an alternative to LA buyoff

[big teej]

we all know LA over +1 or +2 is a horrendous thing to do to a PC.

we also know about LA buyoff.

I am curious however.

as an alternative to the buy off system, is there anything super borked (definition of 'super borked' is still being calibrated) about running things with LA as just with their Racial Hit Die?

for example, as pointed out in another thread, a Minotaur has 6 Racial Hit Die, and + 2 LA, making it level 8, but also placing it 2 HD (and class levels) behind the party.

would it be fair to play said minotaur (with 6 HD) in a party of characters that had 6 class levels?

why? why not?

does this stop working for certain creatures?

why?

[Zaq]

Basically, there's way too many critters out there with LA (with and without RHD) for this to actually apply well to all of them. It's just much too swingy. There are some creatures that would be OK with just RHD, there are some that would still be pitifully underpowered, and there are some that would be totally borked. WotC's been very inconsistent when it comes to determining how they hand out LA and RHD even within a single book (let alone all of 3.x), and while I agree that the whole LA/RHD system is bad as it is, this particular change would probably not make the entire system, as a whole, significantly better. (Also, how would it affect templates, or races that have LA but not RHD? Are they free, now? Would a creature with 1 HD and 2 LA now be a higher ECL than a creature with 2 HD and 2 LA? That seems weird.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I pretty much hate LA and everything associated with it. There are one or two exceptions (I like goliaths, and the Dark template doesn't bother me much at all), but as a rule, LA sets my teeth on edge, so I'm not exactly the most unbiased commentator. Still, though, I think the system's fundamentally borked enough that no single blanket fix will really make the whole thing significantly better overall.

[big teej]

that's a fair poin Zaq


to be fair, I only have a vested interest in it working for certain creatures
namely, one's I want to play! hahaha

such as Ogres
WereBears, Bison, Rhinos, and Boars.