some questions about genasi design.

[Rfkannen]

1. Why do fire genasi have an int bonus? Shouldnt it be charisma? Everything about how they are talked about seems charisma based

2. why do eath genasi get pass withought trace? I guess it would make sense on mountains, but in the forest being made of rock makes you harder to see? They arent even dexterous?

3. Why are air guys the least varied? I mean the other ones can be represented multible ways, but all the air ones look blue and have either wavy hair or spikes.

4. what do spikes have to do with air? I would think you want cloud hair or something

5. How uniform are they anyway?

6. How human are they?

7. Are the human born ones just born knowing primodial?

8. why does earth not get shape earth cantrip?

9. Are air genasi breathing themselves?

[Tenmujiin]

1. Tradition

2. Its more the "can't be tracked" part. i.e. they stop leaving footprints.

3. Tradition

4. Tradition

5. What?

6. They look human other than the listed differences

7. Probably

8. No idea

8. They don't breathe at all (though the idea of them breathing themselves is amusing.

[Rfkannen]

1. Tradition

2. Its more the "can't be tracked" part. i.e. they stop leaving footprints.

3. Tradition

4. Tradition

5. What?

6. They look human other than the listed differences

7. Probably

8. No idea

8. They don't breathe at all (though the idea of them breathing themselves is amusing.

Any idea why the traditions are that way? Also didn't a bunch of the gensai have spikes in 4e? Why do only the air ones have them? When I think air hair I think clouds.
the can't be tracked thing makes sense mostly, exept when your running around in the snow. BUt yeah it does make sense.

[Tenmujiin]

Any idea why the traditions are that way? Also didn't a bunch of the gensai have spikes in 4e? Why do only the air ones have them? When I think air hair I think clouds.
the can't be tracked thing makes sense mostly, exept when your running around in the snow. BUt yeah it does make sense.

You seem to think more thought goes in to the 5e creation process than actually does:smalltongue:

[rollingForInit]

I think the visual design should always be taken with a grain of salt.

It does bother me somewhat that none of the Genasi races got Charisma as a bonus, since they (especially Fire) are described as having some innate charisma. But at the same time, it's nice to see something other than Charisma as well.

[kaoskonfety]

Any idea why the traditions are that way? Also didn't a bunch of the gensai have spikes in 4e? Why do only the air ones have them? When I think air hair I think clouds.
the can't be tracked thing makes sense mostly, exept when your running around in the snow. BUt yeah it does make sense.

So have it fail on snow - cause thats neat and interesting, as long as the character is not always *to* often on snow (if they are generally on snow give them the earth shape cantrip...), and you make them aware of the limitation. (edit - say it works on the ground and anything grown from the earth?)

Alot of the games material is from 1st and 2nd edition monster manuals as they were dredging up that old skool "feel".

as for the spikes: hair styles and fashions change over time, even for semi-human elementals, its not our fault you though it was skin :smallbiggrin:

[Broken Twin]

Yeah, it is a bit weird. Fire never really struck me as smart... more likely to burn paper than read it. I guess if you took to the alternate meaning of "bright"...

As to the human ones knowing primordial, I think it's more of an innate understanding. That's how I'd play it out, anyway. Like Harry Potter and Parseltongue.

[Naanomi]

Air Gensai breathe out, their lungs just 'self inflate' instead of having to breath in

[Broken Twin]

And now I'm just picturing Air Genasi having to constantly exhale to avoid swelling up like a balloon.

[Maxilian]

Air Gensai breathe out, their lungs just 'self inflate' instead of having to breath in

Does that mean that i could actually do a CPR inside a bag of holding to stay in the bag for more than 10 mins with another character? :smallconfused:

[ChubbyRain]

Does that mean that i could actually do a CPR inside a bag of holding to stay in the bag for more than 10 mins with another character? :smallconfused:

First off, doing breaths into someone is not always supported by CPR anymore. They have found that the breaths don't actually help all that much and the restarting of the victim's heart through compressions is a more useful task.

But breathing into someone does not breath a lot of the air that helps people. Assuming these fantasy characters breatah for the same reason we do (O2 in, CO2 + some O2 (we aren't 100% efficient) out) then breathing into someone as you propose just wouldn't cut it.

If you could do something like that you could just breath out, into the bag, and fill the bag with air. However not all air is habitable. They may suffocate on your breath instead of lack of air.

Which brings up a good point, is a bag of holding a vaccum? Having no O2 is one thing but having no air is crazy. I need to look up how they actually describe the bag of holding.

[Ralanr]

The spiky hair on the air ones could be interpreted as icicles. Wind and ice are not a rare overlap of elemental powers.

[bokodasu]

I looked it up because I wondered about the Int thing too - in 2e, they had +Int and -Cha. (All Genasi had -Cha.) I guess you're supposed to think more "hot-headed" than "hawt".

[themaque]

I think loki had ties to fire, being a trickster god.
Stealing of fire from the greek gods was symbolic of intelligence and technology.

There have been several ties to fire/smart in mythology.

[jazzymantis]

The fire genasi come from the Efreet (fire genies). These genies are not very charismatic and are relatively intelligent. All of the genasi stat bumps have to do with their genie parents.

[D.U.P.A.]

It is kinda confusing that now is the Constitution main stat of the Genasi. In 4E it was Intelligence and with secondaries (Str,Con) they were the only having ideal stats for certain classes like Warlord, Swordmage and also Artificer. I had some 4E genasi characters who are not portable to 5E, because they have none of suitable stats anymore.

[Naanomi]

It is kinda confusing that now is the Constitution main stat of the Genasi. In 4E it was Intelligence and with secondaries (Str,Con) they were the only having ideal stats for certain classes like Warlord, Swordmage and also Artificer. I had some 4E genasi characters who are not portable to 5E, because they have none of suitable stats anymore.
None of those are classes anymore so no direct port anyways

[ChubbyRain]

It is kinda confusing that now is the Constitution main stat of the Genasi. In 4E it was Intelligence and with secondaries (Str,Con) they were the only having ideal stats for certain classes like Warlord, Swordmage and also Artificer. I had some 4E genasi characters who are not portable to 5E, because they have none of suitable stats anymore.

See, no. The ability scores aren't what is stopping you from porting over a character. At level 4, which is where a 4e character should start in 5e if not higher, your ability scores can look like this. Using the standard array of course.

Starting
Str: 15, Dex: 10, Con: 14 (12+2), Int: 15(14+1), Wis: 13, Cha: 8

Ending at level 4 with
Str: 16 (+1 @ lv 4), Dex: 10, Con: 14, Int: 16 (+1 @ level 4), Wis 12, Cha 8

Now, is there a ton of abilities and awesome things that were left behind in 4e that 5e refuses to acknowledge or be able to deal with? Yes. Is that what stops 4e characters from being able to be ported over? Mostly.

But ability scores is not stopping a character from being ported over.

Just remember that level 1 4e is not equal to level 1 5e. You may need to start at a much higher level to port your character over, not just because of ability scores but because 5e just doesn't have the ability to support the types of things you could do in 4e.

[Totema]

1. They're descended from efreet. Efreet are known to be sneaky petes.
2. I can't really say, but you'd be hard pressed to find a place without some kind of earth or rock-based terrain.
3. (I'll get to this one later)
4. It's a fluff thing, whatever. I don't think DMs would disallow cloud hair. (Or maybe someone was clever and decided to give them Cloud Strife hair. :smallbiggrin:)
5. Up to the DM and/or the player, I guess. Once again it's just fluff, so unless your DM has a huge stick up their rear end strict guidelines on this, you can probably roll with whatever you want.
6. See 5
7. See 5 (But given how they come into existence it seems like a very innate trait to me.)
8. It seems like they had a design pattern of either one cantrip and one higher level spell per LR at a later level, or one medium level spell per LR. I guess they couldn't find an appropriate higher level spell, so they were stuck with the latter for the earth genasi.
(Personally I like the idea of them casting shape stone, so if I were so inclined I would let them cast it and something like spike growth as their second innate spell. Heck, spike growth would synergize well with their other ability...what the heck, designers?)
9. Presumably, yes. The ability only mentions their ability to hold their breath. As a DM I'd allow players to use air genasi as emergency breathing devices but that might be different at other tables.

I was going to make a separate thread about this, but I completely agree that the air genasi are rather dull. Aside from their one Innate-Spellcasting-Trait™, they only have that kinda janky breath holding ability. I'd been absentmindedly trying to think of something else to give them, but unless I have a player who really wants to play one, I'm in no hurry. :smalltongue:

[D.U.P.A.]

I am not talking about direct port, just approximating how it would look like in 5e, using the most similar classes for Warlord and Swordmage, which are Battlemaster and Eldritch Knight, respectively, I will wait a little more for Artificer though. Just found it weird they are no more known for their intelligence like in 4E.