character belonging to a race that can't be easily handled that way - e.g. something that doesn't make sense without large stat modifiers, or something that has innate abilities beyond what can be balanced as a racial ability.
So, I came up with the following approach, and I'm asking for opinions. This probably won't work for races that are way off the humanoid norm, like dragons or major demons or whatever; also I don't think there's any hope of making things like Regeneration balanced. But I hope it can be used to expand the range of what's playable a bit. Basically, I'm trying to yoink 3e's monster levels, except with a lot more constraints to make them, y'know, not break the game.
The basic premise is that in 5e player characters and NPCs usually don't follow the same rules, and, on top of that, PCs are exceptional by definition. So we're not going to be directly taking the monster stat block and adding things to it. Rather, we're reinterpreting the stat block and abilities in terms of class features. This is basically what you would do if you wanted to make e.g. a Lizardfolk or Grimlock or Hobgoblin playable race: pick a couple of stats to translate to a racial bonus; keep signature abilities; discard the rest. Hit dice, attacks, proficiencies, etc. don't matter; they all get replaced by the PC class.
If the creature has large stat bonuses or abilities that can't be balanced as a PC race, though, that won't work. Let's take a Chain Devil as an example. Ignore hit dice and proficiencies for now. This dude has high stats (let's provisionally call it +2 STR/CON, +1 DEX/CHA), great resistances and immunities, plus a few abilities that are way too powerful for a PC race.
Now, 3e solved this with a bunch of kludges meant to preserve the principle that NPCs and PCs always follow the same rules, so that a PC Chain Devil would have to have exactly the same numbers as the monster Chain Devil. But this is 5e, so we don't really have to do that. It just has to look similar. The question is: how many levels worth of PC class abilities are these? Let's call it... five?
All right then - the playable Chain Devil starts out with those abilities and stat modifiers, 5 HD (d8), and is a level 5 character. He's got the proficiency bonus of a level 5 character. He hasn't got any proficiencies. He'll get those from his PC class, which will be applied according to multiclassing rules. If it's fighter, then the character will be for all intents and purposes a Chain Devil 5/Fighter 1, where "Chain Devil" is at the same time his race, and a class that can only ever have 5 levels, no more and no less.
Is a 6th level character with those abilities too powerful? Fine, just up the Chain Devil levels. Each Chain Devil level you add effectively takes away a level of class abilities - but, and this is key, without taking away hit points or proficiency bonus, which was the main problem with 3e's approach. With this method, you never trade hit dice for abilities; you always trade abilities for abilities. So you don't end up screwed on HD-dependant stats (HP, saves, etc), as you did in 3e.
A special case is for creatures that have spellcasting. For those, I'd just pretend they don't have it, and then declare that all PCs of that race start out with X levels of the appropriate spellcasting class, on top of the monster class. X should be a bit less than what the monster has, because PCs are exceptional and they may be a rare instance of that creature not training on spellcasting very much. This can even work for innate spellcasting, in some cases; for example, a Couatl's innate spellcasting could be replaced with cleric levels and the flavor would mostly work.
Of course, as I mentioned, this won't work for creatures that are just too much overall, and/or for creatures that have abilities that can only balanced within the scope of a single encounter. Still, I think it might be interesting. Thoughts?
