Monster Classes

[Cade Shadow]

In which book does the monster classes appear in? Is it differnet books for different monsters or one book for all?

thank you for your time.

[Caelestion]

Savage Species has a selection of creatures. Otherwise, just play a full monster by adding HD and LA from the MM.

[silentknight]

The classes that a monster can take levels in are the same a Player Character classes.

[Ashes]

There are som for undead in Libris Mortis. I think that's the only one apart from Savage Species (which is not recommended).

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

I beileve there are also a few outsider ones in the Planar Handbook, though I don't own it, my friend does. And I'm not entirely sure they aren't all just ones that appeared in Savage Species.

[The_Snark]

I beileve there are also a few outsider ones in the Planar Handbook, though I don't own it, my friend does. And I'm not entirely sure they aren't all just ones that appeared in Savage Species.

There are a few, but they're also all contained in Savage Species.

Watch out for the Savage Species classes, too- the book's badly edited, and some of the classes are unbalanced at certain levels. A bit of common sense fixes most of it, though.

[ChomZ]

It really depends on what sort of 'monster' you're looking for.
most of the "Races of ***" have it, as well as the afformentioned.. I usually start by deciding what sort of creature I want to be

[AtomicKitKat]

Libris Mortis
Races of Destiny/Stone/the Wild/the Dragon
Savage Species

A few issues of Dragon Magazine also had monster class progressions for each of the 10 core dragons, up till ECL 20.

Edit: Underdark and Champions of Ruin also featured for Chitines and Draegloths, respectively. Might have a couple other races in Underdark as well.

[ZeroNumerous]

Savage Species is fine if you don't go into the feats section. For just the monster classes, it's fairly easy to take one from the book and play it.

[Caelestion]

Savage Species is fine if you don't go into the feats section.

Or the prestige classes. Or particularly the templates section. Or especially the anthropomorphic animals section.

[the_tick_rules]

as suggested above, monsters take the core classes alot.

[Stephen_E]

Savage Species is good for the monster classes. It also give you good guidelines for converting any monster with lev adj from a monster manual, and turning it into a PC you can take from level 1.

A few notes:
1) Savage Species was put out before 3.5 was finished. It is effectively 3.25. You need to check their monsters against the 3.5 Monster Manuals and may have to make some alterations (Pixie is an example).

2) Depending on the monster you may well need some of the feats from Savage Species. Look at the feats and decide case by case (but then this is true of most splat books). Any PC with a Gaze attack will defintely need/want the Savage Species feats.

3) The Savage Species book recommends that PC have to finish the monster career/advancement before taking class levels. IMO you should only restrict the player to having at least half their levels as "Monster Levels" until they finish the Monster advancemet/career.

4) You should allow level adjustment reduction as per SRD.

5) Non-HD levels are really tough hits on a PC's power. I'd recommend giving the PC a flat 2hps and 2 skill pts (no attribute adjustment). This stops them getting to fragile (hps) or straitjacketed (skill points).

6) Regardless of your general view about Precocious Apprentice (comp Arcane) allowing entry into the Mystic Theurge class types, you should allow monster PCs to do so. Lev adjusted (monster) races such as casters as a rule. Allowing fast entry into the Mystic Theurge prestige classes is the only way they can be halfway decent as casters. For monsters with multiple monster levels you might even look at allowing spell-like abilities to count when "abilitiy to cast "x" lev spells" is a prereq

Hope this helps.

Stephen

[AtomicKitKat]

Depending on the monster, you can cut it off mid-progression(eg, Ghoul to Ghast), and resume it at a later point(say, for example, that a Ghoul needs a couple hundred humanoid kills before it "upgrades" to Ghast). Doable with Planetouched->Half-X(or Draconic->Half Dragon, from Races of the Dragon) templates as well. The trick is looking for the cut-off points. For Centaur, for example, you could cut it off around ECL 4(3 RHD+1 LA), where it's Medium-sized.