thing is, i just can't find reasons to explain the drastic change in genasi. That is I am trapt to choosing the toril genasi from what i am guessing is the new "albeir" genasi. The real question is do the old genasi still exist and if so what would be their stats in 4th edition.
for those of you that didn't know, genasi had a much more human look about them in 3rd, and could not switch elements. But now in 4th their practicly considerd these elemnetal chaos humanoids.
I guess what i am saying is, i don't know if i like the concept that the genasi lost their ability to grow normal hair in place of baldness or crystals...which in my opinion should have been an option from the start and not set description. That and i have a problem with changes made to the elements and that they are interchangable...
For instance, i find this very unerving, because i had a wind genasi, now i find he is closer to resmbling a more human/wind genasi with storm/water genasi powers????
aka, i'm bewilderd by how much they changed this already existing race that has "very" much history in toril, and how they vaguley explain their new arrival.
Albeit, the best explenation i could come up with was the merging of worlds re-merged the toril and albeir genasi's heritage, thus the genasi of toril became more elemental and the genasi of albeir became more "material/human".
Like i said...I dunno....
any ideas???
On the topic of Eladrin(since you mentioned it), they have always been on Toril, according to the lore. What we know as Moon elves and Sun elves, are in fact eladrin. As far as that teleporting thing goes, that was something that came into existance with the reemergence of Faerie, which the Eladrin actually slip into in order to teleport. The only thing that miffs me about the Eladrin, is that the standard Half-Elf breed from all previous editions was the Half Moon elf, something which doesn't actually even exist in 4th as there are no Half Eladrin.
...for those of you that didn't know, genasi had a much more human look about them in 3rd
I don't know much about the 3E game, but I have purchased quite a few of the Forgotten Realms setting books from that edition recently, and just yesterday I came across a copy of the Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerûn book (which I actually didn't purchase because I wound up deciding I won't need it for the project I'm working on, plus, it didn't share a trade dress with all the other ones I have ;) ). Anyway, one thing I noticed in there was that the illustration of the genasi (you can see it online) looks a lot more like my conception of 4E genasi than it does the illustrations in the 3E FRCS, in my opinion.
They were pretty wacky in 2E weren't they, ported over from Planescape? If you can find out how the changes from 2nd to 3rd were handled, maybe there's something you can use there.
They were pretty wacky in 2E weren't they, ported over from Planescape? If you can find out how the changes from 2nd to 3rd were handled, maybe there's something you can use there.
There wasn't a need to rationalize any changes from 2e to 3e for the genasi. They looked the same, which is to say there was no monolithic appearance that all genasi were forced to have like there is now for 4e. Each genasi had their own unique appearance as befitting their particular element (or elements). Some mechanical changes sure, but no forced changes to their history/nature/origins like 4e seems to have gone out of its way to do with the monolithic appearance each type now has.
There wasn't a need to rationalize any changes from 2e to 3e for the genasi. They looked the same, which is to say there was no monolithic appearance that all genasi were forced to have like there is now for 4e. Each genasi had their own unique appearance as befitting their particular element (or elements). Some mechanical changes sure, but no forced changes to their history/nature/origins like 4e seems to have gone out of its way to do with the monolithic appearance each type now has.
Isn't it funny how two people can look at the same material and come away with opposite impressions?
I've read (I think) every bit of 4E lore available on the genasi and the world "monolithic" would never have sprung to mind to describe any aspect of them, least of all their physical appearance. To be fair, you did use the word "seems," so maybe you got that impression from a secondhand account or something?Man! "Monolithic?" For this mutable, quantum, dynamic, always changing people? Heck, both the FRPG entry and Rodney Thompson's lengthy "Ecology of the Genasi" article in Dragon #367 go out of their way to stress the unique appearance every individual genasi has with regard to the szuldar lines that are already as unique as a human's fingerprint even before many genasi use tatoos and accentuate this uniqueness. Beyond that most, ahem, elemental difference (sorry, I was just talking about puns in another thread), the various 4E illustrations I've seen seem to support the "as much variety as humans" trope that's suggested with the size/shape/age language in the FRPG's "Physical Qualities" entry for the race.
Each genasi had their own unique appearance as befitting their particular element (or elements).
-Ah, I liked those entries. Some Genasi:
Smell like smoke
Always have rustled hair
Have webbed hands/feet
Have rock-like muscles
and so on...
the rest i can make do with...
He had breathless, and he could levitate at will, and blah, but the new wind genasi is resistant to cold??? and can fly....woohoo...........
So to get the same effect i would basicly have to use some sort of weird water/wind half breed. It seems like it would all be well, xcept i run into a problem....Sure it may seem like a flexable race, but when it comes to flavor, their to restrictive, more impitcular, when it doesn't allow you to manifest more than one element at once (i understand game rules for this, but not flavor of my look) which wizards seemed to go out of their way in every text to stat they are not hybrids, and take only one elemental manifestation.....which is annoying to say the least....(excluding the epic abilitie to finally merge only two elements at a time). Even the tempest whicch is shown as having more than one element can't use them at the same time....ergh....
Anyway, So i basicly figured, instead of these big spike crystals, i was going to use like salt fine crystals for hair, and added flavor that they rustle like wind chimes when he moves. (i just don't like the hair thing, excpet for the fire and earth, which seems reminecent of 3rd)...
lots of fun. in nwn2.
i still dont like the hair deal for the windsoul genasi
a white substance like snow blowing in the wind would have been better than the ice crystals......
anyway, my monk will return as soon as we get a monk class, i have a paragon path already.......
Anyway, So i basicly figured, instead of these big spike crystals, i was going to use like salt fine crystals for hair, and added flavor that they rustle like wind chimes when he moves. (i just don't like the hair thing, excpet for the fire and earth, which seems reminecent of 3rd)...
-Whatever works.