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<blockquote data-quote="War Golem" data-source="post: 109904" data-attributes="member: 142">In the FR campaign I am playing in right now, we started with a very large group of characters. We started at 1st level, and we were free to choose any FR race. Three people chose races with an ECL adjustment - 2 aasimars and a deep gnome. The DM gave us 2 choices, either start at 1st level and counterbalance each level adjustment with a negative level (as in undead energy drain stuff), or start at 0 level with no penalty other than that you would not reach 1st level until you gained enough XP for the level one above your race's ECL modifier.Both aasimars (ECL +1) chose to start as level 1 characters (a cleric and a paladin) with 1 negative energy level; once they gained 1000 XP they were still 1st level characters but the negative level was removed. At 3000 XP they became 2nd level characters and so on. This seemed to work just fine and I would have no issue with doing this in one of my campaigns.The player of the deep gnome (ECL +3) wasn't interested in working off 3 negative energy levels, so he chose the 0 level route, where he would not gain a level until he reached 6,000 XP, at which point he would be a 1st level monk. This character had a really tough time holding up with the rest of the party once the party was 3rd level; even with all the deep gnome special abilities, the 0 level deep gnome simply didn't have enough hit points or firepower to be of much use to the group. I would not take this approach again in one of my campaigns.On a more hypothetical note, I would be disinclined to allow any races with an ECL adjustment to start play with regular 1st level characters without some sort of mitigating factor (such as the negative levels, which seemed to handle the situation pretty well).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="War Golem, post: 109904, member: 142"] In the FR campaign I am playing in right now, we started with a very large group of characters. We started at 1st level, and we were free to choose any FR race. Three people chose races with an ECL adjustment - 2 aasimars and a deep gnome. The DM gave us 2 choices, either start at 1st level and counterbalance each level adjustment with a negative level (as in undead energy drain stuff), or start at 0 level with no penalty other than that you would not reach 1st level until you gained enough XP for the level one above your race's ECL modifier. Both aasimars (ECL +1) chose to start as level 1 characters (a cleric and a paladin) with 1 negative energy level; once they gained 1000 XP they were still 1st level characters but the negative level was removed. At 3000 XP they became 2nd level characters and so on. This seemed to work just fine and I would have no issue with doing this in one of my campaigns. The player of the deep gnome (ECL +3) wasn't interested in working off 3 negative energy levels, so he chose the 0 level route, where he would not gain a level until he reached 6,000 XP, at which point he would be a 1st level monk. This character had a really tough time holding up with the rest of the party once the party was 3rd level; even with all the deep gnome special abilities, the 0 level deep gnome simply didn't have enough hit points or firepower to be of much use to the group. I would not take this approach again in one of my campaigns. On a more hypothetical note, I would be disinclined to allow any races with an ECL adjustment to start play with regular 1st level characters without some sort of mitigating factor (such as the negative levels, which seemed to handle the situation pretty well). [/QUOTE]

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