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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 1658437" data-attributes="member: 94">Welcome to the club! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Well, BD, you've done it again: restated what I have been trying to say all along. Apparently I'm incapable of leading you to understanding and you just have to get there on your own.However, I would treat "Vrock" as a race, essentially; just let him pick up CL1 before he begins play and dispense with the negative XP. The only functional difference this makes is increasing his starting CR by 1. If you are worried about "balance" within the party, this extra +1 CR (from CL1) might mean the race is out of bounds for where you want to begin your campaign.I want to make sure we agree on one last thing. When you say, "Calculate the CR of a classless Vrock," you don't simply mean look up his CR in the MM; you mean actually take him step by step through Chapter 13, including the Golden Rule, but NOT the 2/3 rule-- because he's a character, not a monster. It may help if you think of this in terms of LA that you have already pointed out. LA is an adjustment without benefit-- the only thing it does is bump you up into a higher XP bracket, meaning you have to earn relatively more XP than your HD + CL otherwise indicated. The extra bump that the core system puts into LA is exactly the same concept as not granting the 2/3 adjustment. The both simply implement a "penalty" of sorts for taking a monster and playing him as a character. And, I submit, LA is just as likely to over-value a character (getting him in over his head; for example, as a Vrock would be among 18th level PCs) as using true CR does in GT.One might notice that UK calculates the Vrock at CR 21.998 before the Golden Rule, CR17 after the Golden Rule. Add 1 CL and your playable Vrock character is CR18. He'll need 13 1/3 encounters of moderate difficulty (CR18, assuming he's in a party of 4) in order to gain a level. If that seems awfully familiar to ECL18, it's not by accident.If you needed a reason to trust UKs system as detailed in Chapter 13, this would be a good start.Well, yes, I know. That's what the text on page 185 is meant to infer.Wulf</blockquote>

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