Quote Originally Posted by remetagross View Post
How about that?
I... Disagree. You are a dog. You can't wield weapons‚ or manipulate items‚ or even open a door without somebody helping you or a level in sorcerer to get Mage Hand. Even if you find a way to wield a weapon‚ you won't ever get to 4 iteratives because you have the worst melee type of the game and you lost more than 5 BAB with your RHD alone. You are also a dog that won't be able to enter most buildings because the door is too small. You spend your days outside‚ where you get -4 because you're allergic to sunlight. You're also an undead with undead immunities‚ which is good‚ and undead traits‚ which are bad. You can be turned by clerics and paladins (with no innate turning resistance‚ mind you)‚ can't be resurrected if you're destroyed and the most common health items will damage you instead. And there are very few prestige classes you can actually enter because you're so much behind in skills‚ BAB and saves.

That‚ plus the fact that you have no skill‚ almost at all (at most‚ you can gain 6 ranks in Jump by ECL9)‚ must amount to something. The charnel hound is still probably better than an equivalent level PHB character in melee combat. But it's not enough for such a monster to be better than an equivalent character in melee combat to be worth playing. There are other sides to D&D‚ and the charnel hound fails at basically all of them.