Elemental Creature Templates: Wonky LA's?

[DreadArchon]

The templates I'm talking about are found here. I'm most interested in the Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Cold, and Wood templates--the ones found in Manual of the Planes.

So, title question. I really can't see how these are supposed to balance out. Even if the immunities are valued hugely (like +2 by themselves for each set), the LA's assigned seem ridiculous, especially compared to each other (compare Wood, Cold, or Fire to Air or Earth!). I'd like to reassign the adjustments, but I'm curious as to whether there's some huge balance point I'm missing here.

 

[Twowolves]

Or, you could look in either the 3.0 Monster's Handbook by FFG or in Strange Lands, the last book in S&SS's Scarred Lands series for alternative elemental templates.

Or do what I did and make your own based on all 3 sources.

 

[humble minion]

Without knowing the specifics of these particular templates (the book is just across the room on my shelf but I'm way too lazy and stuffed with chilli to get it!), templates that change the subject creature's type to something other than humanoid are highly valued LA-wise, simply because they give immunity to a huge array of spells - charm person, hold person, dominate person, etc, etc, etc are all useless against elementals. Throw in complete immunity to critical hits (equivalent to a +5 armour enchantment if I remember right!) and that's pretty much where the LA comes from. The relatively minor stat boosts, special abilities and the like don't really have as much impact as the above when LA is assigned, rightly or wrongly.