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Message: <blockquote data-quote="teitan" data-source="post: 1061304" data-attributes="member: 3457">heh, sorry, I can tell you don't have the book. Racial Levels are more like regular class levels than our examples. It is new abilities within your race, not you being a younger version of your race. Giants don't start out teenage size, actually, about 7-8 feet tall. A lot bigger than the average or even extraordinary teen. As an example, Sibbecai are the jackyl based race, when they choose to take racial levels it is like they learned how to use their natural abilities much better, becoming stronger, hardier and able to use their bite more effectively etc. The sprytes learn how to channel their inner magic into a list of minor magical effects. It isn't like aging or anything and each one is a CHOICE the character makes as opposed to something forced on the character, which seperates it from the similar ideas listed in Savage Species.See what I was thinking was breaking Vamps, Werewolves etc down into three levels with various abilities based on legend, maybe a small list of abilities to choose from at each level, allowing for variation within the "race" or whatnot. It is a pseudochoice to become these races in that they are templates applied to infected characters. The levels would represent greater and greater understanding of the characters new abilities.I don't like ECLs for various reasons, mostly the advancement issues and what if I have a player who becomes a werewolf or vampire... what is the best way to adjust everything? I can't take away his levels he fought so hard for in the FIghter class just because he now has a Level Adjustment +2. Calculating ECLs for homebrew races, races found in other monster supplements etc is not an easy task, but I don't like Savage Species fix for the problem either. I feel it punishes the player for wanting to be a Drow or Svirfneblin and whatnot. An ECL race might have some benefits that would make them outweigh a character of 1st level but at the same time they don't outshine other races by that much. Forcing a player to take all the levels of "bugbear" or some such also doesn't work for me because while everyone else is getting nifty class abilities for so many levels, bugbear boy is getting barely stronger. In other words, the system has issues...That is not my topic though, I want to discuss using Racial Levels to reflect learning abilities as applied to a setting like Underworld or Blade...Jason</blockquote>

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