Custom 5E Minotaur Playable Race.

[Eliecc]

I know there have been some done in the past and that there is an official one.

However I wanted to make something that let the player play a large race instead of a mini minotaur.

So i'm looking for some feedback on what myself and a friend have come up with.


Ability Score Increase: Your Strength score increases by 3, and your Intelligence score decreases by 1 (+3 STR / -1 INT)
Age: Minotaurs mature at the same rate as humans and reach adulthood around the age of 20. They live much longer than humans, however, often exceeding 300 years.
Alignment: Because of their demonic heritage, Most minotaurs are chaotic in nature, most living their lives with cults to the Horned King or as bodyguards and mercenaries for hire. Although good aligned minotaurs do exist, the majority of their race choose a more neutral outlook on life.
Size: Minotaurs are much larger than other races, reaching heights well over seven foot by maturity and weighing well over 300 pounds. Your size is Large.
Speed: Your base walking speed is 35 feet
Darkvision: Thanks to your abyssal heritage, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Powerful Build: You gain advantage on strength based skill checks and to grapple with medium or smaller creatures. Due to your size armor needs to be custom-fitted for you (this may cost additional gold).
Charge: If you move at least 10 feet in a straight line towards your target you can use an attack to gore them with your horns. On a hit, the target takes 1d10+Strength modifier piercing damage and must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 10 feet away and knocked prone. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Strength modifier + your proficiency bonus. Huge creatures have advantage on this save, while Gargantuan creatures are immune to the knockback effect.
Large & Cumbersome: You are considered three quarters cover for small and tiny creatures. However you have disadvantage on Acrobatic checks.
Menacing Presence: Due to your overbearing nature you have disadvantage on Persuasion checks when talking to small or tiny creatures, but have advantage on Intimidation checks.
Giant Fists: Due to your large appendages, you have disadvantage when using finesse weapons and can’t use ranged weapons, with the exception of heavy crossbows, longbows and large throwing weapons (javelins, throwing axes, etc) Your unarmed strikes deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage.

[Veniur]

Powerful Build: You gain advantage on strength based skill checks and to grapple with medium or smaller creatures. Due to your size armor needs to be custom-fitted for you (this may cost additional gold).
Charge: If you move at least 10 feet in a straight line towards your target you can use an attack to gore them with your horns. On a hit, the target takes 1d10+Strength modifier piercing damage and must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 10 feet away and knocked prone. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Strength modifier + your proficiency bonus. Huge creatures have advantage on this save, while Gargantuan creatures are immune to the knockback effect.
Large & Cumbersome: You are considered three quarters cover for small and tiny creatures. However you have disadvantage on Acrobatic checks.
Menacing Presence: Due to your overbearing nature you have disadvantage on Persuasion checks when talking to small or tiny creatures, but have advantage on Intimidation checks.
Giant Fists: Due to your large appendages, you have disadvantage when using finesse weapons and can’t use ranged weapons, with the exception of heavy crossbows, longbows and large throwing weapons (javelins, throwing axes, etc) Your unarmed strikes deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage.


So, Powerful Build should probably be a different name, as it doesn't really fit what is already called Powerful Build in other areas of the rules. Second, the armor size bit is already a rule.
Charge should say Huge or larger or else you won't be giving the same benefits to the larger creatures. You could still knock a Gargantuan creature prone as is, but they don't have advantage to the Str check.
Large & Cumbersome is, I believe, already a rule for cover. If removing this feature, you could probably combine the disadvantage on acrobatics with giant fists some how.
Menacing Presence seems awkward to me. I mean its fine as an ability. It just seems unneccessary some how.
I really like Giant Fists. I am probably going to use it for my homebrew of Minotaur if you don't mind my theft.

[Waterdeep Merch]

What you've got is a bit fiddly and doesn't lend itself well to any character builds over anything else that exists. The other minotaur is superior.

The reason things don't have +3's is due to rolling stats. You could accidentally break the stat cap at character creation (18+3=21). Point buy is pretty popular, but this limits its usefulness in a lot of games. Having no other stats alongside it and a malus, of all things, to intelligence means that the stats don't lend themselves well to any class in the game, really. You'll make an okay champion/battlemaster fighter and maybe a decent half-plate wearing barbarian, and that's it. Both would prefer a chance at a 16 constitution than a starting 18 with point buy. It also fits the flavor of a minotaur better to have that constitution.

Also, a negative intelligence on a monster legendary for its ability to solve puzzles? What.

Being large-sized is mostly a bad thing, unless your DM compensates for it or you just don't fight indoors. Hallways and doors will be your bane. It also makes no sense with the legends its based on, as the minotaur was man-sized.

Powerful Build shouldn't be called that, it's already a much-used ability in D&D that does something different. You also already gain all these advantages. You're large sized.

Charge is weak, especially on a race that is almost definitely going to be taking the fighter or barbarian classes and using great weapons. A 10-foot shove is weirdly far and makes no sense with a goring attack, but I'd still almost never take it over a standard attack. The rules about sizes are unnecessarily fiddly. You'll need to look it up a lot. Better to just allow it regardless of size and just give larger things advantage on the check. Gargantuan creatures have huge strength saves anyway, with advantage they'll usually succeed.

Menacing presence is weird, fiddly, and better represented by regular intimidation proficiency. If you're worried because the player has zero reason to bump charisma, intimidation with strength is the book-given example of why you can use other ability scores with skills under the right circumstances. With a strength improvement already part of their kit, regular proficiency will mean they're super intimidating anyway. There's no reason to graft complex rules on top of this.

Giant fists is an incredibly unnecessary nerf that further restricts their usefulness as a race in any class that isn't a great weapon-using barbarian or fighter. Just limit them to large-sized weaponry. Why couldn't they use a rapier sized for a large-sized creature? There's no reason for this. The unarmed damage buff is a... ribbon. They'll rarely, if ever, use it. Considering all the weird nerfs already in place, I'd see no problem buffing that all the way to a d6. He's large-sized after all.

Possible fixes-
Change attributes to +2 strength, +1 constitution, +1 intelligence. Fits the lore better and opens up options.

Change size back to medium. Large-sized is unsupported by the game as it stands and will usually hinder the player.

Change powerful build to the standard definition. It's actually more beneficial.

Grant intimidation proficiency instead of intimidating presence. I might also add investigation proficiency. Minotaur's are supposed to be geniuses at solving mazes and other puzzles.

Instead of the charge as-written, add a free grapple to it (that doesn't require your hands!) to represent impaling and lifting the poor recipient on its massive horns. Real bulls do this, it's awesome. Make it a simple attack instead of a full action so that it has good interplay with Extra Attack.

Giant fists is... just weird. It doesn't fit the flavor of a minotaur. I'd nix it altogether.

[Willie the Duck]

Well, it could be Str+3 (to a max of 20). The Orcs of Thar (BECMI play-as-monsters book) had stat bonuses, but still hewed to the games max of 18. If you roll one 18 and a bunch of 14-, and want your highest stat in Str, looks like you waste some points. It's up to you whether the +3 Str is going to far or going just far enough. I don't know that I would put it in my campaign.

Otherwise, seems fine. I hate how minotaurs have become 'of demonic heritage' in many people's minds, they are curse humans (or a race thereof), but that's just me.

I think it looks fairly good. One suggestion might be to increase the weight of armor, and amount of food required, and then increase their encumbrance. This might be too much needless complexity, though.