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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 4852490" data-attributes="member: 13966">Not a good solution.  And it doesn't really compensate for the lost Level Adjustment; to use your first example, not only is a drow wizard better by several feats worth of value than a human wizard of equal level, but at the middle to upper levels, being down 3,000 XP isn't going to matter much.  He'll still be the same level as everyone else most of the time, ergo 1 or 2 levels' worth of greater power most of the time.  And 3.5 rules for XP awards would cause him or her to catch up quicker during the times when he's 1 level behind, so the duration of his 1 virtual level deficiency will be terribly short.In 3.5, also, the normal Level Adjustment rules result in an LA+X character advancing more slowly because of his higher ECL, as his comrades will earn slightly more XP per encounter, so your XP-debt doesn't really amount to the same slowness in reaching 2nd or 3rd level compared to normal party members.  Your method would just make the LA adjustment races suffer a minor, mostly temporary slowness in gaining their first few levels, without any notable mid-to-upper-level impact.  They'd be getting, for example, the drows's 11 + level SR, +2 on Will saves, +2 Intelligence and Charisma, etc. for free.In 3.0 D&D rules, there's no extra XP for lower-level party members, but your variant would still have about the same effect as in 3.5, just with a slightly longer gap between LA+X PC 1 reaching the same level as LA+0 PC 2.  They'd still catch up in level easily enough, it would just take another encounter or three (out of the 13.5 average encounters expected per level by the rules, that doesn't amount to much).I'll have to run the numbers later, but I'm wondering what an XP debt of 1,000 points per LA at every level would do as a replacement for LA (maybe 500 points per LA instead).  Off the top of my head, it's better for a drow striving for 2nd or 3rd level, at least, but I dunno if it works out worse for them, much worse for them, better for them, or much better for them at levels beyond that.I.E. a 1st-level drow wizard starts with a 2,000-XP debt; once he's earned that many XP, he starts accumulating XP towards his 2nd-level normally (and can finally spend XP on item creation or whatnot).  Once he's gained a total of 3,000 XP, he'll attain 2nd-level as a wizard, while the rest of the group will have just reached 3rd-level, putting him only 1 level behind but actually equivalent in power to being one level ahead.  He acquires a new XP debt of 2,000 XP, so once he earns 4,000 XP (putting his total earned at 7,000, but his actual XP at 3,000), he attains 3rd-level as a wizard, while his teammates are now 4th-level (and have been for the past 1,000 XP).  He again receives 2,000 XP worth of debt, and once he pays that off, he needs another 3,000 to attain 4th-level.  At that point he'll have earned a total of 12,000 XP, but lost 6,000 from paying off his XP-debts.  His allies will be 5th-level (with 2,000 further XP towards their 6th), and the gap in XP will continue to expand slowly over time, but the drow will fluctuate between being 1 and 2 levels behind, but usually just 1 (of course, he starts out roughly 2 levels better than the rest at 1st-level).  I dunno how it'd work out at further levels, because I don't feel like crunching the numbers right now.But there definitely HAS TO BE some trade-off in power for removing the Level Adjustment; a character of equal level to anyone else but with 1, 2, 3, or more levels worth of extra benefits is just plain unfair and imbalanced no matter how you look at it.  I don't care if he's Og the World's Ugliest and Most Unlikeable Ogre, who nobody will even allow into town, let alone do business with; he'll still totally outperform the other PCs in combat and make them all look like nothing more than cheap sidekicks, plus the other PCs will just buy his supplies and gear for him, even if they do fleece him a bit in the process, taking all of his money and only spending most of it on his new magic weapons/armor/etc.  And that's only one possible case; a Blink Dog, Celestial, or other creature could have other advantages besides combat ones (or more likely, IN ADDITION to combat ones), without the stupiditiy, gullibility, and inability-to-deal-with-civilized-people problem of most ogres.</blockquote>

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