A quck Pathfinder question, Monsters as PCs

[Greymane]

I don't use Pathfinder, I use normal 3.5, but after hearing about their rules for playing monsters, I was intrigued. It seemed to me that it was a step in the right direction, as long as the DM adjudicates it properly, however, on to my question...

In Pathfinder, using a monster with RHD, and going off of its CR for level, does the monster still roll for stats as normal? I was told once that that was not the case, so I thought I would double check with you fine folks.

That being said, has anyone used the monsters as PCs Pathfinder rules? How did it turn out? Balanced? Or was the monster PC in question overpowered or underpowered?

[Kaiyanwang]

Rules here say nothing about reroll stats.

Said this, for mosters without racial HD (say, hobgoblin) you roll your stats normally (thery are stated as standard options in the core rulebook, powerful as core races more or less).

I always used core races 'til now, I cannot say. For sure, using the CR could get rid of some annoying parts of the LA (3.5 minotaur barbarian, ECL 9, Pathfinder minotaur barbarian, ECL 5, if I understood it well).

[Prime32]

On stats, I could point to the way Tome does things - you calculate racial modifiers under the assumption that the monsters had the elite array (15 14 13 12 10 8) with the scores matched up in order of size. Tends to give more reasonable values and less straitjacketing.

[Window459]

What me and my group did (not sure fully how it affects the game cause we've just started using pathfinder about a month go) but we just loved the Lvl adjust by one for races and templates stayed the same, so ex Flind is a ECL of 3 not 4 but half dragons still +3

[Starscream]

Last couple of campaign's I've DM'd (the ones that weren't gestalt anyway, monster races work quite well in conjunction with that) used my own little experimental rules.

Basically everyone gets three "free" levels that don't count toward your ECL. These can be "spent" on the following:

1)Offsetting the cost of RHD + LA.
2)A Template
3)Levels in your Racial Paragon class
4)Levels in an NPC class.

I started this simply because I was bored with how races work in D&D. In the long run it barely matters which you pick. An elven ranger may be different than a human ranger at level 1, but by level 20 their racial abilities have long since become meaningless in the general scheme of things. And the human is always better, because a free feat and 20 free skill points are much more useful than +2 to one stat at the expense of -2 to another, and maybe a few skill bonuses and darkvision.

Pretty much every party was ending up as "a bunch of humans and maybe a dwarf". Reams of books with cool playable monsters, and no one would even touch them. This is supposed to be a game about fantasy, where you can do and be anything, but everyone always plays the most mundane creatures because an extra caster level trumps everything else in the game.

Hence the "free" levels. You'd be amazed how viable many monsters become as characters if even just one or two points of LA are shaved off. Templates are also quite useful now, as many of them offer abilities that scale with your HD.

And if you still want to be a core race, the paragon classes make sure that you will stand out compared to other core races. The difference between an elf and a dwarf becomes much more extreme with these levels, and has a significant impact much longer into the game. Even half-elves and half-orcs become decent, as the fact that you can take levels of three different paragon classes (your race, and that of either of your parents) makes them quite versatile. A half elf can start the game with two bonus feats for example (half elf 1, human 2), same as a human with human paragon 3.

Works pretty well, overall. A lot of players were willing to experiment with monster races (Outsider HD start to look really good when they won't cost you caster levels), templates (hey, why not stack Celestial on top of your paladin. Couldn't hurt), and even NPC classes (a level or two of expert can make getting into PrCs with skill requirements much less painful). I certainly had the most varied party I'd seen in a while.

Next time I'm considering throwing on another Free level every 5 levels or so. It will encourage more powerful monsters, and the paragon classes will mean that your elf will actually get more "elveny" over time.

[Mojo_Rat]

I don't use Pathfinder, I use normal 3.5, but after hearing about their rules for playing monsters, I was intrigued. It seemed to me that it was a step in the right direction, as long as the DM adjudicates it properly, however, on to my question...

In Pathfinder, using a monster with RHD, and going off of its CR for level, does the monster still roll for stats as normal? I was told once that that was not the case, so I thought I would double check with you fine folks.

That being said, has anyone used the monsters as PCs Pathfinder rules? How did it turn out? Balanced? Or was the monster PC in question overpowered or underpowered?

I am doing a guess here as to what you wanted to know but here goes.

You would roll stats like you would any other PC and add the monsters stats like any other character. Their monster rules work well it looks like for low Cr monsters that dont have alot of RHD.

so say Werwolf

Though the process for higher level monsters works pretty much the same. i think it is most balanced if everone is playing a monster Char probly. Though no one in or group has tried it yet.