PDA

View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Need help balance checking a homebrew race



colombianbambam
2018-04-14, 04:51 PM
So, basically the title says it all. Need feedback, comments, questions, suggestions, etc. So I can make it playable. I know the advantage saving throws are probably OP and unnecessary. I would like to have throw in mask of the wild since I think it naturally fits in. So I was thinking about moving weapon and armor proficiencies into a new class that I was also homebrewing called Trickster. Let me know about any ideas you guys got... thanks in advance.

[Wukong] “[Sun Wukong then defies Hell's attempt to collect his soul. Instead of reincarnating, he wipes his name out of the Book of Life and Death along with the names of all monkeys known to him. The Dragon Kings and the Kings of Hell report him to the Jade Emperor. Sun is taken to heaven to be executed for his crimes, but fire, lightning, and edged weapons have no effect on his invincible body. Laozi then suggests that they put him inside of the deity’s mystical eight trigrams furnace to reduce the demon into ashes. They check the furnace forty-nine days later expecting to see his charred remains; however, Monkey jumps out unscathed, and not only that, the intense flames refined his pupils the color of gold, giving them the power to see for hundreds of miles and to recognize the dark auras of demons in disguise. He overturns the furnace and begins to cause havoc in heaven with his iron cudgel. The monkey’s anger cannot be contained.]"

—[Wu Cheng'en], [Journey to the West]

The Wukong are monkey/humanoids who are magical from blessings by Sun Wukong, the Monkey God. They are as wild as the different places where they live such as the barrens to high in the mountain ranges. Because of this, there is rarely any other race they do not come in contact with. They emulate their god constantly practicing drilling with each other using polearms, acrobatics, and their trickery.

Monkeylike and Humanlike The Wukong are slender monkey/humanoids with brown or grey fur and have a pink face, which is bereft of fur as well. Their tail is of medium length and averages between 32.1 and 36.0 inches. Adult males measure about 60 inches on average and weigh about 160 lbs. Females are smaller, averaging 55 inches in height and 150 in weight.

From Realm to Realm The magical Wukong may be found arid, open areas, grasslands, woodlands, and in mountainous regions up to 2,500 m (8,200 ft) in elevation. They walk on two feet, all fours, are natural climbers, and are regular swimmers. Babies as young as a few days old can swim, and adults are known to swim over a half mile between islands. The Wukong are noted for their tendency to move from rural to urban areas, coming to rely on handouts or refuse from humans. They adapt well to human presence, and form larger troops in human-dominated landscapes than in forests. Their troops number anywhere from 10 to 100.

Children of the Monkey God The Wukong are magical creatures as they blessed by their monkey god. Highly reverent to Sun Wukong, they constantly pray to their god and act out his adventures with each other and in the world. When in another race’s community, they perform acrobatics, trick, or steal. They don’t do this, because they need money (they are wild and have no need for it), but in order to live their lives as closely to Sun Wukong.

Wild and Fearless

The Wukong being very energetic and having little patience, are born adventurers. Especially because of their short lifespan, they are constantly on the move, looking to experience the world around them. The Wukong, since they are magical and acrobatic, love attention, meeting other races, and sometimes, tricking, and stealing from them. They are always willing to join adventurer’s party, hardly questioning the difficulty or the purpose.

Friendly, but Misunderstood The Wukong argue much amongst themselves, but many have a forgiving nature since this is the the way of the Wukong. There is never a problem, it’s just another day, except that once in a while in their family tree, a fruit bears very bad seeds.

Dwarves. “Dwarves always seem angry, but we know it’s not because of something we have done, although stealing from them does make them so. But many times, they use our services, and we get them something they need and if you do this enough times, even a Dwarf’s stone heart will let them smile and make a long friendship.”

Elves. “Many Wood Elves live with us. They protect the forests and we help them. We trade with them and they seem very forgiving when one of our troop did something wrong. They are very kind to our race.”

Halflings. “Halflings are great folk! They have so much food, that we don’t even have to beg or steal from them! But if anyone were to interfere with them, out troop will deal with them happily.”

Humans. “Some hate us, some like us. Sometimes it’s our fault, but other times they hate us, because they hate anything they do not know. We see how they treat other races, and they hate them too, for no reason! But then, out of nowhere, they’ll treat us again with great kindness. Sometimes I think we are the ones most closely related to them, because of our chaotic nature.”

Wukong Names A Wukong addresses people with his surname first, and then his first name. Many times they choose Wukong as their last name, because they are proud direct descendants of Sun Wukong, the Monkey God.

Male Names: Zhang Wei, Wang Wei, Li Wei,Liu Wei, Li Qiang, Wang lei, Li Jun, Wang Yong, Zhang Yong, Li Jie, Zhang Lei, Wang Qiang, Wang Jun, Zhang Jie, Zhang Tao, Wang Tao, Li Ming, Wang Chao, Li Yong, Liu Jie, Zhang Jun, Zhang Qiang, Wang Ping, Wang Gang, Wang Jie

Female Names: Wang Fang, Wang Xiu Ying, Li Xiu Ying, Li Na, Zhang Xiu Ying, Zhang Min, Li Jing, Zhang Li, Wang Jing, Wang Li, Zhang Jing, Li Min, Wang Min, Liu Yang, Wang Yan, Li Juan, Zhang Yan, Li Yan, Wang Juan, Wang Xiu Lan, Li Xia, Liu Min, Li Li, Li Gui Ying, Liu Fang.

Surnames: Wukong, Liang/Leung, Luo, Kuang, Chan/Chen, Liang, Lu, Zhang/Chong, Zheng, Lin, Xǔ, Xie, Wang, Xú, Zhu, Wang, Yang, Mao, Shen, Hu, Tan, He, Deng, Wu, Yang, Chen, Gao, Wan, Xue, Bao, Ma, Kong, Dong, Guo, Pan, Yu.

Wukong Traits Your Wukong character has a variety of natural and magical abilities, the result of many magical blessings by Sun Wukong, the Monkey God.

Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2 and Charisma by 1.

Age. The Wukong reach physical maturity at 12 years old and live up to approximately 50 years old.

Alignment. The Wukong love freedom, are adventurous, and carefree. So much so, much of their behavior is impulsive. Some act on their gut feeling, doing what they believe is right, not caring what others think of them. Others just go with the moment instead of considering outcomes. But very few are wild and are violent falling to their desires

Size. The Wukong range from 4 to 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 35 feet.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Simius. Wukong interact with each other using a variety of facial expressions, vocalizations, body postures, and gestures. They can read and write at mostly a basic level.

Prehensile tail. A Wukong can pick up, hold up to 18 lbs., and can hang from it’s tale.

Inborn Movement. Being both arboreal and terrestrial, bipedal and quadrupedal, and traveling between arid, open areas, grasslands, woodlands, and in mountainous, they can climb, crawl, and swim with no penalties.

Wild Life. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

Monkey God lesser resistance to magic. You have advantage on saving throws against fire and water based magic attacks. All magic damage is reduced by half.

Reduced Falling Damage. Check is done with advantage due to also being able to use their tail to grab and stop falling. Reduce damage you take by half your check result (round down). If damage is reduced to 0, then he lands standing.

Wukong Armor Training. You have proficiency with hide, breastplate, chain mail, and chain shirt armor.

Wukong Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the glaive, halberd, pike, longbow, and long sword. Natural Strength. All strength and athletics checks are done with dexterity instead.

Natural Strength. All strength and athletics checks are done with dexterity instead.

Lalliman
2018-04-15, 04:45 AM
I like Sun Wukong, so you certainly have my attention.


Inborn Movement. Being both arboreal and terrestrial, bipedal and quadrupedal, and traveling between arid, open areas, grasslands, woodlands, and in mountainous, they can climb, crawl, and swim with no penalties.
Is this meant to prevent all penalties from being prone, or only the movement speed reduction? I'm assuming the latter, otherwise this is very powerful. A way to say this that is more consistent with the rules is: They have a climbing, swimming and crawling speed equal to their movement speed.


Monkey God lesser resistance to magic. You have advantage on saving throws against fire and water based magic attacks. All magic damage is reduced by half.
The first part of this is unclear, since there’s no clear distinction for which spells are fire or water based. The second part is obviously incredibly powerful, and you’d need to lose a lot of other features to balance it out.

I suggest you reduce it down to a combination of the two: You have advantage on saving throws against effects that deal fire or cold damage. Or, more simply perhaps, you could just provide resistance to fire and cold.


Reduced Falling Damage. Check is done with advantage due to also being able to use their tail to grab and stop falling. Reduce damage you take by half your check result (round down). If damage is reduced to 0, then he lands standing.
What check are we talking about? Does this require a reaction like Slow Fall and Feather Fall? Since you mention grabbing with the tail, can you still do it when there's nothing to grab? Also the final line is redundant, because the PHB already says "The creature lands prone, unless it avoids taking damage from the fall."

I suggest you make this compatible with Slow Fall, rather than competing with it. Something like: You have the Slow Fall feature of a 4th level monk. If you take levels in monk, add 4 to your effective monk level to determine the reduction in falling damage.


Wukong Armor Training. You have proficiency with hide, breastplate, chain mail, and chain shirt armor.
This is a strange assortment of armour choices. How can you be proficient with medium armour but not with light? I'd stick to the normal armour categories, if you want to keep this feature. I'd rather remove it completely though; you already have a lot of features, and when I think of Sun Wukong I don't immediately think of armour.


Natural Strength. All strength and athletics checks are done with dexterity instead.
Did you mean for this to apply to attacks, or only to 'checks' as written? Either way, I would avoid effects like this completely, as it removes a big chunk of the game, and makes Strength effectively useless for these characters.

My balance estimation using James Musicus' scale (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ViqLSEN67mmd2Lo_OJ-H5YX0fccsfI97kFaqx7V1Dmw/pub):

As written: 3 (ASIs) + 0.5 (35 ft speed) + 0.5 (Prehensile Tail) + 1.5 (Inborn Movement) + 0.5 (Wild Life) + 4? (magic resistance) + 0.5 (Reduced Falling Damage) + 1 (armour training) + 0.5 (weapon training) + 1 (Natural Strength) = 13 points

The PHB races have an average of about 6 points, with Mountain Dwarves being the highest at 8. Needless to say, 13 is way out of line.

With my suggestions above: 3 (ASIs) + 0.5 (35 ft speed) + 0.5 (Prehensile Tail) + 1.5 (Inborn Movement) + 0.5 (Wild Life) + 1 (magic resistance) + 0.5 (Reduced Falling Damage) + 0.5 (weapon training) = 8 points

8 points is on the high end of the balance scale, but I think this is ok because several of the features are quite niche. So with my suggestions it would be balanced.