When adding class levels to monsters, at what point do you start adding bonuses to their ability scores for the additional HD? Do you add their racial hit dice and their class levels together to determine at what levels the bonuses are gained? Or do you only count the class levels?
Take a troll, for example: A troll has 6 racial HD. Say I tack on 12 levels of barbarian.
After summing the total of his racial and class hit dice, would he gain his ability score boosts at 8, 12, and 16 HD? Or would he get them at 10, 14, 18?
What happens if I boost the creature's racial hit dice, AND THEN add class levels? Would the additional racial hit dice give him ability increases as well?
When adding class levels to monsters, at what point do you start adding bonuses to their ability scores for the additional HD? Do you add their racial hit dice and their class levels together to determine at what levels the bonuses are gained? Or do you only count the class levels?
Take a troll, for example: A troll has 6 racial HD. Say I tack on 12 levels of barbarian.
After summing the total of his racial and class hit dice, would he gain his ability score boosts at 8, 12, and 16 HD? Or would he get them at 10, 14, 18?
What happens if I boost the creature's racial hit dice, AND THEN add class levels? Would the additional racial hit dice give him ability increases as well?
While I understand wanting to know, I do have to question in this case... does it actually matter? Is this a monstrous Player Character? If not, I doubt doing this one way or the other is actually going to throw the CR any further off than simply advancing it will.
I'd personally go with '20 total HD means a total of 5 ability increases, racial increases were already accounted for for the base creatures HD' myself, but if you go with an ability advancement every 4 class levels, I dont think you'll hurt anything either.
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Unfortunately, the Monster Advancement rules are silent on the matter of when to give ability score increases to creatures with racial HD who then gain class levels.
However, when adding racial HD, it does state that it's for every 4 ADDITIONAL HD, so my guess would be that adding class levels is intended to work similarly.
Personally, I think this is an unnecessary complication, and I would base it on total HD, whether racial or class based.
The reason I'm asking is that I always thought that you got the bonuses for ALL HD, regardless of whether they were racial hit dice or class hit dice.
Then I saw a post a while back saying that, that wasn't the case, that you added them only for class levels that were tacked on after racial hit dice.
Not only would this effect how many ability increases the character/creature received, it would effect WHEN they got them.
So I'm just trying to figure out which is right: what the RAW and RAI are on the matter.
Knowing the answer can become extremely important in a wide number of cases involving both GMs AND players, such as when de-evolving a statblock to be used as part of a simulacrum spell.
...such as when de-evolving a statblock to be used as part of a simulacrum spell.
This way lies madness.
Good luck though!
But lots of difficult questions there, though I think you're aware of that.
So I'm just trying to figure out which is right: what the RAW and RAI are on the matter.
If you're asking whether Pathfinder deliberately wanted it to work differently from 3.5, I would say the answer is "no".
So I'm just trying to figure out which is right: what the RAW and RAI are on the matter.If you're asking whether Pathfinder deliberately wanted it to work differently from 3.5, I would say the answer is "no".
How did it work in v3.5? That would be a start.
How did it work in v3.5? That would be a start.So I'm just trying to figure out which is right: what the RAW and RAI are on the matter.If you're asking whether Pathfinder deliberately wanted it to work differently from 3.5, I would say the answer is "no".
The ability score bonuses are based on HD. HD can be racial or class based, so every 4 HD get an ability score bonus.
A monster’s total Hit Dice, not its ECL, govern its acquisition of feats and ability score increases.
And yet, from the same page:
Treat monster Hit Dice the same as character level for determining ability score increases. This only applies to Hit Dice increases, monsters do not gain ability score increases for levels they "already reached" with their racial Hit Dice, since these adjustments are included in their basic ability scores.
Personally, I'm with giving out one statadd per four total hit dice, and ignoring the bit about "such adjustments are included" - those base stats are, after all, for ordinary mook level monsters. But that's a houserule, not RAW.
When adding class levels to monsters, at what point do you start adding bonuses to their ability scores for the additional HD? Do you add their racial hit dice and their class levels together to determine at what levels the bonuses are gained? Or do you only count the class levels?
Take a troll, for example: A troll has 6 racial HD. Say I tack on 12 levels of barbarian.
After summing the total of his racial and class hit dice, would he gain his ability score boosts at 8, 12, and 16 HD? Or would he get them at 10, 14, 18?
What happens if I boost the creature's racial hit dice, AND THEN add class levels? Would the additional racial hit dice give him ability increases as well?
Your ability modifiers and feats are gained from hit dice. It's often overlooked, but every class has an associated hit die and raw statistics associated with it.
For the purposes of gaining new feats and ability score increases, hit dice are all that is important. It doesn't matter if those hit dice come from class levels, racial hit dice, bonus hit dice, or templates.
Thus your troll (6 HD) with 12 barbarian levels (12 HD) would indeed gain an ability boost at 8th, 12th, and 16th HD, as well as additional feats at 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, and 15th HD, and he can have up to 16 ranks in his skills.
Wouldn't it be a max of 18 ranks per skill, Ashiel?
Wouldn't it be a max of 18 ranks per skill, Ashiel?
Yes it would. For a moment I forgot how many HD we were adding. :P
I could have it wrong, but I've always done it is for every total 4 after the base hd you add 1.
ie: Troll has 6 racial hd gains two levels in fighter for a total of 8 hd and a +1 to an ability.
EDIT: or what Ashiel said.