Illumians, thoughts?

[sambouchah]

What does everyone think of Illumians?

Thanks, Sam

[Zaq]

They're my favorite race, hands down. I love the fluff, I love the fact that they're customizable, and I love the neat tricks you can do with them. I think it's really neat how two different illumians can have different sigils granting them totally different abilities, but they still fundamentally feel like illumians and not like anything else.

[Psyren]

I love the fluff. Pity they don't have much psionic support, though I suppose that makes sense for a race that is based around language.

Crunchwise, I do enjoy that they allow one of the very few ways to get into divine PrCs early.

[Gildedragon]

They are pretty amazing. Neat and flavorful and visually fascinating.
Love'em

[shadow_archmagi]

Mechanically, I really like the idea of being able to choose your racial benefits, although most of the actual options for Illumians are not that great. They make fantastic psychic warriors, because they can key their bonus PP off of Strength and not care about Wis because save DCs aren't important for someone who self-buffs.

On the whole, though, I feel like Illumians are a better idea than actually made it onto the page- Most of their racial abilities are fairly weak, and the generated fluff doesn't really seem as cool to me as would be possible for a linguistically based race.

[Zaq]

Mechanically, I really like the idea of being able to choose your racial benefits, although most of the actual options for Illumians are not that great. They make fantastic psychic warriors, because they can key their bonus PP off of Strength and not care about Wis because save DCs aren't important for someone who self-buffs.

On the whole, though, I feel like Illumians are a better idea than actually made it onto the page- Most of their racial abilities are fairly weak, and the generated fluff doesn't really seem as cool to me as would be possible for a linguistically based race.

Even if you ignore the power word combinations, don't underestimate being able to get +2 to every single skill or ability check tied to your two favorite stats. That's actually a huge number of little bonuses, all perfectly adapted to your specific character. In fact, I'd say at least a plurality of the illumians I've played haven't ever used their specific word combo. Just the skill bonuses are enough to matter. And don't forget, of course, that Uur boosts initiative as well.

I guess if you totally ignore all skills forever, that wouldn't be that big a deal, but everyone CAN be good at at least a couple skills.

[Der_DWSage]

They're my favorite race, hands down. I love the fluff, I love the fact that they're customizable, and I love the neat tricks you can do with them. I think it's really neat how two different illumians can have different sigils granting them totally different abilities, but they still fundamentally feel like illumians and not like anything else.

This guy? This guy knows where it's at. That's pretty much the sum of my feelings on them as well. It's a crying shame that they're not supported past Races of Destiny.

I especially love the idea of the various Cabals, especially the ones trying to rebuild a lost library of infinite knowledge, and the ones attempting to reach godhood with the right combination of words.

[Psyren]

Mechanically, I really like the idea of being able to choose your racial benefits, although most of the actual options for Illumians are not that great. They make fantastic psychic warriors, because they can key their bonus PP off of Strength and not care about Wis because save DCs aren't important for someone who self-buffs.

This is a nice trick, though it does require your DM to make transparency apply to supernatural abilities (by very strict RAW it does not.)

I'm not too sure about the plane of shadow connection though, I feel they could have done without it. I'm not sure it even adds much aside from that one vestige that hates people with a PoS connection getting leery around them.

[Waker]

I think they are a neat race, even if I haven't played one myself. One reason I like them is that they make humans actually seem interesting as a race, rather than the generic fill-in-the-blank space that they tend to fill in fantasy.

[intothenight]

They're a fun race. They can fit into a lot of roles very well, from meticulous researcher to obsessed, power-mad fallen heroes. Plus introducing a party to a character with glowing symbols orbiting his head always gets interesting reactions. Illumians are easily my favorite humanoid race.

[Elderand]

Honestly I always found the floating glowing rune and sigil to be a bit silly

[Keld Denar]

See, I like the visible sigil. I use it in my RP. My NaenHoon Paladin/SuelArcanamach didn't talk much. When he was excited or angry, however, his power sigil would reflect it. It was a fun RP point. It was an awesome contrast to the point that he shaved and waxed his head religiously so that nothing would be between him and his power sigil, and the glow of the sigil would reflect off of his scalp.

[Chronos]

They're a really weird race.

I like weird.