Simple Q&A D&D 3.5 (by RAW) XXII

[willpell]

Re: Q192

If you take rules outside the scope wherein which they are defined you'll get unintended consequences.

I would say the same thing right back at you. The difference is that we appear to have different ideas of the scope being defined. I think one should look at the message being sent by the RAW as a whole, and not treat contradictions as a mandate to ignore everything save the primary source, but rather treat them as evidence that the situation is too complex to be properly described by any single source. There are legions of examples throughout the books which contradict your interpretation, and only one book whose failure to explicitly do so, because only that one had the responsibility of doing so (according to you), you take as proof that you are correct. I contend instead that the rules are nowhere near as proscriptive as you are taking them as being, and that this is simply an overlooked detail which was never corrected because the writers assumed nobody woudl notice it (admittedly a bad assumption on their part).

All references to the 1 HD exchange are specific to Humanoid creatures.

Close...they are specific to "humanoid" creatures. It's never capitalized, and none of the non-Humanoid example creatures have 1 HD, so it is not clear that they wished to exclude a 1-HD Monstrous Humanoid or Giant or the like. Any creature with a generally humanlike body plan might have been the intended subject of these clauses, provided it also meets the qualification of having only one racial HD. The existence of 1-HD nonhumanoids such as the Goliath is a later development in the rules; it's possible out of the MM alone only with template creatures, and there are no examples walking you through the application of a template to a 1-HD creature. But there are examples of a half-black-dragon level fighter; he has 4 fighter levels (as evident by his Weapon Specialization feat) and 4 HD, with absolutely no mention of him also having one dragon HD which his fighter levels had to be stacked on top of (this would have given him a BAB of +5 rather than +4, as well as affecting his HD line). He had to have started his life as a 1-HD creature since Half-Dragon isn't an acquired template; short of plot-mandated homebrew spells, there's no way he could have first been a humanoid Fighter 4 and only then gained Half-Dragon.

Thus assuming the DMG is correct here means assuming the Monster Manual was incorrect in restricting the scope of this exchange by titling the rule Humanoids and Class Levels

I would not interpret it as being obvious that the word "humanoid" is being used as a restriction here; it seems to be an informal usage of the English word, rather than a specific instance of the game term.

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Even if Curmudgeon's interpretation is the technically correct RAW, I believe that I am justified in saying I would like to hear a "RAW as apparent to the community as a whole" answer from someone else...call it "de facto" RAW rather than "de jure", or something to that effect. In a "typical" campaign, rather than Curmudeon's, would it be deemed reasonable per RAW-as-commonly-interpreted to start as a 1-HD Half-Dragon with 1 class level? If so, would this allow you to select "Half-Dragon Paragon" as your class for that level?