Creating Races - Determining LA

[Altamont Ravenard]

Hello all,

IIRC, someone has developped a method / system for determining for accurately the LA of races. Is that info available here?

I'm trying to work a system in which the players would be free to determine their "race" (It's a world divided in 2: the real world, where you choose from regular races, and the Dream World, where the players have a 2nd character that can basically be whatever the heck they would like to be. I'd like to have something to base myself on when determining if someone's race is overpowered compared to another).

Thanks in advance!

AR

 

[Spatzimaus]

There are a few conflicting methods.

The sucky way:
In Savage Species are guidelines for determining ECL. They bite the big one. For one thing, they keep it in integers, so "unbalanced stats" is +1 whether it's (STR+20) or (STR+4 DEX-2). For another, 1 HD = 1 ECL, even though most HD are clearly inferior to a Fighter class level.

The way most people used:
Eyeball it. The old "would a Hill Giant Barbarian 1 be equivalent to a Barbarian 6, Barbarian 8, or Barbarian 10?" method.

The way I use:
Soldarin's ECL method
http://soldarin.tripod.com/rpgpages/id5.html
(If you don't like that link, just put "Soldarin ECL" into the Font of All Knowledge, a.k.a. Google)
I've got it in Word format, and you wouldn't believe how often it gets used. Seriously, just use this method to balance stuff. I rarely have to eyeball an ECL any more.

BUT!!!
Do not let the players just use these numbers to optimize a race. Put some guidelines on it, or else they'll min-max it like you wouldn't believe. You know, load on tons of Minor Vulnerabilities and then buy immortality or something. Take a huge hit to CHA to get massive STR. That sort of abuse. As a start, don't allow them to choose any negative-ECL abilities unless the DM okays it.
I'd say to go with a point-based system that loosely follows the ECLs I mentioned. For example, you could steal Four Colors To Fantasy's "Hero" class, which gives you 8 Hero Points per level which can be spent on stats, powers, whatever.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Thanks alot, that's exactly the thing I was looking for...

AR

 

[Cheiromancer]

You could also try downloading Upper_Krust's "Challenging Challenge Ratings." It has point based challenge ratings there, near the back.

 

[kreynolds]

I definately recommend UK's system as well. You can get it here. Just make sure you set aside some time to get familiar with it.