Half Celestial Spell-Like Abilities

[Crake]

Ok, so I've always assumed that a half celestial would get more spell-like abilities as they leveled up, since it says that the SLAs they get are based on hit dice, but recently I've noticed that there's a school of thought that says the abilities are only granted based on racial hit dice, and thus a human half celestial would get none of them.

How legit is this school of thought? From what I've always gathered, unless it specifies racial hit dice (as it does in the half dragon template for HD increase and the breath weapon's save DC), then it just assumes all combined HD (racial + class levels).

[Flickerdart]

A half-celestial with an Intelligence or Wisdom score of 8 or higher has two or more spell-like abilities, depending on its Hit Dice, as indicated on the table below.

There's no ambiguity here - if you have the HDs, you get the SLAs, no matter if they're RHD, HD from classes, or whatever.

[Eldonauran]

There's no ambiguity here - if you have the HDs, you get the SLAs, no matter if they're RHD, HD from classes, or whatever.

I'm with Flickerdart on this one. HD is HD, no matter the source. Unless specially calling out the racial HD, any HD counts.

[Urpriest]

To put this into perspective, often a monster will have abilities that say they're dependent on HD, but that mean RHD. This is for the same reason that classes will refer to level, and mean class level: when you're in that specific context, they refer to that particular game element.

If you're looking at something like a template or a feat that doesn't have its own RHD, then unless otherwise specified you use total HD.

[nedz]

To put this into perspective, often a monster will have abilities that say they're dependent on HD, but that mean RHD. This is for the same reason that classes will refer to level, and mean class level: when you're in that specific context, they refer to that particular game element.

If you're looking at something like a template or a feat that doesn't have its own RHD, then unless otherwise specified you use total HD.

Do you have a source for this ?

I have just been through the relevant section of the SRD and I couldn't find it :smallconfused:

[Urpriest]

Do you have a source for this ?

I have just been through the relevant section of the SRD and I couldn't find it :smallconfused:

This is more of an in-practice thing, as per the philosophy of my Monster Handbook. If you look at the first few pages of that thread, there should be some discussion about it. Essentially, for every example monster that is statted up/advanced, its HD-dependent abilities that come from its base race are based on RHD, not total HD. Look at the Aboleth Mage for an example.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

It says Hit Dice, but it does not specify that only racial HD get counted for that. Nowhere is it specified that only racial HD get counted for that. Therefore, any Hit Dice you have, including those gained from class levels, can be counted when determining what you gain from that template. Anyone who says otherwise is making up their own rules.

[Eurus]

It says Hit Dice, but it does not specify that only racial HD get counted for that. Nowhere is it specified that only racial HD get counted for that. Therefore, any Hit Dice you have, including those gained from class levels, can be counted when determining what you gain from that template. Anyone who says otherwise is making up their own rules.

That's a little vitriolic...

Urpriest makes a decent point, it sort of is one of those ambiguous things that's used one way in practice by the books but never actually pointed out or explained. Reminds me of the "round up when calculating your ToB initiator level from non-ToB classes" thing.

Either way, it definitely seems in this case like it works off total HD, not racial HD, yeah.

[nedz]

Appealing to an example is a good, solid, empirical approach. Unfortunately most of the example characters are known to be wrong, so this is unreliable.

Ed: Counter example (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20040213a)

Look at the Half-Fey racial class. They get access to a variety of SLAs based on HD, moreover this list contains entries which exceeds their RHD. The template works the same IIRC; only that's not OGL so I can't quote it.

[Crake]

well I'm glad that I was doing it the right way all this time. I would have felt bad if I'd been doing it wrong the whole time.