Bloodline ECL

[Ariadne]

The last days I found an interesting part in Unearthed Arcana concerning ECL. There was presented a model, where you can reduce your existing ECL by one after you got a specific character level. Maybe this is an idea for bloodline ECLs. If you got a +2 ECL because of high bloodline, you can spend XP at a special level to reduce it by one. This can be repeated until the ECL is +0 (later in the career, not all at once). Well, spending 16000 XP to reduce your ECL by two points sounds hard, but might be positive, if playing a longer campaign than 10th character level. Normally you actually loose a level by spending this large amount of XP, but you don’t reduce BAB, saves or whatever you got from your class, only that troublesome ECL is gone (or reduced by one). Naturally this system might be a bit odd, if using the bloodline class levels...
What do you guys think of it?

[Mark_Aurel]

I had intended to suggest as much, actually.

It is pretty much always a positive system for the character using it. While you lose XP immediately, you will gain more XP for the same encounters once your ECL drops, and that should be factored in when calculating the overall effect.

[irdeggman]

Good concept and I generally like the way that UA spells it out. This is unnecessary though, if using a level based system instead of a level adjustment system. At the WotC site they recently posted another in their series of Savage Progressions which assigns levels to all of the Level Adjusted templates from the MM. The most recent one gives class levels for the level adjusted races in the DMG: Drow, Duergar, etc. I was wondereing why they left those out when they published the 3.5 DMG since this is clearly the path that WotC is pursuing - even more evident by the way things are done in UA.

[Osprey]

Keep in mind, too, that blooded characters can continue to gain new blood abilities as they strengthen their bloodlines. This allows the template to continue to be viable even at higher levels, assuming the scion gains bloodline power over time.