ECL's

[splatt]

Ecl's are they worth playing with or not?

im using a goliath at the minute and i was curious to know peoples opinions on characters with Ecl's do the Pro's out way the Con's?

im undecided on this issue at present so your thoughts would be welcome.

[Puppet_Master]

I really depends of the race. Some are better than others. Like the Goliath, it's ECL isn't bad. You gain really good abilities, and access to large creature feats, and access to the Goliath Barbarian Goliath Druid. Right now I can't think of a race that is not worth the ECL but I'll think of one or two.

[Glim]

For optimum gain:
If you're going to play a caster, don't go for any race with an ECL higher than 0. Racial HD and LA will cost you valuable caster levels.

Unless you're going to focus on shapeshifting through polymorph, because a different creature type than humanoid (like dragon or outsider) will benefit you greatly. (should this be the case I would like to point out the lesser aasimar and tiefling from Players Guide to Faerun, who have the outsider type but no ECL).

If you're going to play a warrior pretty much everything goes, you just need to decide what you value most, ability increases (which is the only thing taht matter that choosing a different race or template gives you), or class-abilities and bonus feats. A template that's particularly handy for any warrior-type to have is the Lolth-touched template from Monster Manual IV (I think), which gets you +6 to Str AND Con, for a louzy +1 LA, thus resulting in an added ECL of 1. This is obviously broken, more about that later in this post.

This is all from the optimization point of view, so it has some merit, but remember to play whatever you think is fun, and if you can combine a weird race with a standard class, the DM will have tons of hooks, and you will have a lot of fun roleplaying it, I'm sure.

Lastly, the higher the LA, the better it's abilities. As soon as racial HD exceed LA, it is by default a suboptimum choice. Just LA (big thought it may be) and no racial HD at all is the best way to go.

The whole concept of LA is a pretty... broken is not the word, nor is unorthodox really... a pretty clunky fix. It's stuck to creatures who are more powerful than their creature type and number of HD merits.

Bad creature design is fixed by applying lots of LA, sometimes too much, thus nerfing the creature. Be aware of this when choosing.

The guidelines for ECL given in Savage Species are a guideline at best, and i think the book says exactly that. It's rules are applied nearly nowhere in the dnd universe, at least not by WotC creature designers.

To conclude, be mindful of misprints or miscalculations in books. Creature designers are partially blind, utter buffoons that don't know the rules written in earlier versions. The miscalculations are hard to spot, but an infamous example is the Nerra Sillit from the Fiend Folio. The following scenario is likely to have happened*:

A to B: 'Ok, the sillit has a LA of four, for a total LA of +11'

B to C: 'The sillit has a LA of +11, put that into the book.'

C reads SavSpe: 'OK, LA +11 means ECL +18.'

C to D: 'Write that the sillit is basically a level 18 character-'

D writes into the book: 'Sillits have a LA of +18.'

*Theory stolen from Knight Otu on the ENWorld boards.

Sorry my little piece of advice has turned into a rant about LA

[splatt]

wow cheers Glim i'll take all that onboard