Literal LA buyoff, Level Adjustment as a function of wealth by level?

[Jervis]

This should maybe go in homebrew discussion but this is more a discussion than me being willing to post a doc with rules. Basically this is a idea i had while reading through necropolitan rules and how that does a effective LA 0 template. So this is my proposal, LA can be reduced via rituals that cost gold basically paying off the boosted stats and racial features with lowered WBL. Your XP total would either be reduced or capped in such a way that you cant gain a level during the ritual And you have to have a minimum level to do the ritual though assuming average WBL you wont be able to afford them easily at low levels.

Here's my primary proposal for them. These rituals reduce your LA by one, they overlap and don't stack but doing a lower level ritual reduces the cost of the higher level ones by the same cost. I'm mostly just asking for advice on if this is a good idea for a possible upcoming home game or something that should be shelved.

Ritual of Lessened Legacy
You or a spellcaster preforms a ritual to shift the nature of your for to allow you to learn like those less powerful than you. These rituals require that the practitioner be able to cast any of the following spells Alter Self, Polymorph, Baleful Polymorph, Polymorph any Object, or Draconic Polymorph and require the caster and recipient, or just the caster if they are preforming the ritual on themselves, to spend one day per 1000 GP of the cost of the ritual immobile as the ritual is preformed. The recipient must also have a number of non-racial hit dice determined by the ritual's level.

Ritual of Lessened Legacy I: Reduces the recipient's Level Adjustment by 1. Caster Level 5th, Hit Die minimum 3, 2,000 GP cost, 1500 XP

Ritual of Lessened Legacy II: Reduces the recipient's Level Adjustment by 2. Caster Level 9th, Hit Die minimum 6, 6,000 GP cost, 3000 XP

Ritual of Lessened Legacy III: Reduces the recipient's Level Adjustment by 3. Caster Level 11th, Hit Die minimum 9, 15,000 GP cost, 6000 XP

[Saintheart]

If you don't like level adjustment then just allow the players flat-out LA buyoff before the game starts, or deal with it between sessions when the player's accumulated enough wealth to meet your requirements for buying it off. If you make it a ritual within the game like this then your session will grind to a halt halfway through when the players find a sufficiently high level caster and then have to basically redo their entire character sheet.

If you want to make it WBL I'd also contemplate higher prices than this. For 2,000 gp any goon can go and buy a +1 weapon. I can think of a number of races I'd sure like to forego a +1 weapon in place of getting to play it without penalties.

[Yogibear41]

Our DM lets us use to wish to get rid of LA. Bought a Wish ring with 1 charge with WBL on a new character joining a mid level game and wished away a +4 LA (the template I have probably isn't worth that much, but it fits the story) Because of how we handle a few things I still started 2 levels behind everyone else, but better 2 levels with no LA so I gain more xp then 4 levels behind. Although after years of playing in his game, I am only the 2nd person (to my knowledge who has ever done this) we generally start at 1st level or if the group is already at higher level (which was the case here) we come it at that level with WBL.


I also think if you are using the standard buy off rules, +1 and +2 LAs are generally pretty reasonable if you get some bang for your buck. LA +3 is manageable, and +4 is where it becomes unusable (under normal conditions)

I think +2 is the sweet spot for me (assuming you are getting +2 worth of good stuff)