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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 2327263" data-attributes="member: 13966">Breaking down LA and racial HD into racial levels can be done using Savage Species as a guideline.  You could check a race in Savage Species and then check the same race in the 3.5 Monster Manual, find the differences, and then just tweak the Savage Species racial level progression to fix those differences.  Not every MM monster is in Savage Species, but at least SS gives a Level Adjustment for everything in the 3.0 MM, which means most stuff in the 3.5 MM at least has a baseline of comparison for you to work with.I wouldn't require PCs to take all racial levels before gaining class levels, though; Savage Species normally requires a character with racial levels to acquire all of their racial levels before entering any class.Otherwise, I wouldn't consider a d4 HD per point of Level Adjustment to be too much.  May or may not count as actual hit dice for all intents and purposes, not sure.  If you give it BAB, base save, and skill point increases along with it, though, then you'd have to up the LA to compensate.  Perhaps, for every 3 points of Level Adjustment, give the critter a d10 hit die, +1 BAB, 6 + Int skill points (choosing any six skills to be class skills for those hit dice), and +1 to all base saves.  In this case, though, these hit dice would count as normal hit dice, so they'd count towards Character Level (such as for determining feats, ability increases, total ECL, EXP, etc.).Or you could just break down racial abilities into a special Racial Level progression for any given race that a player wants to use....  Determine what racial abilities and adjustments go with the base race and racial hit dice, then determine what additional racial stuff they gain with each point of Level Adjustment.  Allow them to take each Level Adjustment Racial Level in place of gaining an actual level, so for instance if they start at 10th-level and play a race with 3 racial hit dice and a +7 level adjustment, they might choose to start with 6 levels of fighter, plus the 3 racial hit dice and 1 level adjustment racial level.  Making them actually 9th-level but with a +1 LA.  Then when they level up to 11th, they might take another fighter level, or some other class level, or another level adjustment racial level.  In the latter case they'd still be technically 9th-level but with a +2 LA.For reference, I tend to consider each point of LA to be worth 8-12 feats in value, with a +2 to Str or Dex worth 3 or 4 feats, a +2 Con or Int worth 3 feats, and a +2 Wis or Cha worth 2 or 3 feats.  Sort of follows the DMG's description of Str and Dex being most valueable, followed by Con and Int.  To give ya some kind of basic starting point if you go that route.</blockquote>

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