Monster Classes that Actually Work [Idea, 3.5]

[Kellus]

Right. So the basic point is that ECL is borked. Level Adjustment is stupid and almost unplayable, and Racial Hit Dice suck. Challenge Rating doesn't even exist when you get right down to it.

So I had an idea, an idea born of the true dragon progression idea, or rather, what the true dragon progression should have been, which is a 20+ level class that dragons of all shapes and sizes advance in and gain similar abilities at different points. WHAT IF there were, for example, just a class called Dragon? And everything with the Dragon type would have levels in it. And every so often you might be able to pick a perk of being a dragon, like a size increase or a stat boost or a breath weapon or some other neat supernatural or extraordinary ability. The class would roughly be balanced against a PC class, which makes calculating CR a breeze, since in perfect theory a single PC class level is equal to a single challenge rating. So in perfect theory a level 12 human barbarian is CR 12, and in this scenario a being with 12 levels of dragon is CR 12 as well.

"But Kellus!" you cry, "How does this differentiate between different kinds of dragon?! If all the dragons use the same class, they'll have identical stats!" But you would be wrong. Because in this scenario, what actually defines a species is what perks they choose as they advance. All the perks are equivalent in power, but any (for example) black dragon that enters the dragon class needs to pick the same abilities as all of the other black dragons, like acid breath, acid immunity, certain spell-like abilities, and so on. It's basically Racial Hit Dice with class features, granting the racial powers.

Of course, if you have an Intelligence of at least 3, you can multiclass out of your type class into a character class to differentiate yourself, which is how you end up with something like a dragon 7/barbarian 3. While the dragon is advancing in the barbarian class, it doesn't progress its dragonly abilities, but it does get all the benefits of being a barbarian. Later it can go back to the dragon class if it wants, to keep advancing that.

This makes playing powerful races a breeze. WotC already came up with the idea with monster classes, but they just didn't think it through to its logical conclusion. They were still stuck in the mindframe of LA/RHD/ECL. Which, as mentioned before, is dumb.

To take an excellent example from the Monster Manual, let's consider the centaur. A centaur as written has 4 Racial Hit Dice of monstrous humanoid and +2 Level Adjustment. In this system, it instead has six levels of the monstrous humanoid class. It has its base racial traits, and then gets the rest of its cool abilities like those enromous stat boosts, its large size, its boosted speed, its natural armour, and so on by advancing in the monstrous humanoid class.

And the beauty of the system is that since it has starting racial traits equal to any other race, you can play a centaur at ECL 1. Heck, you can play a dragon at ECL 1. You just don't have most of the cool dragon powers. This also lets characters advance as they like. A level 1 centaur can choose to take six levels of monstrous humanoid (the maximum it can take; that's its cap) or the player might choose to take 3 levels of monstrous humanoid and then 3 levels of ranger, or it might decide that it didn't like the monstrous humanoid and start straight into, say, archivist. It's like racial paragon classes, but right from the get-go. If you want to focus on advancing your racial traits, you can do so at the expense of your other character levels. But doing so won't screw up your advancement if you don't it to. After you hit the cap on your type class, you can either multiclass into a character class (if your Intelligence is 3+) or follow the normal advancement rules for bumping up your Racial Hit Dice. For this system to work, every race ever would gain an additional favoured class of its type class, if anybody actually uses those rules. The exception to this is most humanoids, which don't have a humanoid class. If there is a humanoid with racial hit dice, they can certainly advance in the humanoid class to gain their cool racial abilities.

To give you a better idea just how this would work, I present to you the first seven levels of the monstrous humanoid class with two monsters incorporated into it so far: the annis and the centaur.

[hr]
Race: The Centaur

Centaurs are four-legged monsters that like to shoot arrows and trample stuff. You know how it is.

Racial Traits
• Medium size; centaurs are treated as long, not tall for the purposes of space and reach
• +2 Strength, -2 Intelligence
• 40ft. base land speed
• +1 natural armour bonus
• Two hoof secondary natural attacks which deal 1d4 points of bludgeoning damage.
• Centaurs can take up to six levels of monstrous humanoid.

A centaur taking levels in the monstrous humanoid class must take the following type traits– (1st– speed increase, 2nd– natural armour bonus, 3rd– +2 Strength, 3rd– +2 Wisdom, 4th– +2 Constitution, 5th– +2 Constitution, 5th– +2 Strength, 6th– size increase).

A centaur taking levels in the monstrous humanoid class must take the following ability score adjustments– (2nd–*+2 Strength, 4th– +2 Strength, 6th– +4 Dexterity)

Race: The Annis

Annises (anni?) are hags that apparently use disguise self a lot. Also, they sometimes turn people into newts.

Racial Traits
• Medium size
• +2 Strength
• 30ft. base land speed
• +2 natural armour bonus
• 2 natural claw attacks (1d4) and 1 secondary bite attack (1d4)
• Spell-like abilities– 1/day disguise self and fog cloud. Caster level equal to HD+1. An annis gains one additional daily use of each of these spell-like abilities for every 3 levels of monstrous humanoid they take.
• Anni can take up to seven levels of monstrous humanoid.

An annis taking levels in the monstrous humanoid class must take the following type traits– (1st– +2 Strength, 2nd– improved grab, 3rd– +2 Dexterity, 3rd– speed increase, 4th– DR 2/bludgeoning, 5th– rake, 5th– rend, 6th– size increase, 7th– spell resistance, 7th– natural armour bonus).

An annis taking levels in the monstrous humanoid class must take the following ability score adjustments– (2nd– +2 Strength, 4th– +2 Strength, 6th– +4 Strength)

[hr]
Type Class: The Monstrous Humanoid

Being both humanoid and also monstrous, monstrous humanoids are pretty bad-ass.

Hit Die: d8
Skill Points at 1st level: (2 + Int modifier) x 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier
Class Skills: You may select four skills to be considered class skills. You may not change this decision afterwards.

Table: The Monstrous Humanoid
{table="head"]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special

1st|+1|+0|+2|+2|Darkvision, least type trait

2nd|+2|+0|+3|+3|Ability boost +2, least type trait

3rd|+3|+1|+3|+3|Least type trait (two)

4th|+4|+1|+4|+4|Ability boost +2, least type trait

5th|+5|+1|+4|+4|Least type trait (two)

6th|+6|+2|+5|+5|Ability boost +4, lesser type trait

7th|+7|+2|+5|+5|Lesser type trait (two)

[/table]

All of the following are class features of the monstrous humanoid.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: A monstrous humanoid is proficient with all simple weapons and one martial weapon of their choice. They are also proficient with light armour and light shields. They are not proficient with medium or heavy armour.

Darkvision (Ex): Beginning at 1st level, a monstrous humanoid gains darkvision to 60ft.

Ability Boost (Ex): At 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter, a monstrous humanoid can increase of its ability scores by the value shown on the table.

Least Type Trait: At 1st level and every additional level until 6th, a monstrous humanoid may select a minor type trait from the following list. At 3rd and 5th level, they may instead select two.

• Ability Boost (Ex): You gain a +2 bonus to one of your ability scores.
• Damage Reduction: You gain Damage Reduction 2 penetrated by one damage type of your choice. If you have other sources of damage reduction, they overlap to determing your total damage reduction.
• Improved Grab (Ex): You gain the improved grab ability.
• Rake (Ex): you gain the rake ability. Select one of your primary or secondary natural weapons for this to apply to.
• Rend (Ex): You gain the rend ability. This does 2d6 damage + 1-1/2 times your Strength modifier.
• Speed Boost (Ex): Your speed increases by 10ft.
• Natural Armour (Ex): You gain a +2 bonus to your natural armour.

Lesser Type Trait: At 6th level and 7th level, a monstrous humanoid may select a lesser type trait from the following list. At 7th level, they may instead select two.

• Least Traits: You may select two least type traits instead of a lesser type trait.
• Natural Armour (Ex): You gain a +8 bonus to your natural armour.
• Size Increase (Ex): You permanently increase by one size category, to a maximum of Large.
• Spell Resistance (Su): You gain spell resistance 12 + HD

[hr]
At the end of all this, you have two characters, a centaur and an annis. The centaur has taken six levels in monstrous humanoid and is an ECL 6 character and the annis has taken seven levels in monstrous humanoid and is an ECL 7 character.

This system also makes it ridiculously easy to gauge the Challenge Rating of homebrewed monsters. Simply level them up in the class until they have all of the abilities you want to give them. If you homebrewed an ability, decide what level it fits in at (after lesser traits you'd have greater [11-15] and then finally ultimate [16-20]). You'll notice that your RHD and LA in the old system are added together to decide how many levels you can take. That's why a fully levelled centaur in this model is a higher CR than the original centaur, because it has two additional hit dice. It's a neccessary sacrifice to rid ourselves of level adjustment forever.

NOW. You'll notice that the annis doesn't really model very well in this. If you crunch the numbers, you'll notice that the annis base class is a little too powerful for LA +0, and that it's missing a +2 Charisma bonus. This is mostly because the annis was never intended for player use, and hence doesn't have a level adjustment. It models much better if you assume it would have had a LA of about +1 in the old system, although the beauty of this system is that by assigning abilities to the appropriate tiers, you can easily get a monster that is annis-like, even if it doesn't have every statistic the same.

So what do you think? Any questions, I'll be happy to answer them! Obviously it is a lot of work to model a monster into this sytem, but I think that in the long run it will be worth it to have monster classes that actually work and allow every race in existence to be played from level 1!

[Mulletmanalive]

Oddly enough, I've been devouting effort to creating something very similar for my own d20 games design baby Mecha Victoriana. The entire thing was designed as a GM's toolkit so it relies on the rules of common sense.

I created a set of progressions which listed the basics [attack, defence, saves], the size range of the critter and the number of feats, 'quirks' and 'upgrades' that a creature gets per level.

Quirks are little things [stat bonuses, Pounce, Senses, additional natural attacks], while Upgrades were more potent things like spell-like abilities [low magic setting], Improved Grab and the ever ludicrous Constrict.

I've been meaning to share this with the board here but i've been hindered, mostly by the fact i have no idea how to make those nifty tables...

I'm intrigued by your work so far and look forward to its expansion. One question though; are you planning to make these balanced-ish with PC classes so that CR using them becomes 1:1 or are these really not intended for actually building critters with?

Edit: Oh, one more thing. Is there technically a problem combining this with the idea of LA based starting races. Perhaps because it wasn't clear and i had to come up with something, i assumed races with an LA counted as that many levels lower than their peers and started with sufficient xp to be at the level they started with. It's a major drag for +2 or more but LA +1 is a 1000xp deficit and has occasionally led to some great roleplaying from players desperate for the bonus xp...

[Kellus]

Good question. I am in fact hoping to relate them 1:1 to PC classes, since by my own rules a PC centaur can multiclass freely between monstrous humanoid and wizard. Like you can see in the example class, it ended up being by neccessity slightly more powerful than a PC class. While I'm actually okay with this (it turns RHD/LA into a GOOD thing, instead of a drawback to a race) I would in fact prefer to trim it down slightly. Many creatures as I mentioned above won't be able to be modelled perfectly (in the example, centaurs have slightly more hp than normal and anni have less Cha), but the important thing is that it FEELS like the monster. As long as the key features of the monster can be obtained as traits, nobody's going to complain about a +2 bonus missing here or there or a few statistical discrepancies.

[Mulletmanalive]

little embarassed repeating myself but hey ho [this was in an edit i put on my previous post, kinda]

Why not counter the increased power of some of the critters with LA +1 base races? While i agree that taking a +2 or more race is a solid kick to the groin, LA +1 has always been seen as a worthwhile tradeoff amongst the circles i've trodden in. Note from my previous post the assumption that I and most of the other English GMs i've ever met used about how the tradeoff actually worked.

[Kellus]

Aye, but the entire point of this model is that level adjustment is stupid and needs to be destroyed. It's a cumbersome mechanic that only leads to ridiculousness, because XP is not a commodity that realistically can be moved around in multiple ways without disrupting party balance. It's the same reason XP costs on spells or powers are stupid, stupid ideas, because you are punishing the character for using their class features. Same thing with an XP cost for coming back from death. Now you're even further behind. Level adjustment and the entire ECL system in general was one of the most unwieldy things ever to enter 3.5, and there's a reason it's one of the most poorly understood mechanics. Do you know how long it took me to actually realize what ECL actually meant?!

[/rant]

Anywho, the basic point of this system is to allow any or every race to be played at LA +0. So if you're starting a level 1 game, you can be literally anything you want, and gain your cool race-related abilities as you level up.

[PumpkinEater]

Right. So the basic point is that ECL is borked. Level Adjustment is stupid and almost unplayable, and Racial Hit Dice suck. Challenge Rating doesn't even exist when you get right down to it.

So I had an idea, an idea born of the true dragon progression idea, or rather, what the true dragon progression should have been, which is a 20+ level class that dragons of all shapes and sizes advance in and gain similar abilities at different points. WHAT IF there were, for example, just a class called Dragon? And everything with the Dragon type would have levels in it. And every so often you might be able to pick a perk of being a dragon, like a size increase or a stat boost or a breath weapon or some other neat supernatural or extraordinary ability. The class would roughly be balanced against a PC class, which makes calculating CR a breeze, since in perfect theory a single PC class level is equal to a single challenge rating. So in perfect theory a level 12 human barbarian is CR 12, and in this scenario a being with 12 levels of dragon is CR 12 as well.

"But Kellus!" you cry, "How does this differentiate between different kinds of dragon?! If all the dragons use the same class, they'll have identical stats!" But you would be wrong. Because in this scenario, what actually defines a species is what perks they choose as they advance. All the perks are equivalent in power, but any (for example) black dragon that enters the dragon class needs to pick the same abilities as all of the other black dragons, like acid breath, acid immunity, certain spell-like abilities, and so on. It's basically Racial Hit Dice with class features, granting the racial powers.

Of course, if you have an Intelligence of at least 3, you can multiclass out of your type class into a character class to differentiate yourself, which is how you end up with something like a dragon 7/barbarian 3. While the dragon is advancing in the barbarian class, it doesn't progress its dragonly abilities, but it does get all the benefits of being a barbarian. Later it can go back to the dragon class if it wants, to keep advancing that.

This makes playing powerful races a breeze. WotC already came up with the idea with monster classes, but they just didn't think it through to its logical conclusion. They were still stuck in the mindframe of LA/RHD/ECL. Which, as mentioned before, is dumb.

To take an excellent example from the Monster Manual, let's consider the centaur. A centaur as written has 4 Racial Hit Dice of monstrous humanoid and +2 Level Adjustment. In this system, it instead has six levels of the monstrous humanoid class. It has its base racial traits, and then gets the rest of its cool abilities like those enromous stat boosts, its large size, its boosted speed, its natural armour, and so on by advancing in the monstrous humanoid class.

And the beauty of the system is that since it has starting racial traits equal to any other race, you can play a centaur at ECL 1. Heck, you can play a dragon at ECL 1. You just don't have most of the cool dragon powers. This also lets characters advance as they like. A level 1 centaur can choose to take six levels of monstrous humanoid (the maximum it can take; that's its cap) or the player might choose to take 3 levels of monstrous humanoid and then 3 levels of ranger, or it might decide that it didn't like the monstrous humanoid and start straight into, say, archivist. It's like racial paragon classes, but right from the get-go. If you want to focus on advancing your racial traits, you can do so at the expense of your other character levels. But doing so won't screw up your advancement if you don't it to. After you hit the cap on your type class, you can either multiclass into a character class (if your Intelligence is 3+) or follow the normal advancement rules for bumping up your Racial Hit Dice. For this system to work, every race ever would gain an additional favoured class of its type class, if anybody actually uses those rules. The exception to this is most humanoids, which don't have a humanoid class. If there is a humanoid with racial hit dice, they can certainly advance in the humanoid class to gain their cool racial abilities.

To give you a better idea just how this would work, I present to you the first seven levels of the monstrous humanoid class with two monsters incorporated into it so far: the annis and the centaur.

<hr>
Race: The Centaur

Centaurs are four-legged monsters that like to shoot arrows and trample stuff. You know how it is.

Racial Traits
• Medium size; centaurs are treated as long, not tall for the purposes of space and reach
• +2 Strength, -2 Intelligence
• 40ft. base land speed
• +1 natural armour bonus
• Two hoof secondary natural attacks which deal 1d4 points of bludgeoning damage.
• Centaurs can take up to six levels of monstrous humanoid.

A centaur taking levels in the monstrous humanoid class must take the following type traits– (1st– speed increase, 2nd– natural armour bonus, 3rd– +2 Strength, 3rd– +2 Wisdom, 4th– +2 Constitution, 5th– +2 Constitution, 5th– +2 Strength, 6th– size increase).

A centaur taking levels in the monstrous humanoid class must take the following ability score adjustments– (2nd–*+2 Strength, 4th– +2 Strength, 6th– +4 Dexterity)

Race: The Annis

Annises (anni?) are hags that apparently use disguise self a lot. Also, they sometimes turn people into newts.

Racial Traits
• Medium size
• +2 Strength
• 30ft. base land speed
• +2 natural armour bonus
• 2 natural claw attacks (1d4) and 1 secondary bite attack (1d4)
• Spell-like abilities– 1/day disguise self and fog cloud. Caster level equal to HD+1. An annis gains one additional daily use of each of these spell-like abilities for every 3 levels of monstrous humanoid they take.
• Anni can take up to seven levels of monstrous humanoid.

An annis taking levels in the monstrous humanoid class must take the following type traits– (1st– +2 Strength, 2nd– improved grab, 3rd– +2 Dexterity, 3rd– speed increase, 4th– DR 2/bludgeoning, 5th– rake, 5th– rend, 6th– size increase, 7th– spell resistance, 7th– natural armour bonus).

An annis taking levels in the monstrous humanoid class must take the following ability score adjustments– (2nd– +2 Strength, 4th– +2 Strength, 6th– +4 Strength)

<hr>
Type Class: The Monstrous Humanoid

Being both humanoid and also monstrous, monstrous humanoids are pretty bad-ass.

Hit Die: d8
Skill Points at 1st level: (2 + Int modifier) x 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier
Class Skills: You may select four skills to be considered class skills. You may not change this decision afterwards.

Table: The Monstrous Humanoid
{table="head"]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special

1st|+1|+0|+2|+2|Darkvision, least type trait

2nd|+2|+0|+3|+3|Ability boost +2, least type trait

3rd|+3|+1|+3|+3|Least type trait (two)

4th|+4|+1|+4|+4|Ability boost +2, least type trait

5th|+5|+1|+4|+4|Least type trait (two)

6th|+6|+2|+5|+5|Ability boost +4, lesser type trait

7th|+7|+2|+5|+5|Lesser type trait (two)

[/table]

All of the following are class features of the monstrous humanoid.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: A monstrous humanoid is proficient with all simple weapons and one martial weapon of their choice. They are also proficient with light armour and light shields. They are not proficient with medium or heavy armour.

Darkvision (Ex): Beginning at 1st level, a monstrous humanoid gains darkvision to 60ft.

Ability Boost (Ex): At 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter, a monstrous humanoid can increase of its ability scores by the value shown on the table.

Least Type Trait: At 1st level and every additional level until 6th, a monstrous humanoid may select a minor type trait from the following list. At 3rd and 5th level, they may instead select two.

• Ability Boost (Ex): You gain a +2 bonus to one of your ability scores.
• Damage Reduction: You gain Damage Reduction 2 penetrated by one damage type of your choice. If you have other sources of damage reduction, they overlap to determing your total damage reduction.
• Improved Grab (Ex): You gain the improved grab ability.
• Rake (Ex): you gain the rake ability. Select one of your primary or secondary natural weapons for this to apply to.
• Rend (Ex): You gain the rend ability. This does 2d6 damage + 1-1/2 times your Strength modifier.
• Speed Boost (Ex): Your speed increases by 10ft.
• Natural Armour (Ex): You gain a +2 bonus to your natural armour.

Lesser Type Trait: At 6th level and 7th level, a monstrous humanoid may select a lesser type trait from the following list. At 7th level, they may instead select two.

• Least Traits: You may select two least type traits instead of a lesser type trait.
• Natural Armour (Ex): You gain a +8 bonus to your natural armour.
• Size Increase (Ex): You permanently increase by one size category, to a maximum of Large.
• Spell Resistance (Su): You gain spell resistance 12 + HD

<hr>
At the end of all this, you have two characters, a centaur and an annis. The centaur has taken six levels in monstrous humanoid and is an ECL 6 character and the annis has taken seven levels in monstrous humanoid and is an ECL 7 character.

This system also makes it ridiculously easy to gauge the Challenge Rating of homebrewed monsters. Simply level them up in the class until they have all of the abilities you want to give them. If you homebrewed an ability, decide what level it fits in at (after lesser traits you'd have greater [11-15] and then finally ultimate [16-20]). You'll notice that your RHD and LA in the old system are added together to decide how many levels you can take. That's why a fully levelled centaur in this model is a higher CR than the original centaur, because it has two additional hit dice. It's a neccessary sacrifice to rid ourselves of level adjustment forever.

NOW. You'll notice that the annis doesn't really model very well in this. If you crunch the numbers, you'll notice that the annis base class is a little too powerful for LA +0, and that it's missing a +2 Charisma bonus. This is mostly because the annis was never intended for player use, and hence doesn't have a level adjustment. It models much better if you assume it would have had a LA of about +1 in the old system, although the beauty of this system is that by assigning abilities to the appropriate tiers, you can easily get a monster that is annis-like, even if it doesn't have every statistic the same.

So what do you think? Any questions, I'll be happy to answer them! Obviously it is a lot of work to model a monster into this sytem, but I think that in the long run it will be worth it to have monster classes that actually work and allow every race in existence to be played from level 1!

Ahh. I'm kinda confused. Haha, but I'm sleepy too. I'm not totally sure I get what you're trying to say, but if I do totally get what you're trying to say (which is that LA is bad?), I agree. But what's the problem with RHD?

[Kellus]

Ahh. I'm kinda confused. Haha, but I'm sleepy too. I'm not totally sure I get what you're trying to say, but if I do totally get what you're trying to say (which is that LA is bad?), I agree. But what's the problem with RHD?

While there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of RHD (and in fact this system is basically Racial Hit Dice Deluxe), it alone makes it impossible to play most monsters. Because going strictly by racial hit dice, most monsters are too strong. Therefore, WotC in all their brilliance decided to create an interim measure between the monster's RHD and their actual ECL, which they called Level Adjustment.

And lo, it was stupid and cumbersome and still did not really allow monsters to be played and lo it was the source of much confusion. And WotC saw that it was Bad and created monster classes which by and large were equally confusing in that they attempted to sneak LA into the class progression and ended up being equally stupid. And WotC saw that it was Bad and created Level Adjustment Buyoff and LA Buyoff despite being the only real way to deal with the problem remained virtually unplayable in a long campaign due to its reliance on the obscure mechanics of XP growth and relative character level which nobody actually understands or uses which sort of defeats its purpose. And WotC saw that it was Bad and went and made 4th Edition and pretended that a problem had never existed in the first place.

[PumpkinEater]

While there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of RHD (and in fact this system is basically Racial Hit Dice Deluxe), it alone makes it impossible to play most monsters. Because going strictly by racial hit dice, most monsters are too strong. Therefore, WotC in all their brilliance decided to create an interim measure between the monster's RHD and their actual ECL, which they called Level Adjustment.

And lo, it was stupid and cumbersome and still did not really allow monsters to be played and lo it was the source of much confusion. And WotC saw that it was Bad and created monster classes which by and large were equally confusing in that they attempted to sneak LA into the class progression and ended up being equally stupid. And WotC saw that it was Bad and created Level Adjustment Buyoff and LA Buyoff despite being the only real way to deal with the problem remained virtually unplayable in a long campaign due to its reliance on the obscure mechanics of XP growth and relative character level which nobody actually understands or uses which sort of defeats its purpose. And WotC saw that it was Bad and went and made 4th Edition and pretended that a problem had never existed in the first place.

Hmm... what I did with monsters that offered LA was that I made up an "LA" class that had a d4 HD, 2 skill points per level, no class features, and a bad BAB and saves (all of them) progression, and anyone taking a race or gaining a template that had LA of X gained X of the "LA" class. I actually wasn't sure whether or not it was a good idea. I don't know why I did it. Oh well, nothing horrible came of it, so it's all good, haha.

[paddyfool]

Hmm... what I did with monsters that offered LA was that I made up an "LA" class that had a d4 HD, 2 skill points per level, no class features, and a bad BAB and saves (all of them) progression, and anyone taking a race or gaining a template that had LA of X gained X of the "LA" class. I actually wasn't sure whether or not it was a good idea. I don't know why I did it. Oh well, nothing horrible came of it, so it's all good, haha

Curious. So, this would either help saves or leave them alone, depending on the LA. As for HP:

A goliath barbarian 1 (ECL 2) would have 4 + d12 (averages to 6.5) + 2*con modifier hp, rather than 12 + con. They'd have a more random HP total, and tend to be ahead if their con modifier was 2 or higher (which it probably would be at anything from 25 points buy up), and behind it if was less.

A half-dragon barbarian 1 (ECL 4) would have 4 + 2d4 + d12 + 4*con modifier (which averages at 15.5 + 4 * con) hp, rather than 12 + con modifier, and would therefore be significantly less fragile - no bad thing, on the whole.

And as for skill points:

A tiefling rogue 1 (ECL 2) would have 4*(2 + int) + (8+int) skill points, rather than 4*(8+int). So the point of equilibrium would be if 5int +16 = 4int+32, ie if you had an int mod of +16; all in all, the tiefling would really be hurt by this. Obviously this would matter a lot less if you had 4 skill points per level, and be an actual positive if you had 2 skillpoints. At higher LAs... well, you wouldn't be playing a skill monkey anyway. Which skills would be class skills?

[The Dark Fiddler]

I very much like this idea. Very much.

If you need my help, however bad it may be, I am now offering it.

What would Bonus Feats be though? Lesser Trait, maybe?

[Tempest Fennac]

I'd have those as Lest, DF (feats aren't any stronger then those traits). I'm curious about how Outsiders would be handled with this system (I'm not sure how they would be due to how powerful the type is).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I've been using the same basic idea for a while, but I took a slightly different tack. Instead of having a list of selectable abilities, I wrote up a set of rules for reverse-engineering a monster into a number of feats and then had each monster class simply give a feat at each level, and the rules ensure that a monster of X HD has abilities broken down into around 1.5*X feats (since I do feats every odd level and have reworked the monsters a bit to not need all the filler feats). Then, as a monster character you can take the feats in any order you want--barring a few with prerequisites--until you hit the original HD of the creature.

Because each monster gets its own feats, like many PC races have their own feats, each one is accurate to the MM and you can do things like take the Dragon-Blooded feat to get access to [Dragon] feats from a particular type instead of taking the not-at-all-worth-it Half-Dragon template and so forth. Unfortunately, part of what makes it work so well is my altered racial traits system, so I don't think there would be any ideas from it that would easily merge with your system.

[Draken]

Someone made a 20 levels base class whose purpose is to, basically, create a unique outsider.

That said Kellus, I believe you had an idea that was also had by at least two other people (me included), in the form of a base class that makes a monster (or a person) more monstrous.

See the evolutionist linked in my sig.

[Tempest Fennac]

Thanks for mentioning that, Draken (ironically, I saved the link before forgetting about it; http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...light=outsider ).

[togapika]

So what about a monster like say, the Grey Jester from Heroes of Horror?

[fuzzywolf]

This is brilliant. LA is stupid and broke, you're right about that. This works much better, and it's simple enough that players might actually USE it.

[DracoDei]

Curious. So, this would either help saves or leave them alone, depending on the LA. As for HP:

A goliath barbarian 1 (ECL 2) would have 4 + d12 (averages to 6.5) + 2*con modifier hp, rather than 12 + con. They'd have a more random HP total, and tend to be ahead if their con modifier was 2 or higher (which it probably would be at anything from 25 points buy up), and behind it if was less.

A half-dragon barbarian 1 (ECL 4) would have 4 + 2d4 + d12 + 4*con modifier (which averages at 15.5 + 4 * con) hp, rather than 12 + con modifier, and would therefore be significantly less fragile - no bad thing, on the whole.

And as for skill points:

A tiefling rogue 1 (ECL 2) would have 4*(2 + int) + (8+int) skill points, rather than 4*(8+int). So the point of equilibrium would be if 5int +16 = 4int+32, ie if you had an int mod of +16; all in all, the tiefling would really be hurt by this. Obviously this would matter a lot less if you had 4 skill points per level, and be an actual positive if you had 2 skillpoints. At higher LAs... well, you wouldn't be playing a skill monkey anyway. Which skills would be class skills?

My groups do something similar, but the LA HD* never count as your first level and thus are never the HD that gets maxed or the skill points that get quadrupled.

*call them commoner levels, it is easier to explain than: all bad saves, d4 HD, poor BAB, 2 + Int skill points per level.

In case it matters: we also used fractional saves, and BAB (with fractional stat modifiers to go with them). In my own campaign I also let the HD maxing and skill point quadrupling apply to separate classes for multiclass characters, retroactively if necessary.

[Stycotl]

i've actually been playing with some similar ideas, though my experiments have mostly been an unholy conglomeration of kellus and pumpkineater's ideas. i tried to make monster class levels that equaled character class levels in power (1:1 CR ratio), but utilizing LA and RHD.

it did change some things, for instance, many monsters (most of them, in fact) ended up having more RHD than normal, though i was ok with that, and the filler levels that replaced LA had stats according to the monster type (outsider: full bab and good saves across the board; aberrations 3/4 bab and good will saves; etc), and then gave them an occasional bonus feat or ability focus, depending on how powerful the base monster was.

one of the larger problems with this was dealing with some of the low-HD creatures with potent abilites, such as some of the sprites and stuff. they never worked out very well, because in order to us this method, you had to take a 2-HD creature and make it 6 or 8-HD or so.

*shrug* you win some, you lose some. lately i have just been using LA, and then allowing the players to drop a level of LA as a reward for a completed quest or a good roleplay or something, augmenting xp awards. that has been fun.

EDIT: oh yeah, i forgot to mention that lost pair o' dice's idea about monstrous feats for monster classes might actually be the easiest and most balanced way to do this without actually tampering with RHD and stuff.

[Draz74]

So what do you think? Any questions, I'll be happy to answer them! Obviously it is a lot of work to model a monster into this sytem, but I think that in the long run it will be worth it to have monster classes that actually work and allow every race in existence to be played from level 1!

This is actually how I've said monster characters should work for years. But I've never had the time/energy/drive to actually work out the details ... and it looks like you're doing a good job. Awesome work!

[y2kjman]

Could you please finish this up to 20? Would be nice to see where the progression is heading. Thanks.

[Jergmo]

Okay, here's the problem with this and every other monster class progression thing.

It doesn't make a lick of sense.

With what you're suggesting, a dragon that's only a few years old could progress to the power and size of a Great Wyrm if it was determined and survived.

Another example: Ogre monster class. Starts as medium, and they become Large a few levels in. How the heck does that make any sense? Yes, racial hit die/ECL crud sucks. But there are variants for determining the ECL that is more sensible than racial hit dice + class levels + level adjustment. (Also, there is a variant that lets you reduce level adjustments over time).

Also, I don't remember who it is that came up with this system for determining base ECL, but it's:

1. Divide its average HP by 4.5 to 6,
4.5 for 5 HD or lower, 5 for 6-10 HD, 5.5 for 11-15 HD, 6 for 16-20 HD.
2. Add 1 for each five points above 10 its AC is, minusing 1 for every 5 below.
3. Add 1 for each special attack (+2 to +5 or more if its got a decent number of spells in its spell-like abilities).
4. Add 1 for each quality unless you deem it worthy of more. Add 1 for each resistance and 10 points of DR it has, and 2 for each immunity.
5. Add 1 for every two bonus feats it has.
6. Divide by 3.

Another thing to keep in mind about dragons is they were designed to face an entire party by themselves. A dragon is a whole stinkin' party in one creature, it should have a ridonkulous ECL, in my opinion.

[almightyk]

just a thought too for difference with your dragon example at the start
rthere can also be different sub-classes like how there is like 7 different kinds of monk

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Okay, here's the problem with this and every other monster class progression thing.

It doesn't make a lick of sense.

Why not? Age and level aren't linked, so if you have a wyrmling NPC he levels at the speed of plot (i.e., at the right pace to hit Great Wyrm power when he reaches Great Wyrm age) and if you have a wyrmling PC he's more powerful than a normal dragon of his age, just as he would be if he took wizard levels or whatever. An ogre NPC would also level and age at the speed of plot, and a PC ogre would spin it as slowing growing taller and wider as he quickly ages, eventually crossing the line to Large. Levels are purely metagame, and don't interact with character age or progression except in a way best for the story; who says you have to start with a wyrmling, or a young ogre, and not a character who's almost at that power level anyway?

Another thing to keep in mind about dragons is they were designed to face an entire party by themselves. A dragon is a whole stinkin' party in one creature, it should have a ridonkulous ECL, in my opinion.

In the CR system, dragons are under-CR'd to represent this, and it usually backfires because either (A) new players/DMs don't realize this, get a TPK, and are afraid to use/fight dragons anymore or (B) players/DMs do realize this, prepare accordingly, and wipe it out thanks to the action economy. A dragon shouldn't have an artificial ECL adjustment (that's the thinking that got us LA, after all); instead, it should have benefits like better HD/saves/skills for its level, more powerful special abilities, etc.

[Debihuman]

True Dragon Category Age (Years) from SRD
Wyrmling 0-5
Very young 6-15
Young 16-25
Juvenile 26-50
Young adult 51-100
Adult 101-200
Mature adult 201-400
Old 401-600
Very old 601-800
Ancient 801-1,000
Wyrm 1,001-1,200
Great wyrm 1,201 or more

Debby

[Ecalsneerg]

Because of course a level 1 farmboy advancing to level 20 in the space of a few months of gameworld time makes so much more sense than this.

[almightyk]

maybe they just found a lot of rare candies

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Because of course a level 1 farmboy advancing to level 20 in the space of a few months of gameworld time makes so much more sense than this.

That too. Both farmboys and dragons tend to spend their time at home not doing anything exciting, and PCs tend to go to strange places and gain power really really fast, so when you put the two together you're bound to have some inconsistencies.

[Oslecamo]

Levels are purely metagame, and don't interact with character age or progression except in a way best for the story; who says you have to start with a wyrmling, or a young ogre, and not a character who's almost at that power level anyway?

Because this system assumes that for some mysterious reason every freaking creature out there starts exactly at the same power level, wich makes no sense no matter how you look at it.

Yes the mighty gold dragon hatchling who's suposed to start building his hoard and empire as soon as he breathes is as strong as a commoner. Wee...No.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Because this system assumes that for some mysterious reason every freaking creature out there starts exactly at the same power level, wich makes no sense no matter how you look at it.

Yes the mighty gold dragon hatchling who's suposed to start building his hoard and empire as soon as he breathes is as strong as a commoner. Wee...No.

Guess what? The entire D&D class system assumes that for some reason every freaking adventurer out there starts exactly at the same power level, which makes no sense no matter how you look at it.

What's that, you say? Wizards and fighters and rogues are all at different power levels at level 1? Exactly. A 1 HD dragon is vastly better than a commoner simply by virtue of his HD and abilities, even if those abilities are only extra natural armor or flight.

A gold dragon wyrmling "who's suposed to start building his hoard and empire as soon as he breathes" has 8 HD. An 8 HD wyrmling would obviously be equipped to do that. Does the wyrmling pop out of the egg at 8 HD, though? He can, but doesn't have to; having it pop out at 1 HD and rapidly grow to wyrmling size as it gains power is just as plausible.

[Melayl]

I would suggest looking at Sean K. Reynolds' Beholder Monster Class as a guideline. He really knows his stuff, and sets out a good example (along with the though process behind it).