Monster Classes

[Ice&Fire]

I was reading through Savage Species at the monster classes with one of my players, and they expressed an interest in playing an astral deva. How do monster classes stack up against normal base classes? 12HD over 20 levels seems a little weak.

[Salt_Crow]

I was reading through Savage Species at the monster classes with one of my players, and they expressed an interest in playing an astral deva. How do monster classes stack up against normal base classes? 12HD over 20 levels seems a little weak.

It includes +8 LA as well. Only after you take all 20 levels of the class, then you can take class levels as normal and you may qualify for PrCs too. Otherwise, treat the HDs as being 'class levels' and LAs as... well, LAs (where you don't get anything).

So an Astral Deva Paladin 1 (ECL 21) would not gain 4x the skill point with his/her first paladin class level as it had already gained the said benefit from the first outsider HD.

The monster classes are generally regarded as on the weaker side of things except in a few cases (e.g. first 5 levels of Ghaele eladrin monster class) due to their level adjustments and sometimes bad racial HD.