Help me calculate Race LAs

[Artoomis]

...I was going to try typing out refutes to your points, Artoomis, and how you are inadvertently pursuing logical fallacies and ignoring or forgetting some facts...

If you could do it using ONLY logical arguments and not any editorial comments that verge on personal attacks on anyone who disagrees with you, I'd love to hear your arguments. I'll restate mine more fully to make it even easier for you to point out where I am "pursuing logical fallacies and ignoring or forgetting some facts":

1. Humans get
- Extra skill point (4 extra at 1st, then 1 per level)
- Extra feat at 1st level
- Automatic Language of Common (only)
- Favored Class: All

2. Izeroks get
- Extra skill point (4 extra at 1st, then 1 per level)
- Extra feat at first level (Clan Ability)
- Automatic Language: Frost Tongue (plus common?)
- Favored Class: Barbarian, Spirit Shaman.

We'll stop there for a minute. At this point they are slightly underpowered compared to a human. Their extra feat is chosen for them and they have a favored class (two which gives some flexibility, but not as much as a human). They get, in their favor, the Frost Tongue, but that's only good if they also get common and do not have to spend a skill point to speak common. At this point they are a weak LA +0, and that's pretty objective because they are clearly underpowered compared to a human.

Now to look at the sub-races to see the extras they get in addition to the above:

Pure Izeroks

- +2 Cons +2 Wis -2 Intelligence.
- Swim, Rope Use, Sail and Survival are class skills regardless of class.
- +4 Survival in Artic Conditions.
- Resistance to Cold: 5

OKay, so what do we have?

Unblanced stats. Wis and Int pretty well cancel each other out, leaving Con, which is a bonus for every character class.
Bonus Class skills. This is good, but not great. Not worth a great deal, really - this seems mostly a flavor thing.
+4 Survival. Better than the Skill Focus feat (which is +3)
Resistance to Cold: 5 Pretty good bonus, that one.

Now we get into opinion:

I'd say the Bonus Class Skills, +4 Survival and Resistance to Cold make up for the weaknesses compared to human and then some. Add in the unbalanced stats and you have a pretty strong LA +1. Arguably +2, but I don’t think so - I would not value the Bonus Class Skills, +4 Survival and Resistance to Cold that highly

Common Izeroks:

+2 Cons -2 Intelligence.
Swim, Rope Use, Sail and Survival are class skills regardless of class.
+2 Survival in Artic conditions.

Many would say that the stats here are unbalanced, and that's probably true, especially given that the favored classes do not include a WIS-based class. Certainly, when looking at the race as class-independent (as appropriate for LA adjustments) 2 extra Hit Points/level and +1 to Fort saves are pretty much objectively worth worth more than -1 Skill Points.

That plus the Bonus Class Skills and +2 Survival certainly more than balance out the weakness compared to human, making it a rather strong +0 LA, but I don't see enough to put it over the top to +1 LA.

Note that the LA adjusment absolutely, positively does not take a player's potential choice of class into consideration except perhaps in terms of Favored Class. Naturally, some races are better for some classes than others and these would be a bad choice for Wizards, for example.

 

[Arkhandus]

(For reference, Artoomis, I am not directing all my comments just at you, and I am not trying to irritate you; but I am human, and I do take offense when other people call me rude or make veiled accusations against me; my signature has a disclaimer for a reason, as too many people mistake my comments for being personal attacks, no matter how benign or neutral some statements are)

I won't bother wasting my time and effort trying to clarify the nature of my earlier statements. As already said, it's not worth the bother. I did not make generalizations; if my statements were read carefully, you'd have seen that I did present caveats and did not merely comment on the lack of logic employed by many posters; I did just as openly state my respect for the several, just less numerous, individuals on the boards who do take the time to apply logic to their opinions on rules matters.

Once again you jump to conclusions, though, Artoomis. Do you give all non-human core races a level adjustment, just because some of them are superior to humans in stats for some very common character archetypes? The core rules say Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, and their ilk are all LA +0, so by no means should anyone just base every other race's LA determination on Humans, considering that humans are statistically inferior most of the time to other core races at most roles.

Only when you allow a lot of broken feats from numerous largely-untested supplements does the human bonus feat become truly all-powerful as a racial benefit; but certainly not by its own merits, to be sure. With the core rules and little else as the baseline, you should not just assume right off the bat that a human's bonus feat is greatly powerful as a racial benefit. Therefore, humans really aren't a good baseline for judging the Level Adjustment of other races; they are not the most powerful LA+0 core race, and are in fact just mediocre or below average as a core race (in many games at least; I've already mentioned the caveat that allowing a bunch of broken feats from several supplements is the only way that human becomes a great choice rather than just a convenient one).

When balancing other races, do not just use humans as the baseline. Dwarves and Elves and Halflings and Gnomes and Half-Orcs and Half-Elves are all core LA+0 too.

The Survival bonus of Izeroks is not as potent as its mere bonus may seem, because it is limited to affecting the skill's use in arctic conditions; an Izerok outside their home environment has no bonus to Survival checks. It is not better than Skill Focus; it is only equal to it, at best.

Wisdom is not as useful as Intelligence or Constitution. Int and Con are of equal usefulness/potency in D&D, except that Con is fully useful to more characters than Int is, whereas Int is only fully useful to a few and just moderately useful to everyone else. The Con bonus and Int penalty almost balance each other out, leaving only a slight positive benefit to the Izerok overall from them. The Wisdom boost itself is worth about half of a +1 LA by itself, at the very most, for characters who bother to focus on the Cleric or Druid class (or Shaman or the like), and maybe for certain kinds of Monks; it's worth about a quarter of an LA by itself to most other characters (+1 to Will and a few skills for everyone else, not enough to make those skills useful if not otherwise trained significantly with ranks).

+1 to Will, Heal, Listen, Profession, Sense Motive, and Spot is hardly of any use to a Fighter, for instance; it won't be enough to save his pathetic Will when he gets hit with a Dominate Person or a Hideous Laughter. It won't be enough to save his pathetic cross-class ranks when trying to see through deception or spot the enemy force before they get the jump on him. Heal and Profession are nearly worthless skills unless the party has no healers and no decent amount of treasure to pay for room and board between adventures (meaning a stingy DM).

Just how useful is Cold Resistance 5, anyway? So what if they're immune to most Rays of Frost (it'd have to be a max damage critical hit just to get in 1 point against them)? They might be effectively immune to part of Chill Metal's effect or something, I suppose. And when they are eventually facing Cones of Cold or Polar Rays, they'll be taking effectively 1 less die of damage, out of what? 10 dice? 15 dice? What great use is that one die less? They'd have gotten more use out of a Lightning Reflexes feat or the like in that case. So they'll be effectively immune to an Ice Mephit's breath weapon (which can only be used every so often anyway), and they'll be just slightly less hurt by a White Dragon's or Winter Wolf's breath weapon (likewise). Big deal. They're still effectively just as vulnerable as anyone else to Frost Worms and Cryohydras and such (their measly 5 points of resistance are nothing compared to the amount of cold damage such monsters inflict). They're better off using a Potion of Resist Elements (Cold) most of the time. There are few enemies who'll ever by mildly stymied by the 5 points of Cold Resistance, and no enemies will ever really be significantly deterred by it (even ice mephits have other, equally decent ways to attack, that don't involve reliance on cold damage).

By the time an Izerok is facing most of the creatures with cold-damage attacks, the impact of the Izerok's ability score bonuses will have lessened, especially since they'll almost certainly have a +2 or +4 or +6 magic item for one or both stats by that time, if they're playing any class that really has a use for +Con or +Wis. I doubt most Izeroks spend the majority of their youth fighting frequent hordes of Ice Mephits, Wyrmling White Dragons, Winter Wolves, very-low-level sorcerers/wizards, and very-low-level druids. And most of those will just resort to equally-good-or-superior Magic Missile, Produce Flame, or teeth and claws if their first weak cold attack fails to noticeably harm the Izerok.

Objectively speaking, Cold Resistance 5 is far less useful than Fire Resistance 5, Electricity Resistance 5, or Acid Resistance 5. There are more monsters and spells that deal small or moderate amounts of fire, electricity, or acid damage than there are ones that deal similar amounts of cold damage. And the ones that employ non-cold damage are, in many cases, more commonly encountered. Mind you, as should already be apparent though, I am only talking about low-level stuff; at high levels, 5 points of resistance is all but useless against the kinds of spells, breath weapons, magic weapons, and other stuff that are going to be thrown at the PCs and enemies alike.

 

[Artoomis]

....

What is your point? I laid out clear arguments for my LA adjustments, you have commented on a number of items, but not tied it all together into a nice, neat package. It's too hard for me to go through your post and respond, I'm afraid.

Sorry. I do not really expect you to re-structure your post to make it easier to respond point-by-point without wading through lots of extra material. If you do, especially if you do it as a point-by-point rebuttal of my analysis, I'd be happy to agree and disagree with you on a point-by-point basis.

I will address why I compared with humans - because this new race is very, very similar to humans,and but with extra benefits. I chose not to compare with any other race because no other race is so closely matched for a base to compare.

 

[pawsplay]

As put forth in the original post, the common sort are basically just variant humans. Although Int isn't a huge priority for some characters, it's a fair trade for Con. In addition to reducing skill points, it limits Search, use of feats such as Combat Expertise, and naturally, Int-based classes. Clearly, they make better beaters than humans, and access to Survival makes them potentially rival trackers. However, with their low Int, they are probably not in a position to take huge advantage of that. Nonetheless, I would change them to have +2 racial bonus to Survival (doubled in arctic conditions), rather than introducing a mechanic rarely used in other D&D stuff.

The pure ones are similar to Aasimar, but compared to them, they take a penalty to ability scores while having the same number of bonuses, they have less resistances, and no spell-like abilities. Their class skills are nice as a flavor touch, but don't significantly affect the race, particularly with an LA. Since they have unbalanced ability scores, they can't go below +1 LA, so +1 LA they are. They are probably not as strong as assimar, tieflings, or hobgoblins, but a 2nd level character is probably equivalent to a lizardman with no class levels. Certainly, they would excel in their favored classes, and are probably okay at +1 LA.