Consolidating Creature Types and Subtypes (3.5e Help)

[Durzan]

"Monsters of the Harrier role have medium BAB, d6 HD, 6+Int skill points" and "The Harrier template may be applied to any creature. This template changes all HD to d6s, changes its BAB from racial hit dice to a medium progression, and grants 6+Int skill points per HD; recalculate statistics appropriately" are basically equivalent.

The benefit of making actual monster "classes" with class skills, lists of available features based on type and subtypes, and so on really comes in when you're building monsters from scratch (either a new monster or two on its own, or a ground-up overhaul of MM monsters). If you're modifying existing monsters a few at a time, in either the monster classes case or the template case you're changing a bunch of statistics for every monster, and how you phrase those changes doesn't really matter.

Monsters already treat whatever skills that are listed in their entry as class skills, so that part is kind of redundant in nature. The only reason you'd want to give them additional class skills on top of that would be if you want that specific monster to have special training in additional areas... which is rare and can typically limited to monsters who can gain class levels anyway.

Okay, so basically, what creature types do is:

• Hit dice (4 levels: d6, d8, d10, d12)
• Base attack bonus (3 levels: 1/2, 3/4, full)
• Saves (3, all either high or low)
• Skills (from none to 10/level)

Now. That gives us a staggering number of combinations. But I don't think we need them all, as there's usually standard combinations. High Fort tends to go with high BAB.

We can basically go by player class archetypes:

Brute: d10 HD, High base attack, high fort, 2+ skill points
Trickster: d8 HD, medium base attack, high reflex, 8+ skill points
Specialist: d6 HD, low base attack, high will, 6+ skill points
Allrounder: d8 HD, medium base attack, one high save (varies), 4+ skill points
Paragon: d10 HD, high base attack, all high saves, 8+ skill points. For those outsiders and others like them who are just good at everything.

These honestly already cover just about all the monsters out there.

I don't think AC and mobility need to be tied directly to this and neither do special abilities. Hit dice should only determine HD-dependent numeric values.

So, heres how I'd handle that... Keep racial HD and other stuff for Type but treat monster classes the same way you'd treat class levels for a Humanoid class... IE replace HD type, Skill Points, and saves with their class counterparts when appropriate. They keep their "racial" abilities, but also gain access to their "Monster Class" abilities as well. That way, character creation and monster creation are streamlined into a similar system. Creating a new monster is just basically creating a new "race" and then giving each monster class levels as appropriate to the individual monster's theme.

As far as consolidating creature types, I got 8:

• Spirits (Fey & Elementals)
• Artificial (Undead & Constructs)
• Mortals (Humanoids, Monstrous Humanoids, Giants, Sentient Races that die of old age, and any races designed to level up through PC classes)
• Animals (Vermin, Animals, Magical Beasts, & Non-Sentient Dragon-type creatures)
• Aberration (Creatures with abnormal anatomy)
• Outsiders (Creatures from outside the Material Plane)
• Plant (Plants, Fungi, and their derivatives)
• Ooze (Slimes, Oozes, Single Celled Organisms, etc.)

Note: Each grouping was consolidated according to theme. While Plant and Ooze share similar immunities as some other types, thematically they cover vastly different biologies. Plants are different from animals, while Oozes are basically giant amoebas and bacteria. Outsiders could be folded into spirits, but I kept them separate for personal reasons. If you want to, you could always rename the Animal class to Beasts.

Also, certain types that now no longer exist could be reworked to be subtypes.