The balance of racial hit dice.

[Ithamar]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned how much more potent incarnum can become when you have all those extra HD.  Now you can really supercharge some of those soulmelds by stuffing lots of extra essentia into them.

[littha]

I feel the only way this sort of thing would be balanced is if you could only take HD if you already had racial HD and you could only take your type's HD. That forces some LA on to the character and hopefully stops casters using it too much. Possibly limit it to a multiple of your class level.

[Ithamar]

Perhaps use the HD / CR guidelines from the MMI?

Aberration, construct, elemental, fey, giant, humanoid, ooze, plant, undead, vermin - 4 HD = 1 Level
Animal, magical beast, monstrous humanoid - 3 HD = 1 Level
Dragon, outsider - 2 HD = 1 Level

[JaronK]

Assuming you're a race with no LA and no racial HD, what if you could gain 4 racial HD instead of each class level?  Regardless of your current creature type, you could choose Outsider or Dragon racial HD since they're the best.

As a Dragonwrought Kobold, heck yes.  If you're already at the oldest age category and gain Dragon HD, you gain a TON of crazy benefits.  See here:  http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/dragonAdvanced.htm

For every three racial HD you gain, you get +2 Caster Level, +3 Natural AC, +2 Spell Resistance, +2 Str and Con, +1 to all mental stats (technically, it's +2 to all for every 6 HD), and some occasional size increases and, if you have them, breath weapon damage increases (+2d8).  Also, you gain DR 15/Epic the first time you do this.  Plus you get a feat for every three hit dice, so that's free feats, as well as +4 BAB and a ton of skills.  Strictly better than Fighter levels by a country mile.  And don't forget it's +2 initiator level, so this makes initiators insane.

So I think I'd go with a Dragonborn Dragonwrought Kobold with a breath weapon. At level 1 we'll start with Lion Totem Barbarian (for Pounce), and then I'm thinking 9 "levels" of dragon along with all the metabreath feats I can get, followed by one level in each initiator class to get 9th level maneuvers all over the place.  And I'll take the Improved Dragon Wings feat, since I get +100 to flight speed for this as well.

At "level 13" I have the following:

BAB 39
40 Hit Dice
Insanely good saves (the Dragon levels alone give +20 to all saves)
A breath weapon that instant kills everything, basically (these extra hit dice give +36d8 damage, and the save DC is insane)
All the 9th level maneuvers (I might need some items to fill in prerequisites) at initiator level 20
+36 Str and Con, +18 to all mental stats
Collosal+ size (or, to be less nonsensical, 4 size increases from small to Gargantuan, but I probably would also then get +200 to flight speed).
+36 Natural AC
DR 15/Epic
Pounce
Enough feats to get all the metamagic feats I want, in addition to melee feats

So, everything dies.  In fact, I can widen my breath weapon to destroy entire dungeons, most likely.  As a swift action.

JaronK

[awaken_D_M_golem]

... what if you could gain 4 racial HD instead of each class level? ...

You mean like the Improving Monster CRs:
Aberration, construct, elemental, fey, giant, humanoid, ooze, plant, undead, vermin     +1 per 4 HD added

If a "class level" gave you:
3hd + (18+3*int) skills + 1 feat (w/ fakey fast qualifying) + really big AB
... it's clearly better than a Fighter/Rogue gestalt.
Outsider or Dragon is that much better.
Go dumpster diving for hd=CL effects.

[Endarire]

I'm surprised the racial HD were so valuable compared to class levels, even for casters/manifesters!

That's apparently how WotC balanced things!  Give enemies 2-3 times the HD and let the dice the DM sort 'em out!

[Agita]

It's not that the HD are valuable, it's just that you're getting so damn many of them. That simply throws everything that's calculated by level out of whack. You're basically just overwhelming quality with quantity.

[RobbyPants]

I feel the only way this sort of thing would be balanced is if you could only take HD if you already had racial HD and you could only take your type's HD. That forces some LA on to the character and hopefully stops casters using it too much. Possibly limit it to a multiple of your class level.

Even with LA, it's really no cost. A tiefling or aasimar with LA +1 would be ECL 2 and have 4 outsider HD. This still completely outstrips anything a 2nd level fighter could do. Plus I thought there was some type of stupid slaad knockoff (name starts with an "n"?) in one of the books that's on Outsider with LA +0.

And JaronK already touched on kobold-dragon shenanigans which would bypass the LA, anyway.

[Agita]

I feel the only way this sort of thing would be balanced is if you could only take HD if you already had racial HD and you could only take your type's HD. That forces some LA on to the character and hopefully stops casters using it too much. Possibly limit it to a multiple of your class level.

Even with LA, it's really no cost. A tiefling or aasimar with LA +1 would be ECL 2 and have 4 outsider HD. This still completely outstrips anything a 2nd level fighter could do. Plus I thought there was some type of stupid slaad knockoff (name starts with an "n"?) in one of the books that's on Outsider with LA +0.

Neraph, Planar Handbook. LA +0 Outsider.

[littha]

There was a reason I noted to only allow it if you already had racial HD and only as a multiple of your class levels.
That way you need at least ECL 3 before you could take one.

Limited to twice your class level is:
ECL 3
1 HD, 1 Class Level, 1 LA

ECL 4:
3 HD, 1 Class Level, 1 LA

ECL 5
4 HD, 2 Class Level, 1 LA

This is just off the top of my head though, it would need a lot of work to pull off properly.

[RobbyPants]

I see what you're saying. I read the LA part as an "or" for some reason.

[Aradu]

No one mentioned Sylph, with HD+4 Sorcerer casting?

[lans]

I would put 2.5 commoner HD as better than the majority of the martial classes.

[oslecamo]

No one mentioned Sylph, with HD+4 Sorcerer casting?

That's a common misconception. Only the caster level is based on HD, the spell slots and spells known are fixed and can only be improved by taking actual sorceror levels.

[Aradu]

Seems the entry is badly written, but if you read it that way that would also mean a Sylph couldn't gain additional bonus spells from higher charisma for those levels, and other monsters with racial casting specify "casts as a xth level y" which would be missing from this entry entirely if HD +4 wasn't meant to be that, the effective sorcerer level would be unspecified. IMO the spells known and spells per day listed are only for the example Sylph above, who happens to cast as 7th level sorcerer following HD+4.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

This isn't nearly as thought out as my Balanced ECL Variant, which gives some RHD for free.

[altpersona]

three thoughts,

on jaronks 39bab, i dont see / dont know the math to get that. not saying your wrong, just dont know how you got there.  EDIT: i guess im overlooking the 40 hd. i read "13th level" and got confused...

outsider 1 + alter self = 

i will take 1 hd of abomination please. 

[JaronK]

three thoughts,

on jaronks 39bab, i dont see / dont know the math to get that. not saying your wrong, just dont know how you got there.  EDIT: i guess im overlooking the 40 hd. i read "13th level" and got confused...

Yeah, it's that at "13th level" I've actually taken 9 levels of 4 Dragon HD each, so that's 36 HD in dragon HD in addition to the 4 normal levels.

JaronK

[skydragonknight]

Huh. This would actually make Feral better than Lion Totem Barbarian. Pounce + Improved Grab. And then go into Black Blood Cultist.

[Sinfire Titan]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned how much more potent incarnum can become when you have all those extra HD.  Now you can really supercharge some of those soulmelds by stuffing lots of extra essentia into them.

Be honest here: How many people bring up Incarnum without being asked?