Monsters as Races

While every monster has the statistics that a player would need to play the creature as a character, most monsters are not suitable as PCs. Creatures who have an Intelligence score of 2 or lower or any other ability score less than 1, who have no way to communicate, or who are so different from other PCs that they disrupt the campaign, should not be used. Some creatures have strange innate abilities or great physical power, and thus are questionable at best as characters (except in high-level campaigns).

Starting Level of a Monster PC: Monsters suitable for play have a ECL adjustment. Add a monster's ECL adjustment to its class levels to get the creature's effective character level, or ECL. Effectively, a creature replaces its racial Hit Dice with class levels; it loses the attack bonus, saving throw bonuses, skills, and feats granted by its monster HD and gains the attack bonus, save bonuses, skills, feats, and other class abilities of a character of the appropriate class at the appropriate level. When the number of class levels exceeds its Hit Dice, it gains extra class levels as normal.

Humanoids and Class Levels: Creatures with 1 or less HD always replace their monster levels with their character levels, as noted above.

Characters with more than 1 racial Hit Die do not get a feat for their first class level as members of the common races do. Instead, they have already received a feat for their first Hit Die because of race. Monster characters treat skills mentioned in their monster entry as class skills. Even if all the character's racial HD are replaced by class levels, he retains the +3 bonus for his racial class skills, as he is still considered to have "levels" in the racial class.

Effective Character Level: To determine the effective character level (ECL) of a monster character, add its ECL to its character class levels.

Use ECL instead of character level to determine how many experience points a monster character needs to reach its next level, and for determining starting wealth.

If a monster has 1 Hit Die or less, or if it is a template creature, it must start the game with one or more class levels, like a regular character. If a monster has 2 or more Hit Dice, it can start with no class levels (though it can gain them later). Even if the creature is of a kind that normally advances by Hit Dice rather than class levels, the PC gains class levels rather than Hit Dice.

Hit Dice: The creature's Hit Dice equal the number of class levels it has plus its racial Hit Dice (for example, a bugbear - 3 HD - with 2 fighter levels has 1d8 for its humanoid racial HD and 2d10 for its fighter levels). Additional Hit Dice gained from taking levels in a character class never affect a creature's size like additional racial Hit Dice do.

Feat Acquisition and Ability Score Increases: A monster's total Hit Dice, not its ECL, govern its acquisition of feats and ability score increases. Exception: A monster cannot have more feats than its Intelligence score, regardless of its Hit Dice (except for bonus feats, which do not count against this maximum).

Ability Scores for Monster PCs: While a monster's statistics give the ability scores for a typical creature of a certain kind, any "monster" creature that becomes an adventurer is definitely not typical. Therefore, when creating a PC from a creature, check to see if the creature's entry has any ability scores of 10 or higher. If so, for each score, subtract 10 (if the score is even) or 11 (if the score is odd) to get the creature's modifier for that ability based on its race or kind. Generate the character's ability scores as normal, then add the racial ability modifiers to get their ability scores.

Note: Some monsters have base ability scores other than 10 and 11. If alternate scores were used this will be indicated in the monster entry. Also, some monsters that make good PCs have their racial ability modifiers and other traits already listed in their monster entry.

For ability scores lower than 10, the procedure is different. First, determine the character's ability scores, and compare that number to the monster's average ability score, using either Table 1 or Table 2.

The separate table for Intelligence ensures that no PC ends up with an Intelligence score lower than 3.

Table 1: Monster PCs' Intelligence Scores

Monster Intelligence Score
Generated
Score
3 4–5 6–7 8–9
18 10 12 14 16
17 9 11 13 15
16 8 10 12 14
15 7 9 11 13
14 6 8 10 12
13 5 7 9 11
12 4 6 8 10
11 3 5 7 9
10 3 5 7 9
9 3 5 6 8
8 3 4 6 8
7 3 4 5 7
6 3 4 5 6
5 3 3 5 5
4 3 3 4 4
3 3 3 3 3


Table 2: Monster PCs' Other Ability Scores

Monster Ability Score
Generated
Score
1 2–3 4–5 6–7 8–9
18 8 10 12 14 16
17 7 9 11 13 15
16 6 8 10 12 14
15 5 7 9 11 13
14 4 6 8 10 12
13 3 5 7 9 11
12 2 4 6 8 10
11 1 3 5 7 9
10 1 2 4 6 8
9 1 2 4 6 7
8 1 2 4 5 6
7 1 1 3 5 5
6 1 1 2 4 4
5 1 1 1 3 3
4 1 1 1 2 2
3 1 1 1 1 1

Experience for Monsters: A monster with Hit Dice of 1 or less, no ECL adjustment, and class levels uses the same tables as standard PC races when determining experience needed.

A monster with an ECL adjustment, regardless of racial Hit Dice, uses its ECL when determining experience needed.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License