Krishnath said:
Should I use Soladrin's calculator, the Frost Giants total ECL would wind up past the ECL 20 mark
Nope, just tried it... Soldarin's ECL Calculator would indicate +3 for the stats alone, +1.8 for the Natural Armor, and another +1 for Size/Reach. However, since it only counts 0.5 per HD against ECL for Giants, it winds up with and ECL of 13.2 for Frost Giant, rounded up to its HD of 14, or a total LA of +0.
Now, Soldarin's calculator stems from a period where assigning ECLs was very much a black art, published ECLs were still being adjusted, and nobody outside of WotC had heard of Level Adjustment yet. It does fit the vast majority of published 3.0 ECLs, but it has some significant differences from 3.5. For example, Soldarin adds +1 to ECL per size category greater than medium or smaller than small, but only adds an adjustment for reach if it's greater or smaller than usual for the size category. In 3.5, size does not affect LA but reach does. The effect is similar because reach goes up with size, but the end result may be a bit off for specific creatures.
Soldarin's still provides a lot more detailed formula for calculating ECL/LA. It's just that some of the details are wrong for 3.5.
The ideal situation would be to come up with a Soldarin-like calculator for 3.5 which incorporates the SS guidelines and matches the existing 3.5 MM ECLs. Sounds like an excellent project for the Creature Catalog community to tackle *before* you start assigning LAs to all the converted creatures...