Why do you use LA in your campaign?

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Instead my campaigns have fully adopted the racial class ideas borrowed from AU. I use Upper Krust's CR system to balance the racial classes against PC classes and it allows unusual and unique races to be played without handicapping a character by taking away their most critical attributes: Hit Points, Saves, and BAB. Then again my homebrew is rather odd and changes many assumptions of the PHB.

You've mentioned this a couple of times now.... care to give up how you do it? A couple of example races perhaps? Which version of UK's system are you using? Are you using the Grim Tales spreadsheet to help you out?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[BryonD]

I don't think a vampire PC or a drow should be punished with LA just because of the fact that they're more superior than other races.

Admitting that a vampire fighter is more powerful than an equivalent level human fighter is no more a punishment than saying that a higher level human fighter is more powerful than a lower level human fighter.

A 10th level fighter isn't punished by needing more XP to level than an 8th level fighter. That is just how many XP it takes to get from the current level to the next.

(Edit: I also like racial levels as a better solution. Though in some cases a minimum LA is required for me to buy that the race is that race.)

 

[Kae'Yoss]

While I agree that the system's execution could be better, that many LA ratings are not right (I hear that in many cases, this is intentional, so the standard races remain attractive choices most of the time), I do think that it could be worse, and that some system is necessary.

My DM dislike the idea of LA and so do I. Some races are just better than other. I don't think a vampire PC or a drow should be punished with LA just because of the fact that they're more superior than other races.

I don't see it as punishment. It's a trade-off. You get awesome powers others don't, but you have to give something up for it.

Consider this: Why would you punish that human player for not playing a halfdragon drow or something similar? He'd be a sidekick to the other party members, who are better than him in almost every way: The half-dragon ogre is a better melee fighter than him, the succubus rogue is much better at skills and negotiation, the mind flayer the better spellcaster, and so on.

Notjer, the problem comes when one player wants to play a human fighter and the other one wants to play a drow vampire. You can really ignore LA if all the PCs are of equivalent power

Well, not quite: The power level is still skewed. A group of 4 3rd-level humans will have their fair share of problems with 4 ogres. A group of 4 3rd-level half-dragon (or something like that) humans much less so.

Still, it really is much less of a problem if all have similar level adjustments.

 

[notjer]

Admitting that a vampire fighter is more powerful than an equivalent level human fighter is no more a punishment than saying that a higher level human fighter is more powerful than a lower level human fighter.

A 10th level fighter isn't punished by needing more XP to level than an 8th level fighter. That is just how many XP it takes to get from the current level to the next.

(Edit: I also like racial levels as a better solution. Though in some cases a minimum LA is required for me to buy that the race is that race.)

I would still say that the vampire has been punished by LA because I don't care about balance to have a good game of D&D. IMO the level 6 vampire and the level 6 human should have the same amount of xp - or even the level 6 titan should have the same amount of xp. I just like the idea of the fact that there are more powerful creatures than yourself, it is just about the mentallity of the game. The DM doesn't need to cares about the npc he makes when they have LA of course, but it affects the pc who chose a race with a LA +2.

I understand that people would like to balance it. The reason is somehow very logical, I just don't like the idea at all

 

[Particle_Man]

LA prevents monster races from being free power.

The problem is that the costs are somewhat wonky.

Especially since the value of an LA race varies wildly with levels. A half dragon at level 1 (ecl 4) is hard hitting, but fragile despite his natural armor since he only has 1 HD. But at higher levels, the extra Con and natural armor easily make up for a few missing HD (except for pure HD effects like Blasphemy), and the character retains a significant offensive advantage.

One thought on this. I know that some templates add different CRs depending upon the HD of the "original" creature. Perhaps something similar could be done for LA. So the first level cleric half-dragon is LA +1, but when that cleric hits 5th level, the LA jumps to +2, and so forth every 4 class levels after that. Not too far from the "bloodline" rules in UA, come to think of it.

Note: I pulled the exact numbers for my example out of the air and don't claim them to be the right numbers. But you get the idea, right?

 

[Particle_Man]

I would still say that the vampire has been punished by LA because I don't care about balance to have a good game of D&D. IMO the level 6 vampire and the level 6 human should have the same amount of xp - or even the level 6 titan should have the same amount of xp. I just like the idea of the fact that there are more powerful creatures than yourself, it is just about the mentallity of the game. The DM doesn't need to cares about the npc he makes when they have LA of course, but it affects the pc who chose a race with a LA +2.

I understand that people would like to balance it. The reason is somehow very logical, I just don't like the idea at all

If your DM and all of your players are happy, then go for it. But I think it would likely lead to an "arms race" where players will want to play the most powerful races. It would take a masochist to want to play a human fighter in such a campaign, when there are so many other more powerful racial options at no cost.

I would also predict that, if you use the standard experience point rules and no LA, that the "powerful race party" will either get bored, because they are fighting "CR equivalent" encounters (that band of 20 kobolds terrorizing Farmer Bill suddenly doesn't seem like much of a threat to a party of 4 vampire gargoyles, even if they are "only first level" vampire gargoyles), or they will advance in level *very* quickly, because they will be fighting "CR higher than their non-LA adjusted level" encounters and thus getting way more xp. Again, if your DM and all your players are fine with this, that is cool too.

On the other hand, your DM could cut the amount of xp that is awarded to these powerful creatures, and/or slow down their rate of level advancement. Now if only there were some game mechanic that would let you do this.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

You've mentioned this a couple of times now.... care to give up how you do it? A couple of example races perhaps? Which version of UK's system are you using? Are you using the Grim Tales spreadsheet to help you out?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I use version 4, which is somewhat old I'll admit but I'm waiting for the print version of the Bestiary to come out before I buy it. To start I balance racial classes by calculating the detailed CR of the creature without wealth then matching that up on a chart with what level of PC without wealth added has parity. I then reverse engineer into levels from this, splitting the abilities up over as many levels needed to keep each one on the same power level as a classed PC.

However I'll say that some of the low LA humanoids after examining what their CR works out to really don't need LA. The only reason to give them one seems to be to make them suboptimal to encourage players to concentrate on the PHB races.

 

[Particle_Man]

Oh, one other thing. Note that the "Savage Species" approach of giving levels to a "Vampire" class will not allow the original poster to get the "feel" of vampires being more powerful than humans.

If the "1st level vampire" is properly adjusted for balance vs. the 1st level character in general, then that 1st level vampire is *not* more powerful than an equivalent level human. Similarly, other "classed" vampires are *not* more powerful than "classed" humans of the same level. Alternatively, if most vampires are as the MM entry, you have to explain why the 1st level vampire class PC happens to be one of the few "weak vampires" in the whole world.

I would argue that LA is better than racial levels at maintaining an "in-game" feel that vampires are more powerful than humans. Although one could do away with both to *totally* preserve the in-game feel that vampires are just tougher than humans, but then see my earlier post on issues that may arise.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I would still say that the vampire has been punished by LA because I don't care about balance to have a good game of D&D.

So why are you annoyed about a difference in levels? Do you have to have the same levels in order to have a good game of D&D?

The easiest thing, I'd say, is to keep things balanced out: Those who like balance have it, and those who don't care will probably have no problems with some level imbalance.

The thing is that the rules as they're written in the books should be balanced, since I believe that will be best for most players.

If you don't want balance, just ignore it! But before you do, make sure everyone feels this way. If the people aren't fine with this, you'll hurt the game:

This could be because someone would like to play a normal human, not some freak, but he doesn't want to be weak and inconsequential - which he would be if other players pick really powerful classes and templates.

Related to this is those who will play the most powerful race/template combo they'll find and either sorely outpace those who don't, or, if everyone does it, throw the whole challenge rating thing completely out of whack (it's not like it's an exact science, but in such a case it will probably become completely useless)

I just like the idea of the fact that there are more powerful creatures than yourself,

Nothing against that, in general, but if they're in my party, stealing all your spot light, and I feel like my only purpose is to be there and see what awesome things they could do, I don't have any fun in the game, and I'll quit.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I use version 4, which is somewhat old I'll admit but I'm waiting for the print version of the Bestiary to come out before I buy it. To start I balance racial classes by calculating the detailed CR of the creature without wealth then matching that up on a chart with what level of PC without wealth added has parity. I then reverse engineer into levels from this, splitting the abilities up over as many levels needed to keep each one on the same power level as a classed PC.

However I'll say that some of the low LA humanoids after examining what their CR works out to really don't need LA. The only reason to give them one seems to be to make them suboptimal to encourage players to concentrate on the PHB races.

The other issue is that despite UpperKrust's opinions otherwise, it simply isn't true that CR and LA should be the same. An At-Will ability in the hands of a mook that the PCs can kill in one hit (or even a regular enemy that they'll kill in one combat) is not nearly as valuable as the same At-Will ability in the hands of the PCs, especially if the ability is one of utility that circumvents something major. An enemy with a scroll of Fly is really just as hard as an enemy with Fly at will (standard action to activate), so the CR could be the same, but the latter is much much stronger for a PC.