Elans: Drop the -2 cha, change to Humanoid. Balanced?

[Asmor]

Do you think that Elans are still a +0 LA race if you drop the charisma penalty and turn them into Humanoid (Human)* type? For the record, they're aberrations by raw.

I think honestly that being an aberration is pretty damn good for a +0 LA, since it means the charm/dominate/hold person spells won't work on you. The Elan seem fairly good in general, though, so I don't feel too bad about clipping that...

I am considering getting rid of the -2 cha, though. Charisma penalties are one of my pet peeves, primarily because I take a very different view of charisma from the raw (that it's strictly a measure of force of personality, and nothing else) and it seems like they're just way too overused. In any case, it's not like the -2 cha is a huge drawback in the first place... Sure, it makes it hard for them to be wilders, but their favored class is psion anyway.

So do you think these changes are okay?

*IMC, I've consolidated racial subtypes a bit... For example, Aasimar, Tieflings and Changelings are all considered humanoid subraces and have the Humanoid (Human) type.

 

[Nifft]

I'd buy that it's balanced, if a bit on the weak side. Elan get effectively three (weak) 1st level Augmentable powers for their class ability, 2 bonus power points, and a host of immunities (thanks to Aberration type).

Charisma is the most common dump stat -- for most classes, it's (mechanically) meaningless. For some players and some play-styles, it's meaningless outside of mechanics -- and thus it's a weak stat (for a penalty). Removing that penalty is thus meaningless for many PCs. If your game has a lot of RP yet imposes mechanical limits (e.g. diplomacy rolls) on RP, then Charisma is important -- else, not so much.

In order for their main class ability to be worth much, they have to mostly negate their secondary class ability (by playing a Psionic class, which makes their +2 pp not as cool as it would be for a non-Psionic class).

Suggestions:

1/ Steal a feat from Complete Psionic (the one that doubles the benefit of their racial Resistance & Resilience). (That's all it does.)

2/ Create a feat that gives them bonus PP equal to their character level (instead of just +2); requires character level 3 of course. This puts them more on the level of Kalashtar, but costs them a feat. Coupled with the above feat, it's now plausible to play an Elan as a class other than Psion and still make good use of his racial abilities at high level. In fact, it would be a very interesting fighter type.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Decivre]

Another way you can look at it, when you take the force of personality aspect of charisma, is that no matter how old an Elan gets, he will always be mentally less mature than a person of equal age, since his life was restarted. The penalty to charisma reflects both that and the fact that they have a hard time dealing with social interactions since they come off as "alien humans." Same could be said about half-orcs and dwarves... those with little social interaction capability don't really have a personality to force, so to speak, as they go hand in hand. Good speakers tend to become the center of attention, and all that.