Races of Destiny excerpt...

[BryonD]

Because they're conservative about stat bonuses, I'm afraid.

This race has the following bonuses that they're wary of:
* Darkvision
* +2 Str
* +2 Int

Those are pretty nice in a dungeon-delving campaign. A negative to Charisma is negligible - it just rules out the bard and sorcerer classes. A negative to Dexterity is balanced by the +1 natural AC. Light Sensitivity just doesn't come into play enough in the dungeon delve.

So, you have a race that is better (+4 Int) than the Half-Orc. Intelligence is a more significant ability because of skills and wizard spells.

Cheers!

So?

That is HOW they designed themselves into a no win.
It isn't WHY they did it.

It their book!!
If you've screwed up and designed a no-win then BACK UP and fix it.
Either add something else to make it worth +1 or take something away and make it +0.

In terms of winning and losing they were playing a game of soltaire where THEY get to make up the rules as the game goes along and they STILL lost. That's pretty sad.

 

[MerricB]

Thing is, I'm not so convinced it is as underpowered as everyone is making out it is...

Cheers!

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

So that -2 to Dex alone is negating: +2 Str, +1 natural armor, and 1/4th of the skill bonuses? Aren't you making that Dex penalty pretty big?

Not really, because only the Strength bonus is of real value.

The natural armor class bonus is absolutely shrug worthy. The only thing it does is negate one small facet of the Dexterity penalty - it does nothing to negate initiative penalties, or skill penalties, or Reflex save penalties, or the penalties for ranged touch attacks, which are a staple of the race's favored class.

A +2 bonus to Hide and Move Silently checks is absolutely worthless for the vast majority of archetypes the Sharakim's abilities suggest. A fighter or barbarian Sharakim won't have Hide or Move Silently on his skill list, and his armor check penalties will likely make the idea of using either skill laughable.

A wizard Sharakim, meanwhile, not only doesn't have either skill but isn't likely to ever need either skill - he's got spells to do that stuff for him.

Sure, you could make a Sharakim ranger or rogue or bard, but then you get to be nailed by the ability score penalties - and for the same reason you don't see a lot of half-orc sorcerers, you won't see a lot of Sharakim rogues, and sure as hell won't see many bards.

And the archetype unsuitability of the skill bonuses is on top of the fact that two of them are reduced to a piddly +1 by the Dex penalty, and the fact that they only work in darkness to boot.

Patrick Y.

 

[Klaus]

Saying that the sharakim is worthy of a +1 LA because it gains so much over the half-orc is a very basic design flaw. A race's LA should be weighed against its own benefits/drawbacks, not against another race's.

+2 Str and -2 Dex cancel each other out. (Even the DMG says so)
+2 Int and -2 Cha cancel each other out (Again, DMG)
Balanced Scores = +0 LA.

+2 bonus to 3 skills adds +0 to LA (Savage Species guidelines). The fact that the bonus is conditional makes it even less worthy of an LA.

+1 attack vs. orcs. Once again, not worthy of an LA. Dwarves and Gnomes have similar bonuses against much broader categories.

Darkvision. That's a good ability, but it's shared by dwarves, half-orcs, orcs and quite a few creature types. By itself, not worthy of an LA.

+1 natural armor. Kobolds have it. Not that big a deal.

On top of that, there's Light Sensitivity. No core race has a built-in weakness.

 

[Gez]

Bleh. At least Races of Stone had some interesting stuff. But there? A subrace for orcish wizard? Illumians duller than expected? And they did put the "swift/immediate action" thing as one of the previews?

Sheesh, they should have put it in the revised core books and the SRD instead of reprinting them in each sourcebook since XPH.

 

[ohGr]

Is WotC trying to turn people off from this book? Good lord, that is the most absolutely pathetic excuse for an excerpt that i have ever seen; they would have been better of not releasing an exceprt at all.

 

[Nightfall]

Can't say I'm extremely impressed by this excerpt. But at least the stuff on the Illumian was mildly interesting.

I agree with what everyone said about the Magic excerpt, yuck.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Personally, I thought the Illumians (sp?) were pretty cool. As for the Sharakim, I'll probably either drop 'em to +0 or add a couple of abilities or a free minor bloodline or something.