LA Revised

[Sylrae]

Arkhandus: Obviously, a character who gets to just be more powerful for no cost is bad. But the Issue is, that as you progress, the worth of the benefits of an LA become less and less. Especially for the outlandish XP costs you end up paying extra for counting as that much higher a level.

Your Idea would make the gap a bit less severe, but it still kindof isnt worth it.

The whole point of my idea, is that a Drow's abilities become less and less significant as you get to the higher levels.

Because lower levels arent generally as good as higher levels, Level 1 worth of abilities arent worth as much as level 17 worth of abilities. By 20, the only Drow ability that isn't mostly negligible in terms of POWER is the SR, and thats cause its based on HD/Level.

So I was suggesting that instead of pushing them down the table as though they were a higher level, even though they dont have the BAB, or HP, or saves to match, you make them pay for the "Monster Levels" they have via XP, but make them buy all their regular levels at the normal XP costs.

And for something like Savage Progressions (which are helpful beyond explanation), the Minotaur, who has 8 levels total, could progress through minotaur levels and Class Levels as though they were separate characters.
You could go Minotaur 1/Fighter 1 for the cost of level 2, Minotaur 2/Fighter 1 for the cost of 2 level 2s, or Minotaur 1/Fighter 2 for the cost of a level 3.

That was the basic Idea.

For races with no HD and no savage progressions, you could easily make savage progressions, and while you'd have to give them SOMETHING (or they'd have no HP), you just give them 1 LA and 1 Class Level. You make them earn enough for that 1 class level before you let them take anything else.

Hawken, I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say I guess (I dont think my explanation was the best, so no shock there)
. Ima respond to the stuff you said.

You're missing a very obvious point in your calculations, Sylrae. Your XP cost is fixed, but XP requirements scale with each level. Doing it your way means that by 190,000xp (level 20), an LA +2 race will be only 3,000xp from 20th anyway--and at that level that's the difference of only 1 or maybe 2 encounters. So, one encounter later, your LA +2 races are 20th level along with the LA +0 races that are still 20th level. This isn't so bad, but the real burden with this idea and the regular LA rules, is that low level LA race characters are more vulnerable than their non-LA race allies.

That was the point. By level 20, the Drow's advantages are not worth 2 Levels. The Drow abilities may be worth level 1 and 2, but theyre not worth level 18 and 19

Your method penalizes LA races at the worst possible levels, the first two or three! A Drow 1st lvl wizard (to use your example) may be the equivalent of a 3rd level character, but he's not going to be able to handle an encounter for a 3rd level character. One good hit, or even a bad one, and he goes down! His SR may help, but his saves, AC and BAB are also going to be lower than what they need to be for the character to have even a fair chance to survive.

That's true, but I would suggest doing as I mentioned above and breaking Drow into a 2 level class with no BAB or saves or HP bonus. Make them take the first level in the class, give a character class level for free, and then make them earn the class level before they take anything else. Make a stipulation that they cannot have higher class levels than racial LA until they have all their LA.

After a certain point, all XA races pass the same learning curve and advance together. It is at this point that XA racial abilities begin to make less of a difference in play and while a 10th level Drow fighter may have a few advantages due his race, he'll be roughly on par with a Human fighter of the same level.

This is what I was tryuing to address. I haven't had a chance to look at your table, but it may accomplish the same thing (and possibly better).

 

[Hawken]

Thanks for the comments, Sylrae. Oh, and check out my post after the one you commented on. I think we may have both been composing at the same time. My idea there I think trumps the one on the file I linked...maybe.

 

[Sylrae]

I like the concept of the Idea. It means different XP Gain tables, but I like the Idea.

Only Issue I have is im not sute I like the flat selection of the level 10 - LA. Cause for one, what happns in the game when You're allowint 11+ LA Races. I saw one game where the players played dragons.

I think the Idea of the static XP table adjustment could be a good one. But I think maybe LA XP * 2 might work better (just off the top of my head)

and I can't see what you would do with races that have racial HD. (which my solution handles, albeit imperfectly)

Maybe we could combine the two ideas together somehow...

 

[Hawken]

It means different XP Gain tables, but I like the Idea.

Not really any extra tables, just one extra note on the character sheet. The math is fairly basic. LA +1 is 10th - 9th (10 - 1LA) or 9,000xp. Spread over 10 levels, that's only an increase of the required XP by 900. Fairly easy to keep track of.

I didn't design it for LA +11 races, and really, it doesn't work too well for anything over an LA of +5. And that's all there really is for PC races anyway. Anything generally above a +4 is a monster race and with those, you're almost always dealing with racial HD, which is something PC races don't typically deal with.

I've never liked the idea of racial HD counting as a full class level. It just doesn't equal a class level and there's no reason why it should.

However, I think with my idea, it makes things easier. There may be exceptions and just some monsters that don't work, but lets try this as an example. A succubus is a monster with 6 racial hd and LA +6. So we do this:

10th - 6th = 4th (6000xp); 45000-6000 = 39,000. 39,000 split over 6 levels is 6,500xp. Her 6 racial HD make her a 6th level character, and we'll spread her 39,000xp over 6 levels instead of 10--6hd = 6 lvl spread. So she begins play at 6th level with 15,000xp (normal for 6th level), but to get to 7th, she'll have to earn 27,500xp instead of 21,000xp--6,500 more than an LA+0 character needs. And she'll have to do this through her next 6 levels, into her 12th level where she'll need 72,500 instead of 66,000. From there, she'll advance normally, hitting 13th at 78,000 like everyone else.

Is she more powerful than an LA+0 character of equal level? Maybe. But that's relative to the scenario at hand. A 6th level character is going to have 6 class levels worth of abilities, while the Succubus will have her MM entry. And even when she 'pays off' her LA by 13th level, she's still only going to have 7 class levels, where other LA+0 races are going to have 13. Yes, she's got a lot of powers, defenses, etc., but a 13th level character is going to have more powerful class abilities, feats, and more.

This is my point about LA. They aren't equal to class levels and racial HD sure as hell aren't either. And the "that's the price you pay if you want to play that" is a bullcrap reason! Unless I got it wrong, 4e got rid of LA and pretty much equalized all the races. That's a step in the right direction that 3.5 should have taken or that any incarnation of 3.75 needs to take. The only thing is monsters are monsters, not PC races. And they shouldn't be. The DM should have to make a house rule for letting players play monsters (pretty much anything with racial HD).

Oh, and I just went through the Draconomicon and read the section on Dragons as PCs. The highest LA I saw in there was an LA +6, so, my formula could still work as I just wrote on the Succubus. I'm sure this could be refined, but the idea and spirit behind it is to let characters of equal level play together. If someone wants a Succubus in the game and the PCs are 6th level, it can work, she'll have no class levels and will take a lot longer to advance than the others. In fact, by the time she reaches 7th and gets her FIRST class level, the others will be just about into their 8th class level. So, it seems to work out nicely to me.

 

[Sylrae]

That could work. I think we should figure out just what RACIAL HD are actually worth. As you pointed out, they arent as good as class levels. However, If you take their abilities, and add them to the Racial HD as though they were class abilities, You could make it into a class for the purposes of level value, and then the LA could be adjusted to be more reasonable. Then we could use your formula for the LA remaining.

I think youre making them pay too much exp for the abilities though.

 

[Hawken]

The thing is, they're not really 'paying'. Its not XP lost, its just offsetting the point where leveling up occurs. Considering what they get and can do, I don't think the offset I came up with for the Succubus is too terrible for a stretch of 6 levels--considering the alternative where they have to come in at 12th level otherwise, or advance along that craptastic write up in Savage Species.

The thing is, if racial HD is condensed into a class level, by a factor of 2 or 3, that would mean that the Succubus, using my formula, would come in with a group of 2nd or 3rd level characters, way too low for someone like that.

 

[concerro]

I dont think a flat HD formula will ever work to well. Each race should just be assigned an ECL according to its merits. I understand this was not done due to the amount of playtesting it would take, but it would be better. I have never believed drow were a real+2, however luckily enough minotaurs fit their ECL pretty well.

 

[Sylrae]

The thing is, they're not really 'paying'. Its not XP lost, its just offsetting the point where leveling up occurs. Considering what they get and can do, I don't think the offset I came up with for the Succubus is too terrible for a stretch of 6 levels--considering the alternative where they have to come in at 12th level otherwise, or advance along that craptastic write up in Savage Species.

The thing is, if racial HD is condensed into a class level, by a factor of 2 or 3, that would mean that the Succubus, using my formula, would come in with a group of 2nd or 3rd level characters, way too low for someone like that.

it's extra XP theyre paying. I'm inclinedto agree that the succubus amount you listed is fair.
I'm saying for the low LA creature, like Drow, youre having them delayed too much.
Instead of going 10-LA, I would thing it would be better to go some number based on the LA differently. Maybe the XP of LA+1 (so for an LA 2 character you use the xp for LA 3), and then multiply it by something. Perhaps just double it. Cause in no way are Drow Abilities worth 17000 xp. I could see them being worth maybe 6000 if it was spread out.

If racial HD was condensed into class levels, then you would take the Racial HD (6 for succubus). go through all of the powers (from weakest to most powerful), until you have 6HD worth of abilities, plus saves, and HP, and skill points. You'll find that you have less than 6 LA worth of abilities left.

Then you can adjust the Exp delay by the amount left over. So the succubus would start at level 6, and have to pay for the extra 3 levels or so via your exp delays (and give the remaining abilities spread evenly over the delayed levels). You get the idea?
So something between Savage Progressions and your Idea.

 

[Herzog]

I didn't read everything in this thread, so if this is a bit beside-topic, my apologies.

I expressed the XP-gain necessary for an LA+2 character with LA buy-off as an overview for one of my players.
It includes the buy-off XP as a part of the XP-gain table (instead of simply 'disappearing' when buying off the LA)

This would give an appropriate overview for XP/level balance where the XP gain is NOT adjusted for ECL (NB: when the DM does not use the XP by lvl table from the DMG, but gives 'flat' XP instead):

0 -
1,000 -
3,000 lvl 1
6,000 lvl 2
10,000 lvl 3
15,000 lvl 4
21,000 lvl 5
28,000 lvl 6
35,000 lvl 7
43,000 lvl 8
52,000 lvl 9
61,000 lvl 10
71,000 lvl 11
82,000 lvl 12
94,000 lvl 13
107,000 lvl 14
121,000 lvl 15
136,000 lvl 16
152,000 lvl 17
169,000 lvl 18
187,000 lvl 19
206,000 lvl 20

The XP difference at lvl 20 is 16,000. A reasonable pay-off for LA+2, I would think.

Of course, if you add in XP-by-ECL, this difference would rapidly disappear.

Edit: as a base of comparison, an LA+0 character needs 190,000 XP to reach lvl 20, and without buy-off an LA+2 character would need 231,000 XP to reach lvl 20.

 

[Hawken]

Herzog, where is the buy-off you mention? Your XP table continues to penalize the LA +2 race for a full 20 levels! A buy off means that at some point the penalties would stop.

Also, your solution does what the regular LA solution does--it frontloads the penalties much in the same way that 3.0 Ranger class frontloads its abilities. They get the most of it all at once! The lowest levels are precisely when LA races do NOT need the worst penalties but the least. All your method does different from the LA rules is reduce the level difference from 2 to 1 by 11th level. But you still keep the 1 level difference through the life of the character. No buy-off. Unless by buy-off you mean cut the level penalty from 2 to 1--which would make it a buy-down.

Your method is far from reasonable. At 20th level, no racial abilities are worth one full level of power. The only thing Drow have that scales is their SR and by 10th-15th, that can easily be circumvented or replaced through spells or items, thus making their race a liability when it comes to gaining power. And most of the other LA races don't even have abilities that scale with a character's level.

Sylrae, its not EXTRA XP they pay. Its just the amount of delay when they level. It would be extra if there was no cut off and the extra amount kept having to be paid, but eventually, it does get paid off and the delay goes away and they start/resume advancing like everyone else.

If you think 17,000 is too much, then treat it like 1 level difference and make them use 9,000 (difference between lvl 10 and 9 in XP), and split that over 10 levels, or 6 levels, or whatever you feel is appropriate. For LA +1, you could cut that amount in half. For LA +3, you could double it, or increase it by 50% for each LA above +2.