Template Help, Racial HD and Skill Ranks


Rules Questions


Say I use animate dead on a lvl 5 human warrior npc to make a skeleton.

Skeleton Template wrote:
A skeleton drops any HD gained from class levels and changes racial HD to d8s. Creatures without racial HD are treated as if they have 1 racial HD.

What does that mean exactly? The npc has no racial hd right? Surely that wouldnt mean I roll 1d8 for hit points instead of 5d8 right?

Say I apply an intelligent undead template to it somehow, a vampire for example.

Vampire Template wrote:
Change all racial Hit Dice to d8s. Class Hit Dice are unaffected.

Also,

Undead, d20psfrd wrote:
An undead creature has the following features.... Skill points equal to 4 + Int modifier (minimum 1) per Hit Die.

So since it has no racial hd, the change to d8s wouldn't matter? It would use its class hd (5d10)? The vampire entry makes no mention of changing skill ranks to 4+int mod/level, so I keep the warrior's 2+int mod/level?


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Smite Neutral wrote:

Say I use animate dead on a lvl 5 human warrior npc to make a skeleton.

Skeleton Template wrote:
A skeleton drops any HD gained from class levels and changes racial HD to d8s. Creatures without racial HD are treated as if they have 1 racial HD.
What does that mean exactly? The npc has no racial hd right? Surely that wouldnt mean I roll 1d8 for hit points instead of 5d8 right?

That is exactly what it means. A skeleton made from a human would only have 1 hit die, regardless of the number he had while alive. You get the same exact skeleton from a level 1 commoner as you do from a level 20 fighter. At lest as far as hit dice are concerned. When making a normal skeleton, you lose everything the class levels gave you. The only thing that carries over are the creatures Strength and Dexterity scores.

And all creatures actually do have racial hit dice. It is just that normal characters (like humans, elves, dwarves, and so on) ignore their single racial hit die and instead use whatever their class gives them.

Quote:

Say I apply an intelligent undead template to it somehow, a vampire for example.

Vampire Template wrote:
Change all racial Hit Dice to d8s. Class Hit Dice are unaffected.

Vampires don't lose class hit dice, so there would be no change from what the class levels gave. (Aside from undead having no constitution score, so the new vampire would lose any hit points from that, but would gain new hit points from their charisma score instead.)

Quote:

Also,

Undead, d20psfrd wrote:
An undead creature has the following features.... Skill points equal to 4 + Int modifier (minimum 1) per Hit Die.
So since it has no racial hd, the change to d8s wouldn't matter? It would use its class hd (5d10)? The vampire entry makes no mention of changing skill ranks to 4+int mod/level, so I keep the warrior's 2+int mod/level?

The part you quoted only applies to skill points from racial hit dice. It has no effect on skill points from class levels. A human vampire fighter would have 2+int mod/level skill points.


Smite Neutral wrote:
Skeleton Template wrote:
A skeleton drops any HD gained from class levels and changes racial HD to d8s. Creatures without racial HD are treated as if they have 1 racial HD.

What does that mean exactly? The npc has no racial hd right? Surely that wouldnt mean I roll 1d8 for hit points instead of 5d8 right?

Well, the game recommends that you don't roll hp for monsters and NPCs but rather use average values. A single d8 averages 4.5, which you'd round down to 4. You'll find that this is how all Bestiary monsters, adventure NPCs etc. got their hp scores (and NPCs with levels in PC classes get full hp from their first hit die, just like PCs).

Other than that, you got it right.


simple don't use normal skeletons use other undead templates that swaps on a 1-1 ratio with class levels and racial hit die normal zombies and skeletons make garbage minions for the most part


also if you can use the everything gets max hit points rule

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