What is Effective level of Solar Angel?

[Crosshair]

I have a party member who is interested in playing a Solar angel for our 42nd level campaign, not sure what the EL would be?

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I have a solar monster progression (ala Savage Species, attached) that puts him at about ECL 40. The solar does seem significantly weak at that level, so you could use that as a starting point, and then maybe with a little bit more testing, start cutting levels off.

Later
silver

 

[Crosshair]

Much appreciated Mr. Silverbane, he said he's going to stick with human for now. Change at a whim don't they. I'll take a look at it.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Change at a whim don't they.

Strangely, this often closely follows revelations like "powerful races have high level adjustments"

 

[szilard]

I have a solar monster progression (ala Savage Species, attached) that puts him at about ECL 40. The solar does seem significantly weak at that level, so you could use that as a starting point, and then maybe with a little bit more testing, start cutting levels off.

See... I still don't understand how LA+HD can be significantly different from CR while a PC's level equals its CR...

-Stuart

 

[AuraSeer]

See... I still don't understand how LA+HD can be significantly different from CR while a PC's level equals its CR...

Some abilities are far more useful to a PC than to an NPC, because PCs are around longer and get more use out of the ability.

For instance, consider a monster with an at-will ability, like unholy blight or cure light wounds or whatever. As a hostile NPC it will use that ability maybe 5 times at most, if it does nothing else, because that's about how long the combat lasts. But as a PC, it could use the ability every round of every combat for many, many gaming sessions.

Since the PC version of such powers are more valuable than the NPC version, PCs need to pay a higher cost for them.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

See... I still don't understand how LA+HD can be significantly different from CR while a PC's level equals its CR...

Many things have a different impact depending on whether they're used by an enemy or a player character.

For a monster, it doesn't matter whether it can use fireball 3/day or /will - It will probably croak before it could ever throw a 4th. There's also no real difference between a mid-level caster who casts true seeing on himself prior to a fight and a critter that has true seeing permanently.

But for PCs, it's a huge difference. While the monsters will be on the stage for a couple of seconds (in-game), the players will be there in every encounter. If they have 3 encounters on that day, and each lasts 3 rounds, the 3/day character will be able to throw 3 fireballs. The /will character will throw 9. The caster cleric will have to pay 250 gp each time he wants to use true seeing (and weigh carefully whether he uses it now or later), while the permanently true seeing character just sees everything.

 

[Pyrex]

See... I still don't understand how LA+HD can be significantly different from CR while a PC's level equals its CR...

-Stuart

Because many creatures have 'At Will' abilities which are far more powerful in the hands of PC's who can use them 20+ times per day than when used 1-2 times during the combat encounter when the PC's stand across from them.

The ability, for example, to cast Wish 1/day with no XP component is rediculously powerful for a PC...

 

[Fieari]

Upper Krust's ECL guide (v5) states ECL 42 exactly for Solars.

In general, I disagree with the CR = PC HD rule. I agree that there's a difference between CR and ECL, and that it's pretty consistent everywhere -- PC and NPC differences don't really count all that much, even when it comes to abilities like Wish 1/day. I mean, after all, the ability to forge documents, learn facts about any topic, travel long distances, etc, are pretty useless in a single combat, but quite useful to PCs... and PCs get them!

WotC has a pretty stupid double standard between "monsters" and PCs, I think.

In most cases, CR is roughly equal to 2/3s ECL. Dragons are a notable exception. Solars too, obviously. If we take the ECL for Solars (which was calculated according to some pretty strict rules) and apply the 2/3 rule to it, they should actually be CR 28. This makes sense to me as well. I mean, look at them! They're big and scary and loaded with incredible abilities!

 

[Kae'Yoss]

If we take the ECL for Solars (which was calculated according to some pretty strict rules) and apply the 2/3 rule to it, they should actually be CR 28. This makes sense to me as well. I mean, look at them! They're big and scary and loaded with incredible abilities!

Yeah, but so is the everage 23rd-level party. That's where the fighters start to have epic weapons, clerics have persistent divine power. Where wizards can cast 3 spells per round and rogues' sneak attack is repeated a round later. Sorry, but that solar will be quite busy if faced with 4 23rd-level characters. And 4 28th-level characters will annihilate that solar.