As Van Halen might ask, where have all the Hit Dice gone?

**NineShadowEyes** · February 8th, 2012, 23:55

I'm an old gamer who's used to seeing an explicit entry for HD in the monster stats. Now it seems we track CR values and hit points only. I figure you're simply supposed to extrapolate HD from the hit points listed (6d6+12 = 6 HD). I hope so... that's easy. Just want to make sure.

Incidentally, if that's the case, why doesn't the PFSRD list monsters by hit dice? That's nothing but handy right there. I do not like this new fangled CR business. What was wrong with hit dice? Get off my yard, you damn kids!

**Griogre** · February 9th, 2012, 00:03

They did it that what because XP is given by monster CR and you can now have things with different HD that are the same CR.

**NineShadowEyes** · February 9th, 2012, 01:53

yeah, but am I right about extrapolating HD from hit points? Is that how you do it? Or is it now a function of CR?

**Griogre** · February 9th, 2012, 05:35

I'm not sure why you should have to look at the HP to get HD - the monster listings I've seen have the HD as well. IE a Balor has: hp 370 (20d10+260) in the stat block so you can consider it to have 20 HD if you wish, though the fact the HD is only giving you 110 of its 370 hit points makes the HD fairly trivial, IMHO. However, yes I do think they gave it 20d10 because it is a 20 CR monster. I'm looking here: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/mo...rs/demon/balor

**Trenloe** · February 9th, 2012, 08:30

Challenge Rating is just that - a rating as to how challenging the monster will be. For example, a 10 HD Fey will be a lot less challenging that a 10 HD Dragon!

to show this, look at the PRD entry for Monster Creation. The "Creature Hit Dice" table in Step 3 shows how HD maps to CR for various monster type. Checking my above example on this table we see that a 10 HD Fey has a Challenge Rating of 6 which is equivalent to a 7 HD Dragon.

If you still want to think in just HD, then your statement about how many "dice" make up the HP entry is essentially correct - this will be made up of racial HD with any class levels adding additional "HD" too. However, class levels can make a creature much more challenging, so the CR is now a better way to judge how challenging a creature will be to defeat and thus determines the XP such a defeat would garner.

**NineShadowEyes** · February 29th, 2012, 00:25

Thank you all very much, but none of this really helps. Think of Sleep or Color Spray, both spells which describe how many targets are affected in terms of hit dice, not CR values. When the spell description mentions hit dice where do I get this value from?

Is it just the number before the 'd' (6d6+12 would be 6 HD)? That doesn't make much sense as creatures with the same hit dice could be more or less of a threat than another.

**Trenloe** · February 29th, 2012, 00:37

Originally Posted by NineShadowEyes

Thank you all very much, but none of this really helps. Think of Sleep or Color Spray, both spells which describe how many targets are affected in terms of hit dice, not CR values. When the spell description mentions hit dice where do I get this value from?

As I mentioned above, it is the number of dice the creature has (totaling up all dice types). e.g. 2d10+4d6 will be a 6HD creature.

Thread: As Van Halen might ask, where have all the Hit Dice gone?

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