Hill Giant ECL??

[melkoriii]

WHats a HIll Giants ECL?

Also when creating a monster PC you take everything the mob has from the MM and then add a class lvl to it. How do you figure Skills, Feats and HP?

Say if its ECL was 10 I would make him a First lvl Fighter and he would be character lvl 11 right?

 

[melkoriii]

Anyone have a link to some info about this?

 

[hong]

Dragon 293 had a big list of monster ECLs, one for every entry in the MM. Some of them are sensible; some are, well, not so sensible. According to the list, the hill giant's ECL is 16.

 

[Wolf72]

ej rolls a d20 to take a stab at this ...

take the hill giant from the MM ... that's what you start with.

now, add the first level of a class ... for example sorcerer (cuz ya know in the MM Hill giants have a 17 cha)

you get:

1d4+con mod hp

2+int mod skill points

a familiar (if you have the cash, ... that's gonna be one heft familiar too, check out tome and blood for alternate familiars)

1st lvl sorcerer spells

DONE!!!

what you don't get is max starting hp (because you're effectivley MC already Xlvls as hill giant, and 1 as a sorcerer) or 4x starting skill points ... no 1st lvl bonus feat either ...

feats: you now get them at 1/3 lvls (just like other pc's)

[edit: hong said ECL=16 ... so you would effectively be a 17th lvl character]

 

[Jairami]

ECL 12 is probably a little closer to the mark. Just ignore the WotC YOU CAN'T PLAY MONSTERS new policy. You want to make sure you don't overshadow your fellow players, but you don't want to be a half-hit dice henchman either.

Not unless there's a lot of duct tape readily available.

 

[melkoriii]

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

So I go from a CR7 to a CR17 with one class lvl... NOT

 

[CRGreathouse]

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

So I go from a CR7 to a CR17 with one class lvl... NOT

A CR 7 hill giant has a 15-point buy and about 100 gp of useful stuff. An ECL 16 hill giant (no class levels) has 260,000 gp of usefull stuff and a higher point buy (usually 28 or 32).

 

[Jairami]

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

So I go from a CR7 to a CR17 with one class lvl... NOT

No, an NPC Hill Giant would go from CR7 to CR8 with one level of sorcerer. But you were talking about PC's. PC's are judged on a different scale.

CR is a rough estimate of "How hard is it for 4 PC's to kill it?"

ECL is an even rougher estimate of "How far does this PC need to be set back so that he doesn't outshine the other PC's?".

The reason these two questions have such vastly different answers is because at the basest level they are totally different and aside from that, it also has largely to do with lifespan.

In general an NPC shows up for an encounter, uses his little ability, and that's it. For example, a troll shows up, the PC's beat him down, he regenerates some of it but in the end they torch him. Regeneration was only about as important as his rend attack and high strength.

However, if a PC is a troll then all of a sudden every encounter he starts he is at full hit points. All of a sudden his average 23 CON becomes a PC 30 CON with who knows how many hit points that he will always regenerate. Every combat of the entire campaign. Plus reach, rend, 3 attacks a round, and a number of other qualities that draw the spotlight on the troll.

So to keep things fair, he plays with a bump to his effective level meaning he has to pay more XP to level and is generally playing with characters of a higher level than his HD would indicate. CR doesn't even begin to factor in to that.

So yes, WotC says a Hill Giant Sor1 PC is ECL 17 and should play with 17th level Wizards and Fighters. I don't personally like their most recent unreasonable jump in the ECL ladder and prefer to use Soldarin's System to figure such things out. So I'd say a Hill Giant Barbarian 1 would be ECL 13. Not a bad trade off for a probable 39 or so strength after magic items and such get figured in. Not to mention 12d8+1d12+xx hitpoints. Be a good character to have compared to a 13th level fighter.