[3.5] Removing Racial Hit Dice

[Cieyrin]

Beyond DM fiat, how viable is it to remove Racial Hit Dice from a monstrous race? Specifically, I'm looking at the Gnoll, as if we can chop off just 1 RHD, we can use the Humanoid clause of replacing their first RHD with a class level and then it's just a matter of buying off that LA later on and we got something in between a Water Orc and a Goliath in terms of power.

So, ideas?

[sonofzeal]

It's potentially very dangerous. Many creatures become horribly unbalanced if you do this. I'll cite most Giants for melee-types, Marulurks for Sneaker types, and Black Ethergaunts for caster-types. All of those tend to become ridiculously powerful if you remove RHD.

That said, yeah, for Gnolls it's probably fine. You've got to take it case by case.

[Boci]

Have the RH drained away via negative levels, then fail your fortitude save to remove it. Very cheesing, but legal.

[Flickerdart]

You can get the HD drained, but you'll always have to keep one (or you'd be dead) and you have to do it as soon as possible, since you'd have wasted any XP you earned. Corral a Wight and get it to drain you once, then fail the Fort save at the end of the day.

Edit: Or you can get it cut off by ninjas

[Ravens_cry]

Have the RH drained away via negative levels, then fail your fortitude save to remove it. Very cheesing, but legal.

And that's just some of many uses for Vampires around the home.
Order now!

[Kylarra]

I'd say do it on a case by case basis. Personally, I'd rather fold LA into RHD somehow, that way you don't have weird non-levels without HD/BAB/skills/saves.

[faceroll]

For most races, I think the LA is too much, but the HD are fine. Most giants without the LA are about on par with a well built melee'r of their level, for instance. In your case, for the gnoll, +1 LA would be fine.

[PersonMan]

You'd probably have to do it on a case-by-case basis. The sand giant in MM3 gains absurd bonuses for a mere +3 LA, but has 16 RHD. There's also the Naztharune Rakshasa, who gains plenty of wonderful benefits for +5 LA, but has 11 RHD. The first would be insanely overpowered without the RHD, the second...not so much, but still needs some. Maybe you could just subtract LA from RHD? So low-LA creatures would shake off a hit die or two, while stronger ones would still have some to balance them out.

[Cieyrin]

So the answer of the playground comes out to be "Better living through the abuse of Undeath," huh? A.K.A. Back story it, though that's still kinda DM fiat, really. I suppose Energy Drain works on Monstrous HD, though it's kinda ill defined, since they usually refer to class levels whenever discussing it, so I'm unsure of how well that truly works.

[Flickerdart]

The HD drain thing becomes less unbalanced if a DM only allows exotic races that have progressions, so that the drain meaningfully impacts their abilities.

[magic9mushroom]

Maybe you could just subtract LA from RHD? So low-LA creatures would shake off a hit die or two, while stronger ones would still have some to balance them out.

Problem with this is that there are races with more LA than RHD. What do you then?

I'd say, generally, though, that in a high optimisation game (compared to the WotC standard), you could subtract around half most creatures' RHD from their LA and get a fairly balanced result.