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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Malar's Cow" data-source="post: 2090168" data-attributes="member: 19561">I have a player wanting to play a hobgoblin character.  According to the house rules of my game, a new character starts at an ECL of one less than the average of the party, so the ECL of the new character will be 4.  The character wants to take levels in barbarian.Reading the Monster Manual, the entry for hobgoblin states that it has a Level Adjustment of +1, and an ability bonus of +2 Dex, +2 Con.  Seems easy enough; the new character can take three levels in barby, and with the +1 LA has an ECL of 4.But when I read page 192 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, there seems to be an entirely different set of rules for creation of monstrous characters.  After reading these and applying them to the hobgoblins base ability scores, it would seem that it gets a +2 Str, +2 Dex, +4 Con, -2 Wis and –2 Cha.Furthermore, the DMG states that a creature with one or less hit dice, a Level Adjustment and class levels adds all three together to determine its ECL, which means that a hobgoblin would add one for its hit dice, one for its LA and the number of class levels together, meaning that if I want an ECL 4 character, the new character could only have two levels in Barbie.I’m thoroughly confused, and can’t understand why there seems to be two seemingly different sets of rules governing monstrous player characters.  Please help!</blockquote>