Well, the rebuking powers of a Negatai are more a last-ditch effort, or a way to help your friendly evil or neutral cleric by spending a turning attempt to aid their rebuking effort (from DotF) It's meant more for taking care of the evil lich's minions that are commanded to attack him, then for him to take on the evil lich all on his own. I certainly don't expect a 20th level Negatai rogue to be able to turn vampires! However, a 20th level Negatai cleric of Nerull is something entirely different...Sephiroth no Miko said:Isida, I was looking at your Negatai and thinking they are really not worth the +1 ECL, especially when compared your standard fire, water, air, and earth genasi.
Getting a +1 bonus/5 levels to necromantic effects, unintelligent undead ignoring them, the ability to rebuke as a cleric 4 levels lower, chill touch 1/day does not make up for the loss of -2 to all saves, and reduced healing.
I say this because both saves and healing both heavily impact on player characters all the time. They're always rolling saves, and always getting hurt.-2 to every save is just... brutal and the average -1 hp loss per dice cure spells is not insignificant either (the slow natural healing is less of an issue since adventurers rarely heal naturally).
However, a bunch of the negatai's bonuses are quite limited. +1/5 level vs. necromantic effects isn't that powerful, especially if a character needs 10 levels just to achieve a net +0 (plus, there's that -2 to Con to overcome). Both the unintelligent undead ignoring and the ability to rebuke is nice, but they're dependent on having undead around (which in turn, is DM dependent). Even then, neither are especially powerful. Skeletons and zombies aren't much of a threat, especially as a character gets higher in levels, and besides, if you do something threatening, they'll attack you. I would classify that as a minor ability at best.
Incidentally, for the rebuke undead, how many times can a negatai (or a positai for that matter) rebuke per day? Once or 3 + Cha like a cleric (I was assuming once)? A 1st level negatai (= to a 2nd level character if using ECL +1) would have to make a Cha check (which is what a turning check is) of 22 higher to even affect 1 HD undead!
So anyways, that's my argument for why I would consider a negatai around a net +0 ECL. I think the reduced healing penalty equals out the necromantic saves bonuses and invisibility to unintelligent undead and the -2 to saves equals out the rebuke and chill touch.
Of course, this is just my 0.02.
Anyways, here is the new and improved Negatai, now hopefully worthy of their +1 ECL.
Negatai - Negatia are quasi-genasi touched by the Plane of Negative energy (the energy that powers undead). The nature of negative energy imbues them with a certain amount of strength, but also makes them more susceptible to death. +2 Str, -2 Con. +1 racial bonus vs necromantic spells and effects, which increases every five levels. -1 racial penalty to all saving throws. Unintelligent undead will ignore a Negatai and won't attack them unless they attack first.
A Negatai can rebuke undead as a cleric four levels lower than his current character level, or if the character already has the ability to rebuke undead, he may do so as if he were two levels higher. If the Negatai doesn't have levels in a class that grants turning abilities, they may rebuke 3 + Cha mod times per day. If the Negatai has levels in a class that grants turning abilities, he gains extra turning attemps equal to his Cha mod that may be used only on attempts to rebuke.
They also no not heal as fast as other races, with natural healing being slower (half the rate of normal creatures) and healing spells being less effective on them (-1 per die). They may cast chill touch 3/day, and command undead 1/day as a spell-like ability of a sorcerer of their character level.
