4E skeleton race

[Jack_of_Spades]

I tried making a skeleton race for my next campaign. What do you think?

Ability Scores: Dex+2 Con +2
Size: Medium
Speed:6
Vision: Normal

Languages: Common, special*( See Unforgotten Heritage)
Skill Bonuses: Intimidate +2, Endurance +2

Resist: Necrotic and Poison equal to 5+1/2 level
Vulnerable: 5 Radiant
Undead Origin: You count as an undead for purposes of effects and abilities that relate to undead.
Unforgotten Heritage: Choose one race as your base race. You speak that race's language and may choose to use that race's Encounter power instead of the one granted by the skeleton race during an encounter. You also count as a member of that race for feats, paragon paths, and magic item effects. You appear as a skeletal version of that race.
+1 to opportunity attacks.

Racial Encounter Power
Skeletal Agility
Immediate Reaction
Trigger: You are bloodied.
Effect: You may shift two squares.

[Meek]

Remove the Vulnerability to Radiant. It really doesn't balance anything and a race shouldn't have a silly negative feature like that.

Instead, have the resistances scale with level rather than with tier. Necrotic/Poison 5 at heroic, 10 at 11th level and 15 at 21st level.

I'm leery of unforgotten heritage but there's really nothing to do about it. It either stays or it doesn't. It's not broken per say, because Skeletal Agility really isn't that good anyway and you'll probably always be using your racial power instead. But you should clarify what happens with Skeletal Humans and Half-Elves (bonus power and Dilettante), and I would lean towards "they get nothing." Having a race that gets other race's special power just feels weird.

I'm not sure the purpose of +1 to opportunity attack rolls (I assume?) is or what it's meant to represent. I would remove this and stick Darkvision in there, which has always been a classic Skeleton ability (what kind of Skeleton can't feel out for fleshies in the dark? :smallwink:)

[DracoDei]

Why would vulnerability to radiant be "silly"? I can see it being a bad idea or not, but "silly" doesn't make sense to me.

[Theodoriph]

Umm...why are skeletons dextrous...just out of curiosity :smallbiggrin:


Edit: I don't mean that in a critical "Why are you doing that" way =D I'm genuinely curious why you picked dex.

[Meek]

Because it doesn't balance anything. It's not a real drawback, it's just (apparently) trying to be one in a game that doesn't have real racial drawbacks (the only drawback is racial opportunity cost – you could've been that other guy) except for Small size. Which shouldn't be a racial drawback, Wizard's was just dumb in that implementation.

Vulnerability 5 to Radiant is a silly drawback because it's too weak as a drawback to balance anything. Relatively few monsters you face will be shooting radiant energy at you. When they do, the 5 extra damage you take will slowly hell not really, QUICKLY, as you progress, become absolutely nothing but an annoying footnote to keep track of. It's inclusion doesn't do anything.

Also, silly is just part of my vocabulary. I won't argue semantics any further than this on words I just throw out because I feel like it. But there you go.

[Meek]

Umm...why are skeletons dextrous...just out of curiosity :smallbiggrin:


Edit: I don't mean that in a critical "Why are you doing that" way =D I'm genuinely curious why you picked dex.

The template had a Dex bonus in D&D 3.5. They're also often depicted as being the "fast, brittle" undead to the zombie's "slow, tanky" undead. Aside from that, not much else that I remember.