i played an emerald shardmind druid once in 5e and my dm let me turn into crystal beasts with wild shape, very cool, great flavor. one time i pretended to be a statue, once i turned into a spider and pretended to be a fancy broach on our bards lapel, pretty fun
An important note for anyone using the Living Gate/Far Realm lore: 4E did this thing where psionics in general were antithetical to the far realm. The metaphysocs of the multiverse allow Psionic powers to exist either because of an attempt by the multiverse to eject Far Realm influence, or because the living gate altered the rules to creats an anti-Far Realm measure. For this reason, Far Realm creatures or creatures warped by it were often vulnerable to psychic damage in 4E. Far Realm and psychic damage were like undead and Radiant damage. So your very very psychic Shardminds (And they were mostly the psion class) had an edge against the enemy theid lore said they existed to fight. Far Realm stuff often *resists* psychic damage in 5E, and/or has extreme countermeasures when dealt psychic damage or targetted with other "mental" stuff. So *somethings* got to change if you want to drop Shardminds into 5E. Either their 4E lore and how they interact with the Far Realm, or their game-rule interactions with ths far.Realm and its creatures in the current edition.
Probably easyest way to do so would be giving them passive that swaps resistance to weakness to specifficaly shardminds psionic damage when targeting creatures native to far realm. Maybe even not specifically swaps, but something akin to "When targeting creature native to far realm, you ignore their resisntance to psionic damage and whey are considered weak to your psionic damage" Literally one passive fixes it all.
One thing you miss is a stellar dragon can create a shardminder as an avatar for it's self to interact with the world. I found this out from AJ's video on stellar dragons.
So in the mega dungeon im making there are "Mourners" (Warforged stats) Mourners are living statues made by the elves to mourn the dead for them forever. The elves of the nation that does this raptured of to a demi plane when they got sick of the other races. They left the mourners, but no longer had controll of them. The morners "Woke up" but they remember the eons of forced truma. Most went mad pretty imidiatly. Some are jut a bit odd. This was my way of fitting more social encounters in to a mega dungeon tomb. The earliest form of morner had to be within range of thes controll crystals called Aarien stones. Most of this lore I developed in response to awkward player questions. But this video gave me an idea. What if the Aarien stones are incomplete shards of the living gate used to give life to the morners. more modern mourners have smaller shards built in them. Enter the cool plot, there is a Shardmind, shard hunter trying to kill all the shards then their self to rebuild the gate. The PC have already met a few mourners by the time they meet this dude, and the mourners are friendly. Shardmind Shard hunter dude offers to become a badass shardblade for the party if they agree to murder every mourner and shard in the mega dungeon.
When thinking of another way the Shardmind could form is the Gate wasn't destroyed, but it doesn't go to the Far Realms, it instead goes to the Plane of Psionics(I don't know what the proper name is), or they are those "Vibe Stones" people will buy that are suppose to disperse "bad vibes" taken to the logically extreme, they've absorbed so much psionic energy that they are now alive or something.
I have these as a player race in my game, though as we don't have the living gate, the crystals of their body are formed from the residue of disturbing the tides of magic (Similar to the weave) caused by casting high level spells. As it gathers together, a psionic field starts to form that holds the crystals together. Theyre immune to poison die to being constructs, though their fragile body gives them vulnerability to bludgeoning. They get +2 Int and +2 to either Wis or Cha, but a -2 to Con (All races with the exception of humans in my game have a negative stat, either with an array of +2/+1/-1 or +2/+2/-2. Humans have +1/+1)
If you throw out the backstory as provided, I can see this race being a starting place if you wanted to have something like the Gem Authority from Stephen Universe in your setting. Imagine an Empire built of these Shardminds that seek to expand & absorb like intelligent Clockwork Horrors.
My favorite thing to come out of 4th ed. If we ever get a 5th ed psionics book, I hope they get a place in it. Oh, and for those people who say shardminds are too "science fiction" for D&D, just remember spelljammer is a thing.
Anyone saying that shardminds are too sci-fi would be crazy to me. Psionics is just another form of magic. We have arcane magic, nature magic, holy magic; why not mind magic? Also....living crystal sounds like about the most "magic" thing to me. You could drop all the psionic stuff and they would fit right in with any D&D setting. Putting the psionic stuff back in just makes sense as is.
Say what you will about 4e, but sometimes it just came up with really cool things, and cool people like Josiah make cool content working off of that. I loved living constructs and I totally plan on using these one of these days. Maybe my next campaign will involve them. Idea: working off of Grim Hollow lore, the gods fell because of the madness of the worshippers and the ruler who had their artifacts. What if the destruction of The Living Gate were responsible, at least in part, for that madness and the subsequent birth and reign of terror of The Beast? Shocked and confused, shardminds find themselves in a world of madness where the darkness is a spreading aggressively like a metaphysical cancer?
Just from the intro my first plot hook would be a big campaign of doing exactly what was said, stopping an invasion from the Far Realms and kick Cthulhu in the tentacles! Perhaps by gathering as many Shardminds as possible, or have a few powerful ones to create a spell to rebuild it, or rebuild it from scratch. Hah, wasn't too far off with my ideas! Also all the "fun" you can have with the Old Ones-Warlock that suddenly is in big troubles as they either have to fight against their party or forego their pact.
Planescape take: Shards of the broken gate are flung across the Great Wheel, landing on every plane (including inner planes, the material plane and the plane of shadow). Taking the notion that crystals are receptacles for energy, shardminds arise all sharing the memory of their purpose and the desire to reform the gate, but also influenced by their plane of “birth” and so differ wildly on how to go about it. Could be a basis for a whole campaign (“Far Realm is acting up so maybe we should just get this thing done”) or maybe just NPCs who share a weird camaraderie for being diametrically opposed in their outlooks
Ahhh! I remember first discovering them on AJ's channel! That was two years ago. So yea, nostalgia hit me. They really are a great race. Good origin story and very unique. Oh, I almost forgot, I'm the first one.
The idea of a "living gate" between the world we know and the outside realm of eldritch horrors immediately makes me think about Yog-Sothoth. "Yog-Sothoth knows the gate, because Yog-Sothoth is the gate..." He's even sometimes described as looking like a mass of iridescent many-colored spheres, which sounds like a crystalline version wouldn't be much of a stretch.
Why do shardminds have heads? They're psychic and magic. They don't have nervous, respiratory, digestive, or sensory systems. Not only that but they aren't expressive with their heads.
I absolutely love this race. Their lore is so sick. My first Shardmind was a 'Portal Mishap' Artificer. 4E was fun. I still use skill challenges in my 5E adventures.
My home brew setting has things called divine catalysts, crystals dropped by the god of flux and balance that impacted the material plains in ancient times. I’d love to use these creatures in the setting
I absolutely love crystal based beingings, and would love to play as one. Really hoping that they're released again for 5E as an official playable race.
I love the idea of a reflavored not druid Shardmind who is still crystalline in their animal forms as they are simply reshaping their Crystal body and with all the Druid spells and abilities reflavoured as psychic powers
I began playing dnd 3.5, continued with 4th and 5th edition wich I enjoy the most, and when, I want to run an astral sea campaign the shardmind was on of the most intrigin creature to include and my thought was to convert them to 5th edition and here comes your channel and does this for me, I love your channel and the effort that you put into it, keep it up, you are doing great
Here's an interesting take on the Shardminds, at least to me... As some of you may be aware, many a different entity exists to embody the purest essence of... SOMETHING. Fire Elementals, Earth Elementals, etc... But what about 'Psionic Elementals'? Something that is created as a sort of embodiment of pure mental energy? Now, I'm not suggesting that these Shardminds ARE the Psionic Elementals, no no no... But instead, that they're Psionic *Genasi* .The introduction of the humanoid genome to an elemental creature. That could prove to be mildly interesting, no?
I did it and finished this playlist now I have to catch up on the colab monster of the week I enjoyed it a lot very solid work and dedication. Thank you for all the content
I miss the flavor of the Shard Mind. I wish this stuff from 4th would make it over to a new edition. Tbh 4th was great for new players and actually drove the plot forward.
The one and only time i played a shardmind i was a psion ,my body was made of diamond and i was givin a rather Unique ability. Whenever i got struck with a line,beam or ray...instead of damaging me i could refract it and or reflect it in another direction When refracting it the energy type shifted to an "adjacent" element on a table my DM made. OR i could choose to refeact it to pure radient damege when reflecting.
I already have an idea of a Shardmind Archfey Warlock that was a servent to a group of Red Caps where he offers to work as one of them as long as that group of Red Caps protects other Shardminds. Or a Shardmind mob boss that is ruthless but fair in business as he uses conections to seek out more shards, and if some one finds a shard he will either offer them paiment and to have them keep their mouth shut about it or take more violent means, even more brutal for those that betray his trust.
Interesting lore, especially yet another enemy of mind flayers beside the gith. I'm thinking about running a peaceful sect of flayers, so it would be interesting to see how they interact. Also living crystals are dope.
I'm so gonna use this for my FF12-inspired campaign. There's a bunch of huge, incredibly powerful magic crystals in there and these guys will definitely play a role there.
i have a crystal plague as my main BBEG but there was no sentience or reason for the spread at first. Now i have something to play with and maybe making a major reason for the existence of this plague wich only activated though consumtion of an artifact. And pantient Zero is a young brown dragon. Thanks for the help
Love the player class specs! I'd only change 1 thing tho: instead of 1/per long rest, I'd make the Shardswarm equal to proficiency bonus, regaining on a long rest. That way as they get more powerful it grows with them, and gets a bit more usage from players. Thoughts?
So how does a 'shard' get awakened? Is it like a little creshinibon looking thing that kinda just soaks up a bit of ambient conciousness as an 'ingnition' source? Could a fully sentient shardmind go around trying to collect dormant shards and infuse itself with them to bolster its own stats?. . . Could a chaotic evil shardmind even exist? Say it has its own sentience, but the crystalline structure itself was like Warhammers warpstone, basically veins of gemstone soaked in demonic energies. . . An almost annoyingly varied potential for these dudes. . .
Yo, I love where your head is at on this. That’s a really cool idea and would be a fun way to introduce a variety of these creatures into your game world. The actually RAW answer is that they “just do”. Basically pieces of the living gate which was shattered are all just kind of laying dormant around the multiverse. Eventually, they just “wake up”. Sometimes this can be caused by an event or the presence of others, but that’s pretty much it. I like your idea better!
@@DungeonDad they just seem like such blank slates (in a good way) that you could work so much different stuff with them. . . Like even warlocks, where the patrons (say an Egyptian sun god) essence is to powerful for the fractured shard, so the shardmind becomes more like a vessel for the dieties conciousness, spilling out with radiant damage as it directs its internal sunlight through its multitude of facets, more like an avatar than its own thing. Or a sandman-esque type, where it's spent hundreds of years in a desert, erosion having ground it down to sandy grains, but still retains all of it, making it a shifting mass of. . . Well just a walking sandblaster basically. . . It really is damn nigh endless
@@DungeonDad nice to know I'm on the right path tho. . . I've sadly never played a game of DnD (although I desperately wish to). I've got some. . . Half decent ideas for both PC's and NPC's (weeeell I like to think they're atleast decent) and entire story lines. . . But I live in Perth, WA. . . Not really known as the DnD capital of the world lol. Tbh I wouldn't even know how to go about finding a group of people to encounter that'd 'take me in'. . . I like to think of I just keep posting ideas in your comment section eventually someone in Perth will spot them. . . Hopefully not just to nick my ideas but to invite me to a game lol
I think it could be interesting if powerful Gem dragons make these things out of like there scales and such to act like there eyes, ears and hands out in the world while they are doing their research and stuff that they are busy with
I have ideas for two Shardmind factions, one that wants to make a new Living Gate but not one made of Shardminds, and the Shardminds who have been corrupted by the Far Realms and seek to expand its influence.
There is an anime that had humanity divided into 3 future forms. A mental almost computer like race that stored memories in their crystalline bodies. Squid like things and weird space things. The main character gained different powers as her body changed through time and various things were revealed.
I like the way you are structuring this format. Combat first, so you know what you can do with it and plot hooks later, so you can give the DM a starting point, if they want to implement the creature. Out of curiosity: You are moving your images constantly around. Are you doing it to keep the video visually engaging, or is it because of the youtube video compression?
A lot of the subtle movement (or not so subtle) is for exactly that reason. I know a lot of people just listen to my videos but for the folks who sit down and pay full attention, I do my best to try and make it as interesting to look at as possible. Depending on how much artwork exists sometimes it’s easier said than done haha. Thanks for watching!
To expand on the “Crystal meth dealer shardmind”, perhaps the meth puts creatures into a dominated state in which they are compelled to do a certain task depending on what type of product they consumed?
I imagine that Shardminds would be dangerous to psy wielding creatures from the Far realms because they could also absorb the psionic energy of attacks used against said shardmind. maybe They can even multiply by absorbing enough psy energy to crystal pieces break off into another shardmind after they absorb enough to kill three mindflayers. Then the crystal shard could grow absorbing even more psy energy until it is human sized in which it would shatter and reconstruct into a humanoid form.
I am coming from the Stellar Dragon video. It is mentioned in that video that a stellar dragon can use a shardmind as an avatar when interacting with people within a crystal sphere. Yet when I watched this video, there does not seem to be a connection between the two creatures. Are there official materials that make the connection between the two?
My name is Duncan McCloud of the clan McCloud and I was born 400 years ago in the highlands of Scotland. I am a shard and I am not alone. There can be only one
wouldnt it be better for the shard slayers to, instead of killing other shards, capture them and once they amass enough of them, kill them all. with that set, perhaps a friendly npc shardmind was taken and the party has to try to save them. leading to the party learning about the whole plot, and maybe trying to stop the shard slayers' extremist goals.
Ok, now i want to play lawfool evil shardmind who mascarades as earth genasi, and whos ultimate goal is to fuck up plans of all 3 major orders of shardminds, so he and the rest of the ones like him could live peacefully and not fear to become a part of sentient door again one day. This could be interesting. I can see how it could be maybe warlock whitch patron is a piece of living gate inside of himself, and maybe his EB deals psy and not force damage. Or maybe its gonna be cleric, or even oathbreaker paladin. Latter will be even better as basically this character concept literally breaks his oath, and could literally start as oathbreaker. Oh, or maybe some sort of psyonic homebrew version of arcane trickster... SO many possibilities!
Idk if this is possible since I am very new to dnd, but if I were to make a character, I would be an icy blue shardmind warseeker, (rather be a berserker).
So, for the playable race option. Why not use the telepaty like the Kalashtar (Eberron) Mind Link, their version state that "You don't need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language." did u think that would be OP/Broken or something?
I will put the full description of the Kalashtar racial trait here. "Mind Link: You can speak telepathically to any creature you can see, provided the creature is within a number of feet of you equal to 10 times your level. You don't need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language. When you're using this trait to speak telepathically to a creature, you can use your action to give that creature the ability to speak telepathically with you for 1 hour or until you end this effect as an action. To use this ability, the creature must be able to see you and must be within this trait's range. You can give this ability to only one creature at a time; giving it to a creature takes it away from another creature who has it."
Hey Josiah, I can't find a point in both the statblock's text where it's mentioned that Shardswarm is a bonus action, only in the player race, but you mentioned it for the Warseeker. Is it a mistake or is my rampant dyslexia acting up again?
I have a new theory concerning the Shardslayers, that being while they believe killing all of their kind (and themselves) will result in the Living Gate being reformed, that the truth could be far from it. I could only imagine all that psychic agony from the death of an entire race causing the new gate to be corrupted, and maybe not close the portal but expand it EXPONENTIALLY!😱 This may even cause the mind flayers, beholderkin, and cosmic horrors to become more of a Multiverse-level threat than they already are!😰
My favorite race. Im really pissed that Its not on Dnd Beyond. If anyone knows an online source that I can use to make a Shardmind character, please let me know.
I thought they were connected to the Stellar dragons I’d have a Stellar Dragon declare itself tha ruler and protector of the crystals sphere hoard and have the shard minds as both their emissaries as well as their army for they themselves are to large to fully enter our reality with out causing damage and if Stellar dragons ever fought over crystal spheres besides the two dragons fighting their shard minds would fight as well
Unpopular opinion: I actually liked 4e. It was where I started, and had some neat ideas. 5e is better, but I don't think 4e was as bad as most of the people who never played it say.
I adore shard minds, but don’t use the D&D cosmology at all. Personally I threw out their connection to the far realm and wrote that they’re animated shards of a sort of Wyrdstone that gained sentience. Sort of keeps it all in line if the wyrdstone comes from some dimension and many shard minds are aware that the existence of wyrdstone is often dangerous because it’s solidified arcane magic. However, since learning that shardminds are made with a wyrdstone heart surrounded by a body of quartz and other common gems, and wyrdstone is a universal spell casting component that can take the place of any other component, they’ve just genocided shardminds every time they see them. I even had someone write up a shardmind just so that the party wizard could kill his character to collect the heart to use as a spell casting component. Back to the drawing board in figuring out lore for them in my world…
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i played an emerald shardmind druid once in 5e and my dm let me turn into crystal beasts with wild shape, very cool, great flavor. one time i pretended to be a statue, once i turned into a spider and pretended to be a fancy broach on our bards lapel, pretty fun
That is awesome! The broach idea is very clever!
That sounds fucking cool!
Sounds vaguely like beast boy lol, “green animals”
Good DMs allow fun to exist
Crystal beasts like the yugioh cards?
An important note for anyone using the Living Gate/Far Realm lore:
4E did this thing where psionics in general were antithetical to the far realm. The metaphysocs of the multiverse allow Psionic powers to exist either because of an attempt by the multiverse to eject Far Realm influence, or because the living gate altered the rules to creats an anti-Far Realm measure.
For this reason, Far Realm creatures or creatures warped by it were often vulnerable to psychic damage in 4E. Far Realm and psychic damage were like undead and Radiant damage.
So your very very psychic Shardminds (And they were mostly the psion class) had an edge against the enemy theid lore said they existed to fight.
Far Realm stuff often *resists* psychic damage in 5E, and/or has extreme countermeasures when dealt psychic damage or targetted with other "mental" stuff.
So *somethings* got to change if you want to drop Shardminds into 5E. Either their 4E lore and how they interact with the Far Realm, or their game-rule interactions with ths far.Realm and its creatures in the current edition.
Probably easyest way to do so would be giving them passive that swaps resistance to weakness to specifficaly shardminds psionic damage when targeting creatures native to far realm. Maybe even not specifically swaps, but something akin to "When targeting creature native to far realm, you ignore their resisntance to psionic damage and whey are considered weak to your psionic damage"
Literally one passive fixes it all.
I remember shardminds from 3.5 I think things might have been missed
I might be wrong but I think I played with one wirh the pscionics and everything
One thing you miss is a stellar dragon can create a shardminder as an avatar for it's self to interact with the world. I found this out from AJ's video on stellar dragons.
Oh yeah, this is now a permanent player race in all my games.
So in the mega dungeon im making there are "Mourners" (Warforged stats) Mourners are living statues made by the elves to mourn the dead for them forever. The elves of the nation that does this raptured of to a demi plane when they got sick of the other races. They left the mourners, but no longer had controll of them. The morners "Woke up" but they remember the eons of forced truma. Most went mad pretty imidiatly. Some are jut a bit odd. This was my way of fitting more social encounters in to a mega dungeon tomb. The earliest form of morner had to be within range of thes controll crystals called Aarien stones. Most of this lore I developed in response to awkward player questions. But this video gave me an idea.
What if the Aarien stones are incomplete shards of the living gate used to give life to the morners. more modern mourners have smaller shards built in them. Enter the cool plot, there is a Shardmind, shard hunter trying to kill all the shards then their self to rebuild the gate.
The PC have already met a few mourners by the time they meet this dude, and the mourners are friendly. Shardmind Shard hunter dude offers to become a badass shardblade for the party if they agree to murder every mourner and shard in the mega dungeon.
That is awesome! I love this as a way to incorporate the shardminds into your world. I also really like the concept of mourners, it feels very elvish!
When thinking of another way the Shardmind could form is the Gate wasn't destroyed, but it doesn't go to the Far Realms, it instead goes to the Plane of Psionics(I don't know what the proper name is), or they are those "Vibe Stones" people will buy that are suppose to disperse "bad vibes" taken to the logically extreme, they've absorbed so much psionic energy that they are now alive or something.
I have these as a player race in my game, though as we don't have the living gate, the crystals of their body are formed from the residue of disturbing the tides of magic (Similar to the weave) caused by casting high level spells. As it gathers together, a psionic field starts to form that holds the crystals together. Theyre immune to poison die to being constructs, though their fragile body gives them vulnerability to bludgeoning. They get +2 Int and +2 to either Wis or Cha, but a -2 to Con (All races with the exception of humans in my game have a negative stat, either with an array of +2/+1/-1 or +2/+2/-2. Humans have +1/+1)
Comparatively, it’s about as powerful as a warforged for statistical power. Living constructs are awesome.
Agreed!
If you throw out the backstory as provided, I can see this race being a starting place if you wanted to have something like the Gem Authority from Stephen Universe in your setting. Imagine an Empire built of these Shardminds that seek to expand & absorb like intelligent Clockwork Horrors.
Oh my Gods YES! I loved this player race in 4e, and used one as an antagonist in my podcast a few months back. Good on you for bringing them back!
Oh my gods. I'm listening to Dungeon Dudes Drakkenheim series. This....THIS alone could change everything in amazing ways.
Im currently running Drak and these are perfect to add as monsters to the campaign.
My favorite thing to come out of 4th ed. If we ever get a 5th ed psionics book, I hope they get a place in it. Oh, and for those people who say shardminds are too "science fiction" for D&D, just remember spelljammer is a thing.
I would LOVE to see them in an official product!
That sounds awesome. Sadly, Wizards seems to have thrown out the baby with the bathwater on Mystic.
@@Phhase Well we did get two sub classes.... that I've never seen anyone play. Buy if they get around to Darksun there is hope.
Anyone saying that shardminds are too sci-fi would be crazy to me. Psionics is just another form of magic. We have arcane magic, nature magic, holy magic; why not mind magic? Also....living crystal sounds like about the most "magic" thing to me. You could drop all the psionic stuff and they would fit right in with any D&D setting. Putting the psionic stuff back in just makes sense as is.
@@frousteleous1285tbh if your setting includes mind flayers, couatls, most Enchantment spells, etc., it includes some form of psionics.
Say what you will about 4e, but sometimes it just came up with really cool things, and cool people like Josiah make cool content working off of that.
I loved living constructs and I totally plan on using these one of these days. Maybe my next campaign will involve them.
Idea: working off of Grim Hollow lore, the gods fell because of the madness of the worshippers and the ruler who had their artifacts. What if the destruction of The Living Gate were responsible, at least in part, for that madness and the subsequent birth and reign of terror of The Beast? Shocked and confused, shardminds find themselves in a world of madness where the darkness is a spreading aggressively like a metaphysical cancer?
Thanks for watching! 4E had its problems, but there’s also a ton of really cool stuff in there too!
Just from the intro my first plot hook would be a big campaign of doing exactly what was said, stopping an invasion from the Far Realms and kick Cthulhu in the tentacles! Perhaps by gathering as many Shardminds as possible, or have a few powerful ones to create a spell to rebuild it, or rebuild it from scratch.
Hah, wasn't too far off with my ideas!
Also all the "fun" you can have with the Old Ones-Warlock that suddenly is in big troubles as they either have to fight against their party or forego their pact.
Fighting back the far realm has got to be one of my favourite campaign themes. There is so much room for weirdness!
So, horrifying thought, a Shardmind Dominator with levels in Mesmerist from Pathfinder.
I like that these guys mechanically compliment their lore as the obvious threat to mind flayers.
Planescape take: Shards of the broken gate are flung across the Great Wheel, landing on every plane (including inner planes, the material plane and the plane of shadow). Taking the notion that crystals are receptacles for energy, shardminds arise all sharing the memory of their purpose and the desire to reform the gate, but also influenced by their plane of “birth” and so differ wildly on how to go about it. Could be a basis for a whole campaign (“Far Realm is acting up so maybe we should just get this thing done”) or maybe just NPCs who share a weird camaraderie for being diametrically opposed in their outlooks
Thank you so much! Right now I am running a long company united by a meta-plot about Living Gates. Shards - that's what I was missing. Thanks!
Shardmind Oath of the Watchers Paladin. Take the Far Wanderer background from SCAG and it works perfectly
Ahhh! I remember first discovering them on AJ's channel! That was two years ago. So yea, nostalgia hit me.
They really are a great race. Good origin story and very unique.
Oh, I almost forgot, I'm the first one.
I was just building a crystal dungeon. This is so on point and well timed! Thank you my dude!
Heck yeah! I love it when that happens
The idea of a "living gate" between the world we know and the outside realm of eldritch horrors immediately makes me think about Yog-Sothoth. "Yog-Sothoth knows the gate, because Yog-Sothoth is the gate..." He's even sometimes described as looking like a mass of iridescent many-colored spheres, which sounds like a crystalline version wouldn't be much of a stretch.
Why do shardminds have heads? They're psychic and magic. They don't have nervous, respiratory, digestive, or sensory systems. Not only that but they aren't expressive with their heads.
I absolutely love this race. Their lore is so sick. My first Shardmind was a 'Portal Mishap' Artificer. 4E was fun. I still use skill challenges in my 5E adventures.
My home brew setting has things called divine catalysts, crystals dropped by the god of flux and balance that impacted the material plains in ancient times. I’d love to use these creatures in the setting
I absolutely love crystal based beingings, and would love to play as one. Really hoping that they're released again for 5E as an official playable race.
I kept hearing "shart mind" and it would make me smile.
Great to see more videos on the channel and this topic. I can't believe I get to hangout with you often.
I feel the exact same way about everyone we do the show with tbh haha.
I love the idea of a reflavored not druid Shardmind who is still crystalline in their animal forms as they are simply reshaping their Crystal body and with all the Druid spells and abilities reflavoured as psychic powers
I began playing dnd 3.5, continued with 4th and 5th edition wich I enjoy the most, and when, I want to run an astral sea campaign the shardmind was on of the most intrigin creature to include and my thought was to convert them to 5th edition and here comes your channel and does this for me, I love your channel and the effort that you put into it, keep it up, you are doing great
Here's an interesting take on the Shardminds, at least to me...
As some of you may be aware, many a different entity exists to embody the purest essence of... SOMETHING. Fire Elementals, Earth Elementals, etc... But what about 'Psionic Elementals'? Something that is created as a sort of embodiment of pure mental energy?
Now, I'm not suggesting that these Shardminds ARE the Psionic Elementals, no no no... But instead, that they're Psionic *Genasi* .The introduction of the humanoid genome to an elemental creature. That could prove to be mildly interesting, no?
If I remember correctly 3.5 had shardminds too
I did it and finished this playlist now I have to catch up on the colab monster of the week I enjoyed it a lot very solid work and dedication. Thank you for all the content
This look like such a cool race. I really hope that wizards will rerelease those to 5e.
I miss the flavor of the Shard Mind. I wish this stuff from 4th would make it over to a new edition. Tbh 4th was great for new players and actually drove the plot forward.
Excellent video as always!
This would be a really cool playable race.
This was so Awesome! Do you think you could do more playable races in the future?
Good times, my very first DnD character ever was a shardmind psion, I started playing during 4e.
Incoming Steven Universe reskin campaign!
I have shardminds in my world and even had a player play as a shardmind transmutation wizard in a 5e campaign I ran.
The one and only time i played a shardmind i was a psion ,my body was made of diamond and i was givin a rather Unique ability.
Whenever i got struck with a line,beam or ray...instead of damaging me i could refract it and or reflect it in another direction
When refracting it the energy type shifted to an "adjacent" element on a table my DM made. OR i could choose to refeact it to pure radient damege when reflecting.
I already have an idea of a Shardmind Archfey Warlock that was a servent to a group of Red Caps where he offers to work as one of them as long as that group of Red Caps protects other Shardminds. Or a Shardmind mob boss that is ruthless but fair in business as he uses conections to seek out more shards, and if some one finds a shard he will either offer them paiment and to have them keep their mouth shut about it or take more violent means, even more brutal for those that betray his trust.
Interesting lore, especially yet another enemy of mind flayers beside the gith. I'm thinking about running a peaceful sect of flayers, so it would be interesting to see how they interact. Also living crystals are dope.
"The Living Gate ... was the only passage between our world and the Far Realm" ... because that needed to exist.
I can see Shardminds being added to Out of the Abyss as a way to seal the demon lords.
I'm so gonna use this for my FF12-inspired campaign. There's a bunch of huge, incredibly powerful magic crystals in there and these guys will definitely play a role there.
i have a crystal plague as my main BBEG but there was no sentience or reason for the spread at first. Now i have something to play with and maybe making a major reason for the existence of this plague wich only activated though consumtion of an artifact. And pantient Zero is a young brown dragon. Thanks for the help
Always love these videos! And this one in particular has given me inspiration for my current campaign! So, thanks!
Heck yeah, thanks for watching dude!
Love the player class specs! I'd only change 1 thing tho: instead of 1/per long rest, I'd make the Shardswarm equal to proficiency bonus, regaining on a long rest. That way as they get more powerful it grows with them, and gets a bit more usage from players. Thoughts?
Amazing work!🎉 Thx!💎
You have the voice of a silk scarf
I would like you to do a video on the Daelkyr and the half- blood
Shardminds are a cool race that deserves to be in 5e.
So how does a 'shard' get awakened? Is it like a little creshinibon looking thing that kinda just soaks up a bit of ambient conciousness as an 'ingnition' source?
Could a fully sentient shardmind go around trying to collect dormant shards and infuse itself with them to bolster its own stats?. . . Could a chaotic evil shardmind even exist? Say it has its own sentience, but the crystalline structure itself was like Warhammers warpstone, basically veins of gemstone soaked in demonic energies. . .
An almost annoyingly varied potential for these dudes. . .
Yo, I love where your head is at on this. That’s a really cool idea and would be a fun way to introduce a variety of these creatures into your game world.
The actually RAW answer is that they “just do”. Basically pieces of the living gate which was shattered are all just kind of laying dormant around the multiverse. Eventually, they just “wake up”.
Sometimes this can be caused by an event or the presence of others, but that’s pretty much it. I like your idea better!
@@DungeonDad they just seem like such blank slates (in a good way) that you could work so much different stuff with them. . . Like even warlocks, where the patrons (say an Egyptian sun god) essence is to powerful for the fractured shard, so the shardmind becomes more like a vessel for the dieties conciousness, spilling out with radiant damage as it directs its internal sunlight through its multitude of facets, more like an avatar than its own thing.
Or a sandman-esque type, where it's spent hundreds of years in a desert, erosion having ground it down to sandy grains, but still retains all of it, making it a shifting mass of. . . Well just a walking sandblaster basically. . .
It really is damn nigh endless
@@DungeonDad nice to know I'm on the right path tho. . . I've sadly never played a game of DnD (although I desperately wish to).
I've got some. . . Half decent ideas for both PC's and NPC's (weeeell I like to think they're atleast decent) and entire story lines. . . But I live in Perth, WA. . . Not really known as the DnD capital of the world lol. Tbh I wouldn't even know how to go about finding a group of people to encounter that'd 'take me in'. . .
I like to think of I just keep posting ideas in your comment section eventually someone in Perth will spot them. . . Hopefully not just to nick my ideas but to invite me to a game lol
I would have just put the Anvilwrought template onto a Kalashtar for the shardmind PC.
I think it could be interesting if powerful Gem dragons make these things out of like there scales and such to act like there eyes, ears and hands out in the world while they are doing their research and stuff that they are busy with
I thought this was the psionic warforged at first. But then recall that is called a psiforged xP
I have ideas for two Shardmind factions, one that wants to make a new Living Gate but not one made of Shardminds, and the Shardminds who have been corrupted by the Far Realms and seek to expand its influence.
One point of feedback: they're not immune to sleep? Is that intentional, or did you just forget to put that in?
There is an anime that had humanity divided into 3 future forms. A mental almost computer like race that stored memories in their crystalline bodies. Squid like things and weird space things.
The main character gained different powers as her body changed through time and various things were revealed.
What anime was that?
@@andresmarrero8666 I don't remember yet. Lol sorry
A couple of tweaks and the Shardmind could easily be run as one of the Gems from Steven Universe
Well now I want to build one of these
I like the way you are structuring this format. Combat first, so you know what you can do with it and plot hooks later, so you can give the DM a starting point, if they want to implement the creature.
Out of curiosity:
You are moving your images constantly around. Are you doing it to keep the video visually engaging, or is it because of the youtube video compression?
A lot of the subtle movement (or not so subtle) is for exactly that reason. I know a lot of people just listen to my videos but for the folks who sit down and pay full attention, I do my best to try and make it as interesting to look at as possible. Depending on how much artwork exists sometimes it’s easier said than done haha. Thanks for watching!
Ha that there was the first ever character race I played! Havent changed my profile pic since.
To expand on the “Crystal meth dealer shardmind”, perhaps the meth puts creatures into a dominated state in which they are compelled to do a certain task depending on what type of product they consumed?
I imagine that Shardminds would be dangerous to psy wielding creatures from the Far realms because they could also absorb the psionic energy of attacks used against said shardmind. maybe They can even multiply by absorbing enough psy energy to crystal pieces break off into another shardmind after they absorb enough to kill three mindflayers. Then the crystal shard could grow absorbing even more psy energy until it is human sized in which it would shatter and reconstruct into a humanoid form.
I am coming from the Stellar Dragon video. It is mentioned in that video that a stellar dragon can use a shardmind as an avatar when interacting with people within a crystal sphere. Yet when I watched this video, there does not seem to be a connection between the two creatures. Are there official materials that make the connection between the two?
My name is Duncan McCloud of the clan McCloud and I was born 400 years ago in the highlands of Scotland. I am a shard and I am not alone. There can be only one
wouldnt it be better for the shard slayers to, instead of killing other shards, capture them and once they amass enough of them, kill them all. with that set, perhaps a friendly npc shardmind was taken and the party has to try to save them. leading to the party learning about the whole plot, and maybe trying to stop the shard slayers' extremist goals.
Ok if I ever actually play dnd I’m totally using this thing
Yooo past me!! You did get to play dnd!! But you infact did not play this you loser you played a plasmoid instead
Ok, now i want to play lawfool evil shardmind who mascarades as earth genasi, and whos ultimate goal is to fuck up plans of all 3 major orders of shardminds, so he and the rest of the ones like him could live peacefully and not fear to become a part of sentient door again one day. This could be interesting. I can see how it could be maybe warlock whitch patron is a piece of living gate inside of himself, and maybe his EB deals psy and not force damage. Or maybe its gonna be cleric, or even oathbreaker paladin. Latter will be even better as basically this character concept literally breaks his oath, and could literally start as oathbreaker. Oh, or maybe some sort of psyonic homebrew version of arcane trickster... SO many possibilities!
I wish there were some non-humanoid race options
Ooze
Idk if this is possible since I am very new to dnd, but if I were to make a character, I would be an icy blue shardmind warseeker, (rather be a berserker).
Curse of SHARD
🎵We, are the crystal gems🎵
Thanks
No stellar dragon mentioned?😢
So, for the playable race option. Why not use the telepaty like the Kalashtar (Eberron) Mind Link, their version state that "You don't need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language." did u think that would be OP/Broken or something?
I will put the full description of the Kalashtar racial trait here.
"Mind Link: You can speak telepathically to any creature you can see, provided the creature is within a number of feet of you equal to 10 times your level. You don't need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language.
When you're using this trait to speak telepathically to a creature, you can use your action to give that creature the ability to speak telepathically with you for 1 hour or until you end this effect as an action. To use this ability, the creature must be able to see you and must be within this trait's range. You can give this ability to only one creature at a time; giving it to a creature takes it away from another creature who has it."
Hey Josiah, I can't find a point in both the statblock's text where it's mentioned that Shardswarm is a bonus action, only in the player race, but you mentioned it for the Warseeker.
Is it a mistake or is my rampant dyslexia acting up again?
I have a new theory concerning the Shardslayers, that being while they believe killing all of their kind (and themselves) will result in the Living Gate being reformed, that the truth could be far from it. I could only imagine all that psychic agony from the death of an entire race causing the new gate to be corrupted, and maybe not close the portal but expand it EXPONENTIALLY!😱 This may even cause the mind flayers, beholderkin, and cosmic horrors to become more of a Multiverse-level threat than they already are!😰
what’s with the one giant arm?
>Made of rock and psi
>Not poison immune or Shatter vulnerable?
Maaan.
im noticing a theme of constructs
My favorite race. Im really pissed that Its not on Dnd Beyond. If anyone knows an online source that I can use to make a Shardmind character, please let me know.
Since they are made out of crystals with a attracted xorn ?
Only 4 minutes in and I want to be one already
... this is basically Steven Universe in DND
Fractured but whole.
spelljammer adventure rebuilding the Living Gate?
We are da crystal gems 😂
0:00 What dragon and primordia type it is?
I thought they were connected to the Stellar dragons I’d have a Stellar Dragon declare itself tha ruler and protector of the crystals sphere hoard and have the shard minds as both their emissaries as well as their army for they themselves are to large to fully enter our reality with out causing damage and if Stellar dragons ever fought over crystal spheres besides the two dragons fighting their shard minds would fight as well
is there races that are insects or plant like?
Unpopular opinion:
I actually liked 4e. It was where I started, and had some neat ideas. 5e is better, but I don't think 4e was as bad as most of the people who never played it say.
Flail snail
Sooooo Shardmind barbarian lol
Can some send me a pic of that pic of a shardmind in the thumbnail
Do you know if anyone homebrews your Monster of the week on DnDbeyond?
I used to do it myself but nobody was really using them. Maybe since there are more people watching these days I should start doing that again!
@@DungeonDad is your ID the same on DDB?
Nevermind, found it 👍
I adore shard minds, but don’t use the D&D cosmology at all. Personally I threw out their connection to the far realm and wrote that they’re animated shards of a sort of Wyrdstone that gained sentience. Sort of keeps it all in line if the wyrdstone comes from some dimension and many shard minds are aware that the existence of wyrdstone is often dangerous because it’s solidified arcane magic. However, since learning that shardminds are made with a wyrdstone heart surrounded by a body of quartz and other common gems, and wyrdstone is a universal spell casting component that can take the place of any other component, they’ve just genocided shardminds every time they see them. I even had someone write up a shardmind just so that the party wizard could kill his character to collect the heart to use as a spell casting component. Back to the drawing board in figuring out lore for them in my world…