Are you getting ready to play a game?
Did some smartass as for starting XP over level so he can craft a bunch of items
and the DM allow it?
Well here is the perfect trick for you then!
Ritual of Vitality out of Savage Species let's you spend XP (not levels mind you) to pay off the ECL of a creature and break the crap out of your game. Awesome!
Ritual of Unlearning
This major ritual trades levels for the starting ECL of the goal creature.
That's not the one.
Ritual of Vitality
This major ritual trades experience points for the starting ECL of the goal creature.
Yep, that's it.
The character pays the number of experience points it would take to gain a number of levels equal to the goal creature’s ECL. A character using this method to become a gnoll would need to pay 3,000 XP, since a gnoll’s starting ECL is 3 and it takes 3,000 experience points to become a 3rd-level character.No spell, not even restoration, can bring back the lost experience points.
A character may spend so many experience points that he loses levels. If you decide to do this, be careful not to lose so many levels that, even with the addition of the goal creature’s Hit Dice, your monster character cannot survive the threats your group faces. Characters may not spend experience points they do not have. Experience points are not spent until the completion of the ritual. If the ritual is interrupted, the character loses nothing but the time he already spent on it, and he may start the ritual again later.
Paying the experience point cost all at once, or in large partial amounts, is a quick way to complete this ritual for higher-level characters with the experience points to spend. If you have players with high-level characters and want to allow the characters to transform, this ritual is an ideal method. The loss of experience points may even extend the time those characters have available to continue adventuring.
See how turning into a Gnoll only costs 3,000xp (and some gold)? 3k may be enough to take three levels, but XP costs increase as you level, for example taking level 20 from level 19, costs 19,000xp. So your 20th level can convert his 20th level into paying off the transformation into an ECL6 Creature
with 19 Class Levels and you gain additional monster HD. And unlike Unearthed Arcana's LA Buyoff this applies to creatures with more than +3 LA and it's a direct rule rather than an optional rule variant.
A great example of use is the
Void Walker. It's an ECL 12 creature which means normally you cannot obtain more than 8 levels before going Epic which is a huge cutoff point to many people. Under the optional rules of LA Buyoff you can't do anything with it either. But the Ritual requires you to pay out 66k XP which takes a 20th level Creature down to level 16, then back to 22HD after adding the newly obtains 6 Outsider Hit Dice. Effectively it's a +4 LA creature and you gained two levels using the Ritual.
Sounds Amazing! I love Monsters but they suck to play, does this work with E6?Go back and read the green text. This is WotC's version of what E6 tries to do. E6 forces characters to remain within a level cap and all further gained XP buys Feats. Well, now extra XP buys monstrous forms and they expect you to continue to use your super-creature to continue playing to the intended level cap even if others have to stop (or wisely, everyone picks up levels). So, just pump those obtained points into becoming a none-HD granting Race instead of picking up a half dozen Feats (E6) or over leveling for the campaign or adventure module and you achieve the desired effect of an E6 game but it's 100% WotC rules.
