Monster ECLs: Earth Mephit

[RogueJK]

The ECL for awakened animals is lower than the hit dice... (which is minimum 3)

Where did you find this? AFAIK, an awakened animal still follows the same rules as any other creature that gains class levels.

 

[PenguinKing]

Not necessarily. Every race should have some "free" (i.e. no increase to ECL) abilities, modeled after the core races. This would generally include some ability scored bonuses balanced by drawbacks, as well as some good, but not overly good, racial abilites, such as skill bonuses and such.

Precisely. Taking that as given, stating that:

ECL = HD + special abilities

... is inaccurate; it would be something more along the lines of:

ECL = HD + whatever special abilities the creature possesses in excess of what one would reasonably expect a character of a standard race and class and a character level equal to the creature's HD to have.

... otherwise, we have the rather absurd situation where we could, for example, construct a Medium-sized 10-HD Humanoid with racial abilities identical to the class abilities of a 10th-level cleric, and have our monster come out at an ECL of something like +20, even thought it's exactly as powerful as a normal 10th-level PC.

- Sir Bob.

 

[RogueJK]

You seem to forget that I never said that ECL = HD + special abilities. That was something that you came up with. All that I stated was a rule which says "an ECL must be greater than or equal to the number of HD that a creature has."

You also seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. I should probably clarify that this rule doesn't mean that each HD = +1 ECL. Even Soldarin's ECL Calculator takes into account that each type of HD isn't "worth" as much as other HDs or class levels. IIRC, his sytsem calculates each HD as 1/3 of an ECL. However, the rule still stands that the final ECL must be greater than or equal to HD. A 3 HD creature may have a total ECL of +4, of which only 1 out of the 4 points of ECL is HD-related.

In the end, what ECL represents is "this is the level in which the creature's abilities won't be overpowered when compared to the rest of the party." It isn't able to make a monster character exactly equal to a character of the same level. An ECL +6 monster Ftr4 won't be as good as a Human Fighter10. They simply don't have the experience or training of the 10th level character. However, the monster's racial abilities ought to help close most of the gap.

But as it stands now, if you want to play a monster character, you will have to accept some drawbacks along with that. Namely, a lack of class abilites, BAB, saves, and HPs. Is that fair? Maybe, maybe not... In the end, it's up to the individual DM. If they feel that the published ECLs for a troll is too high, they are free to say that trolls are ECL +1 or whatever they feel like. The way that I see it, the current ECLs are merely rough guidelines. They most likely haven't been thoroughly playtested, so it's up to the DMs to decide if they are balanced.

 

[PenguinKing]

In the end, what ECL represents is "this is the level in which the creature's abilities won't be overpowered when compared to the rest of the party." It isn't able to make a monster character exactly equal to a character of the same level. An ECL +6 monster Ftr4 won't be as good as a Human Fighter10.

Perfectly true - a creature with monster Hit Dice isn't going to be as good as a single-classed character at that single-classed character's role, because a creature with monster Hit Dice is by definition a multiclassed character. However, while an ECL +6 Ftr 4 won't be as good a fighter as a human Ftr10, it should probably be something at least approaching as good as a human multiclass Ftr4/SomethingElse6.

- Sir Bob.