Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revamp?

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User3
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Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revamp?

Post by User3 »

How about instead of shifting your position on the experience charts, ECL instead does this:

a) Increases your level for the purposes of gaining experience. For example, a 1st level Drow would gain experience as a 3rd level character.

b) Penalizes all your experience gains by a certain percentage. Say, 5% per ECL.
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by User3 »

And by ECL I mean LA, of course. :biggrin:
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

If you mean LA instead of ECL, does (a) mean a starting Ogre PC would be a level4 giant, considered 6th level for exp? For (b), would an ogre be a 4th level PC that got -10% xp?

How exactly is (a) less harsh from the current rules? A Drow F1 =does gain exp. as a 3rd level PC. It would just deny the other benefits of level 3, namely a feat. Seems bad.

(b) probably is OK for LA +1, although it's going to get really annoying. But for higher LA, ouchie. IMO, the worst thing about differential xp is that the players level up at different times. It's annoying to have, say, 3 players hit 4th level in one session, then the other player hits 4th at the next session. I'd rather let everybody level up at the same time.
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by User3 »

Sorry, I was being unclear. I meant for both a) and b) to apply simultaneously. The same effect could be achieved by only using b) and adjusting the percentage.

Well, the major advantage is that 1st level Drow only needs 1100 experience to get his second hit-die. After that, since his effective level for gaining experience is 4, and he still has that 10% penalty, he'll be gaining even less experience relative to the party.

The idea is for characters with LA greater than 0 to start off barely behind standard race characters, and then fall behind to more appropriate levels as they progress. This way, they aren't so incredibly vulnerable at low levels.

Drow, for example, are a terrible race to play from the start because the +2 LA means you'll have 1 hitdie in a 3 hitdie party...even as a barbarian you'll be one of the most fragile characters. In a 20th level party, however, the lack of 2 hitdie (as long as you aren't a primary caster) isn't nearly as much of a problem.
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

OK, so what happens here? A Drow wizard (LA +3) in this system is a first level PC that gets exp as a 3rd level PC. For a 3rd level PC it doesn't matter much, but at ECL 4 (once it gets to 2nd level), per the charts the drow already gets, what, say on average 2/3 what the other now-2nd level level PC's get. Then, it gets a 10% ECL penalty on top of that.

That's close to the 2E half-xp penalty for multiclassing, without the multiclassing. That's going to really suck for the Drow.

Why not a scaling xp penalty based on ECL? Just thinking out loud here - what if it was (class levels- 3)*500, minimum 0? Or apply an ECL-based xp penalty at a certain point, say a 1000 xp penalty every 20/ECL levels? Or just phased in an ECL level penalty - say every 10/ECL, the PC "gained" an ECL?

I'm not sure why you want to base it on LA instead of ECL.
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by Username17 »

Why not a scaling xp penalty based on ECL?


Because that works just as poorly as the current system. In fact, it is the current system except that the Level Allowances are lower.

If you want to fix the Drow, make a Drow class, which is a couple of levels long and gives them the stuff they need. Level Allowance, XP Penalties, or anything that isn't just gaining levels in a Level Based system is never ever going to work under any circumstances.

No exceptions. If you are in a level system and you can get power from not getting levels the game is broken.

Here are the choices:

1> Gaining levels is better than the LA or XP penalties, or whatever you want to call it. (current system)

2> Gaining levels is just as good as the LA, or XP penalties, or whatever.

3> Gaining Levels is worse than the LA.

For 1 and 3, the unbalance is obvious. But for number 2, it's still unbalanced!

In a level system, people are required to take a certain amount of breadth for free. They get hit points, skills, and saving throws in addition to the ability to hit things harder. That's not because that's what they want - but because the game needs people to have a little bit of sundry stuff so that not everyone is just a gigantic hammer on a toggle switch.

So if not gaining a level is "balanced" with gaining a level, despite the fact that you manifestly are not getting those level-based bonuses - then something is wrong. You've just let Fighters spend their skill points on having more Strength - or let Wizards take extra caster levels instead of saving throws. You've gone point based for some, but not all, of the player characters.

There is no way, even theoretically, to balance Level Adjustment. It is fundamentally and utterly not a workable system.

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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

ACtually, scaling is the opposite of the current system. The current system weights LA heavily at the beginning, then it has less of an effect w/ class level advancement (except caster level issues, which just suck).

Making LA races a class is going to have the same problem as any other system: you can't play a spellcaster, or anything else level dependent.

Even a 2-level drow class makes it impossible to have an effective drow wizard, unless the drow class grants caster levels. If it does grant caster levels, then it's incredibly difficult to make the drow class work w/ all the cool junk it gives. Wizard caster levels, for example, are worth a level w/ crappy everything else and a feat every 5 levels.

Scaling might work b/c if you can proportion it right, you can spread the loss over all 20 levels. That way, you can make a LA PC that is a little bit worse class-wise, a little bit better race-wise, over the whole 20-level progression.

If races had scalable abilities, like the Gith, a scalable LA penalty might work perfectly.
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by User3 »

Well, I think ECL applies to normal characters as well...but their character levels are equal to their effective character levels. Level Adjustment is what you add to hitdice to come up with the ECL.

The problem with, say, applying penalties at arbitrary levels is that before those levels there is no penalty at all, and the character is gaining considerable bonuses. A constant experience penalty balanced toward penalizing the character a number of levels equal to LA by, say, 15th level and maintaining that level difference would be better.

Ultimately, though, I think Frank is right. Racial development classes are the only way you can wring any kind of fairness from the system.
I was hoping to avoid having to do that, however, since it means you have to convert all sorts of stuff for consistency.

You can remedy the casterlevel issue somewhat by allowing all hitdie to count toward casterlevel(but not spells per day), as Frank has suggested elsewhere on this board. Primary casters are still a poor choice for +LA races, but quite a bit better than before.
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by Username17 »

The current system weights LA heavily at the beginning, then it has less of an effect w/ class level advancement


This isn't even close to true.

The concept is that 2 levels equals approximately double the power. Level Allowance charges you a static amount of level - which means that the relative cost is static (a LA of +2 means that you are getting approximately half as much from your levels) - but the absolute cost increases. Half your power is supposed to be a bigger thing when you are 13th level than when you are 11th level.

That's what the logarithmic CR chart means.

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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by Crissa »

Frank: I think the guest means that a class-level 10 party take a lesser hit by adding a character with an LA than a class-level 3 party.

...This is probably assuming LAs are around one to three penalty levels.

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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1081627411[/unixtime]]
The current system weights LA heavily at the beginning, then it has less of an effect w/ class level advancement


This isn't even close to true.

The concept is that 2 levels equals approximately double the power. Level Allowance charges you a static amount of level - which means that the relative cost is static (a LA of +2 means that you are getting approximately half as much from your levels) - but the absolute cost increases. Half your power is supposed to be a bigger thing when you are 13th level than when you are 11th level.

That's what the logarithmic CR chart means.

-Username17


Frank, that's exactly what I was saying, or meant to. At the begining, LA is almost kind of worth it, depending on what you get but at higher levels the power you get from it doesn't match the power of class levels. However, LA penalties are valued at the beginning relative power, not at the end.

How does your caster level/HD system work?
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by da_chicken »

The easiest system I've seen so far is the existing LA system combined with the LA reduction in UA. Nobody ever plays LA +2 in our games, but there's people who play LA +1 now. All things begin equal, it amounts to a flat 4,000 XP penalty.
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by Username17 »

All things begin equal, it amounts to a flat 4,000 XP penalty.


No it doesn't.

Eventually, it amounts to a zero XP penalty as the character eventually ammasses enough XP from being a lower level than the rest of the party to gain extra XP to pay things off.

Assuming that the character is not playing a race with racial hit dice (who get screwed coming by the LA system in the first place and then going by the LA reduction system for no reason at all) - then it goes like this:

When everyone in your party hits fourth level, you all have 6000 XP. At this point, the +1 LA character is playing a 3rd level character with 6000 XP and an ECL of 4. He can then pay 3000 XP to reduce his LA to zero and get himself to be a normal 3rd level character with 3000 XP.

At this point, however, he's a 3rd level character in a fourth level party. He's 3000 XP behind, but he only needs 3000 XP to level - the rest of the party will need 4000. He also gains XP faster because he's a level behind.

He'll catch up after the rest of the party picks up about 2700 XP. He'll then go on a few adventures at the same level as the rest of the party and then fall a level behind when he's 2700 XP short of 5th level. A few adventures later he'll level again and the rest of the party will be about 2500 XP short of 6th.

And then he'll fall behind again after a few more adventures, and then he'll catch up when the rest of the party is about 2000 XP into 7th level.

And so on and so on. But each time he catches up, he catches up for longer. And eventually, the time he's "behind" doesn't even happen because your adventures get you more than the difference anyways.

I don't know where you pulled the "4000 XP" number - but it has nothing whatever to do with anything at all.

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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by RandomCasualty »

If you use the buy-off LA system from Unearthed, LA really isn't the problem. However racial hit dice are... Racial HD I think need to be dealt with most of all.

I'm thinking doing something like counting them as only part of a level, like the monster manual does for calculating CR. Because 1 giant hit dice does not equal a fighter level.
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Re: Better way of doing ECL without massive CR/Monster Revam

Post by Username17 »

If you use the buy-off LA system from Unearthed, LA really isn't the problem.


Yes it is. By the time characters are ninth level, the cost of that LA is zero Assuming that you put a Level Allowance on the character for a reason (and not for no reason like the Genasi) - then you are talking about 9th level characters walking around with more power for no cost. If you gave them a level allowance for no reason (like a Gnoll) - then you are talking about kicking them in the back of the knees for the first half-dozen levels of the game. It doesn't work. Some benefits - such as a substantially increased strength - really do go away by about 9th level. Other benefits, such as a substantially increased Charisma, do not.

I'm thinking doing something like counting them as only part of a level, like the monster manual does for calculating CR. Because 1 giant hit dice does not equal a fighter level.


http://frost.bbboy.net/thegamingden-vie ... [br]Rather than working Orgres into having more than 1 hit die per level - the standard Ogre should simply be a 3 hit die monster. There is no reason why an Ogre couldn't just be a 3rd level Giant with 3 hit dice and a BAB of +3. The way that level abilitiies are acalable in D&D means that there is simply no reason why any creature should ever have more substandard hit dice instead of less better hit dice.

So if you find yourself having to jack the monster hit dice up past their CR to make them challenging - you simply aren't giving them enough benefits for each of their levels. If you find yourself with a monster which needs a lower number of hit dice to get its hit points in line with its Power - you can jolly well just crank down its Constitution.

There's no reason why an Ogre Magi needs to have five hit dice and a CR of 8 when you can just give it a Wizard's BAB and a Constitution of 9 and get the same result out of an 8th level, 8 hit die monster.

And once you systemetize monsters into the same system that player characters live in - then a lot of monsters will become playable immediately without modification.

Monsters have a lot of unique mechanics and there's no reason for it. It's all legacy to back in the days when PCs didn't have unified mechanics either. The whole concept of monsters getting an attack for every claw or horn on their body is retarded and goes back to the bad old days when every character had their own unique attack progression anyway. The whole concept of monsters having hit dice differing from their power level is retarded and goes back to when monsters didn't even have Constitution scores, and all monsters had the same hit die.

We have fixes for these problems - so there's no reason that a CR 6 giant squid should get a different number of attacks than a CR 6 giant bear. The squid can just get grapple bonuses and crap - all of the damage it inflicts can be summed ina "tentacles attack" not in 10 separate attacks with a tentacle.

And when we do that, Giant Squid will no longer become abusive when exposed to buff spells (ever seen what happens when a giant squid becomes Nature's Avatar?) - and that means that they won't be abusive when people have them as pets or summon them with spells.

And when Monsters don't have their own unique attack and hit die progressions which have nothing to do with anything - they will be scalable in challenge and a lot of them will be playable as characters.

-Username17
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