painandgreed
First Post
maggot said:Yes, CR is different than LA/ECL, but I think there is a common problem here: adding spellcasting levels to creatures with many hit dice doesn't work very well. For NPCs (the CR system) there is a patch that allows things like a frost giant wizard 10 to exist at reasonable power levels, but for PCs there is no such solution. (In 3.0 there wasn't even a patch for NPCs, and all frost giant wizards and clerics had to be low level.)
But the NPC/CR patch isn't very good, and not just because it doesn't address PCs/ECL, but because it gives away the wrong things. Compare a frost giant wizard 8 to a frost giant fighter 4 some time. They have the same CR, but wizard is better combat numbers.
So I think a system that allows you to turn in your racial hit dice for class hit dice would be better. Basically, creatures have a minimum number of hit dice. If your class levels are lower than this, you fill up to the minimum with racial hit dice. I've played around with it for NPCs and it works well. For PCs, advancement with this system is wonky.
I think that last issue of Dragon that presented evil dragon classes had and interesting solution. You have class levels in a monster type, much like is presented in Savage Species. Then devide up the monster class levels into age categories. A plyer who has completed the monster levels in an age category may then take levels in a normal class although they haven't finsihed all the mosnter levels. Once they take the next level in the monster class, they must again finish out all levels of that monsters age category before taking any more other class levels.
Hypothetical example, let's say there is a monster that is LA+4 and 4HD for a total of 8 monster levels. These are broken up into age categories of child, adolescent, adult and elder of two levels each. A PC playing this monster must first complete the first two levels of the monster class completing the child class levels. He may then take any other classes although still much short of hit dice and abilites of the full grown monster. Once he takes the next monster class in adolescent and gains more hit dice and abilites, he must also take the next level before taking any class levels besides the monsters. Once they do, they could add more other classes. If the DM wanted, he could actually assign game time limits on when new age levels could/have to be taken. This way, a PC could take a fairly beefy monster without too much of a hit to class levels because they would be playing an immature versin without all the hit dice and abilites although those would be available if they wanted them.