Hit Dice and CR

[Snoweel]

Sometimes I stare off into space and wonder...

"What is a Hit Die?"

It's something that really bugs me for creatures that advance by class. I mean, why is a Gnoll 2HD and an Orc only 1?

I'm toying with the idea of making all sentient Medium sized creatures 1HD, with class levels. Likewise, all Large sentients have 4HD + class levels and so on.

I guess the problem really comes down to this:

If I want to throw a Fire Giant Cleric (for example - I know it's cliche, which is probably why it's the first thing that came to my head) at my 12th level party, it's going to either be a very low-level cleric or it's going to bust the CR.

Why does a Fire Giant need so many HD? What if I want a Fire Giant who can cast 6th level spells? It'll be too powerful for a 12th level party, right?

What are your thoughts? Please tell me I'm not the only one who hates Hit Dice.

 

[Zappo]

Not all creatures of the same size are, well, the same size. A Medium-sized creature could be anything from a dwarf to the biggest half-orc. Even between creatures that are equally big, one could have better innate fighting instincts, or superior racial training, so that he gets more HD and everything that goes with them (saves, BAB, etc).

In any case, remember that the creatures presented in the MM are the "weakest and most common" examples of their species. The MM fire giant is a fire giant that has never got formal weapon training. He hasn't been in many fights that presented a challenge, if at all. He's never studied any particular profession or class. He hasn't ever gained a significant amount of XP, we can say. All his skills and powers are racial or cultural only. Of course, the higher the creature's CR, the more likely that it has never faced matching challenges, thus the more difficult it is that it has gained XP.

So yeah, in D&D a classed monster that is a badass to begin with is very dangerous. That's logical and only to be expected, I think.

Anyway, you can always work with stats to reduce the creature's CR if you want. Let the giant cleric have a 13 CON, and reduce the CR accordingly. 13 is legit according to the average stats, but if you wanted less you can always say that he was hit by a big cloud of burnt othur fumes or whatever when he was a child.

 

[Numion]

Sometimes I stare off into space and wonder...

"What is a Hit Die?"

It's something that really bugs me for creatures that advance by class. I mean, why is a Gnoll 2HD and an Orc only 1?

I'm toying with the idea of making all sentient Medium sized creatures 1HD, with class levels. Likewise, all Large sentients have 4HD + class levels and so on.

I guess the problem really comes down to this:

If I want to throw a Fire Giant Cleric (for example - I know it's cliche, which is probably why it's the first thing that came to my head) at my 12th level party, it's going to either be a very low-level cleric or it's going to bust the CR.

Why does a Fire Giant need so many HD? What if I want a Fire Giant who can cast 6th level spells? It'll be too powerful for a 12th level party, right?

What are your thoughts? Please tell me I'm not the only one who hates Hit Dice.

I've thought about the excact same thing, but I would've had hard time trying to explain it. You put it quite nicely..

It always irked me that you couldn't really put Illithid Psions gainst players.. the CR would be too high, or the Illithid would suck as a psion compared to players. And illithids were supposed to be strong psions, after all.

 

[Tonguez]

I always that the HD should = Level its everthing else that mucks it up (especially CR)

 

[Arnwyn]

Re: Re: Hit Dice and CR

It always irked me that you couldn't really put Illithid Psions gainst players.. the CR would be too high, or the Illithid would suck as a psion compared to players. And illithids were supposed to be strong psions, after all.

*shrug* I don't really understand what you guys are talking about... Of *course* you can put an Illithid Psion against the characters - the characters will just be of higher levels.

Ohhh... you mean you can't put Illithid Psions against *low* level characters. Well, of course not.

I don't get it. :/

 

[bmcdaniel]

Your problem is with CR, not HD

I think your problem is really with the CR system, not the Hit Dice concept.

The CRs as published in the Monster Manual are reasonably accurate, give or take 2 CRs. But the rules for adding class levels aren't well thought out.

To use your example, a Fire Giant (CR10) with 3 levels of cleric is a CR 13 monster.

The exact same problem occurs with multiclassed characters. Is a Rogue3/Sorceror3/Bard3 (CR 9 by the rules) a good challenge for ninth-level characters? That rogue/sorceror/bard is still casting 1st level spells and a +5 BAB; a ninth-level party is casting 5th-level spells and its fighter-types will have BAB of +9/+4.

Of course, a Rogue/Sorceror/Bard is not a good design choice, in the metagaming sense (ie most bang per CR); just like the Fire Giant/Cleric is not a good design choice. But, as a DM, sometimes you want the flavor, or need a certain opponent for plot reasons. In which case I think the only thing to do is to manually readjust the CRs.

BMM

 

[Bagpuss]

What is weird that a Fire Giant accompanied by a 3rd Level Cleric, will have similar abilities, yet no increase in CR. Although I suppose the 3rd level cleric doesn't have the Fire Giants HP's to protect him. Still there does seem to need more of a judgement call to assign a CR and XP than the offical formula.

 

[Zappo]

The "official formula" is that you take the CRs of the monsters involved, calculate an EL, and you get a guideline for the difficulty of that encounter.

I hope noone seriously expects WotC or anyone else to come up with a simple mathemathical method to accurately calculate the party's chance of victory and resources expended in any given D&D encounter.

I know that if I could do that, I would make a model for stocks predictions and get filthy rich instead, or make a method for weather predictions and get a Nobel prize. Both seem fairly easier.

 

[Snoweel]

Re: Your problem is with CR, not HD

I think your problem is really with the CR system, not the Hit Dice concept.

Nope. It's with Hit Dice.

Particularly, as Numion points out, the high HD of human-sized creatures such as Illithids and Yuan-ti purebloods and halfbloods.

I mean, the standard adult Illithid has 8HD, whereas a PHB-race adult would have to adventure pretty extensively to reach such a lofty level. I put it to you that an 8th-level human/dwarf/halfling/gnome/etc would be considered an exceptional member of the race. An 8HD Mind-flayer is run-of-the-mill as far as Illithids go.

And on top of this, Hit Dice give bonuses to saves (particularly reflex saves, which doesn't make sense) and BAB, as well as providing Feats and in some cases, skill points.

The only increase I believe is truly justified with a size (and therefore HD) increase is that of more hit points.

How does being bigger make you a better combatant (especially with missile weapons) - the rules even state that Large and bigger sized creatures' attack rolls suffer a penalty based on size, but what's the point - their BAB bonus due to Hit Dice more than off-sets this penalty.

Add to that the fact that big creatures already have substantial Strength bonuses to their melee attacks, and HD-based attack bonuses seem ludicrously redundant.

Though not as ludicrous as the 8HD Illithid who did nothing but grow potatoes his whole life.

 

[EarthsShadow]

I agree

I totally agree with what your saying, and hopefully that has been addressed a little bit in their upcoming book Savage Species. I also think there is another book out there that provides rules for using racial levels to level up monsters, but I can't remember the name of it nor the company producing it, but I did see a web preview of it last week, and I thought that was pretty cool.

But I agree. A medium creature is a medium size creature, right, so why do they get more HD than a normal person of a normal race? I think its because each HD is supposed to simulate a single level as that kind of creature, and levels and CR's are calculated differently.

How they come up with the CR for their creatures is something I would really like to know though? To me, a lot of seems like guesswork.