Genasi
by Prince Phantom
The Genasi advertise the ability to play a race defined by one of the classic four elements: water, earth, fire and air. That’s definitely a fantasy that many players love to pursue, but do these races contribute to that idea in a meaningful way? Well, half of them do at least. The other two… well let’s just be thankful there are better options for basing your build and race around fire and water.
Air Genasi
The different flavors of Genasi are a great way to embody a certain element and really push the flavor of your build. How well they actually perform at this task mechanically varies wildly among the four Genasi, but thankfully this is one of the good ones.
Speed: 35ft: Having even just a 5ft boost to your movement speed is a huge boon that literally every character build can benefit from. It allows you to outpace many enemies while retreating, and if you have ranged attacks you can just always stay outside of an enemy’s melee range and pepper them with ranged attacks until they are dead, assuming you have the room to pull this off.
Darkvision: Definitely feel like this race shouldn’t get this, but it’s nice to have anyway.
Unending Breath: Being able to hold your breath indefinitely has quite a number of uses, like being able to survive underwater or in space (looking at you, Spelljammer campaigns), ignore any effect that would cause us to suffocate, and probably some other stuff that is super situational. It won’t come up all the time, but when it does it will be pretty nice.
Lightning Resistance: Lightning isn’t the best damage type to get resistance to, as not many monsters are dishing it out, but you’ll still really appreciate it when it comes up. Any damage resistance is good damage resistance.
Mingle With the Wind: Shocking Grasp is a terrible cantrip in every regard. If you need to get away from an enemy, just use the disengage action. It works every time, whereas this only works about 65% of the time on average. The tiny bit of damage is not worth that risk. Feather Fall is a spell that every party should have at least one character with, as falling is one of the leading causes of low level player fatalities. Levitate is an amazing spell that can either be used to keep you out of range of melee attacks, or cast on an enemy who only has melee attacks to leave them stuck in the air with no way to get down. Then just pepper them with ranged attacks until they die. These three spells total up to be a pretty good package, but not the best that a race can offer.
This race feels like a collection of above average abilities all bundled up into a generally above average race. It’s hard to nail down any specific builds that would want to be an Air Genasi, but they will serve pretty well on most builds.
Final Rating: 3/5
Air Genasi (Legacy)
The old Air Genasi is a strict downgrade from the revised version and you have no reason to ever choose it. We don’t get an increased movement speed, we loose all spells except Levitate, and we have to use Constitution as our casting stat for it instead of Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma. Always pick the revised version and forget that this exists.
Earth Genasi
Where some races have multiple nice abilities, others have one amazing feature that really makes them stand out from the crowd. Earth Genasi definitely fit into that latter category, and might actually be one of the best races in that category. Let’s get into the details.
Darkvision: Always nice to have, and actually fitting for a race that probably spends a lot of time underground.
Earth Walk: This basically makes us immune to nearly all difficult terrain. The usefulness of this will vary widely from table to table, as some DMs forget to use difficult terrain at all, and others use it all the time. In the latter instance, this will feel like getting a boost to your movement speed sometimes, and that’s pretty great.
Merge With Stone: We get Blade Ward with this, and before you all click off of this race and never think about it again, we get to cast it as a bonus action proficiency bonus times per day. Do I have your attention now? I thought so. This is a massive defensive buff to any build. If you see that you are inevitably going to be taking some licks this turn, switch the Blade Ward on and only take half the damage you would have otherwise, while still being able to do stuff with your action. But wait, there’s more! We also get Pass Without Trace, the best 2nd level spell in the game, get to cast it once for free and then with spell slots. This is fantastic because Pass Without Trace is usually only available to Druids and Rangers, so this allows parties without those classes to gain access to party-wide stealth strategies, something that is basically impossible without this spell.
This is my pick for the best of the four Genasi, and also a contender for the best “non-flying, non-feat granting” race. I could see a ton of builds wanting this for its defense and stealth capabilities, namely spellcasters who don’t get Pass Without Trace. Seriously, take a look at this race next time you’re building a character. You might be like me and find a new favorite.
Final Rating: 4/5
Earth Genasi (Legacy)
The old version of this race is strictly worse than the revision, removing the cool use of Blade Ward, preventing casting Pass Without Trace with spell slots, and seriously nerfing Earth Walk. You have no reason to ever choose this over the revised version.
Fire Genasi
If the Air Genasi brought buffs to our mobility and the Earth Genasi helped our defense, then the Fire Genasi must give us some cool offensive options right?! Right? Oh no…
Darkvision: I unironically hate that they removed the unique trait where this race saw shades of red instead of shades of grey when using their darkvision. Truly, this is the worst nerf any race received with the redesigns. Definitely.
Fire Resistance: It does what it says on the tin. Fire resistance is one of the best resistances to have, but you’re going to see that there are much better races than this that provide it.
Reach to the Blaze: A feature this lame does not deserve a name this cool. Produce Flame is neat in concept, I like the idea of holding a small flame in my hand, but the mechanics behind it are very underpowered. Burning Hands is loosing a lot of its effectiveness by level 3, and definitely won’t be any good past level 5. Flame Blade is one of the worst 2nd level spells in the game, and you should never cast it. This feature is nearly worthless.
Fire resistance is the one good thing this race gets, and if you want fire resistance, play a Tiefling or Red or Gold Dragonborn (the Fizban’s version). It’s a real shame that this race is so underpowered, as giving some cool fire based offensive abilities would have been both easy to do and a home run for flavor.
Final Rating: 1/5
Fire Genasi (Legacy)
This is somehow even worse than the new version, but at least it gets the red darkvision, so it’s actually better in my book.
Water Genasi
I can’t help but notice a real lack of support for aquamancers in 5e. Pretty much all water-based spells are either supremely mediocre or situational, water doesn’t really get its own damage type, no feats really support it, there’s like one Warlock subclass that relates to water and that’s about it, and most aquatic races really only shine in aquatic campaigns, and even then they’re not that great. I wish I could say that this race was an exception to that rule, but that would be a lie. This isn’t a horrible race, but it isn’t even one of the best aquatic races, making it really tough to recommend.
Swim Speed: 30ft: Getting water breathing is pretty easy to do, but gaining a swim speed is actually pretty exclusive. Still, there are better races that grant this.
Darkvision: Always nice to have, and fitting for a race that can dive to the depths of the ocean.
Acid Resistance: This isn’t the best resistance to have, and if you’re looking for a race with this resistance, both the Plasmoid and various Fizban’s Dragonborn will provide you more overall.
Amphibious: Water Breathing is available to any party containing a class with ritual casting and the Water Breathing spell as early as level 5, so the usefulness on this is limited.
Call the Wave: Acid Splash is a weak damaging cantrip, Create or Destroy Water is bad even for situational spells, and Water Walk is exceptionally situational when we are already such strong swimmers. It’s best use is the actually return a party to the surface from the depths.
Whereas the Air Genasi was a large collection of above average abilities, this race is a large collection of below average ones. In terms of aquatic races I would place this at the bottom of the list. If you’re going into an aquatic campaign and want to play a fitting race, you can do better, and if you want to play an aquamancer, maybe try a different rpg system…
Final Rating: 1/5
Water Genasi (Legacy)
The old version is actually a bit different from the current one, but it’s not necessarily better, just bad in different ways. This biggest difference is that you get Shape Water and Create or Destroy Water instead of the normal spells. Two spells is worse than three, simple as that. Also, our swim speed and walking speed are not connected, meaning your swim speed isn’t increased when your walking speed is increased through something like Longstrider or class abilities.
This is also a 1/5, and probably even worse.
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