Last night's action and Tom's new character

Last night's side-quest turned out to be a bit more challenging than I'd intended, and Ug got killed (again). But he died as a good Gatekeeper Druid, having just defeated a dreaded Mind Flayer. Grim and Verschoyle took his body to Graywall and asked a gnoll druid to reincarnate him, but his spirit did not want to return.

However, a bugbear scout on a mission from the goblinoid empire of Darguun has shown an interest in travelling with the party in order to find out about the new warlord of the region.

I've been reading the rules for monster characters and it turns out I got the rules slightly wrong. To get the effective character level (ECL) of a monster character you add together it's level adjustment, class levels, _and racial hit dice_. Racial hit dice effectively count as levels in the 'bugbear' class.

So a bugbear rogue with ECL 8 would be a level 4 rogue:

3 racial levels + 4 rogue levels + 1 level adjustment = ECL 8

For the purposes of gaining feats and ability score increases, you use your total hit dice (racial and class) but not the level adjustment. So your rogue has 7 HD, giving it three feats and a +1 increase to one ability score. You also have 7 HD for the purposes of magical effects that depend on hit dice.

For the purposes of XP, you add up the racial hit dice, class levels, and level adjustment. So for XP purposes you are a level 8 character.

The value of your starting equipment would also depend on ECL I think. So if I recall correctly you can have up to 27,000gp worth of equipment, no more than 1/4 of which can be spent on a single item.

I have the sourcebooks with extra character options in them here in case you want to borrow them to look at options.

As for the mission your character is on... how about you've been sent by Darguun to look for an ancient Dhakaani artifact that you think is somewhere in the region? This gives you a reason to stay in the area and also opens up a nice 'treasure hunt' story arc.