Author Topic: Changing Straight LA into RHD LA. What about skills?  (Read 1401 times)

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kevin_video

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Changing Straight LA into RHD LA. What about skills?
« on: April 05, 2010, 02:56:18 AM »
Here's something I'd heard of, but never actually thought about. A question was brought up, how do you deal with level adjustments that are only +1 or +2? And the answers were rather interesting.

The standard answer was of course go through the Savage Species book, and separate them like they do on the WotC site with the tiefling, vampire, aasimar, lycanthropes, lich, and others.

But here are the original answers.

One was if it's just that kind of number, have them take a NPC level or two. However, they never actually mention if taking a UA NPC level counted or not. I'd assume not.

Another answer was add racial hit die to them. Now admittedly I had heard of this one before, and it was for the half-ogre. In one of my games that's exactly what we did. We took the savage progression LA that we found online, and took the HD version that someone had made (the skills were based on what you got for being a regular ogre).

That last one is great and all, but there's one major issue with that. Take the catfolk for instance. They're a +1 LA, and a monstrous humanoid. Okay, so they get 1d8 HD, +2 Ref and Will, and 2+INT for skills. Here's the part that I'm confused. WHAT ARE THEIR SKILLS? Seriously. Same goes for the tiefling, the aasimar, and all the others. Half-ogre's easy. Just take what the ogre says. But what about all the others? Are we supposed to assume that the monstrous humanoid, which has d10 HD and full BAB like a fighter, has fighter skills? What does that mean for the dragon then who goes up like a fighter with barbarian HD and ranger/bard skill points, or the outsider that's got cleric HD, and fighter BAB, but has rogue skill points?

Honestly, I'd love to know. I seriously would because I kind of like that idea. Kind of makes you feel less guilty when a player wants to take LAs on purpose.
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Runestar

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Re: Changing Straight LA into RHD LA. What about skills?
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2010, 06:20:35 AM »
I have no idea what you are talking about.

They simply have no racial HD, and advance solely by class lvs. If you want to give them free HD to make up for the crappiness of LA, then you will have to make up their class skills on their own. For a catfolk, I think that going with the ranger skill list might be doable.
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veekie

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Re: Changing Straight LA into RHD LA. What about skills?
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2010, 06:37:04 AM »
I believe hes looking for the appropriate class skills to give for racial HD, in the scenario that all LA races gain free racial HD equal to their LA(sensible enough, I guess, racial HD hardly compares to class HD, unless it's a broken race).
This is a bit of an ad hoc case, generally speaking, just toss the 'universal' Craft and Profession skills in, and then put in a cluster of racially appropriate racial class skills(which are normally physically inclined)
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The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: Changing Straight LA into RHD LA. What about skills?
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2010, 08:05:19 AM »
Here's a quick and dirty method:
It's a class skill if:
-You have a racial bonus to it,
-You have an ability related to it, like scent for survival, slas for spellcraft, that sort of thing
-It is a knowledge skill that includes your type
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kevin_video

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Re: Changing Straight LA into RHD LA. What about skills?
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2010, 10:53:52 AM »
I believe hes looking for the appropriate class skills to give for racial HD, in the scenario that all LA races gain free racial HD equal to their LA(sensible enough, I guess, racial HD hardly compares to class HD, unless it's a broken race).
Pretty much, yeah. It just makes more sense to go that route than say making them take NPC class levels to balance things out.

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