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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 934142" data-attributes="member: 12037">It's because the system wasn't designed with monsterous PCs in mind; it was an afterthought. You have to give them credit, though, for the vast improvement they did on allowing monsters to advance, though. That is one of the best improvements for 3E that was made, IMO.All that aside, when designing an enemy, don't worry so much about ECL. If you want a Stone Giant Fighter 5, then make him, without worrying too much that technically he's an epic level character. I know its a cop out, but its really the best way to work with what you're given. Give him equal equipment for a Stone Giant, maybe plus what a Fighter 5 would have, or perhaps give him what a level 13 fighter would have.ECLs shouldn't affect how you make NPCs.The problem is that monsters weren't designed around the concpet of a PC being one, they were designed to be cool and interesting, and a shadow being CR 3 has no bearing on how powerful that shadow would be as a PC, they just weren't thinking of it. So the monster has several "high level" abilities with "low level" power. This makes him almost impossible to allow as a PC race, he's either going to be overpowered or underpowered, with very little in between. Thus, the designers put ECL on the side of caution. I have to agree with this, much better to have less powerful PCs than to have another way for PCs to get more powerful (for example, the Half-ogre in the back should be ECL +2, oops...).Yes, its odd that you could have a group of 20th level stone giants fight a group of 20th level humans, and the humans wouldn't get any XP for the stone giants. The game is not perfect by a long shot in that regard.A general rule of thumb is the higher the ECL on something, the less powerful it is for its ECL. It simply has to be like this because of the way the game is set up, otherwise you get a lot of overpowered monsterous options that can possibly destroy normal gameplay. Reworking that would have to be built into a whole new edition I think, and really I don't think it will ever be resolved or monsters will get a lot more boring.</blockquote>

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