+4 elc for a sand giant?!?

[megamania]

My son and I were looking at creating a powerful bruiser and he came up with the Sand Giant. It boosts nearly all stats, gives it special abilities and weapons. 15 HD, +11 base att and more. All this for a +4 ELC.

Is that really balanced? Besides the lost money to use on equipment it seems to give a lot for so little.

 

[Ahnehnois]

ECLs are guesswork of course.

That said, we're talking about a 19th level "fighter" with +11 base attack and 6 feats. A 19th level human fighter has +19 BAB and 18 feats (and is quite underpowered by most estimates). The strength basically pulls you back up to where a fighter's attack roll would have been (and then you've lost an iterative attack but gained a ton of damage). The con barely makes up for having d8 hit dice and losing four of them. The few special abilities are nice, but I'd rather have 12 feats. or ten levels of a prestige class. It's best attribute is the natural armor and high dex, which you could turn into a respectable AC with some giant-sized armor (also blur is nice). The character is still just as limited as a fighter (no real magic), he just hits harder.

I don't think it's overpowered at all. A decent tank but that's it.

 

[prosfilaes]

My son and I were looking at creating a powerful bruiser and he came up with the Sand Giant. It boosts nearly all stats, gives it special abilities and weapons. 15 HD, +11 base att and more. All this for a +4 ELC.

Is that really balanced? Besides the lost money to use on equipment it seems to give a lot for so little.

That's a +4 LA, for ECL 19. If I were giving out LAs, most of them would be reduced. This is a CR 10 creature, which means it should be a suitable challenge for a bunch of 10th level characters. How's it really going to run around with a bunch of 19th level characters?

I think the numbers Ahnehnois gave deserve a second look. The strength may make its attack bonus a +19, but a fighter of that level could easily have a 22 strength, meaning they would have a +25. They have the same number of hitpoints as a fighter with a con of 14, on average. Eyeballing it, I would reduce the LA to no more than +2.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think the numbers Ahnehnois gave deserve a second look

Giant characters can put points into strength and buy strength items too, the racial modifier is the difference between the two hypothetical characters and I'm assuming the rest cancels out. Not that the math here is a huge deal. I don't disagree with the conclusion. Most LAs are high, and this becomes more true at high levels.