A dm is planing a very very very evil campaing, and told us what we can use any race, but the pc must be really evil. Too much evilness make me drunk of happyness and hungry of power. Im studing my options and posibles builds. But i dont know how use a monster as race (f.e. a beholder); i know how calculate the abilities modifier (abilitie -10 or -11) but no how to calculate the ecl from a monster entry (how HD and LA).
Its a simple question, if any can give me the tip i will be happy.
Racial HD + LA
Example:
Astra Deva : http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Astral_Deva
12 Hit dices + 8 (LA) = ECL 20
savage species also offer another alternative if you want to play certain monsters which are too powerful and have them made into monster class level only problem of course you will need to finish the monster class lvls before taking class levels.
Hope that helped.
Personally, if I were allowed to pick any race/class combos in an evil campaign, I'd probably just play a Spell-stitched Necropolitan (no LA, just xp cost) version of a standard PC race with the class/build I wanted to play. There are very few true monsters that are worth their ECL when compared to PC class builds.
Psd: I don´t recall if master of many forms alouds you to transform into an aberration, but take Aberrant Wild Shape from Lords of Madness.
Humbly yours,
Yawar
Make sure you know how your DM is going to handle them before playing a monster as a PC. Eltacolibre has the RAW right, but I've met a LOT of DM's that either don't understand or don't like the above, and will run it however they feel like running it.
What he said x100.
There have been folks here talking about all-monster campaigns, and one guy ends up with a wimpy bugbear and one guy ends up with a super were-dire-bear storm giant because the DM has a garbled interpretation the ECL rules.
The wizards.com site search, with "Savage Species" uncovers a few tricky good things.
If you have SS available, playing one of the monster races is fine; and very straightforward.
Q 1 : But is it good ??
A 1 : Maybe.
Compare an Outsider build, to a Fighter or a Rogue or a Caster.
Fighters get feats and more HP.
Rogues get Trapfinding and more synergy.
Casters get Caelic's Ten Commandments.
Outsider shoots the gap on all three, and doesn't do any particularly well.
If your DM lets you take just 3 HD and up to +2 LA,
of the various classes, you'll keep up with an OK CO-build.
If your DM makes you take the whole class ... good luck,
and make sure there's no CO-caster in the party.
That being said, Air Elemental 1 is pretty good stuff, even if you suck later.
I even consider this a fix since higher HD only (and almost always) come with higher LA. I don't count the skill points unless the player wants it to overlap the first level's normal skill points however. Also remove class levels within the monster HD (for instance psionic illithids) when the occasion arises.
Suddenly without HD eating up all your pre-epic class levels you can actually play monsters before ECL17 by which point the wizard's ninth level spells would laugh at your measly 1 class level.
But anyway like people said before, it all depends how your dm see it, ask him/her first.
Suddenly without HD eating up all your pre-epic class levels you can actually play monsters before ECL17 by which point the wizard's ninth level spells would laugh at your measly 1 class level.
This is an example of why I say to ask and understand what your DM wants to run first.
Another example, I had a friend run a campaign for the first time about a year or so ago. He didn't exactly have a strong grip on the rules, but he really wanted to run something, so I decided to stay neutral and help him out on the DM side of things and therefore not play. The rules for character creation were character level seven, with 1.5x standard treasure, and our normal ability rolls/houserules.
Three of the players decided to play standard PC races at level 7. The last, who himself didn't completely understand the rules about playing monsters, played a Stone Giant elder with 1 level of cleric (allowable under PBMC's stated rules above).
When I found out about it, I called him on it, and he used the same argument above, "There's no way a stone giant without class levels compares to an 18th level character." (This was after an hour of arguing on the front porch and me finally running inside and opening every book that had the rules and forcing him to read them, aloud, to the group.) And, honestly, he's probably right. However, the converse of that is completely true as well, "There is no way a stone giant elder without class levels compares to a 6th level character, either." His BAB, Hit points, Saves, Damage, Armor Class, and pretty much everything else is twice (or more) that of the other players. The DM (who was throwing CR+1 mobs and them) couldn't hit the cleric, and couldn't understand why the party was beating every encounter so handedly (in one case, an entire army of 1-4th level fighters/barbs). The other players were completely overshadowed (except for one that was abusing an entirely different rule misunderstanding to make a cloak with unlimited quickened Elemental Swarms), and weren't having any fun. Rather than force the one player to build a new character, the DM kept giving the other players 'special power' after special power (along with double XP) to try and make up for the lack and get them having more fun. The campaign died after only 5 game sessions.
Seriously, before you ever consider playing a monster, or playing in a group with someone that is, make sure your DM knows the rules, and has at least considered them carefully before making any changes to them. Get an idea of what the other people are playing, before you go picking something heinous or week for the campaign your in. There are mobs out there that are overpowered for their ECL, and there are mobs that are severely underpowered for their ECL. It's certainly a good thing for a DM to try and make adjustments where he or she feels appropriate, but as a player, you need to know what those adjustments are, and why, before play begins.
I use a variant of this in a campaign I'm running right now:
The house-rules can be found here:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=809.0
This, in addition to some individual adjudication, is my rule-set:
Take the monster's CR, add 1, or 2 if it's an extraordinarily awesome monster (like an Erinyes, which puts them out of range as starting characters right now): That's your starting monstrous HD and ECL. If this produces a very sub-standard monster because the monster gets really low CR for it's HD, then do the following: Look at HD, CR and BAB and adjust the HD properties to give about the same BAB as the monster entry.
Take the Monster's stats, and either keep them as they are, or modify them by a NONELITE-array to more suit your desired class you'll add. Pay in mind that the lowest allowed stat is a 6. Int should ideally be at least 8, or I want to see the effects of stupidity in your roleplaying.
Take note that his campaign had variable starting levels and the max ECL was 10.
Also, some templates forced me to change my stat point allocation method. For instance the Tauric Template got standard point-buy and racial modifiers for physical stats. The point-buy for this campaign is an all eights + 25 NON-escalating point buy. So an 18 costs only 10 points.
On another note, I don't use LA at all in that campaign, unless a player specifically wants it. LA is completely substituted for RHD. Of course that means that PCs should always shoot for Dragon type or Outsider type, but that's just the way it is. Most RHD are changed in some way, too. In addition, all class levels without class features can be exchanged for RHD and additional bonuses basically at will, from some point onwards.
The result is that basically non-casters get huge stat mods and special abilities. Of course you can destroy the system by taking caster races that stack with caster class-levels, like Araneas, Arkamoi, etc. There is no real way to stop anyone from doing that, except give them more RHD that don't advance casting.
Class levels (supposedly) get better as the levels increase. Casters: yes, Melee: not quite as much. Therefore, taking the monster levels gives you an initial boost, effectively the same as a character of level "X". However, taking class levels from that point results in the equivalent of a character of class level "X", and a class level "Y", unless the two stack in some way. IE: A shadow that takes levels of rogue.
Better is taking a monster that can immediately enter a PrC using their in-born traits and feats acquired through monstrous hit dice.. The power level of PrCs is closer to the upper (levels 10-20) range of the PC classes. This does mean that spell-casting tends to suck a bit for the higher-LA monsters, with the exception of accelerated spell-casting classes, such as Ur-Priest.
I see a lot of people suggesting Gravetouched Ghoul. It should be stressed that you can't choose to be a Gravetouched Ghoul. D(M)oresain chooses YOU.:P
naja, its all up to DM discression, and if he's allowing stuff, he'd probably allow a PC to be a GTG. I wouldn't say its that much of a barrier...
I see a lot of people suggesting Gravetouched Ghoul. It should be stressed that you can't choose to be a Gravetouched Ghoul. D(M)oresain chooses YOU.:P
Who else heard the Russian accent saying the above quote?
Now that I am thinking about it, Shadows with rogue levels would be rather disgusting. Touch-based sneak attacks, able to submerge themselves in the ground, give them spring attack... they are nigh-untouchable. They don't even have a LA, so it is just 3 monstrous hit dice. Just gotta watch out for the pesky clerics.
Who else heard the Russian accent saying the above quote?
That's what I was aiming for. :P
Now that I am thinking about it, Shadows with rogue levels would be rather disgusting. Touch-based sneak attacks, able to submerge themselves in the ground, give them spring attack... they are nigh-untouchable. They don't even have a LA, so it is just 3 monstrous hit dice. Just gotta watch out for the pesky clerics.
According to Savage Species, it's got a +7 Level Adjustment.
Does have the advantage of not needing to put any ranks in Move Silently though(more points for Speak Language or whatever!). Combining Incorporeal Strength Drain with Crippling Strike(Rogue Level 9 Special Ability) would be devastating to most. Except for the pesky fact that you'd be level 19 by then.
For high level Rogue play, I like the Nathzarune Rakshasa. See this discussion here. Overall, I think the sentiment was that it's definitely better for the LA than most "by the book" monsters(