Savage Species Redux

[erdamon]

I have been attempting to constuct some house rules for redoing the entire ECL system as outlined in Savage Species. The entire LA system has never sat right with me, since many races are penalized thoughout their life for bonuses that have shrinking benefits. Such as the hobgoblin. While the +4 stat mod is very good at lvl1, its not worth nearly as much at lvl 15, but the cost to the character remains the same.

Anyway this is my first attempt at redoing the system. What I have done is hit each race with an exp penalty of 40% that is accessed over a period of time equal to the races monster levels plus level adjustment. The races monster levels will equal its CR/HD which ever is higher. While its level adjustment is based upon its abilities versus those of a standard race. Once a toon has lvled past any monster levels they will pick up a class as normal.

This always me to push some race abilities down the level progression while allow the character to begin leveling a class. It also shifts the races extra cost to be more upfront instead of being paid on the back end. For example I left the hobgoblin at +1 LA. This works out to be an extra 667 exp to gain lvl 2, after which the character progresses as normal.

I have begun redoing several races and puting them in an excel doc. Note that the succubus is a work in progress and that I am only mildly happy with it atm.

Anyway if you guys could look it over and provide any feedback.

excel doc

 

[erdamon]

I decided to reorganize everything to make it slightly easier to navigate.

Clicky

Any feedback is welcome.

 

[Arkhandus]

I'm rather confused as to what it is you did/changed/whatever...... I don't have Excel installed on my current computer, and don't intend to install it anytime soon either (already low on memory and no money to buy more). Your description above doesn't really make sense to me, so I'm not sure what it is you did.

Personally, I figure that a +1 LA should be equivalent to 8 or 9 feats worth of power, and that a race ought to have around that much power to start with as LA +0. I figure a human's extra skill points are around 2-3 feats in power, and their general flexibility equivalent to 1-2 feats, in addition to their actual bonus feat (thus how I consider them weaker than dwarves, and to an extent, elves.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Have you looked at the Reducing Level Adjustments variant in Unearthed Arcana? We've been using it for some time and has worked pretty well. Still makes it rough for high LAs but not as bad as was without the reduction.

 

[erdamon]

Haven't looked at those yet. Whats the AE's LA for say a drow?

Part of my problem with the standard LA is that some races warrent some hit for being slightly better then the norm, but just arent worth +1 LA. Hobgolbins for example. And while a good gm can just reduce the LA to 0 and my that hit solidly RP based, I just think its better to have a nice set of rules that do it.

Anyway I redid the rules a bit and made it webbased so you dont need excel.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Okay, for those that want it I have put Erdamon's Savage Species Redux into MS Word and PDF.

 

[erdamon]

Liquidsabre, Thanks for the heads up on UA. I went out at lunch and grabbed it. I am not entirely happy with what they did as I think many races are still either/or too front loaded or too penalized. Such as a hobgoblin takes a 3k exp hit under these rules, which still just isnt worth it. While a 3k hit for the front-loaded half-ogre is well worth it.

That said, I my rethink some things a give it another run though mixing in the by-back approach.

Frukathka, thanks for the pdfs.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

No problem. Always happy to help a fellow gamer.

 

[Nyaricus]

hello everyone,

interesting idea, but not really to my taste. i like everything to be based off of a simple level system, so that CR and HD etc are all lined up (at least for playable races at the moment)

what i am doing for playable races is to give them all racial levels, like in SS. but some haev one racial level (my campaigns elf) and some have 16 (one of my campaigns giant races) basically, at level one, they get their first racial level, which will have some abilities, but for some front-loaded races, most of their abilites they get from their starting adjustments. this makes them balanced overall. if i need a villain, it takes a bit of time adding together all their abilities, but i am in the proces of making "cheat-sheets" so this wont be a problem in the future. They must advance fully in their racial levels before they may take levels in any class.

thats the way i am currently doing things, and i hope it helps helps you.