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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nothing to see here" data-source="post: 2018623" data-attributes="member: 16432">I'm sorry if my post digresses into a rules discussion.  Like many of the so-called 'holes' in d20 rules, LA ad ECL are well intended and, mainly, quite elegant...the designers just could not anticipate eveyr potential possiblity created by the rules modular nature.Level Adjustment is a well intended mechanic -- yet there are three big problems.1) Scaling: What a 'static' level adjustment means varies greatly according to level.  a +2 LA at 4nd level is a much different penalty than a +2 LA at 18th level.2) Racial HD dependency:  I haven't seen this discussed much, but base HD for creatures seems to be assigned pretty arbitrarily...outside of the 'approrpirate HD by size' guideliens in the MM there's nothing on this.  If you're base race has enough HD, you can stomach a decent LA...if it's lower, you can't.  This means that physically weak magical races (such as fey) with relatively low HD but high LA, are put at a mechanical disadvantage3) Class dependency:  An Ogre with 2 levels of fighter is much more powerful than an ogre with two levels of bard.  Seems pretty intuitive that playing against type would create less mechanical advantages (like the old Dwarven sorcerer), except that LA's are designed assuming optimal class selection, and seem to almost compound exponentially with each non-optimal class chosen.  This is an example of rules that are modular on paper -- but acting as a straitjacket in spirit.Anyhow...Our group had a couple of small rule tweaks to reduce the impact of Level Adjustment, that seemed to work quite well.  I'm sure there are plenty others out there.However that's probably a discussion for the House Rules section.  Maybe I'll start such a thread.</blockquote>

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