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Old Feb 2nd, 2018, 10:12 PM
rared rared is offline
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Making a monstrous player character in 3.5e and 5e

Hi everyone,
Last time I had intended to play 3.5e offline, it was going to be a campaign with monstrous players. I was pretty stoked to be a harpy bard! Unfortunately, the game fell through.

However, I'm still interested in trying that character, eventually. I've tried to recreate the character on the site here - it should be a public sheet, the charname is Eglint.

I tried to match the player level of 10 from the game-that-wasn't. However, I'm really not sure how mixing and matching class and creature levels works.

It looks like harpy is a Level Adjustment of 3, so is my understanding you could be at minimum a 1 Harpy / 1 Something with an effective level of 5?

I'm also interested in learning how I'd make this work with 5e, if that's more someone's niche.

Thanks for your help!
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Old Feb 9th, 2018, 05:00 PM
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I know there are rules for this in 3.5e, but not sure about 5e.

The SRD description of monsters as player races can be found here.
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Old Feb 9th, 2018, 06:55 PM
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Thanks roninkelt, I am going to try and re-build from 1HD up using the linked SRD pages and see if I get similar values.
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Old Feb 9th, 2018, 07:42 PM
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Glad to help.

BTW - I didn't find anything on monsters as PC's in the 5e SRD.
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Old Feb 9th, 2018, 09:56 PM
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If an item (creature, template, race, etc.) has a listed level adjustment, the easiest way to think about it is to just subtract that from the PC's level.

If the Harpy has an LA of +3 (and no other adjustments, like monstrous hit die, etc.), they you could be a 7th level XYZ, as a 10th level PC. In other words, the first three levels of your class are Harpy, Harpy, Harpy, then Mage for 7 levels.
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Old Feb 16th, 2018, 01:08 PM
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For 3.5, if you are still looking for this, here's how you would create a harpy with class levels for yourself:

Harpy for Reference.

Okay, Harpies have 7 HD of Monstrous Humanoid, which means you have 7 levels that give you the following:
7d8 Hit Die, granting 3 feats, and base saves of Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +5, and a Base Atack Bonus of +7.
Racial Adjustments: +4 Dex, -4 Int, +2 Wis, +6 Cha (Not forgetting, you get +1 stat of your choice at that 4th Hit Dice)
Skills: (If you have questions on this, I'm going to have to show you a bunch of math.4+Int) Skills per HD, x4 at first HD.
Harpies treat Bluff, Intimidate, Listen, Perform, and Spot as class skills.
Harpies have a +4 Racial bonus to Listen and Bluff.
Harpies have +1 Natural Armor.
Harpies have Darkvision 60 ft.
Harpies have 2 claws that can be used as natural weapons. (1d3)
Harpies are proficient with Simple Weapons, and are not proficient with armor.
Harpies have a 20 ft move speed, and a fly speed of 80 ft (average).
Harpies have a +3 Level Adjustment.

Captivating Song (Su): See listed ability. Save DC is Cha based, making it DC (10+ 1/2 HD + Cha Modifier).

In summary, you basically start out the gate as a 10th level Harpy, making level 11 the first time you may take a class level.

Hope this all helps!

Cheers,
~Toba
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