Quote Originally Posted by ploesch
Negative aspects:
You are effectively higher level, Higher CR, and Need more Experience to level.
This is the same as losing level progression.
(snip!)

A few points:
  • Using a Savage Species inspired progression, you could ensure that someone with a great bloodline could take it in pieces, so they don't have to take the whole LA at once if they want a few class levels first. Of course this duplicates what the scion class levels allow you to do.
  • Using Unearthed Arcana, you can buy off a LA. You can't buy off scion levels.
  • In a very real sense, being a scion is most similar to a template (with some aspects of "inherited template" and some of "acquired template"), and D&D already has well defined rules for such characters; being a scion is not mechanically all that different from being a vampire, a lich, etc.


However, please note that while I think that is the "purest" means of doing it, I 100% support the scion class levels. There is almost nothing fair that you can do to make sacrificing spellcasting levels attractive; you might as well make scion class levels attractive to non-spellcasters. I think the idea of making it effectively part of your inventory is actually the most interesting idea (though probably rightly rejected as overly complex for the core rules). In fact, that idea is so cool I'm wondering if it might be a way to simulate LA stuff in other D&D settings as well, such as my home brew campaign.