rebalancing racial LA in 3.5

[reddir]

assumption: Designers inflated LA to encourage most players to pick 'standard' races. (several designer note support this)

So, how to bring them back in line so that characters with non-standard races are about on-par with characters using standard races?

Options:
- Just use CR, drop any LA
- CR + 1/2 LA (averaging npc and RAW pc ECL)
- something else?   (suggestions welcome )


If one accepts the "Same-Level Theory", then dropping LA is the way to go. This assumes that the listed CR is properly balanced to begin with.
This is intentionally not the case with some monsters, eg Dragons which are admitted to be listed ~2 CR below what would be correct. (any other examples?)

The argument that PCs are inherently more powerful than a RAW NPC because they have access to special equipment... this would require us to estimate the LA value of equipment, something I am not able to do. But applying 1/2 the RAW LA is an attempt at an answer. (Those who are able to, please let me know what would be better.)

Thanks for any insight on the issue.

[veekie]

I think you'd have to 'disassemble' the creature and examine how it's specific abilities compare with PCs. Most of them have raw numbers in approximately the right places but with actual abilities far below.

[Runestar]

Just evaluate them independently. I think the designers overestimated the usefulness of many abilities, leading to an inflation of LA.

[oslecamo]

- something else?   (suggestions welcome )

Just evaluate them independently. I think the designers overestimated the usefulness of many abilities, leading to an inflation of LA.

This. My improved monster classes on my sig and here does exactly this, taking individual monsters, de-constructing them, and then re-building them on a class with the same number of levels as the monster's CR, giving abilities when they're best suited and nerfing/buffing stuff as needed. Also making abilities scale when you start taking normal levels.

Because monsters were never intended to be played by PCs for a whole campaign. They were intended to fight for around 5 rounds and die. There's a significant diference there. If a ogre had just 10 Str and an ability that boosts his Str by 10 for 1 minute per day, would the players notice the diference?

[reddir]

Just evaluate them independently. I think the designers overestimated the usefulness of many abilities, leading to an inflation of LA.

This. My improved monster classes on my sig and here does exactly this, taking individual monsters, de-constructing them, and then re-building them on a class with the same number of levels as the monster's CR, giving abilities when they're best suited and nerfing/buffing stuff as needed. Also making abilities scale when you start taking normal levels.

Because monsters were never intended to be played by PCs for a whole campaign. They were intended to fight for around 5 rounds and die. There's a significant diference there. If a ogre had just 10 Str and an ability that boosts his Str by 10 for 1 minute per day, would the players notice the diference?

Wow, that is a pretty cool thread. Following oslecamo's suggestion seemed very difficult, but looking at your thread - I might be able to balance individual levels to what you provided. This might actually be possible

Still, I was hoping for a simple, easy answer

But your design philosophy does gives me something to think about, monsters are a bit more extreme than we'd like to see in PCs - however, playing something so different is the point of trying a monster.

[JoshuaD]

This is a cool thread. 

I've always thought the LA should slowly wear off as time goes on.  The abilities may be killer at level 1, but they're usually not that big of a deal by level 15. 

[oslecamo]

Still, I was hoping for a simple, easy answer

There isn't one, because there's hundreds of printed monsters out there, and they don't even try to follow a design philosophy, most of them being aparently designed when the writers were drunk.

You know all the complaining about inter-class balance? Monsters are ten times worst at least. There's completely borked things like the psionic mind flayer(cast as a psion one level higher of it's CR on the top of all the extra goodies?), to completely worthless monsters, and then lots of one-trick poneys that are really good at one thing but can't do anything else properly. Neither are good for players as they are. Solving them case-by-case is the only sane answer.

But your design philosophy does gives me something to think about, monsters are a bit more extreme than we'd like to see in PCs - however, playing something so different is the point of trying a monster.

Well I do strive to make them "diferent". The dragons get to huge or gargantuan size, excellent melee stats, 2/3 sorceror spellcasting and a bunch of extra abilities for good measures. The vasuthant is a giant ball of dark energy with tentacles. The mind flayer eats brains for fun and profit.

[RobbyPants]

Just evaluate them independently. I think the designers overestimated the usefulness of many abilities, leading to an inflation of LA.

You pretty much have to.  If you try to apply one simple, standard rule, some races will end up overpowered and some underpowered.

I'd say, as a general level, a PC should always have a number of HD equal to their level.  So, LA would need to be converted into some form of RHD to help with balance.

[wotmaniac]

I've always thought the LA should slowly wear off as time goes on. 

In this vein ....
maybe just have LA automatically reduce by 1 every 3 or 4 levels (without having to pay for it).

:twocents:

[RobbyPants]

It depends on what you get.  Some things scale and some things don't.  Some racial abilities matter when you're 15th level and some don't.  It's hard to make a hard and fast rule that actually works.

[Runestar]

Let's use the ogre mage as an example. It was given a ridiculous ECL of 12 for god knows what reason. But the greater issue is that while it starts with a list of fairly potent abilities, they don't scale at all, so their usefulness decreases rapidly with level. How would you even start to assign a LA for this?  

It gets flight at will, regen, sr and some SLAs, of which all but invis/darkness at-will are flat-out useless.

One solution I can think of is to give it a complete overhaul. Replace its SLAs with wiz9 spellcasting, increase racial HD to 8, and LA of +3. So you essentially have a caster with a LA+2 race, and enough hp so you don't croak the moment the kobold so much as breathes on you.  

Yeah, I know the golden "Thou shall not give up caster lvs" rule, but being a flying, regenerating mage is novel enough that I am willing to suck up the penalty.  

Now, what can we do about the astral deva? Cool abilities, but my experience with one tells me that while it is fairly hard to kill, its damage dealing capabilities is next to zero. So I am essentially deadweight in any party!