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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DarkSong" data-source="post: 398652" data-attributes="member: 4676">While I was initially a big fan of the whole ECL concept as a way to allow ununsual races into play without overshadowing the standard races, I've noticed it definitely has its ups and downs...For instance, it can really hurt a primarily spell-casting class to take even an ECL +1 race, since that lost level of caster really hurts. Even a non spell-caster usually has to look at the race in terms of what the racial abilities "make up for"; that is, a fighter might be willing to take an ECL +1 race so long as it gave +2 strength (making up for the lost BAB) and maybe +2 con (to help out with the lost hit die), amongst whatever else it offered.This is further compounded by the difficulty in assigning an appropriate ECL to a race, where some ECL +1 races really aren't much better than standard races (arguably some are not at all), and some are noticecably so...ECL is just a pretty gross (as opposed to fine) means of control.Blah, blah, blah, hopefully you all get the point. The whole reason for this post is to suggest an alternate means of balancing more powerful races.To wit, if you use point buy for character creation, how about assigning a certain point cost to powerful races? For example (rough example only, please don't crucify me based on these numbers), maybe a Tielfing would be worth 3 points, an Aasimar worth 4, and a Drow, say, 8. This would allow +ECL spellcasters to stay on par, while having some mechanism to keep them in balance.Of course, you'd have to consider the stat bonuses the races get, to make sure that their cost is at least worth that.This would also allow more fine-tuning of cost associated with powerful races, since you wouldn't have to bump them a whole +1 ECL at a time.This would probably breakdown as you got into more powerful races and templates, but I think it just might be able to work on current +1 or +2 ECL races.Any thoughts on that?</blockquote>

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