The LA-assignment thread III: Now in HD!

[Nifft]

Ya know, for a game that traditionally judges actions from a more LG perspective, I've noticed there's a lot of "anything can be accomplished with enough murder" in 3.X

Give a man a warhammer, and everything starts to look like a war.

[Luccan]

Give a man a warhammer, and everything starts to look like a war.

I now have a saying for my next pacifist character.

[Boggartbae]

You can craft items of Embrace/Shun The Dark Chaos. The XP cost makes them more expensive, sure, but ... it's still doable.

OH this is a good idea! and you can pay for the extra cost by performing sacrifices for dark craft gold!

Give a man a warhammer, and everything starts to look like a war.

Can I sig this?

Also, so I'm not derailing the thread too much, I just wanted to say that I agree with everything Inevitability said. I would play a pureblood yuan-ti and be happy about it, but the other two have too many racial hit dice.

[Nifft]

I now have a saying for my next pacifist character.

Snerk.

Awesome.

Can I sig this?

Of course.

[Jormengand]

Give a man a warhammer, and everything starts to look like a war.

Give a man Warhammer, and everything really is a war.

[Random Sanity]

Give a man Warhammer, and everything really is a war.

Give a man Warhammer 40k, and there is ONLY war.

[javcs]

Ya know, for a game that traditionally judges actions from a more LG perspective, I've noticed there's a lot of "anything can be accomplished with enough murder" in 3.X

OH this is a good idea! and you can pay for the extra cost by performing sacrifices for dark craft gold!

Yes. Anything can be accomplished with sufficient murder in 3.x. Especially since Ritual Sacrifice is based on a skill check - and we all know that skill checks are easy to boost in 3.x.
Admittedly, you can't take 10 or take 20 normally on sacrifice checks, but still, skill-boosting is fairly trivial, and there are specific bonuses to ritual sacrifices, and a lot of them are pretty easy to get.

You only need a DC 30 Knowledge(religion) check on a ritual sacrifice to get an evil outsider to serve as per Planar Ally (12HD cap) for 1 hour per HD of victim - that means you can get an Efreeti (10HD), and thus 3 wishes.

Spoiler

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• Karras Stone Knife; +1 bonus to sacrifice check
• Conducted in ceremony lasting at least an hour; +1 bonus
• Conducted on an altar; +2 bonus
• Conducted in a desecrated area; +1 bonus
• Conducted in an unhallowed area; +2 bonus
• Sacrifice is tortured for 1 day prior to death; +1 bonus
• Sacrifice is good-aligned; +1 bonus
• Sacrifice has 1-5HD or levels; +1 bonus

That's an easy +10 bonus on the Knowledge(Religion) check, plus you're going to have ranks in Knowledge (Religion), plus Int modifier, plus any other bonuses (Masterwork tool +2; any spells or magic items that can boost your skill check). Not hard at all to basically make the DC 30 for an Efreet automatic. Plus, let's be realistic - if you're willing to sacrifice one person, you're willing to sacrifice more than one person, so all you really need is a total net modifier on the Knowledge (Religion) check of +10 or better, and some commoners, to sacrifice enough of them until you succeed.
Getting a sufficiently high modifier so as to be able to succeed on the DC 30 Knowledge (Religion) check is quite doable at level 1.

Combined with sufficient torture - to produce Liquid Pain for more item creation XP ... yeah, Evil really does have its benefits in 3.x.

You would be unquestionably evil, so you probably want to avoid attention from adventurers and/or the forces of Good (and probably the forces of law and order, too). And really, you probably want to avoid the typical afterlife destinations of evil people.

Fortunately, these problems are solvable with more murder.
Or, if your initial murders get you an Efreet, you can start exploiting the various Wish-loops for the power to solve your problems instead. But still, leveling up quickly probably involves killing things.

Give a man a warhammer, and everything starts to look like a war.

I now have a saying for my next pacifist character.

If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
- Maxim 6
Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.
- Maxim 27

Alternatively:
Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. The competent turn to violence sooner.

Give a man Warhammer, and everything really is a war.

Give a man Warhammer 40k, and there is ONLY war.

Heh. Warhammer's a place where murder can solve most problems. And some botched attempted murders caused a whole lot more.

[Inevitability]

Anything can be accomplished with sufficient murder in 3.x.

Can I sig this?

Heh. Warhammer's a place where murder can solve most problems. And some botched attempted murders caused a whole lot more.

I'd sooner describe it as 'a place where the problems do not really have any solutions, but murder seems to be best at keeping stuff at least somewhat contained'.

[javcs]

Can I sig this?

Absolutely.

I'd sooner describe it as 'a place where the problems do not really have any solutions, but murder seems to be best at keeping stuff at least somewhat contained'.

Fair enough.
I think that it's a little bit like Star Wars/the Star Wars EU - you can (usually) fix an immediate problem, but the situation never changes, just the names and faces, and some of the details around the edges.
That is, the "solutions" are short term fixes - like putting a bandage on somebody who's missing most of their ribcage and lungs.

[Baby Gary]

anything can be accomplished with enough murder in 3.X

Can I sig pls? this is a great quote!

[TotallyNotEvil]

Fiend Folio sounds like a great step. The Demons/Devils are usually interesting, and it's an often cited book, for all it's old.

[Dusk Raven]

I think it's fairly clear that WotC's sense of playable balance is ... questionable at best. After all, they think the Yuan-ti Abomination is a character of ECL 16 (9RHD, +7 LA).

In fairness, I have to wonder if power creep messed up their estimations over time, and if a +7 LA would have been reasonable at the time it was published. But there's a good chance it was still faulty at the time.

Give a man a warhammer, and everything starts to look like a war.

A variation of a phrase that I first read in, of all things, a Dungeons and Dragons fanfic - "When you have a hammer, you tend to go looking for nails." Spoken about a famed dragonslayer (whom fans of old Mystara may recognize) giving advice to the party, who want to work things out peacefully with a dragon. So both versions apply, funny enough. But I digress...

[javcs]

In fairness, I have to wonder if power creep messed up their estimations over time, and if a +7 LA would have been reasonable at the time it was published. But there's a good chance it was still faulty at the time.

I refer you to a Core-only Druid 16.

[Inevitability]

In fairness, I have to wonder if power creep messed up their estimations over time, and if a +7 LA would have been reasonable at the time it was published. But there's a good chance it was still faulty at the time.

WotC's method for applying LA used to be (and arguably, always was) ignoring RHD altogether and adding at least one full point point of LA for every way in which the creature was stronger than a human (that is, a classless human, not a human of equal HD or something). Unless you think exchanging a full class level for DR 5/magic was ever worth it, LAs have always been broken.

[Inevitability]

Zombie

The book's final 'real' monster: it's only some animals and vermin from here on!

One could almost expect zombies to be semi-reasonable. After all, skeletons got +1 LA in a few select cases, and these guys are basically the same right?

Sadly, not only are zombies worse chassis-wise (ability penalty where skeletons don't get one, worse DR, worse bonus feat), they also have the horrible Single Actions Only trait (hope you didn't plan on casting spells and moving in one round, or making full attacks).

As if that's not enough punishment yet, zombies also lack a skeleton's potential to start without RHD. Zombies have double the RHD of the base creature, meaning their players will always start with at least two worthless undead hit dice.

Even with the mindlessness handwaved, I just can't assign anything other than -0 LA here. I'm sure people will agree.

[javcs]

Concur. Zombies are -0.

[Luccan]

Can I sig pls? this is a great quote!

Be my guest

[Nifft]

Concur. Zombies are -0.

Third'd.


-- -- --

For animals & vermin, perhaps we ought to examine their Awakened forms instead of their baseline?

[Inevitability]

For animals & vermin, perhaps we ought to examine their Awakened forms instead of their baseline?

Not so sure about that. It makes some pretty major assumptions about the way people are going to play the creatures, and for a not-inconsiderable number of builds Awakened isn't the best option to get an intelligence score on a critter (Fiendish and Celestial, for one, will probably be better in several situations).

[javcs]

Not so sure about that. It makes some pretty major assumptions about the way people are going to play the creatures, and for a not-inconsiderable number of builds Awakened isn't the best option to get an intelligence score on a critter (Fiendish and Celestial, for one, will probably be better in several situations).

Maybe do both? Or maybe we should treat Awaken as a template, and assign it an LA.

[Nifft]

Not so sure about that. It makes some pretty major assumptions about the way people are going to play the creatures, and for a not-inconsiderable number of builds Awakened isn't the best option to get an intelligence score on a critter (Fiendish and Celestial, for one, will probably be better in several situations).

Sure, that's also a good idea.

Bring their Int score up into the playable range, and let's price their abilities.

[tyckspoon]

WotC's method for applying LA used to be (and arguably, always was) ignoring RHD altogether and adding at least one full point point of LA for every way in which the creature was stronger than a human (that is, a classless human, not a human of equal HD or something). Unless you think exchanging a full class level for DR 5/magic was ever worth it, LAs have always been broken.

Yeah, the Savage Species advice for estimating LAs is kind of insane. Does it have any Natural Armor at all? LA! Greater than 5-foot reach? LA! Any form of Spell Resistance whatsoever? LA! Net positive Strength bonus? More LA! Small size? -LA, because the only thing that really matters is being a big dumb melee bruiser and Small things are worse at that. And then it tells you to completely ignore all of that and just set it to whatever makes it so that the LA assignment makes the monster look like a reasonable choice compared to an equal-level character... of course their opinion of 'reasonable choice' is a bit suspect, but the book has an example right there of them going 'yeah, this is clearly wrong, let's just eyeball it' on a sample LA.

[Boggartbae]

While it's always fun to find and animate monsters like Elephants and Hydras that can get around the staggered condition, I concur with LA -0

[javcs]

Yeah, the Savage Species advice for estimating LAs is kind of insane. Does it have any Natural Armor at all? LA! Greater than 5-foot reach? LA! Any form of Spell Resistance whatsoever? LA! Net positive Strength bonus? More LA! Small size? -LA, because the only thing that really matters is being a big dumb melee bruiser and Small things are worse at that. And then it tells you to completely ignore all of that and just set it to whatever makes it so that the LA assignment makes the monster look like a reasonable choice compared to an equal-level character... of course their opinion of 'reasonable choice' is a bit suspect, but the book has an example right there of them going 'yeah, this is clearly wrong, let's just eyeball it' on a sample LA.

Both Savage Species samples (Ogre and Kuo-toa) have their LA's knocked down from what the guidelines say.
Although, Savage Species also suggests considering knocking the LA down by 1 if the build is suboptimal for the monster (example given is Ettin wizard as opposed to Ettin barbarian).

It's +1 LA per 5ft of reach beyond 5ft.
Two or more racial bonus feats are also worth +1 LA.
Scent is worth +1 LA.


Also, racial spellcasting? Worth LA only if it is in excess of a spellcasting character of level equal to the monster's CR could do. If Caster Level is greater than RHD, +1 LA.



In the Savage Species Ogre example: Natural Armor +1 LA; 10ft reach +1 LA; Unbalanced Ability score adjustments (+10 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Con, -4 Int, -4 Cha) +1 LA.

An ogre's starting ECL calculates as 7 (4 HD +3 level adjustment) using the system above. His highest ability score is Strength. Would you rather play an ogre with a level of fighter (ECL 8), or an 8th-level fighter? To play the ogre, you give up the fighter's three (larger) Hit Dice, three bonus feats, and two ability score increases to gain +10 Strength, 10-foot reach, and natural armor. The fighter seems clearly better. If you substitute barbarian for fighter, the ogre seems clearly inferior, since the barbarian has 8d12 (plus Constitution modifier) for Hit Dice and can rage three times per day, and the ogre only has 4d8 + 1d12 (plus Constitution modifier) for Hit Dice and can rage only once per day. If you lower the ogre's level adjustment to +2, and compare a 7th-level fighter to an ECL 7 ogre fighter, the choice is no longer clearly in favor of either one. Thus, the level adjustment becomes +2 for the ogre.

As you can see, WotC calculated LA only by assessing the strengths of a monster, but not taking into account the weaknesses and other downsides inherent to that monster.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: Yrthak

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I thought Zombie would be next, but went to look it up just to make sure, and turns out there's a thing called a Yrthak which can fly but is blind. And shoots deadly sonic lasers that do super-weak damage.
I think I prefer the zombie.

I've said before (in another thread, I think) that one of the least weird monsters in the Monster Manual was inspired by the ravings of an actual crazy person.

Yrthak is -0 for sure. However, I have a backhanded sort of affection for it-stemming from my freshman year in high school when D&D Heroes came out on XBox. A massive Yrthak was one of the bosses, and was more satisfying than the mediocre fights against the Beholder and spell-less Red Dragon.

Just goes to show that good game design can make up for weak monster design.

Spoiler: What's Next

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What if we did some short books before jumping back into another huge manual? Why not look at the few monsters from the likes of Heroes of Horror or Lords of Madness? We can use it as an exercise to adjust to really weird things like Unholy Scion.

I approve of this idea. Though with the caveat that Inevitability look for books he enjoys before getting into the slog of another monster manual.
(Speaking of which...given how weird the MM2 is, and how Inevitability agrees it's kinda meh, could we consider skipping to MM3 for now?)

My vote is for Tome of Battle - it would be interesting to swing from the very first monsters published for 3.5 to some of the very last. It'll also be easy to compare them to both well-balanced classes (the three initiators) and to one another.

This sounds interesting, especially since I didn't know the ToB had monsters.

Maybe do both? Or maybe we should treat Awaken as a template, and assign it an LA.

I like the make-Awakened-a-template idea.

Spoiler: Other

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...on that note, I should probably see if anyone has come up with rules for essentially trading away racial hit dice.

If I were DMing and a player asked for this, my one-size-fits-all rule-of-thumb would be to trade away 2 HD for one LA...but one size doesn't fit all, so I expect other people have better solutions. Or at least reasons why my idea is stupid and I am stupid.

Ya know, for a game that traditionally judges actions from a more LG perspective, I've noticed there's a lot of "anything can be accomplished with enough murder" in 3.X

People don't change just because they're playing a game which is supposed to put you on the white side of black-and-white morality.

Plus, let's be realistic - if you're willing to sacrifice one person, you're willing to sacrifice more than one person, so all you really need is a total net modifier on the Knowledge (Religion) check of +10 or better, and some commoners, to sacrifice enough of them until you succeed.

"Dammit, this random guy keeps sending me souls and asking for efreet. Well...he's trying, and I gotta say, he's going all-out with these ceremonies. What the heck, I can spare a guy."

Also, racial spellcasting? Worth LA only if it is in excess of a spellcasting character of level equal to the monster's CR could do. If Caster Level is greater than RHD, +1 LA.

"Our playtest casters were pretty weaksauce. The druid was just throwing scimitars, for crying out loud! A few extra caster levels won't mess things up too badly."

[Thurbane]

MM2 would be interesting. We all know some of the monsters in there are really whacked in terms of CR, so it would be interesting to assign LAs.

[Mike Miller]

MM2 would be interesting. We all know some of the monsters in there are really whacked in terms of CR, so it would be interesting to assign LAs.

I like your thinking on the busted quality of the MM2

[Baby Gary]

"Dammit, this random guy keeps sending me souls and asking for efreet. Well...he's trying, and I gotta say, he's going all-out with these ceremonies. What the heck, I can spare a guy."

This is gold, from GreatWyrmGold. Get it? What was that about hating my jokes?

anyway can I sig this?

[Blue Jay]

MM2 would be interesting. We all know some of the monsters in there are really whacked in terms of CR, so it would be interesting to assign LAs.

I'm really fond of some of the MM2 monsters, so I'd really like to see that book done. Then again, doing a short book next also makes a lot of sense.

[GreatWyrmGold]

This is gold, from GreatWyrmGold. Get it? What was that about hating my jokes?
anyway can I sig this?

Yeah, go ahead.