Level Adjustment adjustment options

[bihlbo]

I've been thinking, and step 1 for fixing LA is: LA is now hit dice.

That's just another way of referring to racial levels. i.e. if you want to be a lich, there's a LA0 version, and you take lich levels (HD) to gain standard lich abilities.

[Chemus]

Yeah, creature classes should act like prestige classes in their ability to enhance certain abilities though. Any monster with casting-type ability should advance, to some extent, a base class's spellcasting ability.

Truly, siggydevil has a point that all abilities, be they spells or extraordinary abilities should be at the same power level for all creatures. Monsters and PC's should be cut from the same cloth; you might have to be a medusa or beholdr in order to get a petrifying gaze, but your HD should == your CR, as a PC's level == CR (fighter 20 ha!)

[SiggyDevil]

Truly, siggydevil has a point that all abilities, be they spells or extraordinary abilities should be at the same power level for all creatures. Monsters and PC's should be cut from the same cloth; you might have to be a medusa or beholdr in order to get a petrifying gaze, but your HD should == your CR, as a PC's level == CR (fighter 20 ha!)

Daww, thanks, but credit truly goes to both The Gaming Den crew for setting me on the right path years ago, and the game Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup for its class-by-template-package setup and eventual convergence of ability range by higher levels.

While I do risk flames on the subject (at least far less so here than in a homogeneous forum) 4e took a completely wrong direction as far as the PC/Monster divide goes.
Even worse, you can't even make 'balanced' monsters or classes without WOTC publications.
So sad.

IMO, ideally all PC and monster powers come from a common pool. Anyone could access them but monsters would tend to be Trick Ponies with a far smaller selection and defined role within their local ecology.
You example of a Gorgon's (Medusa. lol) Stone Gaze might also include Poison Hair and a closerange Multigaze through their snakes, but not much else; the rest of their selection would be straight out defense-boosting, HP, mobility, and outright Fuck Yo Shit kinds of evasion.

Such a setup would then be contrasted by a PC Mage, holding easily 10 times more powers/spells at any given comparable level to the Gorgon, although with far less specificity in scope.
The PC would be made for diversity and the monster for specifically adapted survival.

[dman11235]

IMO, ideally all PC and monster powers come from a common pool.

Dang it, another psychic.

I was just about to post another idea I had for fixing monsters, and that was basically having a point system, and a certain number of points be a certain number of HD, and there would be little overlap in how many points a monster had (so all +0 HD would have 5 points, and all +1 would have 10, and all +2 would have 20, and so on, but not necessarily with those numbers, and probably with a +/-1 or 2).  This would probably make it easier to even make custom monsters, as the only things you'd be creating were custom abilities, and you'd take other existing abilities, and it would definitely be easier to customize your PC to be what you wanted.  The major problem I see here is that sometime ability X would be worth A points, and ability Y would be worth B points, but when combined they would be worth C points, where C>>A+B.

[SiggyDevil]

IMO, ideally all PC and monster powers come from a common pool.

Dang it, another psychic.

I was just about to post another idea I had for fixing monsters, and that was basically having a point system, and a certain number of points be a certain number of HD, and there would be little overlap in how many points a monster had (so all +0 HD would have 5 points, and all +1 would have 10, and all +2 would have 20, and so on, but not necessarily with those numbers, and probably with a +/-1 or 2).  This would probably make it easier to even make custom monsters, as the only things you'd be creating were custom abilities, and you'd take other existing abilities, and it would definitely be easier to customize your PC to be what you wanted.  The major problem I see here is that sometime ability X would be worth A points, and ability Y would be worth B points, but when combined they would be worth C points, where C>>A+B.

Point buy systems suck. I vouch for this statement out of years trying to build one from scratch.

I got as far as figuring out how many points per level, and then adapting d20 feats and spells to varied costs, only to find that the whole aspect of such efforts can NOT be quantified to solid numeric values.
You can price a +1 or -1 here and there but when it comes to worded options you'll be at a loss, or even comparing the worth of a +1 in X situation to a +1 in Y.
It's possible.. but you'll end up with Mutants & Masterminds or Anime d20/BESM all over again.

[woodenbandman]

Say I take the Hound archon racial class. What if you treated the racial hit dice gained therein as sort of a gestalt thing, like gestalting Hound Archon with some other thing? And then, every time you gained a level without gaining a HD (gaining a LA), you increase your XP penalty. Then after that, you can buy it off.

[Jradd7]

IMHO, one possible solution would be to take the final form of the monster and pare it down to an acceptable LA +0 version (like you start with when you use a good Savage Progression). Then arrange and adjust the abilities, granting them to he character, probably in more minor forms to start, for free (rather than as a separate class or level adjustments) at an appropriate rate across however many levels it takes. For some races, this may not be feasibly done over 20 levels, I realize, however, for many of the races it should be doable. Basically, it would simply be a matter of doing what the Raptoran does with its flight, but for everything. Raptorans getting flight simply by merit of being Raptorans isn't broken because they get it at a point when plenty of other folks can also be flying with just as much ease. Why can't we work out free progressions like this for most of the other races/monsters? It may simply be a matter of finding acceptable minor forms of abilities and level appropriate times to grant them to the character for full use. In fact, while we're at it, we may end up rebalancing monsters against PC's in a way that makes the CR system obsolete, because it may result in monsters only having level appropriate abilities that are balanced against each other, as well.

[Jradd7]

Basically here's an example of my solution, as per my previous post, for Minotaur if it was left as-is and the person would eventually get full benefits. Mind you, this is without rebalancing against anything and without some of the tweaks that me and a friend of mine have come up with to help make sure it can be easily balanced.

The Minotaur

LV    Racial Features:
1.    +2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int, -2 Cha; +2 Search, Spot, Listen; Greataxe familiarity; Natural Weapon: Gore (1d4)
2.    +1 Natural armor; Natural Cunning
3.    Scent; Natural weapon: Gore (1d6)
4.    Powerful Build; +1 Natural armor;+2 Search, Spot, Listen
5.    +2 Con; Natural weapon: Gore (1d8)
6.    +2 Str, -2 Int;+1 Natural armor
7.   
8.    Powerful Charge
9.    +2 Str; +1 Natural armor
10.   Large size (supersedes/overlaps Powerful Build)
11. 
12.   +2 Str; +1 Natural armor


As for the tweaks:

One idea that I came up with to help balance this, is that over the given levels shown the player loses the normal +1's to stats that they would get (to compensate for the immense strength boost in this case). Another idea is to leave level one as it is, except to be humanoid maybe and allow the increase to skills and natural attack to be built in, and call it the Half Minotaur (as it seems fairly balanced for a LA +0 race) and then make two racial feats that encompass the rest of the abilities. Such as:

Lesser Minotaur [racial] (Navy colored letters)
Pre-reqs: Must be half-minotaur
Benefit: Half-minotaur is now a lesser minotaur and thereby considered to be Monstrous Humanoid. He gains Natural Cunning and his natural armor becomes one or increases by one at 2nd level with an additional +1 to NA at 4th level. He gains Scent at 3rd level. He also gains Powerful Build at 4th level. Further, he receives racial bonus to Con at 5th level.

Greater Minotaur [racial] (Maroon colored letters)
Pre-reqs: Lesser Minotaur
Benefit: The lesser minotaur is now a greater minotaur and will gain Large Size at 10th level. He gains +2 racial bonus to Str and a -2 racial penalty to Int at 5th. He gains the use of Powerful Charge (as the ability in the MMI) from 8th level on. His natural armor bonus increases by an additional +1 at 6th, 9th and 12th levels and he receives further +2 racial bonuses to Str at 9th and 12th levels.

Something like that. What does anyone think? Perhaps, they could give up stat boosts and have the 5th and 6th level Str and Con bonuses built-in to the level one class and then shift around stuff in the feats or something. But the idea is that eventually this could be worked out for any race (every race, even) and these benefits basically come to you at no level loss, adjustments, savage progressions, etc. You either give up some normal mechanical given, like +1 to stat bumps and/or feats, etc. More than likely, the core races would have to be given appropriate racial feat options or built in racial abilities to help with balance (essentially, some monsters would have to be scaled down a bit and some races would have to be brought up to speed a bit, but hopefully there will be a meeting in a happy medium). Any ideas? Any support?

[bkdubs123]

Since I will be working to provide all the standard PHB races with level scaling racial features a la the Raptoran and Dragonborn of Bahamut, as well as providing a slew of racial feats, this really gels with my race design principles. I like the idea a lot, and think it has virtually unlimited potential. Kudos!