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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Feathercircle" data-source="post: 2444427" data-attributes="member: 11266">As Felon said above, with the additional point that while monster abilities may be duplicated by spells, feats, and items, etc, they don't consume resources to use the same way spells and items do.  Even feats can be considered a resource, in that you're taking one feat instead of another- though this is less of an issue since the ECL system often leaves monster characters trading feats (and HD and so on) for abilities in the first place.  Even when things can be duplicated, you're essentially getting them "free" rather than using expendible resources on them.  On an enemy, it's not hugely different aside from the fact that items usually can be looted and innate abilities usually can't, but for a player, there's a definite distinction.Flight, especially natural flight which has potentially unlimited duration and doesn't go away with dispelling or antimagic, is challenging to deal with.  It's not neccesarily a campaign-killer by any means, but for a newbie DM, or someone attempting to run a prepackaged adventure, can be tough.  In any case, I'm not saying that a DM should never allow innate flight, whether by monster characters or PrCs (though newbie DMs may want to stay away from it at first)- it's just that it's in many ways superior to flight by spell or item and should impact ECL.In a perfect world, CR and ECL and level would be a lot more equivalent to each other, but as the debate in this thread has been showing, the game is not perfect.  Kludges can, will, and do happen, and this is one of them.  Unlike in, say, GURPS, building an opponent is not always similar to building a character and when you step into ECL-mode and start using those opponents as characters, the inequalities start becoming apparent.  Abilities that are barely useful for a PC might be invaluable on a one-shot opponent, and vice versa.</blockquote>

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