I’ve started planning for our next campaign! After the VaultOfLarinKarr we’ll be playing in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy by Judges Guild and Necromancer Games. I think the adventures will all be homebrew stuff and the end of the campaign is not a demon lord or something like that. And I already have a wiki for it: The Alder King Wiki.
Wilderlands of High Fantasy by Judges Guild and Necromancer Games
I’m been looking at allowing some monster races for players. This entire Level Adjustment thing is... Yikes. How about this: Scale all the races down to standard zero adjustment, and have racial abilities available as Feats?
#RPG #thoughts
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I’ve seen that suggested before, and I like it, a lot. It means that the players can pick and choose what abilities *their* Drow has, instead of being just like all the rest. If they want to play one of the races that are Level Adjusted due to high STR (an Ogre, for example) allow them to ’purchase’ blocks of +4 STR (ie, a +2 bonus) per feat, up to the racial maxima. Same for other 18+ stats.
The tricky part will be agreeing on a baseline +0 LA package for the race, but that can be done on a case-by-case basis.
Level Adjustments is one of the things that’s badly broken in 3.5e, but a part of the fun is coming up with kewl fixes 😄
– GreyWulf 2008-06-22 10:19 UTC
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Yeah, I checked a lot of LA+x races, and they never work properly. Those missing HD really hurts *and* there are evil spells which depend on the enemies HD, like blasphemy.
There are 2 steps to “solve” the problem. The “savage progression transition class” (googable) which first strips down the race to a level 0 race, and when you change level you can choose the racial traits instead of the class levels (but you won’t get HD, BAB, saves...), and then the LA buyoff (also googable) system. Never tried it, though....
– Sektat 2008-06-22 21:36 UTC
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Hm, Level-Adjusted Races does in fact sound exactly like the solution I had in mind. Not getting hit-dice, base attack bonus, or saves is a bummer, though. For drow, for example, I’m not sure the spell resistance is really worth it (considering the other class features to be peanuts).
Maybe I’ll talk to Claudia again to see whether she’d be interested in playing a sinister generic elf instead. Perhaps the Wilderlands’ player’s guide will offer some more ideas on this.
– Alex Schroeder 2008-06-22 22:19 UTC
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About the LA buyoff I found this:
“It’s a rules variant from Unearthed Arcana.
Essentially, once you gain HD equal to 3× your LA, upon gaining sufficient XP to level up, you may instead reduce your LA by 1.”
– Sektat 2008-06-22 22:31 UTC
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Yes, I read the copy on the d20srd site and some discussion on a Giant in the Playground forums. I felt that the solution by Sean K Reynolds seems simpler than the solution by Monte Cook.
some discussion on a Giant in the Playground forums
– Alex Schroeder 2008-06-22 23:58 UTC
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Why not amp up all races to LA +X, where X is the highest LA of the available PC races? It wouldn’t be too hard, I think. Bonus feats, additional ability score bonuses, additional skill bonuses, etc., can add up pretty fast.
Hobgoblins are already LA +1. Fey-touched are +1. Drow are +2. Bugbears are 3 HD and +1. Svirfneblin are +3. Half-fey (from *Fiend Folio*) are +2.
– Adrian 2008-06-27 08:17 UTC