ECL Races, EVER worth it?

[I'm A Banana]

Personally, I like playing odd-ball type character once in a while, and enjoy LA characters.

I do, too, but it really comes down to "does the LA make you inneffective when compared to the non-LA members of your party?" and a not-insignificant portion of the time, the answer is "yup."

LA was genius. However, it's effectiveness as a measure lays entirely in the hands of the designer. You can have half-ogres and aasimar and bugbear all being the same level, but varying DRASTICALLY in how effective they are. Yet they all have the exact same measure of power. You give up the same thing to get them. Only one of those was designed to be an effective measure of power, while the others were a kludge.

My own kludge has largely been giving them NPC classes for LA (weaker than the fullblood, but not just a paper tiger).

IMHO, come the next revision, this "kludge" should not be needed. The philosophy of "PC's are just like the NPC's and follow the same rules" should be extended to the monsters as well. Monster HD should be like class levels, paragon levels, what-have-you....

But now I'm pipe-dreaming. Either way, the LA mechanic was a stroke of genius (yay!) that has since been found to be inadequate and unreliable when doing what it was kludged to do. That shouldn't be too surprising, but there doesn't seem to be any simple solution to the problem that is entirely comfortable, either.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

There are a few things I think that could help.

One problem is that everything is supposed to start with 11,11,11,10,10 for ability scores. This means that a monster that should be strong when compared to the PCs has a HUGE strength adjustment. I think giving more creatures a point-buy or low-powered (22pt) array instead of boosting 1-3 ability scores by 4 points would make them, as races, more balanced against the PC races.

On the whole, though, I agree that monster-races shouldn't be more powerful than PC races, if the core books are going to assume that monster-races are playable. I'm a big fan of balance, and balance at every step of the way from 1st-20th, as much as it can be maintained. By placing monster-races obviously more powerful than PC races and putting the fiat directly in the GM's hands, you're going to get FAR more complaints from GMs who inadvertently mess up their games.

Not that I don't believe GMs should have access to and control over what goes on in their games, but I think that WotC "sanctioning" playing Drow with no LA will lead alot of people to believe that there's "not much difference" ... leaving the guy playing a regular elf feeling like he's gotten the short end of the stick.

Not to categorize unfairly, but my recent encounters with LA races have been with our current GM's kids, who he runs regular games for, along with their friends. They all want to play Drow, Minotaurs, Bugbears, Lycanthropes, and, barring that, Half-Orcs. I think it's an 11-14 thing, really. And, because they're his kids, he lets them, because it's all in good fun. Which I agree with. The guy's a great GM and I like his kids.

But the ECL/LA system is clunky. It isn't transparent. Even -I- was confused about ECL and LA and I'm the resident rules-hound. But it's already becoming a problem in-game. While the "anything goes" mentality is great with 11-14 yr olds, our group is university seniors and graduate students (the GM a grad student himself) ... heh, he was rather surprised when his rundown of ECL races was largely ignored and core races chosen ... because outside of RPing reasons based on his campaign setting, it was mechanically inferior to choose a non-core race.

I think that's OKAY, that's what is supposed to happen.

I think that without a major-ish overhall of what a monster is supposed to be, stat-wise, any ECL system is going to have to be a kludge. As-is, I think there's too much variance to make alot of things playable.

Case in point, in the game we're in, the GM's eldest son (14-15, not sure) plays with us. He's a good kid, pretty good gamer, etc. One of his friends will be visiting for about a month and wants in on the game. When asked what he wanted to play ... he wanted to play a Half-Dragon Samurai. Half-Dragon is a +3 LA template ... when statted out this thing will be stronger than the barbarian when the barbarian is in rage, and will be more heavily armored than the dwarf when the dwarf is in Expertise. So it'll outshine the damage-dealer in his specialty, and outshine the tank in his specialty ... AND have a 6d8 breath weapon once per day ... but for this, it'll only have 4 levels of character class ... which means, since we average HP, that he'll have 4 more HP than the party wizard. A total paper tiger.

I don't think it'll be too much fun for ANYBODY at the table. Two players will find their characters take a back seat to one juggernaut, and the kid is going to be upset when the first appropriate-CR creature to get through his armor blows him out of the water and into negative HP in short order.

--fje

 

[Feathercircle]

::nods:: Not all hit dice are created equally. A HD of Dragon (d12, Fighter BAB, THREE good saves(!), and some pretty good creature-type based immunities and perks) is practically worth a level in and of itself- a HD of Humanoid is barely worth anything at all. ECL can be useful, but the whole "ECL=HD+LA" formula is extremely dubious to me. A level isn't just the HP, BAB and save bonuses you get with each new HD, it's also the various other perks that go along with it. If you don't have some way of balancing this out, monster characters get hosed.

Of course... that may be the whole point. I've heard (secondhand, so I'm unsure of the reliability of my sources) that some of the designers at WotC have admitted that the ECL formula is designed to create monster characters who are weaker than their equivalents so as to discourage people from playing anything outside the core races/ECL 0 races. I don't truck with the reasoning that the potential extra work or interesting roleplaying or compensating the 'core' races is an adequate payoff in and of itself- What may be 'weird for weirdness' sake' in one setting might be perfectly normal in another. Maintaining game flavor by vetoing 'weird' or otherwise unsuitable concepts is the DM's job, not the game designers, and by not explicityly spelling out that that reasoning went in to the formulas, the ECL=HD+LA equation creates a lot of players and DMs who are expecting the formulas to work as advertised and they WON'T. Even if I assume for the sake of argument that "weirdness" as a balancing factor is a good idea, it's still a balancing factor that should have been identified to players and DMs rather than only being revealed when one game designer or another chooses to mention it.
(CRs for the dragons in the monster manual are another thing with a similar unwritten assumption that causes problems, but that's a separate rant.)

On the other hand, DON'T use Upper_Krust's CR formulas for this, no matter HOW good they are! ECL is not equivalent to CR, even though a character level is supposed to generally be worth a full CR point when you're playing an NPC properly. Some of the abilities that a monster has may be FAR more useful to them when they have a chance to use them repeatedly as a PC than if they're used in a one-shot encounter. At-will telepathiy is handy for a monster, but potentially balance-altering when used by a PC. A casting of Wish once a year comes up a lot more often when you're fighting different monsters of that kind in several encounters, but is less of a big deal when your PC will probably use it once in the entire campaign. Flight adds to an encounter's challenge, but allows PCs to bypass many otherwise-challenging encounters entirely. Eyeballing is imperative.

I agree with Ottergame- if you're going to stick to the WotC formula, you're best off with melee characters, as you're missing out on less from the ECL. Skill-based classes are basically worthless, and caster-types are probably a bad idea unless you're playing something like an ethergaunt which has "as a X-level caster" built in. Savage species is also a feasible workaround if you're willing to wait for some of the powers and it doesn't conflict with your vision of the monster. (Ie, I dislike the Savage Species illithid because a flayer that has to wait that many levels to be able to eat brains would starve to death)

That being said, if you're willing to look elsewhere, there ARE fairly good formulas out there which do a decent job of balancing monsters against standard classes. I personally use Soldarin's ECL Calculator and so far I haven't had any problems with it. It's also flexible enough to help guesstimate for variant monsters who differ from the listed stats, completely new monsters and races, and templates that might be worth more ECL on some creatures than others. I find it a good starting point, especially if you're still playing 3.0 like me and don't need to tweak it. Also, like any formula, it's thrown off if you deliberately make suboptimal choices at character creation- like multiclassing, some combinations are a LOT more effective than others.

From personal experience... ECL is easier to handle when you're coming in at a point where you can 'pad' it with a decent amount of class levels, rather than just riding it raw. Also, it's important to play the monster character to its own unique strengths rather than expecting to run it like a standard PC. I'm playing an illithid bard in a Planescape campaign at the moment, and my combat tactics aren't something I'd ever use with an ordinary bard. (For example, with my good Dex and Weapon Finesse:tentacle, I'm VERY good at dealing with enemy casters) Make sure to analyze your monster abilities and figure out how to best use them to your advantage in and out of combat, and make sure you don't forget them (like SR or immunities). Since you're paying for them in levels and feats, you should get as much use out of them as you can.

Edit: Curses, MoogleEmp and Kamikaze made some of my points not only before I did but more eloquently. Sorry for the redundancy.

 

[Mokona]

One problem is that everything is supposed to start with 11,11,11,10,10 for ability scores. This means that a monster that should be strong when compared to the PCs has a HUGE strength adjustment. I think giving more creatures a point-buy or low-powered (22pt) array instead of boosting 1-3 ability scores by 4 points would make them, as races, more balanced against the PC races.

I agree.

A strong race like ogres could be more flexible for DMs and PCs. If the Monster Manual version assumed a "monster array" (perhaps the 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 elite array) instead of requiring that the ogre's entire strength to be racially based; then with an NPC ogre sorcerer the DM could move arround the array and have it be playable. Racial stat mods on top of the default array for that creature in the Monster Manual could define flavor (ogres are strong brutes) without completely locking in one, and only one, concept.

I would also, in 3.75 edition, mostly eliminate Racial Hit Dice (especially for intelligent creatures) in favor of class levels for creatures. The defaul Ogre in the Monster Manual could have warrior levels, demons could have rogue or aristocrat levels, centaurs could have expert levels, and dragons could have sorcerer levels (since they're constantly described as magic users). And any DM who wants to change a monster could easily swap in a different class for an easy way to achieve variety in encounters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think having a "monster array" is a VERY good idea, and furthers the idea of "PC's are like NPC's" even better.

That Githzerai doesn't have a +6 Dex. He's got a 14 Dex, and a +2 Racial bonus....

Makes the critter a LOT more playable.

 

[Arkhandus]

I just don't think a creature's extra traits should be measured with LA alone, their racial HD should factor into it too, yet I see that a lot of monster races don't seem to consider the weakness of racial HD compared to class levels. I.E. Humanoid hit dice are only around half as potent as class levels, give or take a little bit, so 2-3 Humanoid HD should include a +1 LA worth of racial traits for free. And critters should have something to avoid discouraging them from being worthwhile spellcasters (i.e. if they have a large LA or racial HD, they should get a few caster levels or something out of the deal, if they actually acquire a spellcasting class).

For my Rhunaria homebrew, the only common races with LA are lizardfolk and bugbears (well, they're the least-common of the common races, anyway), but I've tweaked them to be fair for their racial HD and LA. Rhunarian lizardfolk get +5 AC, +4 Constitution, and +2 Wisdom (amongst other traits) that keep them from sucking too much as spellcasters for their total ECL of +3 (2 HD + 1 LA). They aren't great spellcasters, but then, their society has few spellcasters anyway, and they don't give up too much for choosing to be a cleric or druid (they still have decent HP, superior AC, and better melee prowess than human clerics or druids, though their spellcasting is somewhat weaker; still better than a human bard's spellcasting though). Rhunarian bugbears get +2 Dex and Con, +3 AC, darkvision, 1d6 Sneak Attack, mighty build (+2 on anything a Large critter would get +4 on, and more carrying capacity), and an ability called subterfuge (amongst other traits). Their subterfuge ability gives them +3 effective caster levels (but not for spells known/per day) for casting Enchantments, Illusions, and Transmutations, and also +3 to the DC of saves for those spell schools, and +3 on their own saves against such spells, and finally 3 extra spell slots of the highest spell level available to them (if they have any spellcasting ability) for preparing/casting spells of those three schools. So with the Rhunarian bugbear having a total ECL of +4 (3 racial HD + 1 LA), they only truly miss out on 1 caster level, while being a bit limited with what spells they can cast well (and they'll be 1-2 spell levels behind at any given time, depending on class; but their spells per day will be almost on-par with a caster of their character level). Thus I make them more viable as spellcasters without making them great at it (which wouldn't fit with their Rhunarian societal descriptions anyway).

 

[Felon]

Felon, you'll note in the text you're quoting that we're talking about a 2nd-level human paladin and a 2nd-level (ECL) aasimar paladin. When they're both Pal2 (as they are 50% of the time in the 100 XP-deficit system), they have the same hp, BAB, skill points (barring the 5 extra points the human gets for being human), save bonuses, and class abilities.

Well, it seems like the deck is being stacked if you make the human and aasimar the same level and then disregard the actual level difference. The 2nd-level aasimar paladin is a 3rd-level character. A 3rd-level character is stronger than a 2nd-level character. Even when adventuring with a human of equal level, the level difference isn't a write-off; the aasimar will still be receiving less XP a lot of the time.

The consensus in the d20 community (from what I have heard, at least) is that the aasimar is better than a human, just not LA+1 better. The aasimar gets darkvision, +2 Wis (which affects paladin spellcasting), +2 Cha (which affects paladin abilities), +2 to Spot and Listen checks (cross-class skills for paladins, so it's like he gets 4 automatic skill points to put in those two skills), a 3rd-level SLA that automatically counters the darkness spell, acid/cold/electricity resistance 5, and he's an outsider so he's immune to charm person, hold person, sleep, and other humanoid-targeting effects.

I can't help but be a little amused here, because this same analysis could be applied to a human fighter and a dwarven fighter to show how the dwarf's generous allotment of special abilities make it demonstrably superior in many, many respects. Yet they're both +0 LA. And furthermore, a comparison between a dwarf wizard and elf wizard will show that the dwarf wizard comes out ahead mechanically, favored classes be hanged.

Indeed, such analyses have been abundant since 3e first came out. I think it's safe to say the D&D community has achieved consensus on that. And yet 3.5e designers still deemed fit to lather on even more enhancements to the stunties, while leaving all of the other races virtually unchanged--positively bizarre (I don't think the rationale behind that has ever been explained). And when presented with the evidence of power-level discrepencies, the counter-arguement from designers basically amounts to "yes, it's a strong +0 race".

So if you're comparing a race that actually gives up an entire level to be better than a +0 race and saying "look how well he makes out" , my answer is he'd better, otherwise he should only be a "strong +0".

Compared to a human (+1 feat, +1 skill point per level) an aasimar is more than just "nice." The aasimar has no drawbacks for any particular class (it doesn't have any ability score penalties that would penalize key class abilities) and has some really handy abilities.

I've never understood this mentality. I would be grateful as heck if you could make me comprehend. When you're designing a race, you know what classes it's geared towards. How does having drawbacks for a particular class mitigate its level adjustment, if you know this is not the race to pick for that class anyway? If a dwarf or warforged is too ugly to be a good sorcerer or bard, how does that in any way balance the rest of the "handy abilities" that makes them an outstanding fighter or a decent wizard? What, without the -2 Cha, they would suddenly require a level adjustment even though their effectiveness as a fighter hasn't really changed?

 

[ThirdWizard]

Well, it seems like the deck is being stacked if you make the human and aasimar the same level and then disregard the actual level difference. The 2nd-level aasimar paladin is a 3rd-level character.

Sean is rebutting an argument to remove the Aasimar's LA +1 in favor of a mechanic that leaves the Aasimar one level behind roughly half the time at very low levels. Thus, in this argument, the Aasimar Paladin 2 is a 2nd level character. You are, in fact, agreeing with him.

 

[kirinke]

Sean is rebutting an argument to remove the Aasimar's LA +1 in favor of a mechanic that leaves the Aasimar one level behind roughly half the time at very low levels. Thus, in this argument, the Aasimar Paladin 2 is a 2nd level character. You are, in fact, agreeing with him.

I think that's how most DM's handle it. At least, that's how I'd handle it if a player wanted to play an LA Race and I'd give them the option of buying back levels, ala Unearthed Arcana's ECL reduction ruleset. Altho, instead of half the time, I'd make them be behind the group's level all the time. So if you have an aasimar playing in a 5th level group, he'd be class wise a fourth level character with a +1 racial level. Tis fair and is less of a headache to keep up with the mechanics.

 

[Felon]

I just don't think a creature's extra traits should be measured with LA alone, their racial HD should factor into it too, yet I see that a lot of monster races don't seem to consider the weakness of racial HD compared to class levels. I.E. Humanoid hit dice are only around half as potent as class levels, give or take a little bit, so 2-3 Humanoid HD should include a +1 LA worth of racial traits for free.

Exactly, that's another big flaw in the design; so a gnoll has to cough up two whole levels for his two crummy hit dice, and then another level for ability score bonuses because they don't zero-out? Pretty asanine. I think it's safe to say that for those two worthless humanoid hit dice, the gnoll's +4 Str, darkvision, and +1 natural armor can be "comped". Haven't these guys ever been to Vegas?

and it begs the question of why have humanoid hit dice in the first place? A creature with the humanoid type should inherently be capable of advancing through class levels. The entries for bugbears and lizardmen in the MM could just as easily be warriors of 3rd and 2nd-level, respectively.

And that would help address LA's, at least for humanoids. Instead, powerful races like drow could be built using an approach similar to that used with the gith races; don't just make racial features nifty little gift baskets you get at the door, but rather stretch out the benefits so that the really good ones kick in later on. Maybe, for instance, drow get SR at 4th level instead of an ability score increase. Maybe they gain it at 6th-level instead of a feat. Or maybe all races get something cool at 10th level, and for drow, SR is it.