Racial HD counting towards ECL. What?!

[FatR]

Okay, am I the only one that sees something horribly wrong with this? These creatures already have a level adjustment, and on top of that, their racial hit dice counts towards their ECL. For example, a level 1 ogre barbarian would be CR 4, buts it would effectively be a level 7 character.

They have four giant hit dice, which is equal to +1 CR according to improving monsters. So to be fair, shouldn't their ECL actually be 4? That would fit with their challenge rating, and the ogre is no longer crippled.

Agree/disagree/RABBLE RABBLE?

Yes, I generally agree. ECL should be equal to CR +1, at most (+1 to compensate for extra stats and equipment). Racial HD + ECL in their current form are explicitly, blatantly meant to arbitrarily and horribly punish players who want to play monsters. You will be hard-pressed to find a character with ECL that is remotely playable - of the top of my head I remember just one race (half-ogre) and one template (Feral) that can be theoretically worth taking, although even they are not as good as levels in real classes. Because ECL is almost always too high and racial HDs are treated as equal to class levels, even though they are strictly worse in practically all cases (well, dragon or outsider HDs can be better than levels past level 2-6 in classes, that never were meant to be more than 2-6 levels long, like monk or fighter, but that's about all).

The only exception is puzzle monsters, like ghosts or even lycanthropes - those, frankly, cannot be measured by a static ECL, because at low levels their inherent abilities make them immune to vast majority of things that endanger normal PCs, and at high levels these abilities become increasingly useless (while their weaknesses might become totally crippling).