Quote Originally Posted by Goaty14 View Post
Yes, but at some point along the way of "balancing LA", you either make something along the lines of the PF Race Builder (allowing players to have monstrous abilities for a certain, variable, cost), or Oslecamo's Improved Monster Classes (allowing players to take levels in "monsters", and adding/nerfing abilities to the 'brewer's set balance point), and at that point, why aren't you contributing/improving those systems instead?
I hadn't seen that PF resource before - thanks, but it doesn't seem to account for the "broken" monstrous abilities (gaze attacks etc).

Always good to see Oslecamo's work - definitely more along the lines of what I was thinking. As an alternative to his work though, I was thinking more of reworking specific existing monstrous abilities (i.e. so that PCs start play with all their abilities, rather than progressing through monstrous classes). There might be a happy medium allowing some progression e.g. a medusa's gaze starts off dealing only 1d4 Dex damage, with an additional 1d4 per six levels or somesuch. A bodak's could deal Con damage instead, an energy-draining undead might instead deal +1d6 negative energy damage instead of inflicting negative levels, and so forth.