UA Reducing LA and higher levels

[Kae'Yoss]

Hi
As you may know, Unearthed Arcana has a method for reducing level adjustments (UA, p 18). Unfortunately, it details only how you do it while advancing the normal way. There's no formular for determining the new ECL and xp lag when you start a character on a higher level (and this isn't too easy, since the leveling is off now and you sometimes get more XP then your fellows, and sometimes you don't).

So has anyone come up with a formula which you can feed with starting level/ecl of the campaign or character, level adjustment and racial HD and which will give you the current LA and XP lag?
Detailed tables maybe? A quick and dirty method?

 

[Crothian]

I wouldn't let a character buy off ecl before the game starts. But yif you must just figure out how much XP it would cost them to buy it off using the UA rules and have him start with that many less then everyone else.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I wouldn't let a character buy off ecl before the game starts. But yif you must just figure out how much XP it would cost them to buy it off using the UA rules and have him start with that many less then everyone else.

Why not? The whole point is to get rid of a big drawback you suffer from all the time to compensate for abilities that aren't relevant any more.

We're going to start a campaign at level 14 (the group won't survive the year as the DM is going away to study, and the others wanted to play an evil character at least once, so we finish our current campaign early, at level 14, and start a new one at the same level). Now, on that level, a character with LA+1 previously would have catched up with the LA+0 characters long ago, and even those with original ECL+2 wouldn't be that far behind. But using LA in the usual way, or your way, they will be one or two levels behind (and the campaign won't be too long from now, so there it won't have a big impact).

 

[Gnome]

Just figure out each ECL reduction individually and go from there. Assume the character had the minimum XP to be the level where he could buy that ECL off, figure out how much XP that costs, and subtract it from the total. If he has enough XP left to qualify for the next ECL reduction, figure out how much that one would have cost, and again substract it from the total. Repeat this until you've bought-off the ECL, or you no longer qualify for the next ECL reduction.

If there's a quicker method, I can't think of it.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Just figure out each ECL reduction individually and go from there. Assume the character had the minimum XP to be the level where he could buy that ECL off, figure out how much XP that costs, and subtract it from the total. If he has enough XP left to qualify for the next ECL reduction, figure out how much that one would have cost, and again substract it from the total. Repeat this until you've bought-off the ECL, or you no longer qualify for the next ECL reduction.

If there's a quicker method, I can't think of it.

Yes, I've already done that for +1 +2 and +3 (no racial HD), but it is a lot of work. Therefore I wondered whether some of the number-crunchers have done it all and put the tables somewhere, or if they even found a formula for it.