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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy" data-source="post: 265237" data-attributes="member: 4036">By the core books no creature has ECL.  You could wish to be dragon and you'd still be the same level.  ECL was introduced later.If you want to know by about how much effectively being a lich slide you up the power scale that levels measure, it's around 5 or so give or take.  Is it worth the money?  Most likely for that kind of increase.  I'd certainly pay 5000 xp and 120000 gp for 5 levels in barbarian or that laundry list of immunities.Your statements of benefits and drawbacks seems to imply that added to the monetary and xp cost the drawbacks are equal to (or near enough that it requires a DM call) the benefits.I heartily disagree.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Just counting the number of benefits vs. drawbacks I'd disagree.  Nevermind the sweeping power of each benefit.ECL is designed to measure how certain special abilities affect a campaign.  How many times do they come up?  How many obstacles do they circumvent?  How many attacks do they negate? How many threats do they affect?  It is there so that the level, XP, and CR systems are more flexible and can accomodate creatures other than humans, dwarves, and elves.  So that you can play (or become) an ogre or a pixie or some such if you so wish.The most basic question of "does a lich have ECL?" is easiest answered by "is a lich more powerful than a human as a base race?"  Is yes, then yes.  If no, then no.  Regardless of what you paid to get the abilities, if they leave the range of a normal creatures abilities (which has been demonstrated) or if they leave the range of a normal creature's item's abilities (which has also been demonstrated) then they have breached into a new level.  Either physically, or effectively.How to adjucate this new level is up to the DM, though as Artoomis has already done the legwork on it and sketched it out, I again, highly recommend his solution.</blockquote>

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