LA Buyoff and Racial HD

[Alcyius]

I wanted to know, if you buyoff LA, do you lose racial HD. If you don't lose racial HD, do they still count for ECL? Or do you just ignore them when calculating experience?

[sonofzeal]

ECL = RHD + LA + class levels

LA Buyoff reduces the LA, which reduces the ECL accordingly. That's all it does.

RHD can only be gotten rid of two ways: by only having one RHD and taking your first level in a class (that level replaces your one RHD)... and by methods that are also capable of getting rid of class levels. Beyond that 1st level one-RHD exchange, RHD are treated exactly the same as class levels.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Racial HD are not optional. Even if you manage to get rid of them via negative levels or similar, you're basically reverting to an adolescent/underdeveloped version of an adult of that species. You should have to regain those racial HD up to what a typical adult of that race has before any additional class levels are gained.

[CIDE]

Basically what everyone else said. EXCEPT the possibility for DM discretion, houserules, etc.

[Urpriest]

Everybody here is right, and if you're confused about things like this you really ought to read my Monster Handbook, link in sig.