Gestalting Monstrous Humanoids

[Grytorm]

Hello again, I've had an idea for a while of how to advance races such as Centuars and Gnolls, instead of adding the hit dice on top of the Racial Hit Dice layer them over, picking up class features and sometimes improving saves, or HD size. The main reason to do this would be to rein in certain base numbers. So a potent Gnoll Cleric 5 wouldn't get an additional 9 HP, +1 BaB, and +3 Fortitude Save. I think this would be most useful with larger giants whose advancements wouldn't go out of control when given spell casting commiserate with their CR.

Prestige classes should probably work as normal instead of combining with base hit dice.

I don't know what would be best to do with creatures like Dragons and Raksha who have inherent spellcasting. Probably restrict them from developing there casting ability with regular ability but still allow them to enter Prestige classes which improve casting ability.

[fishyfishyfishy]

What is the intended purpose behind this? Why do you feel the need to make a house rule about it? Feedback will be better if we know what it is you are trying to accomplish.

That said, in my game I tend to give enemies whatever ability I think is appropriate and largely leave class levels out of it. If I want a Gnoll to have cleric casting as a level 5 cleric I'll just give it the elite array and adjust it's stats accordingly, add a few hit dice on and treat whatever skills I want it to have as class skills, and slap on the casting. It's faster and easier as a DM to just eyeball the CR of your creations since the rules are pretty terrible on the subject.

[Grytorm]

Truthfully, if anything it is to do 2 things. First is to partially to make, say a human Fighter 5 and an Ogre Fighter 5 closer to each other, mostly because I like the idea flavorwise.

The second is to make it easier to mix baseline Monsters with their Spellcasting Kin. So a level 11 Frost Giant Wizard won't have 75 or so more hit points than a regular Frost Giant.