Lizardfolk = ECL 4?!?!

[Wolfspider]

Thank you, David, for chiming in. It's good to see some of the official rationale behind the numbers. And I'm starting to come around a bit. Perhaps the lizardfolk is powerful enough to warrant an ECL of 4. During the last year of my own playtesting, however, Sedek the Scaly, my druid, has never seemed overpowering. Then again, he's not a plate mail wearing fighter type with an overwhelming AC. His class limits his armor and his weapons. So that has helped to keep him pretty balanced (that, and the fact that I've never tried to munchkinize him or abuse his powers).

I'd also be curious what ECL you think that a lizardfolk would be if it didn't have any bonus hit dice but was just treated as a hobgoblin or goblin or other humanoid.

That being said, I still have some questions about the ECLs given in the article and would appreciate your input.

Let's talk about the lizardfolk. Some of you noted that the lizardfolk has 2 Hit Dice, and that's important. Your ECL has to *at least* equal your Hit Dice, I hope everyone realizes. And if it does equal your Hit Dice, you should get about, well, nothing else.

Bear with me here, I've got a thought and I'm trying to birth it. The standard races in the PHB are essentially level zero for all intents and purposes, because they don't have any hit dice outside of class. However, they do include special abilities beyond just attribute bonuses and penalties (which tend to cancel each other out and thus don't count). Shouldn't monster's be allowed certain abilities as well in addition when determining ECL. For example, maybe a lizardfolk should start out at ECL 2 because of its hit dice and get darkvision and skill bonuses essentially for free before bumping up the ECL because of natural armor and attacks. This only seems fair. Or should a creature with 4 hit dice and absolutely no modifiers to abilities and no special abilities (if there existed such a creature) still be ECL 4? That would make no sense.

Also, I would like you to take the same care and rational approach to explain why the half-dragon template gives +4 ECL when it seems quite a bit more powerful than the lizardfolk race--so powerful, in fact, that I've thought about creating a half-dragon human druid to replace poor Sedek and just saying that he looks exactly like a lizardfolk (I just love the entire image). How is that for munchkiny? But, under the current rules, it wouldn't matter if I were playing a lizardfolk druid 10 or a half-dragon human druid 10. Explain to me how that's balanced please.

Thanks!

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

My two coppers

Not all of the half-dragons abilities are useful forever. For instance, the breath weapon save DC, damage, and number of uses per day never increases. On the other hand, flight is always useful (but not all half-dragon PCs will get it), so is a boost to Con, natural armor, and hp.

The ECL penalties are based on gaining the highest advantage at a particular level. So if you were to take a monster that gave you a whole bunch of advantages at low levels that becomes useless later on (eg a creature that would let you cast 1st-level spells at 5th-level caster ability three times per day), then you'll have paid a lot. That character looks really good at first level but not so good at higher level.

That said, I don't personally believe that lizardfolk and half-dragons should be the same ECL.

 

[Wolfspider]

That said, I don't personally believe that lizardfolk and half-dragons should be the same ECL.

Especially considering that a half-dragon will get the powers and abilites of its template IN ADDITION to the powers and abilites of the base creature, and if that's an elf, dwarf, or other standard PHB race, that makes them even more powerful with no increase at all to ECL.

On the other hand, flight is always useful (but not all half-dragon PCs will get it), so is a boost to Con, natural armor, and hp.

Not to mention the astronomical attribute bonuses, especially to Strength.

 

[Wolfspider]

Then I did some playtesting, from 1-on-1 fights to party composition tests.

So you acknowledge that staging fights between characters is part of the ECL creation process? Interesting. Guy Fullerton will no doubt be surprised. He chided me about comparing fighting ability when I did my analysis of the lizardfolk ECL, saying, "ECL does not measure how it would do in a one-on-one combat with another PC." I agreed with him at the time, but now since individual fights are used in playtesting, I guess that's fair game for comparisons.

By the way, what exactly are "party composition tests"?

 

[bret]

One of the problems that is coming up is how good a race is depends heavily on what class you want to give them.

In the case of the Lizard Folk, going with a druid really doesn't build much off the strengths of the race. They already have natural armor, so Barkskin is no help, a cleric would actually do better. The skill bonuses are actually weak when you consider how much was given up by not getting quadruple skill points at first level. Anyone want to run a rogue without the bonus skills?

As for hurting players that want to play a monster race for the 'coolness' factor, it seems they have gone a bit too far. The whole idea is suspect if the characters are significantly less powerful than other characters of the same ECL. I personally don't think that any of the lizard man's powers make up for loosing that many hit points and skills.

Rather than trying to make the monster races weaker than the PHB races, they should be looking at making them unique but still playable. The question that doesn't appear to be asked is 'at what ECL is a character of this race still playable.'

 

[Wolfspider]

The question that doesn't appear to be asked is 'at what ECL is a character of this race still playable.'

Exactly. I can't imagine an ogre (just plain ogre...no character levels) surviving the challenges that a party of 8th level characters will face in the typical adventure. For chracters of that level, an ogre would be used as target practice to warm up the fighters. However, a 3rd level ogre fighter might actually have a fighting chance....

 

[abri]

Let's see Ogre ECl+8.
So a Fighter1 ogre is level 9. Now let's assume he is in a typical party of 4 and let's assume they are all ogres (could be interesting for roleplay: the Shrek team...), 1 Cleric, one thief, one sorcerer.
Now let's pit his party against a CR9 encounters with ogres:
That's about 8-12 ogres (don't have my DMG with me). Each PC will end up facing 2 ogres (they're heavily outnumbered so make sense).
Now The F1 ogre has +1 to hit and 10 Hp than one ogre and 1 more feat, and he is facing 2. Mybet is that he is going to get hammered, even with the bless spell cast by the cleric...
Don't think the other will fare much better...

Yes the ogre has nice abilities and same think for many monster. But these abilities can almost often been obtained with spells. If you have a team that work together, you can have humans that do the same thing, just much better.
Yes +5 nat armor is nice, but a barkskin spell does that to, and at high level everyone in a group has nat armor
Yes a lone lizardfolk is good against a lone human of higher level, but in a group the lizardman becomes a weight...
IMC I've allowed a LOT of weird characters: half dragon, half demon, trolls, ogres, various undeads...
The end result was that at ECl=Cr some (some, but not most) looked ok, higher ECl and some already showed some problem. And if you want to play non-typical classes for their race then they ended up beeing real weight (and died often, hence the high number of them we had, and the add the cohorts).

We tried:
Ogre ranger4: was rather good, and was the most useful of the weirdos. The ECL I had given for him was +4.
Skeleton fighter3: using the WOTC template, with slight mods, the player expected him to do as well as a L3 fighter and he did just as well, well until they faced a cleric.
Half-dragon human cleric 2-8: ECL I had given was +3 and that was about right. He had access to less magic, but his firebreath helped him even at L8 and the stats increase made him really good in HTH, he still was of the same power than the human cleric.
Half demon elf psywarrior 5: the stats boost really made her powerful as a psywarrior, and the spells completed her to nicely. Way over-powered for the ECL+3 I had given.

 

[Soldarin]

Back to lizardfolk

You have to admit that humanoid HD aren't as good as class levels. So starting count at 2 due to its 2 HD would be too harsh.

A d8, with lousy skill points per level (1 per level, regardless of Int modifier), a cleric bab, but no spell ability to compensate is definitely not worth as much as any full class level.

Just thought I'd point that out.

 

[Orco42]

An orge is now ECL +8!

That is horrible. The +5 from the DMG was too much.

I have playtested and Ogre Fighter 1 versus a Fighter 6. According to the DMG this fight has a 50/50 chance of going either way. It does not. The ogre dies every time.

IMO ogres should be closer to a ECl +3-4.

Personally I like most of the ECL's at the following site.

http://csserver.evansville.edu/~jc84/DD3/Monster_ECL.htm

David-

I am not trying to bash you. I know you put a lot of work into this. But from what I have heard a lot of those ECL's are way to high for my games.

 

[Wolfspider]

Well, I don't think ECL 3 is representative of the ogre's power either. I think something around 5 would be pretty good...but certainly not 8.