Reinterpretation of the LA Concept

[Sylrae]

I've thought of this for a while. In Neverwinter Nights, which did not directly support LA, the custom scripts that people used sometimes used LA like this. this is also how I thought LA worked when I first started playing D&D.

So.

Standard LA. You count as X levels higher for all purposes, and gain levels as though trying to go X levels higher than your class levels+ hit dice suggest.

Alternate interpretation. You gain experience as though you were 2 levels higher. So a LA +2 character still gets to level 2 at 1000, but the experience received will be lowered as though they were a level 3 character, so they will get to level 2 after everyone else.

Just wanted to see what people think. I haven't actually used this variant in a PnP game before, but I wanted to know if it was reasonable/ worth trying. I think it might make LA more bearable.

What say you

 

[Pyrex]

I'd have to do the math, but my gut feeling is that this is still going to be problematic.

Lets say you have two level 1 characters, one with LA+0 and one with LA+5.

The LA+5 character is massively more powerful than the LA+0 character, but is going to gain very little XP.

Eventually, the LA+0 character will "catch up" and have 5 more levels than the LA+5 character which (eventually) results in exactly the same penalty.

So what this does is:
Let players play characters with LA at lower levels than they should be
and
Lets +LA characters be more powerful than their LA+0 companions for the early through mid game.

Both of those sound bad to me.

 

[Sylrae]

I'd have to do the math as well, but I dont the player would catch up untl very high levels. It could use some tweaking. Maybe some combination of the 2 systems? like you get a 'level' out of every 3 adjusts, and all, counting the ones that gave the level as per this rule? or something?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Have you seen the Unearthed Arcana rules for level adjustment?

 

[Sylrae]

Have you seen the Unearthed Arcana rules for level adjustment?

Indeed I have. This is an Idea to use INSTEAD of the other one. The UA one doesn't help with low level races with ECL. Whereas this Idea does help. A level 3 drow with this variant has the same abilities as a level 3 human, but it will take them longer to get there.

 

[Pyrex]

Right.

The problem is if you start your game with a level three drow (ECL 5) and a level 3 human (ECL 3); the drow starts off more powerful than the human and *stays* more powerful than the human until around level 12 or so by which time the human is level 12 and the drow is level 10.

Instead of making +LA a penalty, it turns it into an advantage.

(the LA buyoff rules in UA have similar problems)

 

[Sylrae]

you wouldnt start the drow at the same level as the human. The human would start at level 3, and for the drow you take the level 3 xp and reduce it to what a drow could get if he had started at level one.

It's not perfect either, but I need to figure out a way to fix LA because I think it costs too much for what you get for some monsters, particularly at the lower levels because you need those hit points.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Upper_Krust's changes are worth a look, IMO. Overall, Level Adjustments (and other ratings) tend to be lower, which is one advantage for this kind of problem. Secondly, they tend to rather more balanced relative to one another (races, templates and such.)

My favourite solution though is racial classes and the like. That way, everyone's much the same in terms of power at any given character level, regardless.