I've noticed that for many monster PCs they tend to be a bit too high in the ECL dept.
Recently a player wanted to make a Gnoll (ECL +3) Barbarian, but he was also kicking around a dwarf/human barb/fighter. In the end the Gnoll had almost the same stats as an equal level dwarf (Attacks, hp comperable, etc).
The big problems that arose seemed to be:
1)Save- The dwarf rocked the Gnoll in every possible way
2)Feats- The dwarf had tons of feats to the Gnoll
3)Stat increases- Again the ECL held back the Gnoll
In the end the Gnoll was worse than the dwarf in every way (using a point buy system here). The old rules gave Gnolls +2 ECL which seemed about right, he had some advantages and some weaknesses compared to the dwarf. With +3 it seemed just too weak.
I realize that WotC probably erred on the side of caution. They thought Gnolls might be slightly better than +2, so they said make it +3 (this seems to be the case with all "powerful races").
While thats fine and all it really makes playing a powerful race a bad thing to do in every way. In most cases you have social problems and aren't really capable of much more than basic combat actions, whereas the standard race has an equal amount of combat ability, is accepted everywhere and is actually better overall (Saves, stats, feats, etc).
I hope by the time Tooth and Claw comes out things change a bit, otherwise why even bother buying the book? Most powerful races are suicidal to even take at this point (especially templates- +5 for half-whatevers?!). To make the book worthwhile it seems that ECLs should make a player able to realistically consider a monster race without screwing themselves over.
I'm not saying make them better than standard races, or even equal in all respects. But if you make a gnoll fighter you'd better be able to at least fight good since you're losing out on feats, stat increases and the like.
Recently a player wanted to make a Gnoll (ECL +3) Barbarian, but he was also kicking around a dwarf/human barb/fighter. In the end the Gnoll had almost the same stats as an equal level dwarf (Attacks, hp comperable, etc).
The big problems that arose seemed to be:
1)Save- The dwarf rocked the Gnoll in every possible way
2)Feats- The dwarf had tons of feats to the Gnoll
3)Stat increases- Again the ECL held back the Gnoll
In the end the Gnoll was worse than the dwarf in every way (using a point buy system here). The old rules gave Gnolls +2 ECL which seemed about right, he had some advantages and some weaknesses compared to the dwarf. With +3 it seemed just too weak.
I realize that WotC probably erred on the side of caution. They thought Gnolls might be slightly better than +2, so they said make it +3 (this seems to be the case with all "powerful races").
While thats fine and all it really makes playing a powerful race a bad thing to do in every way. In most cases you have social problems and aren't really capable of much more than basic combat actions, whereas the standard race has an equal amount of combat ability, is accepted everywhere and is actually better overall (Saves, stats, feats, etc).
I hope by the time Tooth and Claw comes out things change a bit, otherwise why even bother buying the book? Most powerful races are suicidal to even take at this point (especially templates- +5 for half-whatevers?!). To make the book worthwhile it seems that ECLs should make a player able to realistically consider a monster race without screwing themselves over.
I'm not saying make them better than standard races, or even equal in all respects. But if you make a gnoll fighter you'd better be able to at least fight good since you're losing out on feats, stat increases and the like.
