Building races using a CR/ECL calculator?

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Sorry, but the following is sort of a stream-of-consciousness ramble. Your patience is appreciated.

The whole process of making a race is pretty higgledy-piggledy it seems. In fact, there's not really anything that addresses building them in a consistent fashion, other than one lone product from LPJ, at least that I know of.

Upper Krust did the whole CR thing, which seems pretty groovy. In fact, it kinda seems to me like it could be used to do this sort of thing I'm thinking of. It was even formalized and turned into a worksheet for Grim Tales.

So, my points:

1. Back in the day races used to get an XP penalty in the form of a negative percentage modifier. Sean Reynolds ranted about that on his web page and why the LA system is better. But the thing is, to me it still looks like it's doing the same sort of thing (penalizing your XP earnings) it just does it in a different fashion.

2. I'm not exactly wild about the whole idea of buying off your LA as present here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm Why? Because it seems to me that after a certain point, the extra race bonuses you've got are no longer really an important factor. So why should you have to pay to lose it, when it becomes a disadvantage? You've effectively been paying for _having_ the advantage the entire time. Seems like a double slam.

So my question is, why can't we simply use something like Upper Krust's system (Or Soldarin's ECL calculator) to figure out what the explicit benefits are, at what point they stop being an advantage and simply a part of the character, and strip out some of the useless stuff in the whole racial thing.

So for example, the Centaur (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/centaur.htm) :
What do we need the extra HD for again? If it's going to be a character anyway, why not just rely on class Hit Dice, and be done with it?

The AC bonus, the feats, the darkvision, skills, and possibly even speed... all of these are pretty easy to make up for in a few levels based on items, at least that's my understanding. The stat bonuses, reach, and being Large... I can see that being a penalty a while longer.

What is it I'm missing? I haven't run a 3.x game, and only played humans and a warforge, and all in lower level games. And that warforge seems to be pretty strong to start out with, but seems like the others will rapidly catchup and eventually surpass it.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

*bump*

Nobody? 50 views and not even a "This idea sucks because..." thingy?

 

[Moon-Lancer]

I have heard of the Upper Krust cr thing, Can you give me a link so i can check it out. I am also interested in building races and i will give you input on it but i need to see it first.

*edit*
http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/shadows...ok/ECLcalc.html
*edit*

I use this and try to get the cr to .5 for a base race.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I have a recurring debate with my wife over the ECL/LA system. We agree that it's broken, but disagree about how to fix it. I think she would prefer to just throw out racial hit dice and just use LA+class levels. I know that won't work, but I don't have a better alternative. I think that this is one of the things that really needs to be fixed before we can move on to a new edition of the rules.

 

[Aus_Snow]

So my question is, why can't we simply use something like Upper Krust's system (Or Soldarin's ECL calculator) to figure out what the explicit benefits are, at what point they stop being an advantage and simply a part of the character, and strip out some of the useless stuff in the whole racial thing.

Well hey, that's what I do/did/will do. I use the UK rules, not Soldarin's (haven't tried those).

 

[Flynn]

Well hey, that's what I do/did/will do. I use the UK rules, not Soldarin's (haven't tried those).

If I were calculating ECL/LA, I'd use Soldarin's. His work is pretty good.

However, I have been swayed to the dark side by Grim Tales and the Chi-Rho XP method, so I tend to track CR adjustments instead. For that, I use UK's system, particularly as presented in Grim Tales.

I understand why ECL is different than CR, and Sean has a great explanation of it for those that have need, but I've finally come to the point where I'm okay with CR alone. Chi-Rho allows you to calculate different XP totals based on the CRs of the participants, and that adjusts XP in a manner similar to both XP penalties from 2nd Edition and ECL. Besides, I don't allow characters whose ECL values are too far from their CR values anyway. YMMV, of course.

Hope this helps,
Flynn

 

[Blue]

I think a concept where one gains some special abilities and have them balanced vs. the other players is good. (Yes, that's very general.) If those special abilities are based from race, class, what-have-you.

I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea that some abilities depreciate and potentially even expire. But if I was going to do it for races, I'd really want to do it for everything.

For instance, at 3rd level (well, ECL 3 is probably better since we're talking LA), 2nd level spells are important. At ECL 15, those 2nd level spells are worth a lot less. If a character hasn't advanced them in the past 12 levels, does that mean they should get a break on them, even though they "paid" for them (by taking 3 levels of a casting class) at the time? Well, they paid for them, and they were useful. That seems like value given and value paid for.

The other part of this is foundation - things to build off of. Using your Centaur example, lets look at the LA part:

The AC bonus, the feats, the darkvision, skills, and possibly even speed... all of these are pretty easy to make up for in a few levels based on items, at least that's my understanding. The stat bonuses, reach, and being Large... I can see that being a penalty a while longer.

I don't see all of those as "easy to make up". Goign through them point for point:
* +3 Natural armor. Any AC bonus that other PCs get, so can the Centaur. So they will stay ahead.
* (skills and feats are from HD, everyone has those, nothing special offered)
* Darkvision - if a PC is wearing an item for darkvision, the same gold and item slot can give something else to the Centaur. So they still have something the others do not.
* Speed - options for bonus speed also add to centaur. In addition, there are a number of abilities and items that give flight equal to land speed, so they can parlay that land speed into even more of a bonus.
* Stat bonuses - same. Give a human and a centaur gauntles of ogre power, and the human is +2 strength and the centaur is at +10.
* (Centaurs don't have reach)
* Large - this is half and half. Some size increases will affect them, and large to huge is just as cool as medium to large. Some, like enlarge person, won't because of their type. But that's okay because the flip side is that spells like charm person won't either. On the other hand, being large is definitely a downside at times.

This only addresses the bonuses that cost LA - which is what you were talking about in terms of buyoff. I see all of these as giving value.

I didn't address racial HD. For the most part, racial HD ranges from inferior to vastly inferior to PC classes. Monsterous Humanoid is around the same as the "warrior" NPC, some (like animal) don't even compare that well, and some (like outsider) are almost good. I think racial HD is an entire different point. Because how many other things (like skill max ranks and saves) are tied to HD you can't just assign a negative LA or discount monster HD. But that's a different thread.

Cheers,
=Blue(23)

 

[kreynolds]

Upper Krust's system is fantastic, and amazingly accurate to boot. I've used it since version 3, and I'd say 90% of what I build using his system is spot on. This is not to say that it eliminates playtesting, but it sure helps reduce it somewhat.

Here is UK's system, v5. Post #42.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

I so forgot to post the this link in my original post.

http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/shadows/Handbook/ECLcalc.html

This is a link to Soldarin's ecl thingy. I really thought i posted the link.

*edit*

Thanks kreynolds, I was looking for this.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Sorry I didn't respond sooner... busy weekend between playing in a Buffy game, running a game for my wife (Zorcerer of Zo), and going to NYC for the Mermaid Parade.

Thanks for posting the link to UK's system, I probably should have done that.

For anyone looking to use Soldarin's system, the link from Moon-Lancer will get you to the ECL auto calculator script done up based on Soldarin's rules, and you can see what those actual rules are here: http://soldarin.tripod.com/id5.html. From Soldarin's page, you'll actually get a link to a handy listing of new ECLs based on his system.

However, I have been swayed to the dark side by Grim Tales and the Chi-Rho XP method, so I tend to track CR adjustments instead. For that, I use UK's system, particularly as presented in Grim Tales.

I understand why ECL is different than CR, and Sean has a great explanation of it for those that have need, but I've finally come to the point where I'm okay with CR alone. Chi-Rho allows you to calculate different XP totals based on the CRs of the participants, and that adjusts XP in a manner similar to both XP penalties from 2nd Edition and ECL. Besides, I don't allow characters whose ECL values are too far from their CR values anyway. YMMV, of course.

Hope this helps,
Flynn

Holy moly. I have got to say, thank you. I picked up GT a while ago, and haven't had much reason to go through it really closely. But having read that, and done a bit of poking around, it sounds like GT is doing something pretty darn close to what I wanted.

Thanks! Keep pimping the Chi-Rho method, because that's how I found this groovy post: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=127923 which basically lays it out.

For those (like myself) that don't know the Chi-Rho thing, this thread (starting at post 70) should get you up to speed: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=86471&page=2)