LA and racial HDs

[Phlebas]

I've house ruled that you can mix and match class / racial levels with a couple of restrictions

1 - your 1st level is always racial
2 - your racial levels must always exceed class levels (until you max racial)
3 - Favoured class rules apply

It seems to work OK IMC, but you do have to look closely at the progression, and i do tend to 'tweak'

 

[Delta]

Uhm, Monster manual minotaurs have 6 hit dice {and +2 LA].

Fixed, thanks.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

If you can talk your DM into allowing you to play a minotaur without racial HD, it's okay, but you have to accept that the LA will go up like pharmacy stocks when they make doping mandatory in sports.

If you compare it to the half-dragon, I'd say the mino has it better: While the half-dragon's breath weapon is powerful, it's only usable once per day. The minotaur has the advantage of being large (big one I'd say, as it gets you reach and bigger weapons), is never flat-footed, gets better physical stats (and if you play this sort of character, you're in it for sticking solid objects into yielding objects.), better natural armour, and has a nice natural attack.

So I'd give a racial HD-less minotaur +4 (+3 might have been alright, too, but that's the price I demand for playing a mino without class levels).

 

[Klaus]

One thing I consider doing is giving a character with LA levels in Commoner equal to the LA (so a minotaur would be Minotaur 6/Commoner 2).

 

[gnfnrf]

That's not the case with many monsters. For example an air elemental gets all its best abilities at 1st level - 100 ft. flight (perfect), elemental immunities - and knack all after that. A player would be far better off taking one level in air elemental then switching to another class, such as sorcerer, for the next 19 levels. Wow! 100 ft. flying and a bunch of other good stuff for +0 LA, that's a good deal.

The elemental classes are an unusual case, because they are written to match all of the listed elemental sizes at each step.

--
gnfnrf

 

[Cameron]

It's precisely the other way around. You may NOT take any class levels until you finish your racial progression (so, if you're playing a Ghaele Eladrin, you're set for all of your non-epic career).

All 5 levels of it...



What?

 

[Cameron]

If you can talk your DM into allowing you to play a minotaur without racial HD, it's okay, but you have to accept that the LA will go up like pharmacy stocks when they make doping mandatory in sports.

If you compare it to the half-dragon, I'd say the mino has it better: While the half-dragon's breath weapon is powerful, it's only usable once per day. The minotaur has the advantage of being large (big one I'd say, as it gets you reach and bigger weapons), is never flat-footed, gets better physical stats (and if you play this sort of character, you're in it for sticking solid objects into yielding objects.), better natural armour, and has a nice natural attack.

So I'd give a racial HD-less minotaur +4 (+3 might have been alright, too, but that's the price I demand for playing a mino without class levels).

I'd prefer to go with Half-Ogre. Not as Strong, maybe, but only LA+2 instead of all the other crap thrown in.

The LA system is whacked. I wouldn't pit a Rakhsasha against a CR14 anything, but that is what it is supposed to be facing if it was in the party...

A 7HD monster vs a CR14 monster... Roadkill comes appropriately to mind, if you ask me...

Let's not even go into the Mindflayer. For one of the iconic DnD monsters, it sure looks like (and is) roadkill to me. At least the silly Rakh has 7 levels of Sorcerer to back it up...!

 

[darthkilmor]

The LA system is whacked. I wouldn't pit a Rakhsasha against a CR14 anything, but that is what it is supposed to be facing if it was in the party...

A 7HD monster vs a CR14 monster... Roadkill comes appropriately to mind, if you ask me...

Let's not even go into the Mindflayer. For one of the iconic DnD monsters, it sure looks like (and is) roadkill to me. At least the silly Rakh has 7 levels of Sorcerer to back it up...!

roadkill?

Special Qualities (see above): Change shape, damage reduction 15/good and piercing, spell resistance equal to 27 + class levels.

 

[eamon]

roadkill?

Of course, a rakshasa in a party of ECL 15, say (in otherwords, enough to take 1 class level) will encounter and engage opponents of upto EL 19.

So an Ancient White dragon (to pick another D&D staple) of CR 18 should certainly not be overpowering, right? Except... even without any magic items this thing has 375 hp, an SR of 24 (meaning our rakshasa7/sorc1 will only succeed on the caster level checks 1/4 of the time), nice things like a breath weapon dealing 10d6 damage, and a base attack of +30 (and a strength of 33). So yeah.. you have damage reduction, and let's hope that the dragon can't Align Fang that away, but even so, you've got a problem... And just to top it off, the dragon's caster level is 9th and yours is 8th .

Rakshasas are one of the better choices for high levels, but still... a level adjustment of +7 is painful. You can do it for flavor, and because of the great Con and Racial HD, and damage reduction and SR, you'll survive quite a while, but your attacks are truly wimpy for such a character. Being an 8th level sorcerer when you could be a 15th level sorcerer, is a big, big issue.

And we all know that if you want to be a sorcerer with level adjustment, you want to be a...
pixie
Ahh... how cute... and how permanently invisible, an SR of only 2 lower, 3 less LA, A damage reduction which, though only 10, is /cold iron (which isn't very common in monsters, and isn't easy to come by either), and a fly speed! It's also one of the few LA which is equal to CR.