Monsters as races question

[Sgt. Cookie]

In the dungeon master's guide, it states:


If a monster has 2 or more Hit Dice, it can start with no
class levels (though it can gain them later).

I'm confused as to what that actually means. Does it mean that a monster with 2HD cannot start taking class levels until it's actual character level is 2? Or is it something else entirely?

[Urpriest]

Your problem here is more fundamental. Read the guide to monsters in my sig, it explains a lot.

[Tanuki Tales]

Something else entirely.

A monster with no RHD and LA can't be played out of the box because it has no Hit Dice and no class levels at the ECL equal to it's LA.

A monster with 1 RHD generally replaces it with it's first class level HD.

So any monsters with 2 or more RHD can be played as just monsters.


For example, you can't just play a "Drow"; you have to play a "Drow Fighter 1". But you can just play a "Troll" and don't have to play a "Troll Fighter 1" unless you're already at the ECL for that and need to fill in the missing level gap with actual class levels.

[Pilo]

A non-humanoid monster cannot trade its hit dices to class level.

If you take the elf in the Monster manual, it has an humanoid hit dice.
If you play an elf, it only have its class level hit dice.

If you take the ettercap in the Monster manual, it has 5 aberation hit dices.
If you play an ettercap, you have to be at least level 9 (5HD+4 level adjustment) to play it. But if you want it to have a class level, you have to be level 10 because it keeps its Aberation hit dices (5 aberation HD + 4 level adjustment + 1 class level).

[FearlessGnome]

A non-humanoid monster cannot trade its hit dices to class level.The Humanoid type has nothing to do with it. Any creature with a listed LA and only one hit die trades the hit die for a class level. Any creature with a listed LA and more than one hit die has to keep all of its hit dice.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Random question: How many races have more than 1 humanoid HD? I know of Bugbears but thats it.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Ok, I've read "I wanna be a monster when I grow up". But it doesn't answer my question in a way that makes sense. Do these "Monster levels" work in exactly the same way that class levels work in the sense that, unless you are playing gestalt, you can only have one at each character level?

For example a pseudodragon has 2 RHD, does this mean that it can only pick up a level of Rogue when it's character level is 3?

[Yora]

Almost. You start as a Pseudodragon with two racial Hit Dice so when you add a 1st level of rogue you would be a 3rd level character.

However, almost all monsters also have Level Adjustment, since it is assumed that with their special abilities, a Racial Hit Dice is better than a Class Level.

Level Adjustment is like additional levels, but without hit dice.

So the lowest level pseudodragon character would have 2 HD plus LA +3, which makes him a 5th level character.
If you add 1 level of rogue, it's a 6th level character.

Random question: How many races have more than 1 humanoid HD? I know of Bugbears but thats it.
A lot. Bugbear, gnoll, lizardfolk, locathahs, and troglodytes have 2 HD and that's only from the Monster Manual.

[Tanuki Tales]

Ok, I've read "I wanna be a monster when I grow up". But it doesn't answer my question in a way that makes sense. Do these "Monster levels" work in exactly the same way that class levels work in the sense that, unless you are playing gestalt, you can only have one at each character level?

For example a pseudodragon has 2 RHD, does this mean that it can only pick up a level of Rogue when it's character level is 3?

The Pseudodragon has 2 racial hit dice and a +3 level adjustment, making it ECL 5.

This means it can be played alongside a party of Level 5 characters right out of the box. You don't need any class levels.

But if the group was, say, level 6 then you could pick up 1 class level or add on a +1 LA template that is acquired or what have you.

Edit: Damn. Swordsaged as I was typing. :smallsigh:

[Sgt. Cookie]

Almost. You start as a Pseudodragon with two racial Hit Dice so when you add a 1st level of rogue you would be a 3rd level character.

So, if I played a pseudodragon right out of the box, when I level up, I can choose a class level to bring it's ECL to 6, and it's actual character level to 3?

[Fax Celestis]

Yup. And without a racial progression, you can't play one before its minimum ECL.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Technically you could, it just wouldn't be balanced.

[Tanuki Tales]

Yup. And without a racial progression, you can't play one before its minimum ECL.

Though in Pathfinder or 3.PF, it's ECL is only 1. :smallbiggrin:

Until ARG does something to change that of course.

[Yora]

So, if I played a pseudodragon right out of the box, when I level up, I can choose a class level to bring it's ECL to 6, and it's actual character level to 3?

For most purposes yes. Almost everything in the game is based on the number of hit dice. Your skill points, maximum skill ranks, if certain spells can affect you or not, the feats you gain, the increases to ability scores, and some other things I guess. In regard to these things, racial HD are exactly like class levels. Level Adjustment is important only to determine at what amounts of XP you can add additional levels to your character.
One big problem is that LA almost always seems to be set way too high, with a few cases where it's much too low.
Level Adjustment Buyoff (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm) helps a bit in adressing that as you increase in level, your racial abilities become less and less important. I think if you can use it, you always should.

Pathfinder adresses the entire thing very differently and makes a Pseudodragon character ECL = "class levels +1" instead of "class level +5". If that really is any better, I have no idea, but it seems to me like it's potentially even much worse.

[Greenish]

Technically you could, it just wouldn't be balanced.You could playa pseudodragon in a 1st level party like you could play a 5th level human rogue in the same party. That is, if your DM says "yes".

Also, I think by "actual character level" you mean hitdice?

[Tanuki Tales]

Pathfinder adresses the entire thing very differently and makes a Pseudodragon character ECL = "class levels +1" instead of "class level +5". If that really is any better, I have no idea, but it seems to me like it's potentially even much worse.

Because it doesn't punish the player out the nose for straying outside wanting to play a Human Wizard or Dwarf Fighter?

I mean, you could argue that it's a balance issue but I don't know if it's the opposite end of the train wreck trap that was 3.5's Monster PC rules.

[Darthteej]

Because it doesn't punish the player out the nose for straying outside wanting to play a Human Wizard or Dwarf Fighter?

I mean, you could argue that it's a balance issue but I don't know if it's the opposite end of the train wreck trap that was 3.5's Monster PC rules.

The main problem with balancing Monsters as PCs is that Monsters and PCs are balanced under entirely different design philosophies. Monsters are, by their very nature, designed to only last for one encounter. The main rationale behind 3.5's high LAs was that monsters got a whole bunch of powers that were VERY hard for PCs to normally access.

[Tanuki Tales]

The main problem with balancing Monsters as PCs is that Monsters and PCs are balanced under entirely different design philosophies. Monsters are, by their very nature, designed to only last for one encounter. The main rationale behind 3.5's high LAs was that monsters got a whole bunch of powers that were VERY hard for PCs to normally access.

That ended up completely trivialized because of the massive punishment you received for choosing to play said monsters.

And even for the ones that didn't royally screw you over, they were still strictly inferior to playing a human and going with class levels.

I think it's a little ludicrous to question the balance of Pathfinder's Monster PC rules when you are using the horribly broken (in the Truenamer sense) 3.5 Monster PC rules as the measuring stick.

And even then, only certain monsters don't just continue the age old Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard trope (and they still don't exceed the power of a single classed Wizard except in the rarest of cases).

[Yora]

I didn't say it is much worse. I think that there is a good chance that the PF-System is not actually making things better.

LA is awful, but the concept behind it seems sound. To judge LA, the designers compared how good a character of that race would be, when played as a PC. They usually got really wrong results, but there seems to have been a process of examination involved.
The PF system doesn't. It just takes CR and does not spend any thought on the possibility that some things that are okay for a monster could potentially be extremely powerful in the hands of a PC.

3.5e aimed and missed. PF doesn't aim at all, but fires completely blind.

[Darthteej]

Oh, yes, I think 3.5 went complete overboard in terms of restricting acess to balancing monsters. All I'm saying is that Challenge Rating and Level are not necessarily the same thing, which is why LA exists in the first place. Unfortunately, they went way too far in the other direction, and now gestalt is pretty much the only way to play monsters.

[Tanuki Tales]

I didn't say it is much worse. I think that there is a good chance that the PF-System is not actually making things better.



but it seems to me like it's potentially even much worse.


*cough*



Now, I'm not claiming that Pathfinder's approach to Monster PCs is perfect, far from it, but I don't think you can really claim that they've screwed up the balance between Non-Monstrous PCs and Monstrous PCs as bad as 3.5 did. Yes, CR isn't always a nail to lay your hammer down upon but they did try to make monsters more rounded for their CR and not as widely varying as 3.5 did.

It's messy, it takes guesstimating but I don't feel for a second that it's worse than what WoTC gave us.

[Yora]

No, I don't claim that because I have not extensively compared several creatures with different classes at different levels with equivalent human characters.
In thereory, there is a real chance that the PF system actually works out better. But I believe that this would be purely by chance and not by design.

[Prime32]

The Tome system is similar to the PF one but goes a little more in-depth:
http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Races_of_War_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/Playing_Unusual_Races#Powerful_Races

[Darthteej]

The Tome system is similar to the PF one but goes a little more in-depth:
http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Races_of_War_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/Playing_Unusual_Races#Powerful_Races

I like that system if only because it acknowledges that there are some monsters that were simply not designed for PC use(coughwillowispscough). Another big problem that I've noted with monster design is those monsters who have PC or PC-ish casting. Stuff like Rakshaka's, Nagas, Coutals, and Angels all cast as spellcasting classes above their CR. Their Level Adjustments are only presented in Savage Species, and even then they are so prohibitively high that no sane person would ever play them. At the same time, it's hardly balanced to say that a monster who casts as a PC of their own HD, gets a ton of goodies besides, and can advance that PC casting with no trouble at all is really balanced with a PC of their own level. I don't think that's bad level adjustment so much as bad monster design.

Has anyone here ever read Gary Gygax's opinions on playing monsters in the 1st ed. DMG? He believed the idea was nothing more than the product of munchkins, and firmly held that the game was designed to be human focused(remember that back in those days even your average dwarf and elf were limited in what classes they could take). I seriously wonder if borked attempts to let PCs play monsters are a legacy design issue. Even Savage Species ers way on the side of keeping monsters in line.

If you ask me(not that anyone is), the best efforts I've seen toward creating playable monsters were the Community Monster Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192151&page=17). The home brewers there solved the problem of monster classes being uninteresting by using the monsters as a base, and then adding thematic abilities, rather than just granting stuff right out of the book. The best ones also seauged well into PC classes. Of course, now that's gone the way of Duke Nukem Forever Joe Paterno's career.

[Yora]

Spellcasting monsters that cast better than human NPCs of the same level and in addition have lots of strong defenses and other powers are a mistake to begin with even way before Level Adjustment comes into play.

[Tanuki Tales]

Don't want to toot my own horn, but since the community classes have been brought up; I am in the middle of a project of working on a base class that has the feel and flavor of playing a monster. Mind you it's not Tier 3 by any measure, but not everything has to be.

Scion of Legacy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221012)

And for those of you wondering on it's progression; yes, I'm going to be working on it again soon. Just between setting up my homebrew setting for my irl group, the holidays and my mother having a stroke, I've been...distracted.

Now enough of me and let me nail home:

Yes, there are several homebrew movements that end up with more balanced and/or better options for playing monsters than RAW stuff.

[Prime32]

If you ask me(not that anyone is), the best efforts I've seen toward creating playable monsters were the Community Monster Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192151&page=17). The home brewers there solved the problem of monster classes being uninteresting by using the monsters as a base, and then adding thematic abilities, rather than just granting stuff right out of the book. The best ones also seauged well into PC classes. Of course, now that's gone the way of Duke Nukem Forever Joe Paterno's career.The original project is still being updated. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?board=34)