ECL Races, EVER worth it?

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.
 

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The_Gneech said:
The default setting and the default rules are tied together: "out of the box" D&D assumes a given 'flavor' of world (i.e., Greyhawk-lite or close thereto), in which a monster-hero isn't as viable. D&D is not even close to generic.

D&D is adaptable, yes. But not generic. That's Fantasy HERO (or possibly GURPS.

-The Gneech :cool:

D&D ties its rules to its setting only in a handful of places - spells, magic items and, apparently, ECL. Unsurprisingly, the first two are full of exceptions to the rules rather than in accordance with them.

D&D's rules for most things aren't tied to its setting in any way (as evidenced by those rules working just fine for wildly different settings).

D&D provides demographics telling the player what demographics it assumes - predominantly human, with the other PHB races constituting most of the rest of the population. I have no problem with that. The race, class, feat and equipment options D&D offers - say, by putting them in the Player's Handbook? - do derive from its setting. I have no problem with that, either.

If, however, D&D offers an option - say, playing a hill giant? - that option should work with the rest of the rules and be as close to balanced as possible with them.

I don't believe the designers set out with the intention of making the Swashbuckler, Hexblade and Samurai stronger or weaker than the core classes, for example. Why are non-core classes designed to a similar power level, but races aren't?

Now, I'll be the first to admit, the true setting-neutrality of HERO or GURPS is highly attractive to me (as far as the systems themselves are concerned, the former appeals more than the latter, but it hardly matters), one of several reasons I'd rather play HERO than standard d20. Nonetheless, I'm only speaking from a d20/D&D perspective. D&D sets its default classes very clearly by including only certain races in the book far, far more players own than any other - NOT by making the defaults more powerful across the board. Why should it treat races differently?
 

MoogleEmpMog said:
D&D ties its rules to its setting only in a handful of places - spells, magic items and, apparently, ECL. Unsurprisingly, the first two are full of exceptions to the rules rather than in accordance with them.
This is not true, d&d ties its rules everywhere to the implied setting: magic item necessity, polytheistic pantheon, vancian magic, multi-racial society for starters.

MoogleEmpMog said:
D&D's rules for most things aren't tied to its setting in any way (as evidenced by those rules working just fine for wildly different settings).
These wildly different settings have an enormous amount of similarities or rather the differences are largely cosmetic. I can switch from Eberron to Greyhawk & few of my gaming assumptions are invalid.

MoogleEmpMog said:
If, however, D&D offers an option - say, playing a hill giant? - that option should work with the rest of the rules and be as close to balanced as possible with them.
Except that unlike a dwarf, a hill giant comes with a 100hps & +15 str. This is a race that was designed to challenge 7th level parties; in effect monstrous races combine racial traits with 'class.' This is not class as players know it but rather class as in mechanical attributes to challenge the pcs in some particular manner, close combat in the case of the hill giant. For the hill giant to be balanced with a standard race without the ECL, it needs to drop the 100hps & +15 str, which will make it not a hill giant; the hill giant is hard coded as a monster.

This further begs the questions, do you object to the value of the hill giant ECL or do you object to not being able to play one at 1st level? I am sympathetic to the second question but a balanced 1st level hill giant just won't feel like one anyway. Do we then sacrifice balance & accept all the problematic ripples that then occur?

MoogleEmpMog said:
I don't believe the designers set out with the intention of making the Swashbuckler, Hexblade and Samurai stronger or weaker than the core classes, for example. Why are non-core classes designed to a similar power level, but races aren't?
I would compare like with like, races with races. New races that are introduced for pcs, i.e. +0 ECL are designed to balance with the core phb races. Monsters from the MM as mentioned, were designed as combat challenges.
 

Upper_Krust said:
Hey sean! :)
Anyway, if you apply the parameters of the Innate Spell feat to any monsters spell-like abilities then there is no way any of them become unbalanced.

But then you're treating NPCs differently than PCs. If you want to play a Small fire elemental, you should be able to be on fire all the time and use your burn ability all the time. Your tweaking of Innate Spell (which I admit is a smart way of looking at it, but unfortunately still isn't a fix) would mean that an NPC/monster Small fire elemental would be able to use those abilities all day, whereas a PC Small fire elemental would have limited uses per day ... in short, there would be extended periods of the day where he simply wasn't on fire.

The whole point of templates is that they act the same whether you use them on PCs or NPCs. With your Innate Spell tweak, we might as well have separate PC and NPC versions of each template and race ("you can play a PC drow, which gets no SR or SLAs, but not an NPC drow, which does"). Which sucks.

By the way if someone casts dispel magic on your caravan of dominated monsters you are in for a bit of trouble. ;)

Each effect would require a separate caster level check, so the odds are if you're facing a CR-appropriate challenge you'll only lose half of your monsters, which means you can direct the other half to hold off the first half while you use dominate monster on the guy who used the dispel....

Ondo said:
{re: the fireballer template} A PC is paying for his +1 LA far more often than a monster is paying for his CR, so of course he gets more use for it. A +1 LA PC may use his fireball 10-30 times per day, but every single use will be against an encounter that is 1 CR higher than it would otherwise have been.

Not necessarily. There's nothing stopping the ECL 6 (for example) PC from using it on a CR5 gang of 8 orcs. Or on a door the party rogue can't seem to open. Or over and over on a pool of water containing an aquatic monster until the water boils away. Or over and over on the bandit fortress from 400 feet away, well out of arrow range. Don't assume that just because the PC is ECL X that every situation they encounter is EL X. Part of the reason LA is different from CR is because PCs do things other than combat and their special abilities don't just have to reflect pure combat ability. A monster "pays for" his CR (an interesting way of putting it, by the way) only in combat and we don't have a way to evaluate them outside of combat (most creatures don't have a LA), whereas a PC "pays for" his EL in combat, out of combat, and all the livelong day.
 

Hey Sean! :)

seankreynolds said:
But then you're treating NPCs differently than PCs.

Not if the monsters (NPCs) were designed using those parameters in the first place.

seankreynolds said:
If you want to play a Small fire elemental, you should be able to be on fire all the time and use your burn ability all the time.

I agree.

...although I don't see how burn applies in this case given that its an Extraordinary ability.

seankreynolds said:
Your tweaking of Innate Spell (which I admit is a smart way of looking at it, but unfortunately still isn't a fix) would mean that an NPC/monster Small fire elemental would be able to use those abilities all day, whereas a PC Small fire elemental would have limited uses per day ... in short, there would be extended periods of the day where he simply wasn't on fire.

I don't think I was suggesting that at all. The fix was for spell-like abilities.

I can't imagine you would say the burn ability is going to be unbalanced in the hands of PCs anyway.

seankreynolds said:
The whole point of templates is that they act the same whether you use them on PCs or NPCs. With your Innate Spell tweak, we might as well have separate PC and NPC versions of each template and race ("you can play a PC drow, which gets no SR or SLAs, but not an NPC drow, which does"). Which sucks.

Perhaps you have picked up wrong on what I was trying to say? The innate spell tweak would firstly only apply to spell-like abilities. Secondly I would even suggest it as a design parameter for all monsters as a whole, not simply PC Monsters.

But obviously I am not calling for people to rewrite their monster manuals just to incorporate it wholesale, so their may be some minor discrepancies between PCs and NPCs. But we both know either way that the changes won't make a noticeable difference to the challenge rating of the monsters (NPCs); who will rarely get to exhaust even limited applications of their abilities in a given encounter.

seankreynolds said:
Each effect would require a separate caster level check, so the odds are if you're facing a CR-appropriate challenge you'll only lose half of your monsters, which means you can direct the other half to hold off the first half while you use dominate monster on the guy who used the dispel...

Lets just hope its not a Braxat casting dispel magic, or someone with mind blank. Still seems like a dangerous game to play to me...but I suppose the danger is part of the excitement. :cool:
 

Upper_Krust said:
Hey Sean! :)
Not if the monsters (NPCs) were designed using those parameters in the first place.

True, but that's a far more involved solution than "LAs don't work, use this instead," so it's sorta out of the scope of this discussion.

{...although I don't see how burn applies in this case given that its an Extraordinary ability.
...
I don't think I was suggesting that at all. The fix was for spell-like abilities.}

The point is you're going to have the same problems whether those abilities are Ex, Sp, Su, or none of the above.

{I can't imagine you would say the burn ability is going to be unbalanced in the hands of PCs anyway.}

The burn ability is just an example. Poison is also an Ex ability, useable at will by a PC, and it's one of the many abilities that justify an LA (you can use it all the time, in theory you can extract it to apply to your friends' weapons or sell it, etc.).

{But we both know either way that the changes won't make a noticeable difference to the challenge rating of the monsters (NPCs); who will rarely get to exhaust even limited applications of their abilities in a given encounter.}

True, 3/day is the same as at will for an NPC or monster.
 

Hey sean! :)

apologies for the slow reply.

seankreynolds said:
True, but that's a far more involved solution than "LAs don't work, use this instead," so it's sorta out of the scope of this discussion.

Just a bit of light-hearted banter, I wasn't trying to draw you on the matter.

seankreynolds said:
The point is you're going to have the same problems whether those abilities are Ex, Sp, Su, or none of the above.

Seems to me only if the monster is clearly badly balanced in the first place.

seankreynolds said:
The burn ability is just an example.

Not one that unbalances things though.

seankreynolds said:
Poison is also an Ex ability, useable at will by a PC, and it's one of the many abilities that justify an LA (you can use it all the time, in theory you can extract it to apply to your friends' weapons or sell it, etc.).

I think there would be limits as to how much poison you could milk from a creature per day. Also poisons used on weapons degrade fairly quickly. Those who are not assassins can accidentally poison themselves when applying the poison. There is also the moral implication of poison to consider. The market for poison is probably not going to represent a bottomless pit either and its going to become saturated faster than the character will become rich from the endeavour. The retailer will pay you less than the market price. Others might feel the character was muscling in on their business (drow for instance - nice adventure hook though). Poison doesn't work on all monsters anyway (especially the higher in power the party advance). Most venoms probably have a unique scent - so if used frequently by characters (on their weapons for instance) will probably give them away to those with heightened olfactory senses such as animals, dragons etc.

I just don't see this getting out of hand. There are far too many factors DMs can draw upon to curb any possible abuse. Enterprising PCs may make a few hundred gp each time they visit major towns or cities but contrasted to what they would make adventuring anyway its likely to be a pittance.

seankreynolds said:
True, 3/day is the same as at will for an NPC or monster.

Yes, more or less.
 

I always thought of poison more as a weapon against PCs than NPCs - the second effect of poison comes usually after the combat ended, and it´s difficult to get powerful poisons that deal a dangerous amount of ability damage. And since saving throw DCs against natural poisons increase by HD, this would usually indicate that most enemies with have a 50 % or higher chance to resist your poison if they have a good fortitude save.

But there are probably other examples that might work well describing the problem ...
 

I think the likely easiest way to balance out LA properly is to do the following two things:
Don't assume that an exceptional monster is as superior to the typical monster as the exceptional core race is to a typical member of the core race. So while a human with an 18 Strength might be unbelievable compared to a typical human with a 10, a bugbear with a 20 Strength might be equally rare compared to a typical bugbear with a 15. Instead of giving the bugbear +4 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Con and -2 Cha, give it +2 Str, -2 Cha and force it to have a minimum of a Str of 12, a Dex of 10, and a Con of 10. Or give it +4 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Con, and -2 Cha, but multiply the total bonus by 2(12) and subtract that from the point buy score - a Bugbear in a 28 point buy game is only going to be a 16 point buy bugbear.

Make the monster classes a complete pile of dreck to fill out details that aren't really worth it from a player perspective, but are from standard monster perspective - similar to why no PC is really going to take the NPC class Aristocrat. So while the adventuring PC Bugbear might only have +1 Natural Armor/+2 Racial Bonus to Hide and be a third level Rogue, there's a +3/4 BAB class for 3 levels that gives the NPC Bugbear +3 Natural Armor total and +4 Racial Bonus.

At this point, if it has been impossible to drive down a particular monster to LA +0, then give them an LA. But a lot of the monsters that players are typically interested in playing from a roleplaying perspective aren't that difficult.
 

You don't have to treat NPCs differently in that situation - you simply make a horrible NPC class that most small fire elementals take, allowing them to burn all the time. But most PCs should find the NPC class not sufficiently valuable compared to say Fighter.

seankreynolds said:
But then you're treating NPCs differently than PCs. If you want to play a Small fire elemental, you should be able to be on fire all the time and use your burn ability all the time.
 

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