I need some help with Savage Species monster levels

[gurgleflep]

I'm looking through Savage Species at the monster progressions and wondering how good they actually are. They'd allow me to play as a couple of my favorite monsters in campaigns much earlier than I typically would, but I can't help but notice that it would take a fair amount of time to get them to where they can still pose a decent threat. Is there anyway to fix this?

I've also got a few other questions about it:
1.) When going from the monster to an actual class, how does the Fortitude, Reflex, and Will work?

2.) How about their BAB?

3.) How often do they acquire feats? Is it every so many RHD or something?

4.) Can you gestalt a monster class with a regular class? (As an example: Illithid//Barbarian - Not a combination I can see working, but this is just theoretical.)

5.) Is there anything else I might need to know? I've not multiclassed or used one of the monster progressions before and I would like to learn as much about this as I possibly can.

I would like to thank anybody and everybody to helps me with all of this ahead of time :smallsmile:

[Studoku]

The racial progressions are usually designed so by the time you finish them you have the same stats, including RHD and LA, as you would have if you'd just created a character of that race. The difference is that you can play a character of that race in a game that begins at a lower level.

The downside of them is that they're based on the LA/RHD system which tends to result in underpowered characters. While melee characters can sometimes benefit from the size and strength in exchange for their BAB, it's almost never worth losing caster levels.

There's no easy rule for fixing LA- it needs to be done on a case by case basis.

As for your questions:

1&2. When you add class levels, you add the saves and BAB from your class levels onto the saves from your monster progression, as you would for any multiclass.

3. Every 3 hit dice.

4. Gestalt and LA/RHD is already a mess. I'd allow this though because Illithid Barbarian sounds like fun.

5. Monster progression classes are intended to be completed before players begin to take class levels. Players shouldn't normally multiclass out of them until they've taken all the levels in it.

[Urpriest]

In general, my monster handbook (link in sig) is a good introduction to this stuff. To the above warnings, I'll add that Savage Species is 3.0, so in general you will need to rewrite the classes to match the 3.5 monsters.

[gurgleflep]

The racial progressions are usually designed so by the time you finish them you have the same stats, including RHD and LA, as you would have if you'd just created a character of that race. The difference is that you can play a character of that race in a game that begins at a lower level.

The downside of them is that they're based on the LA/RHD system which tends to result in underpowered characters. While melee characters can sometimes benefit from the size and strength in exchange for their BAB, it's almost never worth losing caster levels.

There's no easy rule for fixing LA- it needs to be done on a case by case basis.

As for your questions:

1&2. When you add class levels, you add the saves and BAB from your class levels onto the saves from your monster progression, as you would for any multiclass.

3. Every 3 hit dice.

4. Gestalt and LA/RHD is already a mess. I'd allow this though because Illithid Barbarian sounds like fun.

5. Monster progression classes are intended to be completed before players begin to take class levels. Players shouldn't normally multiclass out of them until they've taken all the levels in it.

This all sounds a lot simpler than I'd previously anticipated, so thank you :smallsmile:
I'm glad somebody other than me thinks that an illithid barbarian sounds fun :smallbiggrin:


In general, my monster handbook (link in sig) is a good introduction to this stuff. To the above warnings, I'll add that Savage Species is 3.0, so in general you will need to rewrite the classes to match the 3.5 monsters.

I'll look into it now - I've gone into it on multiple occasions for various reasons (showing it off included :smallwink:). I'm going to bookmark it this time :smalleek: