[Savage Species Question] ECL, Level Adjustment, Hit Dice ... Help?

[Angelsboi]

ok im trying to make a Bardic Succubus.

In the MM, it states the Succubus is a CR 9

In Savage Species it states that is has 6 HD (so it gains 3 feats - Level 1, Level 3, Level 6).

It says its Level adjustment is +6 and its Starting ECL is 12

So ... If im making a Succubus Bard 1

What would its CR be, how many feats would it get and how many stat increases?

Can someone explain this? Or am i just stoopid?

 

[shouit]

Your not stupid, I havent figured it out yet either.

 

[godfear]

Although I'm not sure why you need it, I would estimate your CR to be 10. As a 7 HD character, you would still have only 3 feats, and you would not gain a stat adjustment until you took another class level (be it bard or whatever) and had 8 HD total. Your ECL would be 13.

 

[Angelsboi]

How did you get 7 HD? 6 Succubus HD + 1 Bard HD? And my CR would be 10?

Ok. The book reads kinda funny. Sorry for any trouble

 

[Gez]

Yes, the CR would be 10. That's how classed creatures works, they add their class level to their base CR (a base CR of 1/2 or less count as 0 for this purpose), minus 1 if they have one level or more in NPC class.

In other words, a succubus, being CR 9 by default, is bumped to CR 10 if you add a level of bard or any other PC class (or even Prestige Class she may qualify for with her natural succubus HD, feats and skills), and stay CR 9 if you instead added a level of, say, expert or aristocrat.


Oh, I so wish they could retool all monsters so that HD = level = CR !

 

[Celebrim]

Oh, I so wish they could retool all monsters so that HD = level = CR !

Why?

 

[godfear]

How did you get 7 HD? 6 Succubus HD + 1 Bard HD? And my CR would be 10?

You got it.

Ok. The book reads kinda funny. Sorry for any trouble

You're right, it does. No trouble.

 

[Gez]

Why?

Because calculation of ECL and CR are two of the most annoying and painstaking things to do in D&D 3.

If monster HD worked totally like class levels, then we would have HD = CR = ECL.

 

[drnuncheon]

Oh, I so wish they could retool all monsters so that HD = level = CR !

That would probably cause more problems than it solves, since CR and HD measure completely different things.

It's sort of like wishing you could use the same number/scale to represent both temperature and air pressure.

J

 

[Celebrim]

All you are asking is to heavily restrict the ways in which you can make monsters.

A low HD monster could never have a particularly fearsome power because such powers would increase thier CR higher than thier HD would warrant. This is true of essentially ALL the monsters in the books (otherwise we wouldn't worry about CR).

All low HD monsters would be basically identical.

Important powers would never appear above a certain level of HD. One can imagine having to remove poison from poisonous snakes, and preventing creatures with less than 15 HD from having gaze or sonic attacks. Birds might have to lose the power of natural flight before attaining 3 or 4 HD, and we'd otherwise end up with alot of the same sort of silliness as 1st level giants being medium sized creatures.

Yes, it might be interesting to devise a system in which monsters were all parsed from the same monster construction rules and gained powers along monstrous feat paths in the same way as PC's, but it wouldn't be all that useful and it would result in alot of cookie cutter monsters.