Need help adjudicating CR and LA adjustment

[Mistah J]

Just as the title says, I'm looking for input on what you think the following template is worth, both in CR and LA.

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The template can be added to any corporeal aberration, animal, dragon, fey, giant, humanoid, magical beast, or monstrous humanoid.

Use all of the base creature's statistics and abilites except as noted here:

Size and Type: The creatures type does not change. The creature gains the [Living Construct] subtype. Do not recalculate the creature's Hit Dice, base attack bonus, saves or skill points. The creature gains the [Augmented] subtype is necessary. Size is unchanged.

Armour Class: Natural Armour increases by 4 (this does not stack with any natural armour bonus the base creature already has). The change to Dexterity (see below) also changes the creature's Armour Class.

Attacks: The base creature gains a slam attack if it does not already have one. This slam attack deals 1d8 points of damage or the base creature's original damage, whichever is better.

Special Qualities: The templated creature has all the special qualities of the base creature plus;
Damage Reduction (Ex): The creature gains DR 5/adamantine
Spell Resistance (Ex): The creature gains SR equal to 15 + HD (or character level).
Light Fortification (Ex): The creature gains the benefits of the Light Fortification quality, meaning anytime it suffers sneak attack damage or a critical hit, there is a 25% chance the extra damage is negated.
Armoured Body (Ex): The creature is treated, at all times, to be wearing light armour. This occupies the armour/robe slot on the base creature's body, provides a 5% arcane spell failure chance, and imposes a -2 armour check penalty.

Abilities: Change from the base creature as follows: Str +4, Dex -2, Con +4, Int -2 (minimum 1), Wis +0, Cha -2 (minimum 1).

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Everything else is unchanged..

So, what do the experts say?

Thanks for your help

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

First blush? As is this template is nastily powerful...

Have the template gain a Slam attack based on size, not a flat 1d8..

Stat mods are too high. I would go with +2 STR and -2 Dex, dropping the rest. The changes to CON duplicate light fortification and Nat AC boost. I would also drop the DR and SR.

With those changes, I would peg it as a CR +1

Living Constructs, as far as I have read, are not linked to having a SR. Starting them off at 15+HD is extremely good.

But, someone else who messes with templates and LA's more than I do should be able to chime in better shortly

 

[Spatzimaus]

Using Soldarin's ECL system:

Physical stats +6 = +0.6
Mental stats -4 = -0.2
Natural Armor +4 = +0.8
SR 15 or greater = +1.0 (and 15+HD is HUGE. That's near-immunity in most situations.)
Slam attack: probably +0.2
Light fortification: again, probably +0.2
DR: either +0.5 or +1.0. Let's go with 0.5.
Armored Body: It's probably only a minor drawback (-0.2); ACP affects enough skills that you could argue it's a moderate one (-0.5). The catch is that the people/creatures using this template won't even HAVE those skills, and arcane casters won't be adding a template that subtracts INT and CHA, so the 5% ASF is meaningless.

Total: +2.9. Given the sheer power of the huge SR, I'd even argue that this should be higher. This is something that EVERY "tank" would want, with literally no downside.

 

[Mistah J]

Armored Body: It's probably only a minor drawback (-0.2); ACP affects enough skills that you could argue it's a moderate one (-0.5). The catch is that the people/creatures using this template won't even HAVE those skills, and arcane casters won't be adding a template that subtracts INT and CHA, so the 5% ASF is meaningless.

Does this take into consideration that the character cannot benefit from magic armour or robes?

Also, where might one find this "Soldarin's ECL system:" you speak of.. it seems highly useful.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Does this take into consideration that the character cannot benefit from magic armour or robes?

Ah, no, missed that part. In that case, "can't wear armor" is probably a moderate penalty (-0.5), and this -0.2 for the ASF and ACP is on top of that. So you're down to +2.4, which should round up instead of down just due to the sheer awesomeness of that SR. (Against an even-level opponent, that's 70% of all incoming spells blocked.)

Also, where might one find this "Soldarin's ECL system:" you speak of.. it seems highly useful.

Use the Font of All Knowledge, aka Google; the original page is here, although there are some pages with automated calculators for you to use. I just keep it as a text file.

Soldarin was a regular on the various boards way back when. His system for calculating LA/ECLs was so far above what WotC tried releasing in Savage Species that, well, I still use it as a benchmark for everything, even though it was never updated to 3.5E and other semi-official systems came out later. For instance, WotC at first claimed that ANY unbalanced stats was automatically a +1 in its own right, even though the Tiefling and Aasimar were perfect counterexamples. It got even worse when you tried to balance races that came with "racial HD". Equating 1 HD = 1 ECL just didn't work.

There's still plenty of guessing involved, such as what constitutes "Major", "Moderate" or "Minor" benefits and drawbacks. And it doesn't really differentiate generalized from specialized (for instance, your template seems designed for ONLY melee fighters to use; no other classes would want it, so many of the drawbacks given really aren't significant, and the ECL really shouldn't lower as much for them.)
But overall, it's a great first-pass estimator when designing races (or templates).

Also, when using it for templates, note that the "round down" part of the rules is meant for designing races, to where the baseline is an ECL=0 race with a handful of abilities. That wouldn't apply for templates; if anything, you should round up.

 

[Quartz]

DR 5 / Adamant, NA +4, and SR 15+HD mean that the template grants significant invulnerability. Then there's Light Fortfication. And then there's the stat boosts. LA +4 or more, easily. Monk 5 vs Templated Monk 1? No contest. Sorry, but I wouldn't allow a PC to take this template. CR on a monster is a different matter. The monster would be largely invulnerable to mooks, but not PC warriors. It would be very tough for PC spellcasters, particularly those who've multiclassed, and without the right feats and spells. Call it CR +2 and see how it goes.

 

[Arkhandus]

Man, people are really underestimating some of the advantages. I'd peg it at +4 LA and +4 CR, or at the very minimum +3 LA and +3 CR.

The Armoured Body and the slam attack are negligible and probably balance each other out somewhat, sufficiently to be of little impact to the LA/CR determination.

+2 LA for the 15 + HD/CL Spell Resistance. This alone makes the creature immune to at least 75% of spells used against it. Ergo, immune to the majority of non-pitiful ranged attacks that would be used against it, and more (virtually immune to most afflictions/hindrances that enemies could try to set against it). Also, many monsters tend to have several hit dice for their Challenge Rating. A CR 5 threat with 8 hit dice, for example, would gain SR 23, just barely vulnerable to 10% of spells from a 5th-level wizard. This gets, of course, drastically worse if the templated creature is a dragon, giant, or the like (and thus probably having abundant HD for its CR).

+1 LA for the Damage Reduction and Light Fortification.

+1 LA for the +4 natural armor and the ability modifiers (which themselves provide an overall benefit of +4 Strength basically; the template already makes the critter less useful as a caster or manifester, namely with the couple of points of LA it would inflict, so the mental stat penalties are of little importance when this is clearly a melee brute's or archer's template).

Slap a flying magic item on them and they'll be pretty dang close to impervious (at least for the most part; SR to negate spells like Magic Missile or Fireball or Hold Monster, DR to minimize the likelyhood of arrows/bolts doing any real harm, LF to mitigate the occasional natural-20 attack with a bow/crossbow, natural armor to further reduce enemies' chance of striking them...).

Of these factors, the DR and Fortification are perhaps the most likely to not matter in play (i.e. the enemy may be using an adamantine weapon in the first place, and may happen to not roll any criticals, or rolls really well on confirming them and avoiding the Fortification effect). Thus a possible minimum of +3 Level Adjustment and Challenge Rating. But only broad playtesting would really be able to determine if +3 or +4 is most appropriate.

Since this template grants pretty much just combat-related benefits, and nothing to compensate a skill, feat, or magic-oriented character, it would adjust Challenge Rating and CR by the same amount. The non-combat possible benefits for a PC are negligable (the SR may help in some other situations), and since the template's amount of LA would put a significant damper on their initial feats and skills and class features, that's probably balanced out enough for it to have identical LA and CR adjustments.

 

[Mistah J]

Thanks for yur input,

I'd like to keep it in the +3 LA range and so to help I'd like to add a negative quality or two in order to take the SR edge off.

Since it is about becoming a tough, bulky, armoured warrior. I was thinking of having it add to the character's weight total. Something like,

"Adding this template causes the base creature's weight to increase by 75%. Unlike normal, this extra weight is considered to be carried and thus applies to determining if the base creature is at a medium or heavy load"

Or something, does that help?

 

[monboesen]

Or something, does that help?

No. Anyone taking the template will have a high Str and gets the +4 bonus as well. They will be strong enough for it not to matter, especially since they wont be wearing any armor. Armor usually constitutes the majority of a characters load.


As it is stands any fighter type PC who has the chance of taking the template would be foolish not to, even at LA +4. IMO a permanent near invulnerability to magic is not something players should have acces to.

 

[Mistah J]

I dropped the SR down a bit, to 13 + HD.

Thanks for everyone's help, this is one part of a larger template I found myself designing. Looking at the half-dragon and the woodling (from MMIII), I think I'm going to call this LA +3

At any rate, your input was highly appreciated.