Planetouched races in Dragon Magazine

[Desdichado]

Once again these aren't templates, so you can only have human planetouched. [sigh]

Anyway, my question is, I wonder why they did six "para-elemental" types. Obviously only four of them are actually para-elemenal and the other two are quasi-elemental, while the other six quasi-elemental races (if they can all reasonably be supposed to exist, which is questionable) are left out.

Also, how do y'all pronounce words like genasi, aasimar, tiefling, etc.?

 

[Jack Haggerty]

Speaking of which... How come there are half-good outsiders (aasimar), and half-evil outsiders (tieflings), but no half-lawful, half-chaotic, or half-neutral outsiders?

Unless they included some in the magazine article? I haven't seen it.

Don't you think it'd be better to make them not only templates, but different for each particular diety? A "Descendent of Pelor" template, for example.

Oh, and I say...

Jih-nah-see,
Ass-ih-mar,
Teef-ling.

 

[Aitch Eye]

There's a collection of wav files on the Wizards site that give the correct pronunciations (which are for some reason listed on the "Earlier Editions Fan Articles" page, they really ought to be moved over with page with the free downloads of official products).

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20020121x2

Click on "Planar Adventuring". Or take the direct link to the "Critters" file:

http://www.wizards.com/planescape/critters.ZIP

Genasi didn't have a "J" sound, it was more like "gen-oss-ee" with the stress seeming to be on the second syllable. The others were as Jack Haggerty suggested, with the stress on the first syllable of Aasimar.

 

[Desdichado]

Dragon had axani and cansin, lawful and chaotic respectively. Then they had ooze, smoke, dust, steam, magma and ice.

 

[Crothian]

Humans are the whores of the planes. THink about it. We appernetly sleep with anything. "My that ooze is looking good tonight." Maybe it's a racial, epic curse placed on us thousands of years ago by some greater being. The idea was we'd eventually dilute the gene pool so much that true humans wouldn't exist.

However, I like that these are races. Sure Templates makes a little more sense, but then it'd get to abusive looking for the perfect race to apply this perfect template to to get a very min maxed character.

In a campaing that may be starting up I'm planning on playing an Ooze Gensai who's aiming for the Oozemaster prestige class. It sounds like too much fun not to do that.

 

[Breakstone]

The reason they're not templates is because they're a race of their own. Unlike Half-Dragons, which have two parents of completely different species, Planetouched have lines of ancestry going back many, many generations.

Here's how I'm prone to saying them:

Jen-ah-sie

Ass-ah-mar

Tie-fling

 

[Desdichado]

That's kinda silly, really. Even the genasi article in the World-building Dragon mentioned gnomes, elves, dwarves and halflings that were supposedly possessed of a smidgen of outsider blood. And then all we get are the races as they are presented.

However, instead of fighting the system, I've thought about using it. Now we've got 4 alignment outsider races, 4 standard genasi races and 6 para/quasi genasi races.

I'm going to make a world that's a real crossroads of the planes, that has only humans and planetouched as PC races!

 

[Sigma]

What annoyed me about that article is the way the picture did not jive with the text in some cases. The ooze and magma genesai are describe as looking human with elemental-ish traits, not as big gooy monsters and flaming stone guys.

 

[bwgwl]

I'm going to make a world that's a real crossroads of the planes, that has only humans and planetouched as PC races!

now THAT sounds like a cool idea!

i suppose they threw in the dust and steam genasi (or whatever they're called) because there are dust and steam mephits. even though i haven't seen any indication in 3e that there are paraelemental planes to match.

in a certain cosmology, i could definitely see dust and steam paraelemental planes: dust is the combination of air and earth; steam is the combination of fire and water. with those, you'd have a complete set -- each plane would form a paraelemental plane with each of the three others.

[edit]but aren't there also salt mephits? i don't remember if the article included "salt genasi."[/edit]

 

[ForceUser]

I loved Planescape 2nd edition; I own all the boxed sets and almost all the supplements and adventures. The setting, unfortunately, was a bit too "out there" for most of my friends. Most of them never "got it."

Here's how I said those words:

TEE-fling

AY-sim-are

GEN-ah-sigh (hard "G")