Can't Reverse Engineer Anything, and It Bothers Me

[Kevingway]

So, as the title says, I'm having issues with taking Monster Manual creatures and turning them into playable characters. This may seem like a silly goal that can be overcome with a simple "let the DM decide," but for humanoid races such as the Githyanki and Duergar, I can't help but feel cheated by having to resort strictly to homebrew in order to get the desired results.

Stats aren't a problem for me as far as homebrew is concerned; I can reasonable say one creature would get this boost or that boost. My problem comes down to the racial abilities, mainly the spells that these races are granted. Taking the schematic from playable races (which, if I remember correctly without my books in front of me, is one spell at 1, 3, and 5) and comparing this to what the Githyanki has, nothing matches up. You can try giving the Githyanki spells past level 5, going with a 5, 7, 9, but when you hit 9, you're suddenly one spell above what you would assume a normal player character would have at that level. If you use the other Githyanki example creature as your base, you're either right on or, I think with the Githzerai, one under. Again, this is all coming from memory, but all of it is inconsistent within itself.

If these creatures can exist as NPCs with certain powers/benefits, I want these same benefits to apply to what I would have as a player character. I wouldn't, however, want to be more powerful than other player characters. I'd simply enjoy having a system that's based on precedents and not homebrew, as these precedents seem to be what the game suggests but does not fully offer toward anything that already exists in the system.

Does anyone have a solution? Or am I missing part of the formula that would make these NPC-->PC conversions more sensible? Right now, everything contradicts the precedent given by the core races.

[Eslin]

So, as the title says, I'm having issues with taking Monster Manual creatures and turning them into playable characters. This may seem like a silly goal that can be overcome with a simple "let the DM decide," but for humanoid races such as the Githyanki and Duergar, I can't help but feel cheated by having to resort strictly to homebrew in order to get the desired results.

Stats aren't a problem for me as far as homebrew is concerned; I can reasonable say one creature would get this boost or that boost. My problem comes down to the racial abilities, mainly the spells that these races are granted. Taking the schematic from playable races (which, if I remember correctly without my books in front of me, is one spell at 1, 3, and 5) and comparing this to what the Githyanki has, nothing matches up. You can try giving the Githyanki spells past level 5, going with a 5, 7, 9, but when you hit 9, you're suddenly one spell above what you would assume a normal player character would have at that level. If you use the other Githyanki example creature as your base, you're either right on or, I think with the Githzerai, one under. Again, this is all coming from memory, but all of it is inconsistent within itself.

If these creatures can exist as NPCs with certain powers/benefits, I want these same benefits to apply to what I would have as a player character. I wouldn't, however, want to be more powerful than other player characters. I'd simply enjoy having a system that's based on precedents and not homebrew, as these precedents seem to be what the game suggests but does not fully offer toward anything that already exists in the system.

Does anyone have a solution? Or am I missing part of the formula that would make these NPC-->PC conversions more sensible? Right now, everything contradicts the precedent given by the core races.

Aren't the gith not supposed to be equal to player races? They were LA>0 in previous editions, they're supposed to be stronger. Unless I'm misunderstanding you.

[Envyus]

The DMG has advice on this.

[Maxilian]

The DMG has advice on this.

http://tribality.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/npc.jpg

[Kevingway]

Drow were a more powerful version of other elves; they've been dumbed down and presented as a race. The other races, the Githyanki and such, have not. The DMG's "advice on this" doesn't apply simply because the Eladrin and the Aasimar do not exist in the Monster Manual, while, again, the Githyanki and such do. Converting them as-is into a player race would make them much more powerful than everything else presented, but even doing a conversion is impossible because there's no baseline "what to do in this situation" given when converting anything at all, as opposed to creating something entirely new.

I guess my problem is this: I feel I can't "create something new" because this opportunity was taken away from me by those races being presented in the Monster Manual in such a way that they're sort of "reserved" to be strictly monsters.

[Draken]

You could make them following the race creation guidelines and put anything "extraneous" in a racial feat, perhaps. A gith-only preset... What is the name of the caster feat. I'm AFB right now.

[SharkForce]

indeed, assuming that those githyanki have received some sort of training beyond the baseline to get certain of those spells seems the simplest solution.

it's the same if you look at the NPCs in the monster manual... they have class abilities, but you can't really get the NPC exactly the same by building it with the rules for creating PCs.

so maybe those gith have specific racial paths for certain classes that gives them an extra spell at a certain level, and the class in question may or may not be one that exists in the PHB (and of course the path very obviously is not).

[Envyus]

Their is a list of monster powers and ability modifiers for making NPC's of certain races that could be used to make PC's. For example

Gnolls get +2 Str -2 Int the Rampage ability and 60 ft Darkvision.

Hobgoblins do not get any ability modifiers, but they get the martial advantage ability, 60 ft Darkvision and Common and Goblin as base languages.

[pwykersotz]

You could always pull a Half-Dragon and just make a subset of more powerful PC races. As long as both you and your players recognize that they are a cut above, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Yorrin]

Part of the problem is you're approaching the 5e MM as if it was inspired by 3.5, where all monsters and PCs were built on the same math, when in fact the MM is the heaviest 4e influence I see where monsters have only superficial resemblance to PC builds at best. In 4e there were several examples of monsters that when they became PCs looked nothing like their monster stat blocks (look at the monster races in the back of the 4e MM, for example).

So until they publish some sort of quick list of official monster races we're going to be stuck with homebrew- because no matter how much you reverse engineer you're not going to end up with a PC race, because that wasn't the baseline.