Yep, from a pure statistic point of view, he's the best. Best special ability in the game (maybe best ability in general), play dead also very usefull, he can use other racial abilities too (you lost the full mask at the begin, it's true, but even with the less powerful version you could gain many advantages, like gain abilities from eat corpse, improve bartering, ect). Immunity to deathfog/poison is a minor improve, but ok, and the weakness to healing is often insignificant, because an heal on you means that enemies have less heal for themselves.
