4e Shade Race Age?

[Th3N3xtGuy]

In the book Heroes of Shadows 4e they're is a race call Shades which with a ritual you replace a fragment of your soul with energey from the shadow Realm. I was thinking of bringing it over to 3.5. But whats the age limit, etc.

What I have stat wise is:

+2 Con +2 Dex or + 2 Intel

Size Original Races Size

Darkvision

+2 Arcane Knowledge and +2 Hide +2 Move

But does the age limit changed upon transformation?

[georgie_leech]

You might consider throwing this in the Homebrew forum instead. 4E and 3.P Racial stats and abilities look almost nothing like each other.

Incidentally, the fluff behind the race points to a Template rather than a base Race.

[Th3N3xtGuy]

Okay I'll look into it

[Sian]

or you know, take the Shades in Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, which are errataed (in Players Guide to Faerun Web Enhancement) to be a LA+5 Template

[Zaq]

You're starting from a non-RAW premise, so you're not going to get a RAW answer, because there simply isn't any source text on the subject.

That said, if we go by what's in Heroes of Shadow, Shades all started out as humans, and they didn't gain any special vitality or vigor from the transformation—if anything, they lose some, because Shades have fewer healing surges than other races do. So at most, I'd treat them the same as humans, and I could even see treating their lifespans as a little shorter than a human's. The Shadow keyword doesn't give a creature a special grip on life (in contrast to, for example, the Immortal keyword)—if anything, they're closer to death, since the Shadowfell is not exactly a wellspring of vitality.

[Baptor]

You might consider throwing this in the Homebrew forum instead. 4E and 3.P Racial stats and abilities look almost nothing like each other.

Incidentally, the fluff behind the race points to a Template rather than a base Race.

This brings up a good question. If someone from a given race, say Elf or Halfling, went into the Shadowfell and became a Shade, do the Shade benefits replace the original race's benefits or are they added together?

[Zaq]

This brings up a good question. If someone from a given race, say Elf or Halfling, went into the Shadowfell and became a Shade, do the Shade benefits replace the original race's benefits or are they added together?

Once again, since you're starting from a non-RAW premise, there isn't a clear-cut RAW answer.

If you treat Shade as a race, it would overwrite your elf stats or halfling stats. because that's how it works. The closest analogue in 3.5 is probably the Hellbred race, from Fiendish Codex II—you used to be something else, but now you're a Hellbred, and that's all there is to it. You aren't what you used to be.

If you treat Shade as a template, then it would modify your elf stats or your halfling stats. For a 3.5 example, look at Dragonborn (RotD): you lose most of the features of your old race, but you keep some of them (mostly the stats), and you add in Dragonborn stat modifiers on top of whatever other modifiers you had.

Personally, I think they're more race than template. With the exception of Revenants, 4e doesn't really do racial templates—that sort of thing is handled more through feats (like the Elan Heritage/Foulborn Heritage feats in Psionic Power) or themes, not races. 4e fluff says that Shades all used to be humans, but they don't have any human features, so Shade clearly overwrote human in terms of their mechanical powers. (They also don't qualify for human-specific feats, the way half-elves or muls do.) But since this is all basically homebrew anyway, you're not going to find any ironclad rules for it. Ask a non-RAW question, get a non-RAW answer.