Trading HD

[Tanuki Tales]

I have a question to pose to the playground; how do you all feel about allowing players who set their hearts and minds on playing Monster to partially trade in some of their racial HD for either class levels or templates?

In the game circles I float in it's generally allowed for a player to switch racial HD for class levels or templates for an amount up to half their CR (Pathfinder) or half their CR or LA (which ever is lower) for 3.5. This is either allowed to be done at character creation or is done in a similar method to LA buy off.

[Mastikator]

I'd be cool with it as long as the end character doesn't become overpowered and it makes sense roleplaywise.

[Rixx]

Pathfinder has a quick-and-dirty system for playing monsters where you use the monster's CR as its total "Monster Levels", independent of hit dice, which you can eventually buy off half of. It sounds like it'd suit your purposes:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rul...onsters-as-pcs

[Tanuki Tales]

Pathfinder has a quick-and-dirty system for playing monsters where you use the monster's CR as its total "Monster Levels", independent of hit dice, which you can eventually buy off half of. It sounds like it'd suit your purposes:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rul...onsters-as-pcs

I know, but even with Pathfinder's "improvement" of playing Monster PCs you can still get saddled with unfavorable HD.

[Zaq]

Depending on the monster, the player, and the rest of the party, I'd probably allow it. Honestly, the as-written rules for playing monsters are just shameful.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

Either allow a balanced ECL variant or follow RAW where you can use negative levels cheese to ditch those RHD. In both cases apply LA buyoff.

[DarkEternal]

I don't allow it. Maybe it's rigid or something, but if you know fully well what you're getting into(and I do explain in detail and give the players all available choices), then you are set. You obviously really, really wanted to play that race to the point where being held back for class or some penalties will be a small price to pay anyway.

[Greecy]

(3.5) My old DM who was generous and like to see what things we could come up with had a way to do it but toned down.
*Since we had no racial HD we did not receive feats gained from HD but we did keep racial feats (like satyrs get alertness for free as a bonus racial feat regardless of HD)
*Racial bonuses to skills (such as snakes getting +8 racial bonuses to swim)
*The base race's skills added to our class skills (makes sense to me)
*Natural armor, nat attacks, special qualities, etc. was all kept the same since they don't rely on HD to improve.
*We didn't advance in size if we hit the HD where it would normally advance and didn't pick races bigger than Large. (such as when a manticore reaches 17HD it becomes a Huge sized Manticore thus improving its nat attacks, nat armor, etc.)
*We kept the level adjustment and started leveling from there.

It was fun, we could generally pick any race with up to +3LA and eventually buy them off.