Zinovia
Explorer
They have:
• Telepathy so they can communicate with anything that has a language
• Three starting languages
• Encounter teleport that also gives them combat advantage against foes they were adjacent to
• +2 to three different skills
• No need to eat, breathe, sleep, drink, and resulting immunities from associated penalties
• A scaling resist vs. psychic damage, which is fairly common
Their teleport isn't as cool as the eladrin one because it requires an adjacent enemy to target and is half their speed, rather than 5. It does give you CA vs that target, which is nice. I rate it as comparable.
I noticed that the immunities of other races also scale (by 1/2 level), which I didn't think was initially the case, but I don't have a copy of the PH here right now to check the pre-errataed version. Comparable I guess.
That still leaves skill bonuses to 3 skills, and an extra starting language over most races, along with the whole telepathy thing that renders language almost moot.
Maybe shardminds are balanced with other races, but something about them puts me off. My son's response when we were looking at the PH3 was "They're OP!" I think it's the living construct immunities that make us feel that way. My campaign uses nothing from Eberron, including warforged. As it stands, I will not be incorporating shardminds into my game for now. I can make room for the other races, but these things seem like a jarring discrepancy. They don't fit.
Perhaps we're in the minority here, but I really dislike the shardmind, much as I dislike warforged outside of Eberron. We didn't need a version of the warforged that is smart rather than strong.
• Telepathy so they can communicate with anything that has a language
• Three starting languages
• Encounter teleport that also gives them combat advantage against foes they were adjacent to
• +2 to three different skills
• No need to eat, breathe, sleep, drink, and resulting immunities from associated penalties
• A scaling resist vs. psychic damage, which is fairly common
Their teleport isn't as cool as the eladrin one because it requires an adjacent enemy to target and is half their speed, rather than 5. It does give you CA vs that target, which is nice. I rate it as comparable.
I noticed that the immunities of other races also scale (by 1/2 level), which I didn't think was initially the case, but I don't have a copy of the PH here right now to check the pre-errataed version. Comparable I guess.
That still leaves skill bonuses to 3 skills, and an extra starting language over most races, along with the whole telepathy thing that renders language almost moot.
Maybe shardminds are balanced with other races, but something about them puts me off. My son's response when we were looking at the PH3 was "They're OP!" I think it's the living construct immunities that make us feel that way. My campaign uses nothing from Eberron, including warforged. As it stands, I will not be incorporating shardminds into my game for now. I can make room for the other races, but these things seem like a jarring discrepancy. They don't fit.
Perhaps we're in the minority here, but I really dislike the shardmind, much as I dislike warforged outside of Eberron. We didn't need a version of the warforged that is smart rather than strong.
