My gaming group has an epic D&D game we play once in a while, 24th level, pretty much so we can play around with high-level stuff and have some really earth-shaking adventures in contrast with the more street-level campaign (which is 10th right now). One of the most interesting characters in the party is Fred, a semi-reformed incubus bard (CG alignment, but still has the evil subtype).
The problem: His player is going to drop this fascinating character and make a new one, because he's severely underpowered in comparison to the rest of the party.
Succubi and incubi get some thoroughly nifty abilities, but on their own aren't on par with an epic party; they're only CR 7, after all. (I know CR doesn't factor into ECL, but it illustrates my point: in any given fight, an unagmented succubus is as much of a threat as a 7th level PC.) And between level adjustment and racial hit dice, he only has room for 12 class levels. When the fur starts to fly, even with his phenomenal stats he's about as effective as a succubus and a 12th-level bard teaming up (or less so, because of available actions), and two level-12's just don't add up to a level-24.
So we know that in this case, the ECL simply is not fair. I've looked at the UA rules for reducing LA, and even if we include racial hit dice in his class levels (which the rules say not to) he would just now be able to reduce it to +5. What I'm wondering is, how would the rest of you out there handle this? How does one gauge a fair reduction in LA at high levels? This is particularly frustrating since I just made an epic paladin for the game, and was really looking forward to the interaction of these two.
The problem: His player is going to drop this fascinating character and make a new one, because he's severely underpowered in comparison to the rest of the party.
Succubi and incubi get some thoroughly nifty abilities, but on their own aren't on par with an epic party; they're only CR 7, after all. (I know CR doesn't factor into ECL, but it illustrates my point: in any given fight, an unagmented succubus is as much of a threat as a 7th level PC.) And between level adjustment and racial hit dice, he only has room for 12 class levels. When the fur starts to fly, even with his phenomenal stats he's about as effective as a succubus and a 12th-level bard teaming up (or less so, because of available actions), and two level-12's just don't add up to a level-24.
So we know that in this case, the ECL simply is not fair. I've looked at the UA rules for reducing LA, and even if we include racial hit dice in his class levels (which the rules say not to) he would just now be able to reduce it to +5. What I'm wondering is, how would the rest of you out there handle this? How does one gauge a fair reduction in LA at high levels? This is particularly frustrating since I just made an epic paladin for the game, and was really looking forward to the interaction of these two.
