Level adjustment alternative.

[Alastar]

Ok, I don't like teh LA system, and the LA buyback is basically giving everyone a free +1 la, or so.  It's just not doing it.

Here's my take on it, as a lot of people hav eprobly tried, It's not balanced so far I think, but i'm hoping youguys can help.


Every Bonus from the race is categorised as either:

Minor, costing 1000 exp to have
Medium, Costing 2000 exp to have
Major, costing 3000 exp to have

For example: a +2 to a stat would be minor
a DR of 5/magic would be medium
A spell resistance would be major.

Now we have penalties, classified as such.

Minor: +1000 exp, ex: light sensitivity, or -2 to a stat.
Major: +2000 exp, ex:Unability to cast arcane or divine spells

Now, a player can choose to buy one of his racial powers at any time he wants, but must pay the appropriate exp cost to do so, if his race has penalties, he can start with an equivalent amount of bonuses in exchange.

How does that sound?

[JaronK]

Honestly?  It sounds like you have no decent way to classify things as minor/medium/major.  +2 to a stat is useful all the time.  DR/Magic is useless after a while when lots of stuff has magical attacks or hits so hard that DR 5 is meaningless.  And SR is often incredibly easy to bypass as someone levels up (enemies will very often have FAR more HD than you). 

It only gets worse when you realize some bonuses only effect some builds.  What's minor for one is incredibly for others.

I dunno, I think you're going to get bogged down in the details trying to make this work.

JaronK

[RobbyPants]

Picking up racial abilities as you level?  Reminds me somewhat of Savage Species.  I haven't actually played anything using that book though.

How are you planning on handling Racial Hit Dice?

[PhaedrusXY]

This is going to wind up pretty much the same as LA buyoff in the end, isn't it? (At least for races with low LAs that can actually be bought off in a reasonable amount of time.) You're also going to have to weight every ability in the game, and I also disagree with your ratings. If spell resistance is major, what is spell casting? That's worth a LOT more than spell resistance, in most cases. Spell-like abilities would also have to be rated based on what level spell they reproduce, and how often they can be used, etc. You could probably use the Savage Species guidelines for assigning LA as a starting place for all of this, but it is going to be a lot of work, and you're basically reinventing the wheel I think, since in the end you wind up with a character very similar to one that just bought off his LA.


I think converting LA into racial hit dice and/or just dropping some or all of it (when it seems unnecessarily high) is probably the best system. For creatures that have enormous amounts of racial hit dice that aren't really that good (like their racial hit dice are higher than their CR), actually removing racial hit dice and/or turning them into actual class levels (like barbarian levels instead of giant hit dice) might be a good way to go.

[Alastar]

Hmmmm yeah you guys are right, it's just that LA really annoys me.  Most of the time I can do the Racial Hit Dice thing, and it works, but what about those few templates you can't do it with, like feral, or karsite, those are annoying...

[Prak, the Mad]

One of the problems with LA is that it assumes that HD is worth levels at a one to one rate (which it isn't, except maybe some of the crazier types that give "over 9000" immunities, but even then you shouldn't have to pay for every HD) and the other is that it assumes 3 +2 racial bonuses to skills is worth a level, or +5 natural armour. This is all bullshit. At the very least what you need to do is take the creature's LA and give that many HD. For example, a Succubus, +6 LA, 6 HD, that should be ok as a 6th level character (yes, even with immunities, stats and spellcasting) I don't know for certain, but honestly I wouldn't worry too much.

More dedicated minds than mine (and that's saying something) have gone further to provide a ruleset that allows one to play a monster.