Toughness as a bonus feat/replacement

[Cabral]

I've been toying with the idea of replacing monster HD with toughness feats and/or giving toughness as bonus feats to monsters with high LAs when played as a PC race.

The theory is in the first case is, if you replace the HD with toughness, you keep the hp representing the monster's toughness/bulk but lower the overall ECL. I first thought of this for the Centaur ... Why should a human with a horse's rump be more skilled than a normal one?

In the second case, I am concerned about the frailty of high LA characters (such as the half-celestial level 1 cleric I played once ...). I was considering giving one toughness bonus feat per 2 or 3 full LAs. The toughness feats won't, in my opinion, throw balance to far out of whack, yet make those early levels more survivable without increasing Hit Dice.

 

[gogo_jerrick]

I've been toying with the idea of replacing monster HD with toughness feats and/or giving toughness as bonus feats to monsters with high LAs when played as a PC race.

The theory is in the first case is, if you replace the HD with toughness, you keep the hp representing the monster's toughness/bulk but lower the overall ECL. I first thought of this for the Centaur ... Why should a human with a horse's rump be more skilled than a normal one?

In the second case, I am concerned about the frailty of high LA characters (such as the half-celestial level 1 cleric I played once ...). I was considering giving one toughness bonus feat per 2 or 3 full LAs. The toughness feats won't, in my opinion, throw balance to far out of whack, yet make those early levels more survivable without increasing Hit Dice.

A question I have for you, is this for you as a player or you as a dm? That changes the output of the Q. Until that question is answered I have a statement to make. A centaur isn't "just a human with a horses rump." That would mean that elves are humans with pointy ears, liches are dead humans with a box, titans are big humans, halflings are small humans, dwarves are short stout humans, and dogs are domesticated quadraped humans with fur, pointed noses, tails, paws, canines, and the ability to take a full round action to sniff butts equal to your character level + you CON modifier and the ability to lick you own......well we won't get into that.

 

[Cabral]

This is for a game I am running. What I meant by centaurs being a human with a horse's rump was that they give centaurs 3d8 hp for being a bigger critter, but those 3 levels of monstrous humanoid come with skills, feat, BAB, etc ... Why should your just-out-of-apprenticeship centaur be better trained than a similar human or elf? Sure, they might be tougher (hence the toughness feat substitution idea) from their added mass, but not more skilled.

 

[gogo_jerrick]

It is implying that they are just a more advanced race. It's no different than wyrmling gold dragon popping out of the womb as skilled as an 8th level ranger. It doesn't seem very reasonable, it's just a balance issue......

 

[gogo_jerrick]

You could figure out a system where you give up a number of racial skill points = to a number of extra hitpoints. like +1 hp per hd for every 2 racial skill points traded in (int mod would not count torward this total)

 

[Sravoff]

I've been toying with the idea of replacing monster HD with toughness feats and/or giving toughness as bonus feats to monsters with high LAs when played as a PC race.

The theory is in the first case is, if you replace the HD with toughness, you keep the hp representing the monster's toughness/bulk but lower the overall ECL. I first thought of this for the Centaur ... Why should a human with a horse's rump be more skilled than a normal one?

In the second case, I am concerned about the frailty of high LA characters (such as the half-celestial level 1 cleric I played once ...). I was considering giving one toughness bonus feat per 2 or 3 full LAs. The toughness feats won't, in my opinion, throw balance to far out of whack, yet make those early levels more survivable without increasing Hit Dice.

Would those toughness feas at all afect LA? If not, thats kinda powerfukl, some creaturs have lots of HD, like minataur.

 

[Drowbane]

Eh...

Was this a serious question?

 

[Cabral]

Would those toughness feas at all afect LA? If not, thats kinda powerfukl, some creaturs have lots of HD, like minataur.

LA would have to be reevaluated. dropping a 2hd down to a 1hd with 1 toughness bonus feat won't do anything significant to the LA in the long run.

Adding toughness to a high LA, no extra HD races (a +1 LA race, like Aasimars wouldn't merit it, but a +4 LA half-celestial would merit one.) likewise shouldn't affect the LA too much.

I couldn't find a straight multiple HD monster with no LA, but I'll go ahead and use the minotaur as an example. The minotaur is a 6HD +2 LA race. The first step is to trade in 5 of those 6 HD for +15 Hp (5 toughness feats). Then, looking at his stats, I'd change his LA to +3 and test it out. If it's a bit overwhelming, I'd tweak the abilities or raise the LA to +4.

Assuming no tweaking is needed, the first level minotaur would now have an ECL of 4 and the +15 hp will let him survive higher level attacks but would leave him vulnerable to HD-based attacks and level drain.

In the case of races with high LA's AND HD, only one would generate toughness feats. In some cases, I would lower or replace innate abilities.

For, example, the nymph casts as a 7th level druid. I would remove many of her special abilities, chalking them up to druid levels and/or spells/items. I would probably keep only Stunning Glance, Uneartly Grace (does not stack with divine grace), and the DR 10/cold iron tweak the mechanics and lower the abilities bonuses to str -2 Dex +4, Con -2, Int +2, Wis +2 and Cha +4 ... with that, I'd say a 1d8 fey with a LA +4. Now, I'd add in one toughness bonus feat and see how it fares... the fey type might cause unexpected problems and I'd have to watch out for Nymph-monks with the Vow of Poverty ...

Eh...

Was this a serious question?

Yes. It's trend I've noticed on message boards that the longer they've existed, the ruder and less helpful the posters become. Thankfully, EN World's decay rate is slower than most. Nonetheless, if you don't think the question is worthy of a response, you could at least do me the favor of stating why.

I am rather dissapointed by the few replies on this, and no replies on my Shadar-Kai Variant. It's a rather disheartening start to what I had hoped to be a return to EN World.

If you'd like to review the quality of my posts prior to my hiatus, try google

 

[Ghoti]

This is for a game I am running. What I meant by centaurs being a human with a horse's rump was that they give centaurs 3d8 hp for being a bigger critter, but those 3 levels of monstrous humanoid come with skills, feat, BAB, etc ... Why should your just-out-of-apprenticeship centaur be better trained than a similar human or elf? Sure, they might be tougher (hence the toughness feat substitution idea) from their added mass, but not more skilled.

The centaur isn't better than a just-out-of-apprenticeship human. You are comparing apples to oranges here.

A centaur with LA +3 is equal to a 3rd level human.

So if you want everyone to start at 1st level then you need to use monster levels. So the centaur would need to go through 3 levels of centaur before he could take his first character class.

Either that or you start everyone off at the same level.

 

[Cabral]

The centaur isn't better than a just-out-of-apprenticeship human. You are comparing apples to oranges here.

A centaur with LA +3 is equal to a 3rd level human.

So if you want everyone to start at 1st level then you need to use monster levels. So the centaur would need to go through 3 levels of centaur before he could take his first character class.

Either that or you start everyone off at the same level.

LA+3 = level +3; Level 1+3 = Effective Level 4.

A centaur has 4d8 of monstrous humanoid and an LA of +2. Why? because a centaur receives 4 levels of training before being "adult"? No, because a centaur is a Large Creature. My intention is to represent that bulk with bonus hp, instead of hit dice with the associated BAB, saves, skills and feats. This way, you could play a centaur at 4th level or so, instead of 6th level (7th if you want an actual class level). by replacing 3 of the 4 hit dice with toughness (only 3 because when a race with 1HD takes a class, the HD from the class replace the racial ones), the size and rugedness of the race is, hopefully, adequately represented without the superficial addition of improved saves and better skills.

Now, on the other hand, the mind flayer HD are a more warranted. Even then, however, defining a core 1 HD Mindflayer race (not necessarily a level 1 race) and slap class levels (like Psion or Sorerer) onto that race would allow for more versatility. You want a more physical version of the Mind flayer? take that base race and slap on Psychic Warrior, Fighter or even Barbarian levels onto it.