Help with Monstrous Races

[papa_laz]

Hey guys, I'm going to be running a campaign with the players using monstrous humanoid characters starting at level 5. The campaign is 3.0 but I'm using rules from Savage Species and the 3.5 Monster Manual. According to Savage Species, when making a monster into a playable PC I should be including the hit dice of the monster in its ECL. So for example a Bugbear would be ECL 4, including 3Hd: so 1 ECL for its skill and ability bonuses and 3 ECL for its 3Hd. What I'm trying to decide is if I need to include the Hd in the ECL. The idea is to give the players more freedom to take levels of other classes, rather than be stuck with 3d8 Bugbear hit dice when they could be taking 3 levels of fighter or cleric. So I would decide on the starting bonuses the bugbear will get, then choose an ECL for it (either 1 or 2). Then the player is free to take 3-4 levels of whatever class he chooses.

With things like minotaurs and ogres which are a much higher ECL I'm going to use level progression charts, but with anything below 5 ECL I think I can use the above method.

Your thoughts?

 

[Runestar]

Your usage of terminology is a little messy. ECL = HD + LA.

In theory at least, racial HD serves to mitigate what would otherwise be a higher LA. For example, a bugbear has +4 str/+2dex/+2con and +3NA for just +1LA exactly because of his existing 3 humanoid HD. If you allow the player to replace them with class lvs (which are more useful in comparison), you may need to compensate by increasing the LA. I believe I do not need to illustrate how superior 3 class lvs are compared to 3 humanoid HD.

I say in theory because LA has a tendency to be higher than what it ought to be, and the aforementioned bonuses are roughly in line with what one ought to expect from a LA+1 template, and thus, I do not find anything problematic with this. You will have to vet your PCs' stats very closely to see if they are weaker or stronger than what their ECL suggests they ought to be, and adjudicate accordingly.