The LA-assignment thread -0: Inevitably rejected: Redux

[Blue Jay]

...which is irrelevant, since the unicorn's ECL incorporates factors other than their pure beatstick potential (as should the destruchan's). The destruchan has at-will AoEs of an almost-never-resisted energy type and the ability to easily destroy most common materials, while the unicorn has a variety of immunities and SLAs (including a constant magic circle against evil).

I mostly agree with you. I was directly responding to an argument that bloated ability scores belied efforts to set an ECL, and the unicorn was just an example of when bloated ability scores do not pose a serious issue.

So, do people like 5 RHD for the destrachan? Liquidformat was originally comfortable leaving them at 8 RHD (thus, LA +0), but I think it should have at least some taken off.

Maybe we can just push forward and see if that helps us keep the project alive?

Digester

A few people have commented on how stupid this monster looks. Personally, I think it's kind of adorable: if I played one of these, I would use one of those old Nerds candy creature for the character portrait:

Spoiler: Nerd Digester

Show

I think 8 RHD is why too many for this.

• Medium aberration
• +6 Str, +4 Dex, +6 Con, +2 Wis and animal-level Int
• +5 natural armor
• 60-ft speed
• one claw (1d8)
• Acid Spray (20-ft cone) 4d8 acid (Ref halves)
• Acid Stream (single-target, 5-ft range) 8d8 acid (Ref halves)
• Skills: Hide (+4 racial), Jump (+4 racial), Listen, Spot
• Miscellaneous: Scent, Immunity to acid

I'm thinking that that all might be worth 4 RHD. I don't like the 8d8 damage at 4th level, but that alone isn't a serious objection. The one claw is kind of annoying: why not let it have a sort of Leap thing ability, like the bulette gets, so it can jump and full attack?

Weapons for this are kind of not good. The acid attacks are okay, but one-dimensional. And it has no arms to wield weapons, and presumably no arms, hands or ring slots (that's probably negotiable, though). It could be hilarious fun if it could wield a manufactured weapon with its foot. Certainly a boot blade from Complete Scoundrel should work, but the natural claw actually does quite good damage for a Medium-size natural attack.

So, does anyone else vote different from 4 RHD for the Digester?

[GreatWyrmGold]

8d8 damage, Reflex half, is really good for 4th level (even at melee range). The acid cone is pretty good, too; it's basically a souped-up (in every regard) burning hands. And it's usable every 1d4 rounds, rather than having limited uses like a spell.

The acid is awesome, but it doesn't have anything else; its only other innate ability is the rough equivalent of having both your hands tied to a longsword. This causes two big problems. First, the digester only gets to use its acid attacks once every couple of rounds; it's likely spending 60% of rounds making one claw attack. Second...8d6 damage to one target isn't always going to be impressive. I'd peg 5th level (where wizards can deal 5d6 damage to everything in a wide radius) to be the first great blow to the acid's impressiveness, and it's definitely obsolete by 7th (where a warlock can use unaugmented eldritch blasts to deal half as much damage as the acid, more than twice as often and at range). If the damage scaled or there was some class that let them improve it, it would have some staying power; as it is, it doesn't even qualify for metabreath feats. You basically need to start over from scratch; the digester has a decent chassis, but it's nothing incredible (especially since it's all but guaranteed to get one skill point per level).

A digester would make a good addition to a 5th-level party; its primary ability isn't quite up to par with 3rd-level spells, but it's much more spammable. But it would rapidly fall behind even unoptimized mid-tier characters, aside from its stunning lack of versatility, so 4 HD sounds good to me. (3 HD is too low; dealing an average of 14 damage to an adjacent creature who makes their save is a bit much for a level when bruisers have 30-50 HP and probably won't make the save.)

[Lans]

I'm thinking that that all might be worth 4 RHD. I don't like the 8d8 damage at 4th level, but that alone isn't a serious objection. The one claw is kind of annoying: why not let it have a sort of Leap thing ability, like the bulette gets, so it can jump and full attack?

I assume that it will have at least 1 class level. So if it was 3HD then it would start at 4th level and the stream Would be comparable to A whirling frenzy barbarian or Imp trip+knockdown.

[Blue Jay]

8d8 damage, Reflex half, is really good for 4th level (even at melee range). The acid cone is pretty good, too; it's basically a souped-up (in every regard) burning hands. And it's usable every 1d4 rounds, rather than having limited uses like a spell.

Yeah, the acid is the only thing the digester has going for it, but it's just so one-dimensional, and isn't even a breath weapon. The high speed is kind of nice too, but speed doesn't seem to be something people invest too heavily in.

If the damage scaled or there was some class that let them improve it, it would have some staying power...

You mean something like this?

A digester would make a good addition to a 5th-level party; its primary ability isn't quite up to par with 3rd-level spells, but it's much more spammable. But it would rapidly fall behind even unoptimized mid-tier characters, aside from its stunning lack of versatility, so 4 HD sounds good to me. (3 HD is too low; dealing an average of 14 damage to an adjacent creature who makes their save is a bit much for a level when bruisers have 30-50 HP and probably won't make the save.)

Okay, 2 votes for 4 RHD.

I assume that it will have at least 1 class level. So if it was 3HD then it would start at 4th level and the stream Would be comparable to A whirling frenzy barbarian or Imp trip+knockdown.

Why assume 1 class level? You can play it without class levels, just having its racial HD as "levels"?

[Lans]

Yeah, the acid is the only thing the digester has going for it, but it's just so one-dimensional, and isn't even a breath weapon. The high speed is kind of nice too, but speed doesn't seem to be something people invest too heavily in.





Okay, 2 votes for 4 RHD.



Why assume 1 class level? You can play it without class levels, just having its racial HD as "levels"?

For a couple of reasons, even if it starts with 0 class levels it will eventually gain levels and should spend more time in with at least 1 class level. So I'm willing to let a bit of imbalance slide for a level. 2 It gives direction for growth, and alleviates front loadedness of classes.

[OgresAreCute]

For a couple of reasons, even if it starts with 0 class levels it will eventually gain levels and should spend more time in with at least 1 class level. So I'm willing to let a bit of imbalance slide for a level. 2 It gives direction for growth, and alleviates front loadedness of classes.

The front-loadedness is important, especially for martials. A level 4 orc barbarian has comparable strength to an ogre with 4 HD, but the ogre pulls ahead immediately if it's a level 5 orc barbarian vs a level 1 ogre barbarian.

[Blue Jay]

For a couple of reasons, even if it starts with 0 class levels it will eventually gain levels and should spend more time in with at least 1 class level. So I'm willing to let a bit of imbalance slide for a level.

I'm rather unenthusiastic about making future build assumptions, so I'd want to see a really substantial benefit to this before I'm willing to consider it; and I just don't see the benefit.

2 It gives direction for growth, and alleviates front loadedness of classes.

I'm not sure I see how this actually addresses front-loadedness. The front-loading issue comes up regardless of whether we decide on 3 RHD or 4 RHD; so ultimately, the only comparison that really matters is the comparison between 3 RHD and 4 RHD. And as long as your assumptions are the same for the two different RHD values, it doesn't really matter what character build you construct around them: you could use any build you want, as long as the builds you use for 3 RHD and 4 RHD are equivalent. So it seems like adding class levels is only making the comparison more complicated without actually accomplishing anything.

The front-loadedness is important, especially for martials. A level 4 orc barbarian has comparable strength to an ogre with 4 HD, but the ogre pulls ahead immediately if it's a level 5 orc barbarian vs a level 1 ogre barbarian.

Front-loadedness is only important if you assume nobody except the ogre will multiclass. The best way to address front-loadedness is to remove it from the equation entirely. You can do that by comparing "ogre 4 / barbarian 1" with various other "X 4 / barbarian 1" builds. When you approach it from that way, it's easy to see how ignoring class levels altogether makes sense, because if I'm comparing "ogre 4 / barbarian 1" with "orc warblade 4 / barbarian 1," I could achieve the same result by just comparing "ogre 4" with "orc warblade 4."

[GreatWyrmGold]

You mean something like this?

Yeah, I guess. I've seen it before, but it doesn't have any relevance to this thread (unless you're just trying to advertise your homebrew).

I'm not sure I see how this actually addresses front-loadedness. The front-loading issue comes up regardless of whether we decide on 3 RHD or 4 RHD; so ultimately, the only comparison that really matters is the comparison between 3 RHD and 4 RHD. And as long as your assumptions are the same for the two different RHD values, it doesn't really matter what character build you construct around them: you could use any build you want, as long as the builds you use for 3 RHD and 4 RHD are equivalent. So it seems like adding class levels is only making the comparison more complicated without actually accomplishing anything.



Front-loadedness is only important if you assume nobody except the ogre will multiclass. The best way to address front-loadedness is to remove it from the equation entirely. You can do that by comparing "ogre 4 / barbarian 1" with various other "X 4 / barbarian 1" builds. When you approach it from that way, it's easy to see how ignoring class levels altogether makes sense, because if I'm comparing "ogre 4 / barbarian 1" with "orc warblade 4 / barbarian 1," I could achieve the same result by just comparing "ogre 4" with "orc warblade 4."

I don't think your stance is completely invalid, but I think it's less valid than the others'. A character with some class levels getting a new class doesn't increase in power as much as a character with no class levels getting their first class level. There's not a ton of overlap between Barb1 and Warb4, but there's more there than between Barb1 and Ogre4.

[Blue Jay]

Yeah, I guess. I've seen it before, but it doesn't have any relevance to this thread (unless you're just trying to advertise your homebrew).

Well, when you're the guy who tried to make the homebrew that does X, you can't help but link when somebody mentions X.

I don't think your stance is completely invalid, but I think it's less valid than the others'. A character with some class levels getting a new class doesn't increase in power as much as a character with no class levels getting their first class level. There's not a ton of overlap between Barb1 and Warb4, but there's more there than between Barb1 and Ogre4.

Hm... I understand what you're saying, but it feels uncomfortably like a lack of faith in the Reassignment project. If one class level always boosts an ogre more than it boosts non-monster characters of equivalent level, then the only possible conclusion is that the ogre is consistently at a major deficit relative to 4 levels in any class. And that can only mean that 4 ogre hit dice are not equal to 4 class levels.

[Blue Jay]

Digester

Okay, it sounds like 2 votes for 4 RHD, 1 for 3 RHD. Does Ogres want to put in a vote, too?

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Do y'all mind if I continue leading this thread? I guess martixy isn't going to keep it going, so maybe I'll just continue it from here. I suppose it would be better if I started a new thread, so I can keep a running index. I also worry that I'm not the best choice for a project leader, because I'm stubborn and not very dynamic.

Dinosaurs

I'll go ahead and express my thoughts on all of these, and if the thread participants elect a different leader, you can just take over here. The primary issue with most of these monsters is the hit-die bloat, but it's complicated a bit by having things like Huge size, which is something I'm not comfortable giving at low ECL. I think what I'll do is just start by lowering HD to match the listed CR, and use that as my starting point.

Elasmosaur
Swim speed, average Bite attack, low natural armor, big Str and Con, and that's it. Plus, it's an aquatic creature without the Aquatic subtype or even Hold Breath. At least it can function out of the water with a 20-foot land speed. In my mind, it's sort of like a one-headed hydra with no Fast Healing. That doesn't seem entirely consistent with the actual Elasmosaurus: if I had been trying to build the real ancient reptile (not actually a dinosaur), I would have given it an unusually long reach as the first priority; but that's neither here nor there.

How does the elasmosaur work at 7 RHD? That ability-score boosts are pretty good there, and Huge size is nice; but it still kind of sucks. Maybe 5 HD for Elasmosaur is better?

Megaraptor
A big deinonychus with CR 6, so let's use 6 RHD as the starting point. Does it work at 6 RHD? The Project thought the deinonychus was balanced at 4 RHD, so do we think the +2 Str, +2 Con, +2 Wis and Large size are worth another 2 HD? I kind of think it does, though it is on the low side.

Oddly, on the Weapon Size chart, the deinonychus' 2d4 bite attack should have sized up to 2d6; but the megaraptor's bite is actually 1d8; not exactly a downgrade, but at best it's a "sidegrade."

So, I think I'll propose 6 RHD for the Megaraptor.

Triceratops
My favorite dinosaur. Huge again, about +30 on stats (before accounting for the Int penalty), with one average natural weapon, surprisingly below-standard natural armor, Powerful Charge (which isn't explicitly stated as double damage, but I think it's safe to assume), and Trample with a non-standard damage formula.

So, starting at HD = CR = 9, is the triceratops worth 9 RHD? I would probably be happy to play it at 9 RHD, but that's likely mainly because "favorite dinosaur." It could obviously make a good uber-charger with a few class levels; but it really can't do much else. I'd personally probably want to play it as a defensive character like a Knight or Devoted Defender, and I would have built in some kind of Defensive Stance ability; but general consensus is that that type of character isn't very optimal. I think I could rationalize dropping it to 7 RHD for the Triceratops (same ECL as a 5-headed hydra), but it feels a bit self-serving.

Tyrannosaurus
Every else's favorite dinosaur. WotC apparently bought into the "hunter" side of the debate and rejected the "scavenger" side: it's got a nice, big bite attack with Improved Grab and Swallow Whole, disappointingly low natural armor, a bit of a speed boost, +34 on ability scores (before Int penalty), and... I guess that's all. On the whole, I'd say it's pretty much on par with triceratops, though its abilities are disappointingly not very well suited to a one-on-one battle with a triceratops (which would actually be a depressingly dull fight with D&D mechanics, anyway).

CR 8, so is 8 RHD a good fit for the Tyrannosaurus? Maybe I'll just vote for 7 RHD for the Tyrannosaurus, so triceratops and tyrannosaur can be on the same level.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Well, when you're the guy who tried to make the homebrew that does X, you can't help but link when somebody mentions X.

Fair enough.

Hm... I understand what you're saying, but it feels uncomfortably like a lack of faith in the Reassignment project. If one class level always boosts an ogre more than it boosts non-monster characters of equivalent level, then the only possible conclusion is that the ogre is consistently at a major deficit relative to 4 levels in any class. And that can only mean that 4 ogre hit dice are not equal to 4 class levels.

If, for the sake of argument, an Ogre 4/Barb X is approximately equivalent to a Barb (X+4) for all valid values of X except 0, I find it hard to argue that four ogre hit dice (plus ogre racial features) should not be treated as roughly equivalent to four class levels. Sure, an Ogre 4 might be more akin to a Barbarian 3, but is balancing that one level really worth unbalancing the other 16?
I'm not looking at this as a question of whether a straight monster would be balanced against a character of equal ECL at that level alone; I'm looking at this as a question of whether a monster PC in general would be balanced against characters of equal ECL. And yeah, power curves are erratic things (especially with classes as frontloaded as they are in 3.5), but we can't solve that by ignoring level-ups.

The frontloaded nature of classes in D&D does give us a slightly better bad solution. Monster M/Wtvr 1 vs. Wtvr M+1 seems like the best quick-and-dirty comparison, because you're comparing a monster with most of the core features of whatever class they're progressing in (albeit at smaller numbers) versus what someone in that class could become by staying in the class.
Of course, this does presuppose a low-optimization environment, but defining level adjustment for a high-op environment is nigh impossible. I don't want to get bogged down in this particular patch of weeds, so I'll just list the three big problems that come to mind first: It's harder to define "high optimization" than "low optimization" (the optimization floor is more solid than the ceiling); higher levels of optimization lead to increasing ease of simply breaking the game (which no prebuilt set of stats and abilities is going to do, short of limitless spawn or wish SLAs or a sarukh or something); and how D&D's fragile sense of balance is broken over its knee at even the near end of high-op character creation (because spellcasters gain more from optimization than martial characters).

I would also like to note that, as a rule, the inflexible nature of high-ECL monsters (you can't choose to stop taking a "monster class" halfway through and pick up some factorum levels, whether the monster class is figurative or literal, and with few exceptions you don't get to customize their monstrous abilities) makes them much harder to optimize than low-ECL monsters, which are harder to optimize than standard-level races. The higher up the optimization tree you go, the worse monster PCs will look by comparison.

Do y'all mind if I continue leading this thread?

As long as martixy doesn't object.

I'll go ahead and express my thoughts on all of these [dinosaurs]...

The only way to balance pure beatsticks like most animals is to compare their numbers to that of martial characters, because numbers are basically all they have. (Then maybe knock off a level or two, because martial classes give PCs a little more than raw numbers.) But those numbers change a lot when you remove as many HD as you need to make big beatsticks viable, and...well, I'm just not motivated enough to do that for this project.

[Blue Jay]

I'm not looking at this as a question of whether a straight monster would be balanced against a character of equal ECL at that level alone; I'm looking at this as a question of whether a monster PC in general would be balanced against characters of equal ECL. And yeah, power curves are erratic things (especially with classes as frontloaded as they are in 3.5), but we can't solve that by ignoring level-ups.

I think I've lost track of your argument here. I don't think comparing to a straight-class progression is a good way to evaluate the monster hit dice across the entire 20-level progression. See, to me, the idea is to evaluate the monster as a component of a build, not as an entire build. So, think of ogre as a 4-level dip. Surely it makes the most sense to compare it to other 4-level dips, doesn't it? That way, you're comparing apples to apples, rather than comparing a 4-level class with a 20-level class.

See, I would argue that using the quick-and-dirty comparison you're advocating is precisely what creates the front-loading issue. Ogre itself is front-loaded in a sense, because it gives all of its abilities in the first 4 levels, and then gives nothing after 4th level. So, when you compare "monster+1" to a single-class reference build, you're effectively mandating that there's a front-loading issue, because the monster progression will always have two sets of front-loaded abilities, while your reference build will have only one.

It's perhaps easier to see that with a monster that advances by racial hit dice, like the digester. The stat block allows for a digester to have as many as 24 racial hit dice, so you could hypothetically single-class digester all the way into epic. But, you've acquired all the best bits of the digester "class" by 8th level, and the other 16 levels give nothing except growth to Large size. Now, on this thread, we're saying that the stuff you get in those first 8 RHD of digester is actually only worth something like 3 or 4 RHD, which means you're only getting noteworthy abilities in the first 15-20% of the class, and the rest is basically dead levels.

So, if your reference point is Barbarian 20 or Dragonfire Adept 20 or Warblade 20, then an apples-to-apples comparison would be Digester 20. Digester 4 / XXX 16 is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

The only way to balance pure beatsticks like most animals is to compare their numbers to that of martial characters, because numbers are basically all they have. (Then maybe knock off a level or two, because martial classes give PCs a little more than raw numbers.) But those numbers change a lot when you remove as many HD as you need to make big beatsticks viable, and...well, I'm just not motivated enough to do that for this project.

Yeah, I suppose you're right. Groan!

So you're saying I should find the levels of triceratops and fighter that have equivalent numbers, then knock a few levels off of triceratops to account for the feats, proficiencies and skill points? I'm kind of stuck at home babysittting the kids today, and I'm bored, so maybe I'll give it a try in a little bit.

[Blue Jay]

Well, as predicted, I was incredibly bored today, and number-crunching actually sounded king of interesting. So I did some comparisons between triceratops and a vanilla half-orc fighter. Both were built with the same 32-point buy (18-10-16-10-10-8), similar gear purchases and basic attack-boosting feats (Power Attack and Powerful Charge). The half-orc had a greatsword and full-plate, and used its fighter feats on Weapon Focus line of feats, along with Leap Attack, Greater Powerful Charge, Improved Critical and Shock Trooper; while the triceratops had a necklace of natural weapons and full-plate barding. The extra cost of the triceratops' barding and the cost of an awaken spell meant that the half-orc could get a +2 equivalent on its sword by 8th level, so I added keen.

Here's a quick summary:

Spoiler: 7th Level

Show

Triceratops
AC 27, 99 hp
Str 41 (18 point-buy, +20 racial, +1 4th level, +2 enhancement)
Con 30 (16 point-buy, +14 racial)
+1 gore +19 melee (3d8+23) -> +15 Str, +7 "two-handed", +1 enhancement
DPR: 36.4 (95% hit chance vs AC 18, 5% crit chance)

Charging, PA +5/-10 (85% hit chance)
DPR: 68.3 (double base damage, +10 PA, +10.5 Powerful Charge)

Half-Orc
AC 19, 64 hp
Str 23 (18 point-buy, +2 racial, +1 4th level, +2 enhancement)
Con 16 (16 point-buy)
+1 greatsword +17 melee (2d6+12) -> +6 Str, +3 two-handed, +2 Wpn Spec, +1 enhancement
DPR: 35.5 (95% hit chance vs AC 18, 75% on 2nd iterative, 10% crit chance)

Charging, PA +5/-10 (Shock Trooper -> 95%/75% hit chance)
DPR: 69.7 (+10 PA, +10 Leap, +3.5 Powerful Charge on 1st iterative)

Spoiler: 9th Level

Show

Triceratops
AC 27, 128 hp
Str 44 (18 point-buy, +20 racial, +2 levels, +4 enhancement)
Con 30 (16 point-buy, +14 racial)
+1 gore +23 melee (3d8+26) -> +17 Str, +8 "two-handed", +1 enhancement
DPR: 39.4 (95% hit chance vs AC 21, 5% crit chance)

Charging, PA +5/-10 (90% hit chance)
DPR: 75.3 (double base damage, +10 PA, +10.5 Powerful Charge)

Half-Orc
AC 19, 90 hp
Str 26 (18 point-buy, +2 racial, +2 levels, +4 enhancement)
Con 18 (16 point-buy, +2 enhancement)
+1 greatsword +19 melee (2d6+15) -> +8 Str, +4 two-handed, +2 Wpn Spec, +1 enhancement
DPR: 43.6 (95% hit chance vs AC 18, 70% on 2nd iterative, 20% crit chance)

Charging, PA +5/-10 (Shock Trooper -> 95%/70% hit chance)
DPR: 76.3 (+10 PA, +10 Leap, +7 Powerful Charge on 1st iterative)

The triceratops clearly has better defenses, with AC 27, A Con mod of +10, and a Good Fort & Ref, and it looks like the vanilla damage output lines up pretty well at either 7th or 9th level. With the added benefits of size and reach, and recognizing that I covertly assumed the half-orc has Pounce, the triceratops seems like a clear winner here.

Of course, the straight-class character has 9 levels of added build freedom relative to the triceratops, so he could have optimized to a much higher degree than this, while the triceratops doesn't have as much room to grow from here.

Triceratops is obviously a good premade charger and meatshield that you can make potent with minimal optimization, but there's not much else you can do with it. After this evaluation, I think maybe I will stick with 7 RHD for triceratops. That damage output is higher than I personally prefer to see at this level, but a Whirling Frenzy barbarian could outdo it, and a multiclassed character or initiator would be more versatile.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I am suggesting evaluating the ogre as part of a build...in an ideal world. Ideally, we'd be able to evaluate how the ogre fits into multiple builds, from straight-class barbarian to an optimized damage-dealer, and see how the ogre compares to a normal race at each level.
But you can't do that, can you? You need to pick a single comparison point, ideally one near the lowest possible level you could play the monster at (because most games don't reach 20th level, or anywhere near it). I suggest monster+1 as a good approximation for comparison, in part because the difference between a Mstr X getting its first level of Barbarian and a Barb X getting its X+1st level is much larger than a Mstr X/Barb 1 getting its second level of barbarian and a Barb X+1 getting its X+2nd level of Barbarian.

I also acknowledged that this presupposes a low optimization level, because it's an attempt to quickly compare a Mstr X/Barb Y to a Barb X+Y, even though straight-class anything is very low-optimization. I then defended my choice to focus on that over, say, the higher-optimization Warb X/Barb Y by pointing out the difficulties involved in evaluating how well monsters would do at higher-optimization tables (and that balance isn't really a thing at that point).


Also, I'm not suggesting that you have to go through the rigamarole of recalculating stats to evaluate the dinosaurs, I'm just saying I wouldn't want to evaluate unless I did so. So I'm not going to evaluate the dinosaurs, so I'm not going to complain about your evaluations.

[Lans]

I think part of the problem is comparatively unbalanced choices available to classes. Barbarian 1 can give pounce and whirling frenzy which are about as good as the next 19 levels of barbarian. Warblade gets a third level manuever that if it was 9th I don't think any body would consider under powered.

[Blue Jay]

I am suggesting evaluating the ogre as part of a build...in an ideal world. Ideally, we'd be able to evaluate how the ogre fits into multiple builds, from straight-class barbarian to an optimized damage-dealer, and see how the ogre compares to a normal race at each level.

But you can't do that, can you? You need to pick a single comparison point, ideally one near the lowest possible level you could play the monster at (because most games don't reach 20th level, or anywhere near it).

Okay, the difference between our methods isn't that you've picked a single comparison point, and I haven't. I have picked a single comparison point. My comparison point is 0 class levels on the monster side: Monster X vs Class X. I believe that this comparison point is the best comparison point because it doesn't shoehorn either the monster or the reference build into any particular future progression, and it does a better job of controlling for extraneous variables that can potentially confound the analysis, such as build complexity.

Lans' method is basically comparing a multiclass character (Monster X / Class 1) to a single-class character (Class X+1). So it's increasing the complexity of the comparison: anytime you see a difference between the two characters, the root cause of that difference may be because of the abilities of the Monster or the Class, or it may be because of multiclassing itself. Multiclassing itself exacerbates front-loadedness, so in trying to control for front-loading, Lans has actually created the frontloading issue.

With my method, you don't introduce any extraneous variables that confound your analysis, and you don't make extra work for yourself by adding additional build components. You're just comparing a monster straight-up with an ostensibly equivalent options. For example, ogre hit dice fill a similar role in a build to fighter levels or barbarian levels, so you can simply pick any martial build you want, and decide whether that build benefits more from 4 levels of ogre or 4 levels of fighter. The best reference build is usually the simplest, so why not use 0 other levels?

Also, I'm not suggesting that you have to go through the rigamarole of recalculating stats to evaluate the dinosaurs, I'm just saying I wouldn't want to evaluate unless I did so. So I'm not going to evaluate the dinosaurs, so I'm not going to complain about your evaluations.

I know. I just had the time and enough interest in fiddling with numbers to do it anyway.

[GreatWyrmGold]

You don't add any irrelevant variables to the comparison, but you also leave out relevant variables. The simplest method isn't always the best.

[Blue Jay]

Okay, I've just realized that the debate I'm perpetuating here isn't that important, so I'm just going to drop it. I'm sorry for the attempted "thought control."

The project will likely benefit from different posters approaching the ratings from different perspectives; so everyone should feel free to "vote their conscience" on these things, and not have to subscribe to a specific methodology. Inevitability has done an incredible job of facilitating that kind of discussion, and I think that's why the Reassignment project has been so fruitful: I have a lot to learn about how to do that right, but until someone better than me steps up, I'll take it on myself to continue the ratings in a new thread, so I can maintain an archive/index in the opening post.