LA / racial hit dice and effective level - is there a difference?

[Dark_Ansem]

I am being confused on how to consider LA. a +2 equals to character being in fact of level 2, and +8 of being of level 8?

Drow, Sarrukh, Mind Flayers are the first that come to mind.

[malonkey1]

LA Does indeed work as you think (Fighter 1 Drow is a level 2 character). ACL is your class levels plus your LA.

However, while often related, racial HD is not the same as LA.

For example, a Hound Archon possesses 6d8 racial HD, but only has a Level Adjustment of +5.

[Dark_Ansem]

so for sarrukh and mind flayer, for example, there is a LA+8 but the racial HD might be less? and the effective level is 8+actual racial hit dice?
mind flayers start in the monster manual at level 8, and they have a la of +7, so their effective character level is 8+7=15?
sarrukh, on the other hand, have a racial hd of 14, and a LA of +8: so their effective character level is 14+8=22?

what I don't understand is, at the end their starting level is the ECL or the Racial HD?

for player races, on the other hand, who have LA but no racial HD, their starting level is considered the LA?

[malonkey1]

Their starting level is their LA + their class level. Racial HD are not figured into it. If you start as a Sarrukh Fighter, you are ECL 9 (Fighter 1/LA , but you possess 15 HD.

[Atalsen]

From what I recall, in table top, ECL and LA are really only for calculations done for PC's - since CR (Challenge Rating) covers all NPCs, and ECL/LA are not factors in calculating the CR of an opponent or encounter.

Given that, and that NWN seems to work similarly (i.e. ECL/LA has no bearing on the CR calculation that NWN does for NPCs), I think it’s safe to say these are PC only factors.

LA (Level adjustment) is what you add to the HD of the PC in order to get their ECL (Effective Character Level).

So if we have a Drow (LA +2) 1st level Fighter, we have a PC with an ECL of 3 and the game will treat the PC as if they were 3rd level when handing XP granted to them.

If we want to jump to the Hound Archon with their LA of +5, we must first ask if they have Racial HD turn on in NWN PRC settings. Assuming that it IS on, and that either it has been granted for free (one possible setting), or the PC has leveled all the way through the racial Hit Dice (the other possible setting), that gives us 6 racial hit dice, 1 level of Fighter (or any other class), and an LA of 5 for a total ECL of 12: the game will treat this character as 12th level for handing out XP.

If you do NOT have racial hit dice turned on, or the PC has not worked/leveld through the racial hit dice and is just starting out, the hound archon character will be 1st level fighter +5 LA for an ECL of 6.

And as they gain levels, their ECL increases on a 1 for 1 basis.


Hopefully that makes sense!

[Dark_Ansem]

I understand: ECL is a gameplay-term, but the real level for monsters with HD is, unless they have classes or have advanced, their hd. right?

[Atalsen]

Yes, For NPCs, Level and Hit Dice should be synonymous.
When coding for NWN, if you need to know the Level of a monster, you check their Hit Dice.

When looking at how challenging a monster is, then we look at its CR (Challenge Rating) instead. In table top when you "advance" a monster, typically it gets 1 or more hit dice, possibly a size increase, and its CR advances. There's typically a ratio so that the CR doesn't advance as fast as the monsters actual Hit Dice, which is why you can see, say, CR 15 Giants with 20+ Hit Dice.

In table top, adding a PC class to a monster *typically* does increase its CR and Hit Dice 1 for 1, which is a way of saying that PC classes, picked correctly and played to maximum effect can be pretty powerful.

But again CR is only a calculation to help pit appropriately powerful monsters against the correct level of PCs. A CR 15 creature in table top is 'a challenge for 4 PCs of 15th level', using 1/4 of the total of all those PCs resources to fight. (Probably not entirely true in NWN, but that's the ratio in table top). From that expectation, we could expect a single CR 15 monster to fight a single 15th level PC, and use 100% of that PC’s resources (which means maybe the monster wins, or maybe the PC - they should be approximately equal).

So, for monsters, their level is always their hit dice; advancing them or adding class levels gets them more it dice and thus a higher level, but its CR you generally watch to determine if the NPC is the right challenge for what you are looking for.