ECL & multileveling penalties

[Ailander]

Many may not know this, but in D&D, there is what is called the Equivalent Character Level (ECL) or Level Adjustment. It means that some races are more powerful than the average basic races, and for this reason, they begin from a lower level based on their race ECL. This rule is use on our server with some slight changes.

The ECL is a modifier that will decrease a certain percentage of the XP received (only by hunting monsters; this doesn't apply to events, tasks, quests, or modules) based on the ECL of the race. If you want to see what ECL a race has, check out the Races forum. The general idea is: the stronger the race and major bonuses they give, the higher the ECL.

Each point of ECL counts as that character has 1 more level in their total. So, if an avariel, that has ECL 2, bard 3/fighter2 counts as a level 7 character, so if they want to get the "normal" level of experience from their monsters they need to find and fight monsters of cr 7 (which could be quite difficult)

We decided that this penalty will also increase if:

the number of classes/prestige classes exceeds 4. We will not prohibit people from doing min-max builds, but for the sake of roleplay, we choose to make it harder to progress if they possess a lot of classes. In addition, some special circumstances may apply an +1 ECL on the character

Their base class levels are more than 3 level apart (meaning if you make something like bard 3 fighter 2 Eldritch Knight 10, you are safe, but if you make fighter 7 bard 2, you will get +1 ECL)