Quickie monster PC question

[cfalcon]

I have a player running a pixie. For group levels 1-3, we used a pixie toned down (the in game reason was that he had been captured and forcibly addicted to a drug to render him unable to do some classic pixie things). Currently the group is level 4, and the pixie is a stock pixie, adjusted by his character matrix.

Now, unlike the normal rules, I opted to let him keep his fey hit dice of skills- when he takes first class level (Sorcerer), he will simply gain those skill points.

So here's my question:

A level 3 character gets a feat. A level 4 character gains an attribute. Pixie is LA +4. How is he for that feats and attributes chart? Does he gain them based on his adjusted "level"? Or does he gain them based on class levels? When the group is level 7, he'll have three levels of sorcerer- my understanding is that this is when he gets his feat. But he thought it was different, and I can't find the rule about that either way.

Anyone know?

[ZeroSpace9000]

Fair question, I asked pretty much this exact same thing myself once. For feats and stat-bumps, only hit dice count. So when your pixie takes his first class level, he'll have 1 hit dice. Level adjustments are the price you pay to get all those nice abilities. Racial hit dice (like from being, say, a Lizardman) do count towards gaining feats and stat ups; Level Adjustments do not.

[cfalcon]

Ok. I'm letting him keep the "pixie stuff" (which would normally go away as he exchanges his racial hit die for his class one, but I very much wanted him to be, at group level 4, a stock pixie except for his better attribute array, and then improve from there). So he'll keep his feats and skill points as listed.

But thank you, this answers my question. That means when the group is level 5 and he's a sorc 1, he'll have the level 1 feat, and then at group level 7 where he is sorc 3 he'll have the first feat, and group level 8 where he is sorc 4 his first attribute increase, etc.

Excellent!

[Shadowknight12]

Feats, ability increases and all those level dependent things key off class levels and HD, not LA. What LA does is basically making you suck in a party of other people (since they will be ahead of you in terms of spellcasting and facing tougher challenges), not really have an actual effect on the character itself.

[Greenish]

Ok. I'm letting him keep the "pixie stuff" (which would normally go away as he exchanges his racial hit die for his class oneWait, what? You don't lose any racial features by swapping your only RHD to class levels.


I very much wanted him to be, at group level 4, a stock pixie…Minimum ECL for a pixie is ECL 5.

[cfalcon]

Wait, what? You don't lose any racial features by swapping your only RHD to class levels.



Creatures with 1 or less HD replace their monster levels with their character levels. The monster loses the attack bonus, saving throw bonuses, skills, and feats granted by its 1 monster HD and gains the attack bonus, save bonuses, skills, feats, and other class abilities of a 1st-level character of the appropriate class.


Again, I'm not playing by that: I want him to keep his stock pixie stuff, and then gain levels.


Minimum ECL for a pixie is ECL 5.

Irrelevant and not actually true. Irrelevant because I addressed this as something I'm ignoring in the earlier posts, and not actually true because, if nothing else, Savage Species has a progression for playing a partial pixie below ECL 5. I did not use that exact progression, but at ECL 1 he only had some of his pixie powers, and I had him track XP from 0- he levelled when the party did, gaining more pixie powers at levels 2,3, and 4.

Right now, the party is at level 4, and he has the stock pixie feats, skills, and abilities. He is, in fact, a stock pixie with better attributes (his Int was the same, or he would have more skills from the fey list, or less, but he assigned an Int of 10 before racial modifiers). ECL 5 will be when he takes his first level of his class (sorcerer), which is next level.


I've been pretty pleased with this method, by the way- I doubt it's a generic solution for monsters as PCs (which is normally a hard task to balance, and an invisible flying PC with DR 10 / Who Has Cold Iron Seriously at low levels trivializes many encounters), it's seemed pretty good for the grounp.

[Divide by Zero]

I can't help but think that this is a really bad idea. In addition to all the lost HP and so on, keep in mind that he's going to be two full spell levels behind. Unless the campaign is very low-power, he isn't going to be even competent until level 10 or so, and never at the level of other casters.

[cfalcon]

If he survives to late game, I have a mechanism that will let him eventually reclaim two of the caster levels. However, even without that, I'm really thinking he'll do just fine. If he had taken those stats and made, say, a human sorcerer, then at 10th level those two guys would both have the same DC on their highest level spells- because of the massive +Cha a pixie gets. Granted, the status debuffs on spells of -2 levels are pretty crushing, and -4 caster levels pretty much poops on blasting spells, but if a bad guy fails a save versus a 4th level status debuff versus a 6th level status debuff, he's probably pretty screwed either way.