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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guilt Puppy" data-source="post: 434211" data-attributes="member: 6521">In my experience, the ECL's work out pretty well for a game balance. Because monsters weren't designed with being played as characters, some weird situations arise where they're more powerful or less powerful than equivalent characters... IMO that's what makes playing them interesting <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm currently playing a Mind Flayer (which we estimated as an ECL +14... Might be a little off, but we're not playing this game to be a totally serious, high-roleplaying adventure, it's the one we're having fun with)... He has no character levels, which means he lacks the versatility (and, in certain cases, the focus) of a character with 14 class levels, but I haven't lagged behind or stepped ahead of any of the other members of the party. Granted, the fact that I can send creatures to other planes when they piss me off makes things interesting. And, my ability scores are just nuts... It makes up for the whole slew of feats and such that I'm missing completely, IMO.Also note that (as far as I know) ECL is used for determining appropriate character level in a starting party as well as experience awards, but NOT the experience required to gain a level... That's still dependent on hit dice (I could be wrong). So even though you're effectively a fifteenth level character, you'll get to effective-sixteenth level a little (or a lot) faster than a character with 15 class levels... So, you should begin to accrue your abilities in short enough order.Of course, if you're min-maxing you might feel a little jilted ("you mean I can't have a +8 Strength AND eight bonus feats? BROKEN!") but in practice, the ECL system seems to work better in creating a fun, balanced game than even the DMG suggests it should.</blockquote>

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