Races for a Dragonlance Campaign

[dukeofwolfsgate]

So I'm going to be running an old AD&D module called Rise of the Titans for some friends soon, and am hoping for advice on two things.

Thing the 1st: Does anyone have a better idea for Ogre Mages than the one's listed in the MM? I feel like they are kinda weak...:smallconfused:

Thing the 2nd: I'm going to allow Kender and Half-Ogres as race choices, and am planning on using the Kender stats from the D&D Next playtest (given in spoiler). For Half-Ogres, I'm planning on substituting the Goliath (http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/EE_PlayersCompanion.pdf) (page 10) crunch from the new EE: Players Companion and using the fluff from the old Dragonlance Campaign Setting book. Any constructive suggestions or thoughts on these two races?:smallsmile:

Kender
Kender are a small race similar to halflings.
Known to exist only on the world of Krynn—the DRAGONLANCE setting—kender are utterly fearless, insatiably curious, and unstoppably mobile and independent.
They pick up anything that is not nailed down, and kender with claw hammers will get those things as well.

Traits
As a kender, you have the following racial traits.

Ability Score Adjustment. Your Dexterity and Charisma scores increase by 1.
Age. A kender reaches adulthood at the age of 20 and can live for more than 100 years.
Alignment. Kender tend toward neutrality. They don’t consider themselves lawbreakers, but if they feel a law is unjust, they simply ignore it. It is extremely rare for a kender to be evil, and they are almost completely incorruptible.
Size. Kender average between 3 and 4 feet tall and weigh about 80 pounds. Your size is Small.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet.
Fearless. You cannot be frightened.
Taunt. You have an uncanny insight into the motivations and characteristics of other races, and you can use this insight to infuriate them.
As an action, you can unleash a verbal barrage of sarcasm, insults, and crude comments against a creature. Make a Charisma (Performance) check contested by the target’s Wisdom (Insight) check. You fail the contest if the target can’t understand you. If you win the contest, the target must use its next action to attack only you. If you are out of range, it must charge at you or, failing that, hustle toward you. The target attacks you with disadvantage during this action. If the target wins the contest, it is immune to your Taunt for 24 hours.
Kender Pockets. Kender constantly pick things up and pocket them, and then often forget about them. If you find yourself in need of a piece of nonmagical equipment, there is a 25 percent chance you have it. Roll a d4. If you roll a 4, you find the item in your pocket, pack, or pouch. If you roll anything else, you don’t have such an item on you, and you can’t search again for the same item until you’ve spent at least one day in a town or city. Rummaging through your pouches, pack, and pockets in this way takes 1 minute.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Kenderspeak. (Kenderspeak is a language unique to the DRAGONLANCE setting. If you are playing a kender in a different setting, check with your DM.)

For clarification: Dragonborn, Teifling, Half-Orc, Halfling, Drow, and Forest Gnome are not going to be PC options in this campaign.

[calebrus]

Dex +2
Every race has a +1/+1 for play test versions, and every race gets bumped to +2/+1 for roll out. Kender should be no different, and I can pretty much guarantee that when it gets an official release, it will have +2 Dex instead of +1.

[eleazzaar]

Once you give it that +2, Kender strikes me as either underpowered or overpowered. The pockets are nice but situational. Immunity from fear is powerful but situational. But taunt that seems open for abuse, on a success the enemy must try to attack the Kender, so you build a rather fast and/or flying Kender and it can force all the bosses to futilely chase it.

Search the homebrew forums, there are a least a couple versions of Kender which try to deal with this issue.

[Forum Explorer]

Out of curiosity, how will you handle draconians? Or do they not show up in the module?

I think the Oni are fine, Dragonlance I think lends itself to a lower level game and they fit in well there. The other option though is to just take a crude fusion of a mage and a normal ogre. The DMG has guidelines on how to do that.

Plus if you think the fights with them are too weak, you can always add a couple of ogre bodyguards to amp up the difficulty.

Goliath's traits seem fine to use as a quasi-half ogre.

[JAL_1138]

Add something to Rock Gnomes that says everything they build either hilariously malfunctions, horrifyingly malfunctions, is completely pointlessly rube-goldbergian for what it does, is hare-brained bat-guano crazy and ill-conceived, or explodes (pick two).

[Mr.Moron]

The kender pockets rules could stand to be cleaned up. While it's silly RAW that you could easily stop as a GM, as it is now you could

"I search my pockets for <most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <2nd most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <3rd most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <4th most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <5th most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <6th most valuable mundane item in the book>"

..and so on, until you've covered every piece of mundane equipment in existence. Since there is no limitation on GP or how often the ability can be used, only how often it can be used to look for the same thing it basically generates infinite money. Especially when you consider "The biggest diamond that could conceivably fit in my pocket" could easily be classified as mundane equipment.

A better wording would probably be something like:

"Once per short rest you can look through your pockets for ~ normally worth less than 25gp, since the long forgotten item is likely poorly maintained or mistreated it has no resale value and will break after a day of use ~ can't search for the same item type again until you visit a town.

[dukeofwolfsgate]

Dex +2
Every race has a +1/+1 for play test versions, and every race gets bumped to +2/+1 for roll out. Kender should be no different, and I can pretty much guarantee that when it gets an official release, it will have +2 Dex instead of +1.

I didn't know that. I will consider changing the Dex, but I already feel that Kender are a little OP for 5e as it stands with their Taunt and Fearless abilities. A friend of mine ran a group through an adapted version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and his girlfriend played a kender barbarian (bear totem). Between Rage dmg reduction and the Taunt ability, she used her ridiculous Unarmored AC (something like 20) to make most fights cakewalks.


But taunt that seems open for abuse, on a success the enemy must try to attack the Kender, so you build a rather fast and/or flying Kender and it can force all the bosses to futilely chase it.

Yeah, as I addressed above, it can be abused. However, I don't plan on giving them any early flight items or such. Even spellcasters (of which I feel only Sorcerer is appropriate for a kender), only get that option at lvl 5. I will probably dissuade any players who choose kender from selecting a spellcasting class, although an exception might be made. However, the Mobility Feat could be extremely useful when used in conjunction with the Taunt ability...


Out of curiosity, how will you handle draconians? Or do they not show up in the module?

Not a playable race in my game. Neither are Minotaur or Centaur. As far as monsters, it looks like mostly Ogres and Minotaurs. Same friend as above did a quick homebrew of Dragonborn as Draconians; he switched out their breath weapon for an alternate abilites. I don't think they were a playable race in his game either.

[dukeofwolfsgate]

The kender pockets rules could stand to be cleaned up. While it's silly RAW that you could easily stop as a GM, as it is now you could

"I search my pockets for <most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <2nd most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <3rd most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <4th most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <5th most valuable mundane item in the book>"
"I search my pockets for <6th most valuable mundane item in the book>"

..and so on, until you've covered every piece of mundane equipment in existence. Since there is no limitation on GP or how often the ability can be used, only how often it can be used to look for the same thing it basically generates infinite money. Especially when you consider "The biggest diamond that could conceivably fit in my pocket" could easily be classified as mundane equipment.

A better wording would probably be something like:

"Once per short rest you can look through your pockets for ~ normally worth less than 25gp, since the long forgotten item is likely poorly maintained or mistreated it has no resale value and will break after a day of use ~ can't search for the same item type again until you visit a town.

A simple talk with the player beforehand (warning that if they try to abuse it in a munchkiney way, I will nerf it to Cania) should dissuade this type of exploiting.

[Mr.Moron]

Also, because it's tied to a skill check the Kender taunt is amazingly hard to resist due expertise, particularly with access to Eagle's Splendor or other advantage source. Presumably an invisible, flying or otherwise hard to attack kender is basically guaranteed to take one combatant out of the fight near indefinitely.

[calebrus]

I didn't know that. I will consider changing the Dex, but I already feel that Kender are a little OP for 5e as it stands with their Taunt and Fearless abilities. A friend of mine ran a group through an adapted version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and his girlfriend played a kender barbarian (bear totem). Between Rage dmg reduction and the Taunt ability, she used her ridiculous Unarmored AC (something like 20) to make most fights cakewalks.

Sounds to me like they weren't using Taunt and/or Rage correctly.
If her AC was 20 and she wasn't getting hit, and she was Taunting instead of attacking, how did her Rage continue to keep her DR up?
Taunt doesn't say that the attacker keeps attacking you. It says that it uses its next action to attack you. Once.
If the Kender uses her action to Taunt again next round, and hasn't taken any damage, her Rage ends.
Taunt and Rage don't play well together, because they are at odds with what they want to happen. The first time that her AC makes a Taunted enemy miss, her Rage ends.

Kender make terrible Barbarians.

[dukeofwolfsgate]

Also, because it's tied to a skill check the Kender taunt is amazingly hard to resist due expertise, particularly with access to Eagle's Splendor or other advantage source. Presumably an invisible, flying or otherwise hard to attack kender is basically guaranteed to take one combatant out of the fight near indefinitely.

True, but I see nothing stating that Taunt's effects last more than 1 turn in the text. If the kender keeps using Taunt as its Action every turn, they could possibly take one combatant out of the fight. However, that hinges on the kender always winning the opposed check... Some DMs may just roll behind their screen and say the kender lost the check after several rounds.

[Mr.Moron]

True, but I see nothing stating that Taunt's effects last more than 1 turn in the text. If the kender keeps using Taunt as its Action every turn, they could possibly take one combatant out of the fight. However, that hinges on the kender always winning the opposed check... Some DMs may just roll behind their screen and say the kender lost the check after several rounds.

The Kender winning the opposed check when they have (2x Proficiency Bonus + Primary Stat + Advantage) vs (no advantage + no-proficiency +0 to +2 stat) is as close to a sure thing as you're going to get. If you're facing off against 1 strong monster that's entire encounter solved, kender taunts the rest of the party wails on the monster while it does nothing but throw a temper tantrum. 2 monsters barely fare better. It's basically an auto-win in any situation that's less than 3 baddies or so.

Yes I suppose the rule isn't broken if the GM ignores it entirely by secretly fudging rolls, but so would the case be if the ability read "The kender taunts something and they take 3d2400 damage." The GM could still go "Just rolled straight 1s!" from behind a screen. It's still not a very well written rule. (the issue of where the group found D2400s aside)

Since it's a skill check and not a save, as written even high-end legendary monsters are helpless before The Taunting . Seriously there are CR20+ encounters that are entirely solved by it. They can't even use spells or special abilties. Heck it even reads like they might not even be able to use multi-attack (is this the intent?).

[dukeofwolfsgate]

Sounds to me like they weren't using Taunt and/or Rage correctly.
If her AC was 20 and she wasn't getting hit, and she was Taunting instead of attacking, how did her Rage continue to keep her DR up?
Taunt doesn't say that the attacker keeps attacking you. It says that it uses its next action to attack you. Once.
If the Kender uses her action to Taunt again next round, and hasn't taken any damage, her Rage ends.
Taunt and Rage don't play well together, because they are at odds with what they want to happen. The first time that her AC makes an enemy miss, her Rage ends.

Kender make terrible Barbarians.

But if the DM doesn't choose to have that attacker Disengage Action, the kender barbarian gets a AoO when it goes back to attacking another character, thus prolonging the Rage.

From the PH: "It ends early... if your turn ends and you haven't attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then."

The DM could also just choose to have the attacker keep attacking the kender after the Taunt effect has expired... Saw it happen more than once.

[dukeofwolfsgate]

Since it's a skill check and not a save, as written even high-end legendary monsters are helpless before The Taunting . Seriously there are CR20+ encounters that are entirely solved by it. They can't even use spells or special abilties. Heck it even reads like they might not even be able to use multi-attack (is this the intent?).

You are right. I am going to change the creatures roll from a Wisdom (Insight) check to a Wisdom save. The original wording is very flawed in that regard.

[Mr.Moron]

You are right. I am going to change the creatures roll from a Wisdom (Insight) check to a Wisdom save. The original wording is very flawed in that regard.

This expands the list of things not utterly destroyed by the The Taunting from "Nothing" to "Things with Legendary Saves" and "CR20++" monsters proficient with wisdom saves.

If it must be an opposed check I would suggest making it a normal charisma check, not keyed to the performance skill. Mind you because of the advantage thing it's still ballbusting powerful in that case.

The best way to word this is probably to make it a static save equal to 8 + Cha Mod + Prof Bonus, like every other ability in the game besides grapple.

[calebrus]

But if the DM doesn't choose to have that attacker Disengage Action, the kender barbarian gets a AoO when it goes back to attacking another character, thus prolonging the Rage.

From the PH: "It ends early... if your turn ends and you haven't attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then."

The DM could also just choose to have the attacker keep attacking the kender after the Taunt effect has expired... Saw it happen more than once.

Kender's turn: bonus action Rage, action Taunt
Enemy's turn: move to Kender, attack
- if the enemy attack hits, he can do it again next round
- if that attack misses, he has two options:
- - option 1: Kender's turn: Taunt again and hope the enemy hits him
- - option 2: Kender's turn: Attack (retaining Rage) and leave enemy untaunted

So he can take one enemy out of the fight. So what? He's effectively taking himself out of the fight unless he's taking damage from that enemy. If he's taking damage from that enemy, that enemy isn't out of the fight. If he isn't taking damage from that enemy, the Kender is out of the fight as well. A PC taken out of a fight is a bigger deal than an enemy taken out of a fight.
It's nothing that a caster can't do, except a caster doesn't leave the fight himself as well.

Personally, I'd never let a Kender be a Barbarian anyway. They're happy go lucky. They aren't Rage monsters. The fluff is all wrong. But that's just a personal peeve.

[dukeofwolfsgate]

The best way to word this is probably to make it a static save equal to 8 + Cha Mod + Prof Bonus, like every other ability in the game besides grapple.

I like that. It fits more in line with established traits like a Dragonborn's Breath Weapon.

Revised Taunt
Taunt. You have an uncanny insight into the motivations and characteristics of other races, and you can use this insight to infuriate them.
As an action, you can unleash a verbal barrage of sarcasm, insults, and crude comments against a creature. The creature must make a Wisdom saving throw. The DC for this saving throw is equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. The target automatically succeeds on the save if it can’t understand you. If it fails the save, the target must use its next action to attack only you. If you are out of range, it must charge at you or, failing that, hustle toward you. The target attacks you with disadvantage during this action. If the target wins the contest, it is immune to your Taunt for 24 hours.

Still pretty powerful in my opinion, but at least as blatantly OP as it was initially.

[dukeofwolfsgate]

Personally, I'd never let a Kender be a Barbarian anyway. They're happy go lucky. They aren't Rage monsters. The fluff is all wrong. But that's just a personal peeve.

Personally, I agree with you. I really feel that the kender should be limited to choosing from: bard or rogue. Maybe even just limiting it to rogue. However, I'll try to work with my players. I know at least one of them is very interested in playing a kender.

[calebrus]

I like that. It fits more in line with established traits like a Dragonborn's Breath Weapon.

Revised Taunt
Taunt. You have an uncanny insight into the motivations and characteristics of other races, and you can use this insight to infuriate them.
As an action, you can unleash a verbal barrage of sarcasm, insults, and crude comments against a creature. The creature must make a Wisdom saving throw. The DC for this saving throw is equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. The target automatically succeeds on the save if it can’t understand you. If it fails the save, the target must use its next action to attack only you. If you are out of range, it must charge at you or, failing that, hustle toward you. The target attacks you with disadvantage during this action. If the target wins the contest, it is immune to your Taunt for 24 hours.

Still pretty powerful in my opinion, but at least as blatantly OP as it was initially.

Change it even further, to make it broader:
The creature must make a Wisdom saving throw or a Wisdom (Insight) check, their choice. The DC for this saving throw or Ability Check is equal to 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus.

[Mr.Moron]

I like that. It fits more in line with established traits like a Dragonborn's Breath Weapon.

Revised Taunt
Taunt. You have an uncanny insight into the motivations and characteristics of other races, and you can use this insight to infuriate them.
As an action, you can unleash a verbal barrage of sarcasm, insults, and crude comments against a creature. The creature must make a Wisdom saving throw. The DC for this saving throw is equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. The target automatically succeeds on the save if it can’t understand you. If it fails the save, the target must use its next action to attack only you. If you are out of range, it must charge at you or, failing that, hustle toward you. The target attacks you with disadvantage during this action. If the target wins the contest, it is immune to your Taunt for 24 hours.

Still pretty powerful in my opinion, but at least as blatantly OP as it was initially.

This is much better, probably fine as written now. Though it should read "If the target succeeds on its save" but that's a minor editing hiccup.

[dukeofwolfsgate]

Ah, thanks for the catch.

[MadBear]

Personally, I'd never let a Kender be a Barbarian anyway. They're happy go lucky. They aren't Rage monsters. The fluff is all wrong. But that's just a personal peeve.


off topic comment

You're totally inviting MustacheFart to join the thread with comments like this.

He's very defensive of the idea that the only way a barbarian works, is as a giant rage monster. He's made a point to comment on these types of posts regularly saying such. To be fair, he has a point.

As I sit here, I wonder why I bothered making this comment at all, but alas, it's too late (deleting the post would be more troublesome then hitting submit) :smallbiggrin:

[calebrus]

off topic comment

You're totally inviting MustacheFart to join the thread with comments like this.

He's very defensive of the idea that the only way a barbarian works, is as a giant rage monster. He's made a point to comment on these types of posts regularly saying such. To be fair, he has a point.

As I sit here, I wonder why I bothered making this comment at all, but alas, it's too late (deleting the post would be more troublesome then hitting submit) :smallbiggrin:

If you wanted to change the core mechanic of the class from Rage to something else, then I would have no problem with it. Feel free to replace Rage with something else (and tweak the subclasses and other abilities as needed to accommodate).
But Rage is indeed the core mechanic of the class (at least 5 of their 17 class/subclass abilities are tied directly to it, which is just barely shy of 30%.... that's the CORE mechanic of the class), so until that changes, I don't care what he says, a Barbarian is a Rage Monster, and a Kender is the farthest thing from a Rage Monster that you can possibly get.

[RedMage125]

Not a playable race in my game. Neither are Minotaur or Centaur. As far as monsters, it looks like mostly Ogres and Minotaurs. Same friend as above did a quick homebrew of Dragonborn as Draconians; he switched out their breath weapon for an alternate abilites. I don't think they were a playable race in his game either.

Princes of the Apocalypse includes notes on how to convert the module to Dragonlance. And whether as PCs or enemies, it suggests to use dragonborn as draconians, just add the death throes ability where relevant.

[dukeofwolfsgate]

Princes of the Apocalypse includes notes on how to convert the module to Dragonlance. And whether as PCs or enemies, it suggests to use dragonborn as draconians, just add the death throes ability where relevant.

Yes, but his campaign ties directly into the discovery of the draconians as enemies. He did use death throes instead of breath weapon. As a player race, it would be a mostly unused ability, as it requires you to die to take effect.

[calebrus]

Yes, but his campaign ties directly into the discovery of the draconians as enemies. He did use death throes instead of breath weapon. As a player race, it would be a mostly unused ability, as it requires you to die to take effect.

Remove Dragonborn.
Build a Draconian race, using Dragonborn as the basic chassis.
Str +2, size M, speed 30'

Build standard (evil) subraces for Aurak, Baaz, Bozak, Kapak, Sivak.
Vary the +1 stat, give them death throws and one other ability (gliding for those with wings, a few spells similar to drow/tiefling for the casters, etc).

Do something similar for the non-standard (good) subraces for Flame, Frost, Lightning, Vapor, Venom if you want to include them.

[Forum Explorer]

I like that. It fits more in line with established traits like a Dragonborn's Breath Weapon.

Revised Taunt
Taunt. You have an uncanny insight into the motivations and characteristics of other races, and you can use this insight to infuriate them.
As an action, you can unleash a verbal barrage of sarcasm, insults, and crude comments against a creature. The creature must make a Wisdom saving throw. The DC for this saving throw is equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. The target automatically succeeds on the save if it can’t understand you. If it fails the save, the target must use its next action to attack only you. If you are out of range, it must charge at you or, failing that, hustle toward you. The target attacks you with disadvantage during this action. If the target wins the contest, it is immune to your Taunt for 24 hours.

Still pretty powerful in my opinion, but at least as blatantly OP as it was initially.

I'd change attack to something a little more flexible. Like if, he taunted a spell caster, then the mage throwing a fireball at the kender seems perfectly appropriate, even if others are hit by the ability.

Maybe something like; 'on a failed save the target will prioritize harming the kender over any other action'?

[dukeofwolfsgate]

I'd change attack to something a little more flexible. Like if, he taunted a spell caster, then the mage throwing a fireball at the kender seems perfectly appropriate, even if others are hit by the ability.

Maybe something like; 'on a failed save the target will prioritize harming the kender over any other action'?

I do agree that it wouldn't be limited to melee or even weapon attacks, but I don't think the wording needs to be changed to indicate that.

If the wording said: "...must use the Attack Action to attack you..." I would be worried about that, but using their next action to attack allows for casting spells or making ranged attacks.

[Mr.Moron]

I do agree that it wouldn't be limited to melee or even weapon attacks, but I don't think the wording needs to be changed to indicate that.

If the wording said: "...must use the Attack Action to attack you..." I would be worried about that, but using their next action to attack allows for casting spells or making ranged attacks.

It certainly didn't read that way to me. Though if this is only for your own personal use that's not a problem. You're the GM so your reading is the only one that matters.

However if I'd been handed a game to run with this race included, I would have assume that once the kender taunts the subject it can only move and make a single attack roll regardless of what other abilities or attack modes it had.

If this is going to possibly wind up in the hands of other GMs and it is your intent that taunted monsters be able to use spells/multi-attacks/offensive skills you should probably make it clearer.

[tarlison]

I'm not familiar with the taunt but it would be best the DC to resist it as 8+ wisdom mod+profiency bonus since he is looking for something really bad about the target to insult to first the target make an insight check on the DC if he fail he make a will save , if he fail on the check but succeed on the saving throw he gain disadvantage to attack except when attacking the taunting kender until the end of his turn, if he fails on both check and save then he have the full effect of the taunt as stated

[tarlison]

Insight first since its like somebody is pulling my legs then if you don't get it you do the wis save trying to control my anger..and make it an action not a bonus action

[Forum Explorer]

I do agree that it wouldn't be limited to melee or even weapon attacks, but I don't think the wording needs to be changed to indicate that.

If the wording said: "...must use the Attack Action to attack you..." I would be worried about that, but using their next action to attack allows for casting spells or making ranged attacks.


Well you do say, attack you and only you. Implies that it must be an attack.


Insight first since its like somebody is pulling my legs then if you don't get it you do the wis save trying to control my anger..and make it an action not a bonus action

If you get two saves, it's almost never going to happen. Or it will only happen very rarely anyways.