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stewstew5
2019-01-28, 12:57 PM
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/Hke_-nhmN

Vacili are a race defined by their souls, which can be born again after death.

The race needs some heavy bookeeping, but yields a high reward in both power and flavour.

I made this race so that creating new characters after dying can add something interesting to the new character beyond fluff at the cost of in-game time

DeTess
2019-01-29, 05:51 AM
This class makes a couple of assumptions that very often do not hold true. These include that people roll for stats (many people use point-buy instead), and that characters level separately (most 5e games I've played use milestone leveling, keeping everyone at approximately the same level). Keeping all that in mind, this race is broken one way or another. Either it gives you far less than any other race, or a clever munchkin just dies repeatedly to stack up wisdom and get the optimal ability scores for their build without spending ASI's.

The concept itself is neat though. maybe instead make it a 3.5e style 'template' that you can add to another race indicating them being reincarnated?

stewstew5
2019-01-30, 01:55 PM
This is really strange. All of the abilities of this race only trigger upon dying. Nobody would ever choose this race. My advice to you is to make abilities based off of supposedly having lived past lives that you can vaguely remember. These abilities must NOT be contingent upon your death. If you die, leave it up to you DM to see what you do and maybe add a sidebar about simple rules for determining how you came back. Basically, it would just be a new character with vestiges of the old one, so you don't really have to worry about balance for that because the effects of death is mainly dependent on the DM.

Some ideas for abilites:

Proficiency in a tool/skill/weapon of your choice
Making a check once per long rest to temporarily gain proficiency in askill for the rest of the day
Maybe some healing thing (you using the power of your soul)
Something like the blink spell because your soul is only loosely tied to your body


I spent a long time thinking about this, but I want them to be able to actually reincarnate. the purpose of the race is to not need to fear death and see it as a method of development and if the DM doesn't like it or it doesn't fit the setting, they are the DM after all. They get last say.

I like the ideas for abilities and I may add a few more soul sub races, but reincarnating is powerful and I can't load them up on powers.

As for the sidebar idea, I can get behind that. you're right that you shouldn't have to reincarnate to use any of the race's abilities and I will try and find a way to improve on the race while not letting go of what I want them to be

stewstew5
2019-01-30, 02:01 PM
This class makes a couple of assumptions that very often do not hold true. These include that people roll for stats (many people use point-buy instead), and that characters level separately (most 5e games I've played use milestone leveling, keeping everyone at approximately the same level). Keeping all that in mind, this race is broken one way or another. Either it gives you far less than any other race, or a clever munchkin just dies repeatedly to stack up wisdom and get the optimal ability scores for their build without spending ASI's.

The concept itself is neat though. maybe instead make it a 3.5e style 'template' that you can add to another race indicating them being reincarnated?

If they use point-buy, then they can use half the points (or one third (4/6) or five sixths) and re buy everything except wisdom. As for the levelling separately, they can be kept a few levels behind and still level up with everyone if not a bit faster to help them catch back up.
as for the munchkining concern, I'm 100% with you. the races don't get much aside from the flat WIS bonus of young soul. however, you can't keep killing off level one characters to stack wisdom past WIS 13

As for the template idea. I had entertained it for a while. I'll probably add more sub races that further populate the chart, and have one of them be a templatte you stack onto another race

stewstew5
2019-01-30, 04:33 PM
Reincarnating is only as powerful as the DM's rules. If, in the campaign, dead characters are replaced with new characters of the same level, then reincarnating is actually harmful to you. If they are replaced by level 1 characters, it is incredibly good. If they are replaced by new characters of one level lower, this is still somewhat harmful. You can't really balance the reincarnation because you have no idea how character death is handled in the campaign. That is why I suggest doing the reincarnation bit as an optional sidebar feature.

Also, even if dead characters are replaced with new characters of equal level, the reincarnation ability is incredibly broken as written. It says that at any time you can choose to be reincarnated. Essentially, there is no way to kill you because the moment you die, you can immediately pop back into a fight. In fact, to speed up the process, whenever you drop to 0 hp, have the wizard cast magic missile on you to make you fail all your death saving throws. You'll never miss a turn and pop back up at full hp (I'm assuming that that is how you come back; it is unclear in the text.

So, yeah, for designing the race, reincarnation can't really be worked into the features because it is unbalanceable. Just write something in the fluff so that the player can talk to the DM so that they can work something out and then making the race to be balanced to other races.

that's why I included the phrase born again. I agree I didn't make it clear enough in my fluff, but your character's Vacili is recycled back into a body yet born

stewstew5
2019-01-30, 04:44 PM
Sorry, I wasn't clear. What I mean is that you don't need mechanics for reincarnation. Only fluff and a sidebar saying basically that at DM discretion, when you die, the same character (more or less) can come back in a way that the DM determines. Also, this prevents the pop back into the fight after dying thing without having to clarify that the new form is actually born and not just popped into existence.

therein lay the issue. You don't come back as "the same character". You create an entirely new one and may keep certain aspects of your old character while adding an interesting past they never had through more than just fluff

DeTess
2019-01-30, 04:55 PM
that's why I included the phrase born again. I agree I didn't make it clear enough in my fluff, but your character's Vacili is recycled back into a body yet born

Does this mean the character would first have to group up before allowing them to rejoining the adventure> because in that case the ability won't do anything for most campaign,a s those take place over a couple of years at most.

stewstew5
2019-01-30, 04:59 PM
Does this mean the character would first have to group up before allowing them to rejoining the adventure> because in that case the ability won't do anything for most campaign,a s those take place over a couple of years at most.

I updated my original post to give a better understanding of what I want from the race. And yes, it does. THey're intended for longer-running games and not just single campaigns

stewstew5
2019-01-30, 05:00 PM
But you can already make a new character with some of the same aspects just by virtue of the build you choose. I get that you want to make the new character more similar, but these mechanics would probably better as a sidebar than actual racial traits which are supposed to give you benefits while you are actually part of that race.

I 100% agree with this and am currently altering the race to make dying not the main feature. The link will always have the most updated version

DeTess
2019-01-30, 05:09 PM
I updated my original post to give a better understanding of what I want from the race. And yes, it does. THey're intended for longer-running games and not just single campaigns

That'd be very long-running games then (like, generational play). I guess I can see the appeal of a character that is continuous while everyone else has to swap character because their previous ones grow old and die, but for campaigns that take place over less than about 15 years (which I suspects is most of them), this race will be very underpowered.

If you do regularly run games that take place over centuries, this could be a rather interesting character to play if they can leverage their past knowledge. However, the thing about such knowledge abilities is that they might appear important, but generally aren't. The things your character really needs to know will be given to you by the GM in one way or another anyway because otherwise there is no adventure, so an ability like this shouldn't really take center-stage. It's a ribbon at best, like dwarven stonecunning, or a rock gnome's tinker ability.

Therefore I'd suggest streamlining the reincarnation rules, and giving them something else that's actually useful in day-to-day adventuring as their main shtick. A quick example leveraging the idea of them having a lot of experience would be an ability that allows them to spend an action to give all their allies advantage to hit against a creature as they instruct the rest how to best strike its weakspots, which is knowledge they got in a previous life.

Edit: ah, regarding some of the new changes, I'd give the old soul advantage on wisdom saves, not proficiency, as that way there's no risk of this ability overlapping with a chosen class (unlike skills, there's no rules for having a duplicate save proficiency).

stewstew5
2019-01-30, 05:11 PM
That'd be very long-running games then (like, generational play). I guess I can see the appeal of a character that is continuous while everyone else has to swap character because their previous ones grow old and die, but for campaigns that take place over less than about 15 years (which I suspects is most of them), this race will be very underpowered.

If you do regularly run games that take place over centuries, this could be a rather interesting character to play if they can leverage their past knowledge. However, the thing about such knowledge abilities is that they might appear important, but generally aren't. The things your character really needs to know will be given to you by the GM in one way or another anyway because otherwise there is no adventure, so an ability like this shouldn't really take center-stage. It's a ribbon at best, like dwarven stonecunning, or a rock gnome's tinker ability.

Therefore I'd suggest streamlining the reincarnation rules, and giving them something else that's actually useful in day-to-day adventuring as their main shtick. A quick example leveraging the idea of them having a lot of experience would be an ability that allows them to spend an action to give all their allies advantage to hit against a creature as they instruct the rest how to best strike its weakspots, which is knowledge they got in a previous life.

I'm currently revamping all the abilities to be useful if you haven't reincarnated 1,000,000 times, While keeping reincarnation a side not instead of the main focus