Playing Powerful Races
(and Templates)

It is a fact that some races are more powerful than others. From a purely narrative aspect this has be the case. As a GM you want your giants to be unbelievably strong, or your dragons to completely overwhelm all before them. The trouble begins when players want these races as PCs. What is a GM to do when faced with a party of six gnomes and a storm giant?

Obviously it is entirely up to the GM what races he allows in his campaign. In the Iourn campaign I don't even allow elves, and they're as bog-standard a D&D race as they come. This section assumes that an incautious GM has thrown the doors open to any race or template, and tries to come up with a way of coping with such insanity.

If these more powerful races are going to be available to players then steps must be taken to balance them with the rest of the party. On the whole I am not a fan of so-called 'game balance', but even I see that there must be parity between the power levels of player characters in the same party. Without parity the player with the most powerful character would completely eclipse the others - the party of five fourth level characters spend two hours planning how they are going to bargain with the sea devils for the golden chalice, not realising their dragon turtle chum, Spanky, has already devasted the sea devil kingdom and eaten the royal family…..

The standard D&D 3.5 rules go to great lengths to address the inequality of PC races and templates. The infamous Equivalent Character Level (ECL) that is assigned to every vaguely playable race and template works well to address these problems. However, for my purposes, it does not work well enough. This section presents new House Rules that replace the ECL. How? Why? Read on.

The Equivalent Character Level

These are the rules presented by Wizards of the Coast. It is important to underline that I do not use these rules. However, I am including them here for the sake of completeness and so that everyone knows where they stand.

The Equivalent Character Level (or ECL) is a figure that is supposed to reflect the equivalent power of a given race when compared to a character of one of the standard races. The ECL is made up of two components. The first is the racial hit dice (HD) of the creature as laid down in the Monster Manual. The second is the Level Adjustment. This figure is derived through a complicated formula (which I won't go into here) and guesswork.

This is easier to explain with an example: so let's take the Minotaur. The minotaur is a 6 HD monster. Each of those six hit dice has given the minotaur feats, skills and certain abilities just as six levels in a character class would have done the same for a standard race. However, the minotaur is more powerful than a standard race so he is given a Level Adjustment of +2 for a total ECL of 8.

The ECL of 8 means that the minotaur is considered about as powerful as one of the standard races who has reached 8th level. An 8th level human fighter and a minotaur are pretty much on a par. So if one of your PCs wanted to play a minotaur then the rest of the party would have to be eighth level to stop the minotaur PC overshadowing them.

As a note, even though the minotaur has only 6 HD he would need to earn experience points for 9th level before he gained a level. However, his feats and skills would be calculated at his actual hit dice. Does this already begin to sound complicated to you? It certainly does to me. Read on and follow my train of thought.

A Note on Templates

Templates use exactly the same mechanic as above except that templates never have a HD component to their ECL. Almost every template carries a level adjustment. Therefore a standard race (e.g. human) with a template (e.g. vampire) will have an ECL equal to their class level plus their level adjustment.

A Note on Challenge Ratings

It has been said again and again in various D&D books but it bears repeating here: the Challenge Rating (CR) that is used to calculate experience points for adventurers has nothing whatsoever to do with the ECL. The ECL is a means to judge a race or template's power level as a PC. Whether you use the system as published in the books, or the system that I use, the whole CR mechanic is unaffected. Of course, I don't use CRs either, as can be evidenced by the section on Experience Awards.

Why Change the ECL?

There are several reasons why I decided to change this aspect of the system. Mainly I changed it because level adjustments impose a proportional cost on certain races and templates - a cost that increases as the character advances in level. I do no believe that a proportional cost is appropriate.

Savage Species states that the importance of level adjustments diminishes the higher in level the PC is. What might have merited a +1 level adjustment at second level, is irrelevent when you compare the power level of PCs at eleventh level. To put it another way, a first level vampire might be the equal of a sixth level character, but a fifteenth level vampire is certainly not the equal of a twentieth level character.

By giving races and templates a fixed cost (experience points) the problem of the sliding scale is overcome. Under the new system the vampire template costs 15,000 XP. There would still be a five level gap at first level as suggested by the level adjustment, but by the time the character reaches twentieth level the gap has closed almost completely. This is wholly appropriate. In the face of the abilities a twentieth level character can throw around the powers of a vampire, although helpful, are little more than a drop in the ocean.

Remember, I run a game that uses spell points and allows players to buy extra feats for their character. Those changes make PCs more powerful and more versatile. It is very much in the light of those changes I speak of the irrelevance of a vampire's powers by level twenty. As I said, this system is not for every campaign.

The secondary consideration for changing the rules is the rate at which characters advance in my games. I do not give away experience points very quickly. While I think the game benefits from this, it also means that acquiring templates or exotic races is largely beyond the means of the average PC. The new rules address that.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I think the new system is simpler. Under the house rules a character level really is a character level. There is no confusion as to what level a character is, how many feats they have, what the maximum skill ranks are or when characters qualify for epic feats.

So enough of the build up. I can tell you want to know what these rules actually are. Here we go:

House Rules: The XP Cost

A brief outline of the new system is as follows. Rather than add a level adjustment to the character level, powerful races and templates now have a XP cost that must be paid to select them. This is consistant with the rules for burning XP to make magical items, or buying additional feats with XP. There are various options as to how this XP is paid which makes the system extremely flexible. In the final analysis it is easier to play a powerful race, especially at higher levels. Allow me to break the system down step by step:

Step One: Hit Dice

The hit dice of a monster are directly equivalent to character levels. A 6 HD minotaur and a 6th level human ranger have the same experience points. They are both sixth level characters. They would both need to earn a total of 28,000 XP for the next level. The minotaur would become a Minotaur 6/Ranger 1 and the human ranger would be a Ranger 7.

Think of the HD of a monster as a Racial Character Class (see below). It works in exactly the same way as any other core character class except that (for the most part) it must be selected from first level. "Wait!" you say, "Does this mean I can multiclass? Could I be a Minotaur 1/Ranger 6 instead of a Minotaur 6/Ranger 1?" The answer is yes, but you are getting ahead of yourself. Let's take this one step at a time.

First there is an exception to deal with. If the monster has 1 HD or less then it does not have a Racial Character Class. The racial hit dice disappears and is replaced by the first level of a standard character class. This is what happens to all common the races presented for play in the PHB.

So, our 6 HD minotaur is sixth level. It gains 6d8 hit points, three feats, the appropriate skill points, a single +1 to apply to any one attribute and all the other benefits that one would expect from a sixth level character. Full statistics are shown here, but I'm being brief to keep the impetus going.

Step Two: The Level Adjustment

The 6 HD minotaur is indeed sixth level, but it is not equal in power to a 6th level ranger because it had a +2 level adjustment. We need to convert that level adjustment into an XP Cost for the shiny new system. Doing this is very easy.

Take a first level character (any will do) and apply the monster's level adjustment. Now see what level that first level character would be. The experience points required for that level is the XP Cost we are looking for. A first level character modified by the minotaur's level adjustment (+2) is a third level character. You need 3000 XP to be a third level character.

The minotaur's XP cost is 3000 XP.

Some monsters do not have level adjustments. Often this is because if the HD + level adjustment creates an ECL of greater than 20, the published rules consider it too powerful as a PC race. I take a more lenient view and I'll happily look to create a level adjustment (and therefore an XP cost) for any race. As a rule of thumb the level adjustment is going to be somewhere between +1 and +10. Inevitably the decision is a subjective one.

Step Three: Putting it Together

The minotaur is a sixth level character with a one-off 3000 XP cost. How is that paid? Well it really depends on the nature of the game. Ideally, you would be introducing the minotaur into a party of players that were higher than sixth level. If, for example, the average party XP was 28,000 you could introduce the minotaur as a character with 25,000 XP and everything would be balance.

Of course, situations are always far from ideal. Perhaps the player wants to play the minotaur from level one, or (even worse) he becomes a minotaur at level three. What happens then? Is this even possible? Of course it is! It just takes a little more explaining.

A further note on Templates

If a character acquires a template (or is transformed into a different race) he will immediately be saddled with an XP cost. Paying this cost cannot result in the character losing a level. The character is required to immediately pay what they can afford. It is then up to the GM how he requires the character to pay the remainder. It might eat up all the character's XP until the debt is paid, or call for a proportion (for example half) to be paid each time XP is awarded.

Conversely if a character loses a template (or is transformed into a less powerful race) then the player should gain experience points in the name of party parity. However, this gain should never put a character up more than one level at a time.

The Racial Character Class

So you are naturally awkward and care nothing for raising the GM's ire - you want to play a minotaur from first level. Well, it is all very simple really. The minotaur is considered to be a racial character class. You start off life as a 1 HD minotaur. Using the existing rules, 1 HD minotaurs will have corresponding smaller base attack bonuses and saving throws. You earn experience points and reach 2nd level, thus becoming a 2 HD minotaur and so on, until the minotaur is fully grown at 6th level (6 HD).

It goes without saying that a racial character class must be the first class a character chooses. It also follows that multi-classing within the racial character class is probably quite a rare event - although, personally, I would permit it. During the rise from 1st to 6th level the character would have to pay off the additional 3000 XP cost. This should be paid off proportionately at each level. For the minotaur, it would actually cost 1200 XP to reach level two (although 200 XP of that is spent and doesn't appear on the character's XP total).

Examples make this far clearer, therefore have a look at the progression for the Minotaur. Just to show you that it wasn't a fluke racial character classes for two other exotic races - the Aboleth and the Drow - have also been posted for your edification. It is far too much work to create a progression for every race in the game, however, I will happily create one for any race a player shows an interest in pursuing. These progressions are very similar to those found in Savage Species and like publications, but it removes the level adjustment element from the calculation. The progressions in Savage Species (SS p152) could be used as a guide, but they could not be used without adaptation.

Continuing to advance in a Racial Character Class

The Monster Manual has rules for advancing many monsters - for creating monsters that have larger hit dice than normal. This is essentially the same as continuing to advance in a racial character class. Players and GMs should consult MM p290 for guidance on this matter. Please remember that not all monsters are suitable for racial advancement beyond their normal maximum hit dice. You should bear in mind that an increase in hit dice beyond the racial maximum represents the monster growing larger and more powerful. This simply doesn't happen to some creatures. The Minotaur, for example, never gets any larger than 6 HD. Of course, players can continue to advance their minotaur character by choosing a character class.

See Also:

• Races and Monsters
• Templates