BryonD
Hero
I have had this same issue.
I recently wanted to throw a walking dead Dire Elephant at my party. Well, 200 of its 290 HP come from CON. Uping the HD to d12 only returns 40 of the lost HD.
The problem as I see it is that CON represents more than one thing. It represents "health and stamina" that come from an semi-abstract life force, such that a CON18 halfling and a CON18 Ogre get the same bonus hit points per die. Size has no matter there. But it also represents bulk resiliency, as represented by simply big things having a hig CON.
It makes sense that a big thing would lose its life force, but not its bulk when becoming a corporeal and mostly intact undead. So some fraction of those HP should be retained.
My solution was to simply let the elephant keep 1/2 its old CON hit points.
It worked great in my case. The party was still able to take it out fairly easily. But they were impressed by the shear load of damage the thing took. 20d12 = 130 HP and it would have gone down to fast.
I recently wanted to throw a walking dead Dire Elephant at my party. Well, 200 of its 290 HP come from CON. Uping the HD to d12 only returns 40 of the lost HD.
The problem as I see it is that CON represents more than one thing. It represents "health and stamina" that come from an semi-abstract life force, such that a CON18 halfling and a CON18 Ogre get the same bonus hit points per die. Size has no matter there. But it also represents bulk resiliency, as represented by simply big things having a hig CON.
It makes sense that a big thing would lose its life force, but not its bulk when becoming a corporeal and mostly intact undead. So some fraction of those HP should be retained.
My solution was to simply let the elephant keep 1/2 its old CON hit points.
It worked great in my case. The party was still able to take it out fairly easily. But they were impressed by the shear load of damage the thing took. 20d12 = 130 HP and it would have gone down to fast.
