I can't find the answer in the ARG unfortunately. My DM wants to know how powerful they are compared with other races...
All assistance gratefully appreciated.
I count 10
Specialized Ability Scores 1
Low-Light Vision 1
Lifebound 2
Samsaran Magic 2
Shards of the Past 4
That is right, they pay extra for having painfully bad ability score modifiers. And the same for a "magic" ability that doesn't include a bonus to DCs like others do. Not to mention the idea that Shards of the Past is worth nearly half their RP total. Ah, the race builder.
Seriously though, tell your GM to ignore RP when determining how powerful races are. It is a terribly unbalanced system that is even worse when used to compare races built outside of it. This is especially true for something like the Samsaran, which can wildly increase its power level by switching out Shards of the Past for Mystic Past Life. Base Samsaran is easily the weakest race in the Dragon Empires, MPL Samsaran is quite good. The RP don't really deal with having that sort of option around.
I'm assuming they have linguist seeing as they can learn over 7 other languages, although they are missing sylvan and perhaps one or two others o.O there doesn't seem to be a language option relating to theirs so I went with linguist. Agreed about the RP system, it doesn't represent how powerful races actually are.
On it's own it is not perfect but if you try build a balanced race and come up anywhere from 8 to 14 RP you are probably fine, just use it as an additional checking point for your created race.
Thanks everyone, good advice there all round.
Cheers