Thank you folks for weighing in. I think the logic I was presented with was something like: Racial hit dice give you feats; Levels give you feats; Therefore Racial hit dice count as levels. I thought it was pretty cut and dry that Character level=Class level, so when I was present...
of getting 138 for instance is the chance of getting an adjusted result of 6 from each of 4 dice. The chance of that for each die is 2/3, so the overall chance is that to the power of 4 - or just under 20%. The chances given for other higher scores similarly look a little out...