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View Full Version : Racial Hit Dice: What's the point? [3.5]



The Witch-King
2009-09-01, 07:22 PM
I'm creating some new races for an upcoming 3.5 campaign--some NPC races and some player races. What my question comes down to is: should I give them racial hit dice? If so, why? And is there any official guide as to how many to give?

See what I don't get is that there's such a wide spread in racial hit dice for the same size of creature. Humans and Elves and Orcs get 1 HD. Gnolls get 2. Illithids get 8. One of the player races I'm creating is a gnoll offshoot. So, should I give them 2 HD when I could just skip that and they could get 2 levels of their choice as characters instead in a 3rd level game? Would doing so make them less "gnolly"?

And more importantly, for the NPC races I'm making up out of whole cloth: what standard do I use to give them racial hit dice and isn't each one a penalty instead of a bonus compared to what they could be getting? Is it just not cool enough for the powerful villain to have a racial package that only gave him 1 HD? Are Illithids cooler for having 8? If so, should I give my evil quarterling 14 HD and only 1 level of Rogue? (Although it would be funny to meet a guy with a 14 HD racial package who's only two feet tall.)

Xefas
2009-09-01, 09:15 PM
Racial Hit Dice are a balancing mechanic. An Illithid has all of its abilities and 8 aberration hit dice. If it had all of its abilities and 8 levels of a class of its choice (Wizard, Psion, Factotum, Warblade, etc), it'd be vastly more powerful.

It's just a cheap (power level speaking) way of making someone's hit points, skills points, saves, etc, match with the deadliness of their abilities.

So, yes, in a way, racial hit dice are a 'penalty' and not a bonus.

EDIT: Your avatar is notably badass, by the way.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-09-01, 09:32 PM
As Xefas said, it's an intentional penalty--essentially, LA sucks past +1 or +2 because you have pathetic HP/BAB/etc., so they throw you a bone and give you some HP/BAB/etc. without being as good as a real class.

If you don't want to give any RHD at all, it's generally accepted that you can trade them out for LA on a 2:1 or 3:1 basis, depending on the creature type (i.e., the +1 LA/2 RHD gnoll would become a +2 LA/0 RHD gnoll).

Dante & Vergil
2009-09-02, 02:34 PM
As Xefas said, it's an intentional penalty--essentially, LA sucks past +1 or +2 because you have pathetic HP/BAB/etc., so they throw you a bone and give you some HP/BAB/etc. without being as good as a real class.

If you don't want to give any RHD at all, it's generally accepted that you can trade them out for LA on a 2:1 or 3:1 basis, depending on the creature type (i.e., the +1 LA/2 RHD gnoll would become a +2 LA/0 RHD gnoll).

I can kinda see why one would do that, with the lower ECL, but LA don't give anything. This of course is just a problem with LA itself.
Sorry for not adding much to the conversation.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-09-02, 03:46 PM
I can kinda see why one would do that, with the lower ECL, but LA don't give anything. This of course is just a problem with LA itself.
Sorry for not adding much to the conversation.

LA not giving anything is the whole reason for adding RHD, so it really does come down to whether you'd rather get into your class earlier or whether you want to improve HP and such. Of course, this basically boils down to "casters want low LA, martial types want some RHD," so martial characters have their class features delayed even more, but that's another issue.