Café de Nuit

How would you fine people build ravenloft style gensai?
This is mostly for curiosities sake. But it would make for a interesting campaign to say the least.

The Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium (for AD&D 2nd Edition), had some unique elementals. An unusual interaction caused between the mists of the Deep Ethereal and the elemental planes?

[Air = Mist, Earth = Grave, Fire = Pyre, Water = Blood]

Or maybe you could go with the quasi-planes? Those are the ones that border on the positive/negative plane. Those quasi planes that bordered on the Negative Plane were [Air = vacuum, Earth = dust, Fire = ash, Water = salt].

I guess thematically ... the effect of the negative plane on the elemental planes caused these quasi-planes to become the natural antithesis — or whatever would be the death of, or perhaps the natural end-state of — the original element.

One thing I would certainly do is tone down the 'otherness' of the race. It has been an evolving position as the editions have gone marching on, but in my mind's eye, RL works best when it is human-centric. I'm fine with folks wanting to play other races ... but I like it much more if any non-phb races allowed in the game can at least 'pass' for human.

Better yet ... they are human and their racial abilities can be explained as lineages or curses or something.

A tiefling, for example, doesn't necessarily have to be a distinct race that breeds true. The stats/abilities of a tiefling could be applied to a human looking character who comes with a devilish backstory. A trait or two might stand out, no more than that. I don't know about the whole horns and tails situation.

It's kind of how 3.5 handled the half-orc (viewing them through the lens of the caliban, I mean).

I would skin the genasi similarly. That is, regular humans who — through fate, lineage or circumstance — found themselves born/imbued with blessings/curses that they could not quite explain.

I mention genasi in Heroes of the Mists on the DMsGuild, tying them to grave, mist, blood, and pyre elementals.
It's mostly just a reflavouring of existing genasi. A change in their tone. They don't particularly need new mechanics or wholly different subrace traits.

I know we've done this one before.... searching...

ah, yes, a thread and a QtR article:
http://fraternityofshadows.com/forum/vi ... lit=gensai