Flumph Race

[AgentMaineSIGMA]

God, do I love flumphs.

I've recently begun working on a list of homebrew races as part of my in-progress 5e expansion. After looking at a thread on Twitter about which races people wanted to see added to 5e, I saw someone wanted a race of playable jellyfish. After looking through the monster manual for some inspiration, I found the lovely flumphs. These psychic flying-spaghetti-monsters of the underdark were perfect for a race of jellyfish creatures, so I set out to work. As a flumph, you get some natural telepathic abilities, ability score improvements that make being a wizard or mystic more appealing, and a dragonborn-esque spray that poisons people. Overall, I've had a lot of fun looking into these guys, and I hope you enjoy the race. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or critiques, I'm always happy to talk shop to improve my work. Thanks!

FLUMPH
Flumphs are a bizarre, if largely harmless race of aberrations adventurers may happen across in the Underdark. Latent telepaths, they settle near aboleths, githyanki settlements, and illithid colonies. In such a dangerous place, and near such horrors, one would be forgiven for assuming flumphs to be lethal and dangerous. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

COWARDLY TATTLERS
The flumph are lawful and good creatures on the whole. With their advanced telepathy and chosen places of settlement, they are often subject to the horrifying plans of other aberrations. As such, flumphs seek out good-aligned beings to share these thoughts, wanting to rid themselves of such evil. In combat, flumphs aren’t much better. Due to their weak bodies, flumph have a natural aversion to violence. When threatened, flumph are most likely to spray their foes with a foul-smelling fluid and flee.

OPEN MIND
It is very easy to tell what a flumph is thinking. When a flumph isn’t telling you everything on its mind, you can tell its feelings just by looking at it. Due to their latent psionic abilities, flumphs emit a soft glow, the color indicating their mood: red for anger, blue for sadness, pink for happiness, and green for curiosity.

WISE PSIONS
Despite their appearance, flumphs are actually quite intelligent. With their advanced telepathy, flumphs can intercept any telepathic communications near them, an ability amplified when living in their cloisters. Living near such intelligent beings as the illithid, flumphs learn much quickly. Further, they are constantly connected to every other flumph in their cloister, meaning that the information learned by one is information learned by all. As such, flumphs can become living libraries of assorted knowledge, gained through their telepathic abilities.

FLUMPH NAMES
Born with their telepathic abilities, flumph are rarely named. When everyone can speak directly into the mind of anyone in your society, naming is redundant and unnecessary. The only time a flumph is truly named is when they run into a being from another race. As such, flumph names are most often nicknames given in other races’ tongues.

FLUMPH TRAITS
Your flumph character exhibits a variety of aberrant abilities, a result of your alien biology and mind.
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Age. Flumphs reach maturity very quickly, feeding on the latent psychic powers of their community and other powerful creatures. Flumphs reach maturity within 1-2 years, and can live to be around 100 years old.
Alignment. Flumphs are largely benevolent creatures who abhor evil, and are most commonly good. Furthermore, they form egalitarian and fair societies, where each member contributes according to their abilities. This is a result of their innate sense of law.
Size. Flumphs are fairly compact, only about 3 feet tall, though they often hover at eye-level. Your size is small.
Speed. You have a base walking speed of 5 feet. You also have a hover speed of 30 feet, though you cannot hover if you are wearing medium or heavy armor.
Darkvision. Taking residence in the Underdark, you have developed keen eyesight that is unaffected by the dark. 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.
Languages. You can read and write common and undercommon. You cannot physically speak as a result of your alien physiology, but you can telepathically communicate with creatures that share a language with you. Furthermore, your telepathic abilities allow you to cast spells as normal.
Advanced Telepathy. You know the content of any telepathic communication within 60 feet of you, such as the message cantrip, or the Awakened Mind warlock feature. In addition, you can communicate telepathically with any creature within 60 feet of you.
Prone Vulnerability If you are knocked prone, make a Dexterity saving throw (DC 10). On a failure, you land upside-down and are incapacitated. On your turn, you can use your bonus action to right yourself and end the condition.
Stench Spray. You can use your action to expel a foul-smelling liquid to poison your foes. Each creature in a 15 foot cone must make Dexterity saving throw. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. The creature takes 2d4 poison damage and are coated in this liquid for one hours on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful save. A coated creature is poisoned for as long as it is coated, and other creatures are coated while within 5 feet of the creature. The damage increases to 3d4 at 6th level, 4d4 at 11th level, and 5d4 at 16th level.

Once you use your Stench Spray, you cannot do so again until you complete a long rest.

[Bjarkmundur]

Omg I love these little guys! :)

[DracoDei]

I assume.the "hover" in "hover speed" is defined in some sourcebook, if so, where? If not, a careful description would be good.

Interesting take on them. Goes in a different direction than the originals. I can get behind that.

These things would be the NEMESES of the creatures they live nearby, since they would be know many of their secrets. I'd actually change it to having the colonies a further away than this implies, with friends agent "thought raids" of elite groups of stealthy types approaching the illithids etc close.enough to "wire tap" them for a bit before exfiltrating. Or maybe make it "all who are reasonably capable must take this most dangerous but necessary duty in turn" and/or make it an official site of passage in their society. Perhaps any adventurers who wish to form an especially close alliance with a cloister must perform an equivalent to which they are more suited. Stereotypically this would be stealing a magic item or written information (anything from a time of lore/spells to a military message), but assassination of sabotage would also work. Not being detected would be strongly advised (because: they are 'cowards'*), but, as long as the location of the cloister is not revealed, the test would be considered to have been passed.
*Quotemarks added because this change makes them less so, despite being no more prone to confronatation.

Changing between intense colors NOT found in one's normal habitat, especially based on emotions, is terrible for camouflage. I'd expect full-body camo paint to be the norm while adventuring... sorta there version of.the armor.they would almost never wear. Not polite for social.situations, but worn for travel etc.

Combining these two ideas, I might give them the option to select Stealth as one of their trained skill (still requiring a pick) at character creation. No idea.if this would be a big deal mechanically or not as far as their balance goes.

[Cynthaer]

So let's look at the raw mechanics, shall we?


+2 Int, +1 Wis
Small
Darkvision
1/long rest spray attack
Telepathy
Intercept others' telepathy
30 ft "walk" speed
Undercommon
No armor
Psychic vulnerability


I get why you did the "hover" thing, so we'll ignore that for now. Undercommon, telepathy, and advanced telepathy are all basically ribbons from a character building standpoint, so I don't really want to count them towards the power budget. At the same time, I think they do count towards the complexity budget, so I don't want to keep jamming in features.

Aside from the normal +2/+1 stat boosts, that leaves the meat of this thing as Darkvision, a dragonborn-style spray attack, and a damage vulnerability.

First off, I think we need to drop Psychic Vulnerability. While it's not completely unheard-of to have a drawback in a 5e race, it's pretty rare. Off hand, I can only think of Sunlight Sensitivity on kobolds and drow, and the -2 Int on orcs (which nobody plays). Notice that Sunlight Sensitivity just gives Disadvantage—it's an obstacle for the player to work around. Damage vulnerabilities just get a player dead. They're a good tool for monsters, but bad for PCs (especially if the race favors unarmored, low-HP caster classes).

Relatedly, if you did want to include a drawback for some reason, I would 100% use some version of Prone Deficiency, not Psychic Vulnerability. Prone Deficiency is iconic and hilarious, whereas most people probably have no idea that flumphs are vulnerable to Psychic damage at all. A quick and simple PC-friendly version might be:

If the flumph is knocked prone, make a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw. On a failure, the flumph lands upside-down and is incapacitated. As a bonus action, the flumph can right itself and end the incapacitated condition.

Note that this doesn't really cost the player anything more than a bonus action. It doesn't need to be a huge downside; the real purpose is just to make everybody laugh when the player gets knocked upside-down and then move on with the fight.

The spray attack is fine, I think. The dragonborn breath attack is generally regarded as underpowered, but with the contagious poison clause, I think this one will probably see use. That said, if it needs to be dropped for power reasons, I don't think it's iconic for the race.

In the monster manual, flumphs have "proficiency" in Arcana, History, and Religion. I think it would be appropriate to let players choose proficiency in two of these skills. You could do all three, I guess—none of the official races give more than two, and I'm reluctant to do more than that without fully understanding why that is.

Finally, I'll note that this race is extremely restricted in its class choices, and is likely to look very strange as anything except a psion or caster. Wearing no armor means it just about has to be a caster, although Barbarian and Monk offer alternate AC calculations. That may or may not be a problem—it depends on what the flumph player has in mind for their character.

Overall, I think there are two directions you can go here. The first is to make this much closer to Aarakocra—this approach lets the flumph be a normal race that can work with any class (while clearly favoring certain ones):


+2 Int, +1 Wis
Small
Darkvision
Undercommon
Telepathy/Advanced Telepathy
30 ft fly speed if not wearing medium or heavy armor
Proficiency in Arcana, History, or Religion (optional)
Prone Deficiency (optional)

With this design, we drop the vulnerability and the spray attack, and add a bunch of power in the form of a proper fly speed that allows light armor (like Aarakocra). Darkvision actually adds even more power, but the flumph's Int/Wis boost is much less synergistic with flying than the Aarakocra's Dex/Wis boost, and the Small flumph can't wield heavy weapons.

You could leave out the skill proficiency and Prone Deficiency for simplicity, or leave them in. It probably doesn't matter.

The other direction, IMO, is to take your starting design, drop the psychic vulnerability, and then just be willing to discuss with your players if custom tweaks are warranted. Do you want to just say "no martials" because a flumph with a sword and shield makes no sense? If someone did want to play a flumph paladin, would you be willing to work with them on that?

There's no wrong answer there, but this approach basically means giving up on making this a generically workable design, like official races are, and accepting that it's going to be very specific to your own world and campaign. You should know which one you want for your design goals.

[AgentMaineSIGMA]

So let's look at the raw mechanics, shall we?


+2 Int, +1 Wis
Small
Darkvision
1/long rest spray attack
Telepathy
Intercept others' telepathy
30 ft "walk" speed
Undercommon
No armor
Psychic vulnerability


I get why you did the "hover" thing, so we'll ignore that for now. Undercommon, telepathy, and advanced telepathy are all basically ribbons from a character building standpoint, so I don't really want to count them towards the power budget. At the same time, I think they do count towards the complexity budget, so I don't want to keep jamming in features.

Aside from the normal +2/+1 stat boosts, that leaves the meat of this thing as Darkvision, a dragonborn-style spray attack, and a damage vulnerability.

First off, I think we need to drop Psychic Vulnerability. While it's not completely unheard-of to have a drawback in a 5e race, it's pretty rare. Off hand, I can only think of Sunlight Sensitivity on kobolds and drow, and the -2 Int on orcs (which nobody plays). Notice that Sunlight Sensitivity just gives Disadvantage—it's an obstacle for the player to work around. Damage vulnerabilities just get a player dead. They're a good tool for monsters, but bad for PCs (especially if the race favors unarmored, low-HP caster classes).

Relatedly, if you did want to include a drawback for some reason, I would 100% use some version of Prone Deficiency, not Psychic Vulnerability. Prone Deficiency is iconic and hilarious, whereas most people probably have no idea that flumphs are vulnerable to Psychic damage at all. A quick and simple PC-friendly version might be:

If the flumph is knocked prone, make a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw. On a failure, the flumph lands upside-down and is incapacitated. As a bonus action, the flumph can right itself and end the incapacitated condition.

Note that this doesn't really cost the player anything more than a bonus action. It doesn't need to be a huge downside; the real purpose is just to make everybody laugh when the player gets knocked upside-down and then move on with the fight.

The spray attack is fine, I think. The dragonborn breath attack is generally regarded as underpowered, but with the contagious poison clause, I think this one will probably see use. That said, if it needs to be dropped for power reasons, I don't think it's iconic for the race.

In the monster manual, flumphs have "proficiency" in Arcana, History, and Religion. I think it would be appropriate to let players choose proficiency in two of these skills. You could do all three, I guess—none of the official races give more than two, and I'm reluctant to do more than that without fully understanding why that is.

Finally, I'll note that this race is extremely restricted in its class choices, and is likely to look very strange as anything except a psion or caster. Wearing no armor means it just about has to be a caster, although Barbarian and Monk offer alternate AC calculations. That may or may not be a problem—it depends on what the flumph player has in mind for their character.

Overall, I think there are two directions you can go here. The first is to make this much closer to Aarakocra—this approach lets the flumph be a normal race that can work with any class (while clearly favoring certain ones):


+2 Int, +1 Wis
Small
Darkvision
Undercommon
Telepathy/Advanced Telepathy
30 ft fly speed if not wearing medium or heavy armor
Proficiency in Arcana, History, or Religion (optional)
Prone Deficiency (optional)

With this design, we drop the vulnerability and the spray attack, and add a bunch of power in the form of a proper fly speed that allows light armor (like Aarakocra). Darkvision actually adds even more power, but the flumph's Int/Wis boost is much less synergistic with flying than the Aarakocra's Dex/Wis boost, and the Small flumph can't wield heavy weapons.

You could leave out the skill proficiency and Prone Deficiency for simplicity, or leave them in. It probably doesn't matter.

The other direction, IMO, is to take your starting design, drop the psychic vulnerability, and then just be willing to discuss with your players if custom tweaks are warranted. Do you want to just say "no martials" because a flumph with a sword and shield makes no sense? If someone did want to play a flumph paladin, would you be willing to work with them on that?

There's no wrong answer there, but this approach basically means giving up on making this a generically workable design, like official races are, and accepting that it's going to be very specific to your own world and campaign. You should know which one you want for your design goals.

Thanks for the suggestions! A few things:

I love swapping psychic vulnerability for the prone vulnerability. While both make sense thematically, one of them is hilarious, and as you said, less debilitating. I'll definitely be amending the race for that.

I'd be comfortable giving them one proficiency as well. I agree that three seems excessive, and the only race that comes to mind that gets two proficiencies is half-elves, so one feels appropriate here.

I'm iffy on the flight speed and armor bit. Given you have to be moving for flight to continue working, it feels like flumphs should still have a hover speed instead. That said, hover speed is just better flight, so allowing you to use armor and hover feels wrong. I guess I'd be willing to include light armor while hovering for general workability though.

So my thought with the martial-class flumph is fairly simple from a workability standpoint. Flumphs might lack arms, but if you look at some of the images for 5e flumphs, they have a number of tentacles generally used for walking and attacks. I'd rule that a flumph paladin, like you suggest, uses those tentacles for the purpose of grabbing a sword and shield.

While I agree that flumphs, as I've written them, are highly optimized to be mystics and wizards, they aren't necessarily locked into those two options. With your suggestions, I hope that they end up a bit more balanced for general play, and have more options than they do now.

[Cynthaer]

I'm iffy on the flight speed and armor bit. Given you have to be moving for flight to continue working, it feels like flumphs should still have a hover speed instead. That said, hover speed is just better flight, so allowing you to use armor and hover feels wrong. I guess I'd be willing to include light armor while hovering for general workability though.
So, I have to apologize here—in my first response, I didn't realize that Hover was an actual existing ability with a rules meaning. I read your "hover" speed as "basically walking, but technically not touching the ground".

That colored some of my analysis, obviously. Mostly, it meant I thought I was making them stronger by suggesting a fly speed, not weaker.

(For reference, here's the actual rules text on hovering.)

If a flying creature is knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0, or is otherwise deprived of the ability to move, the creature falls, unless it has the ability to hover or it is being held aloft by magic, such as by the fly spell.

With that in mind, I think flumphs should definitely have a fly speed, not hover, for several reasons:


I agree that from a physics perspective, flumphs seem to fly by "hovering" in the colloquial sense (not by flapping wings or something). Still, letting them fall when immobilized also seems intuitive (unlike an air elemental, for instance). The designers seem to agree—if flumphs in the monster manual don't need hover, why do PC flumphs?
A level 1 fly speed on a PC is already very powerful (notice how few features Aarakocra get). There's no balance reason to make it even more powerful.
Falling damage is one of the few factors that balances out the massive tactical advantage of being able to fight every battle from 20 feet in the air.
Staying airborne even when knocked prone basically negates the "Prone Deficiency" ability—the whole point is that when they are knocked prone, they fall straight to the ground (probably upside-down).



So my thought with the martial-class flumph is fairly simple from a workability standpoint. Flumphs might lack arms, but if you look at some of the images for 5e flumphs, they have a number of tentacles generally used for walking and attacks. I'd rule that a flumph paladin, like you suggest, uses those tentacles for the purpose of grabbing a sword and shield.

While I agree that flumphs, as I've written them, are highly optimized to be mystics and wizards, they aren't necessarily locked into those two options. With your suggestions, I hope that they end up a bit more balanced for general play, and have more options than they do now.
That's good, because I think balancing for general play is a more interesting design challenge.

For reference, here's a table comparing flumphs and aarakocra. (I hope it's obvious why I'm constantly comparing to aarakocra—they're the archetypal official race where all of the power comes from having a fly speed.)



Flumph
Aarakocra


+2 Int, +1 Wis
+2 Dex, +1 Wis


Small
Medium


30 ft fly speed (no/light armor)
50 ft fly speed (no/light armor)


5 ft walk speed (med/heavy armor)
25 ft walk speed (med/heavy armor or in small spaces)*


Common + 1 language
Common + 2 languages


1/day spray attack (2d4 + poisoned)
Unarmed strikes deal slashing damage


Darkvision



Telepathy



Intercept telepathic messages



Prone Vulnerability



*I'm comparing the aarakocra's walk speed to the flumph's fly speed, for reasons I explain below.

I've tried to mark the pros and cons where the features line up, highlighting in bold the ones that I think really matter.

Aarakocra clearly favor Dex martials and Wis casters—everything about them says Monk/Ranger/Rogue/Dex Fighter, but a Dex build + flying works for literally any class. A medium size means they can even go classic greataxe Barbarian if you want.

The staggering 50 ft fly speed outpaces the flumph's 30 ft, but IMO it's not needed. I suspect they just imported it from the monster version, and didn't see a need to specifically reduce it for PCs.

The 25 ft walk speed is technically better than the flumph's 5 ft, but wearing med/heavy armor still means losing all of the race's power, so it's not that much better. Note that they increased it from the MM aarakocra's 20 ft walk speed—I think this is to avoid punishing players in places like caves where full-on winged flying doesn't make sense.

IMO, that makes comparing the walk speeds a little misleading, because I would expect a flumph to still use its fly speed in constrained spaces where an aarakocra must walk. In the table, this is why I have the aarakocra's walk speed in red—it's slower than the flumph's 30 ft fly.

On the other side, the flumph gets Int and Wis, pretty strongly pushing us toward some specific casters. FWIW, giving Int and Dex would also be justifiable—the MM flumph has 15 Dex, and implicitly uses Dex for its tendril attack. This would increase the power budget by adding stat synergy, but it's a tool in our design toolbox. The biggest downside is that it would strongly encourage Dex martial classes, which I don't think we really want.

Now, our flumph gets a quite powerful spray attack. In fact, looking at at closer, I suspect it's too powerful to put on a flying creature as-is.

(Note: In the MM text, creatures next to the coated creature are merely poisoned while within 5 feet. You've changed this to actually coating adjacent creatures, making it contagious. I'm going to assume this change is accidental.)

The "poisoned" condition straight-up gives disadvantage on all attack and ability rolls, and that's a pretty powerful thing to apply to one or more enemies for a whole battle with only one save. On top of that, you've added damage that's not there in the MM flumph. I think this is unwarranted power creep, and is going to make your poor dragonborn player feel bad (doubly so because the flumph gets darkvision!).



Flumph
Dragonborn


+2 Int, +1 Wis
+2 Str, +1 Cha


Small
Medium


30 ft fly speed (no/light armor)
30 ft walk speed*


5 ft walk speed (med/heavy armor)



Common + 1 language
Common + 1 language


1/day spray attack (2d4 + poisoned)
1/day spray attack (2d6)


Darkvision
Damage resistance (1 type)


Telepathy



Intercept telepathic messages



Prone Vulnerability



*I'm comparing the dragonborn's walk speed to the flumph's fly speed, for the same reasons as above.

Now, we shouldn't just count the greens and reds to evaluate power levels, especially since the stat boosts push these races in very different directions. Nonetheless, I think it's clear that the flumph has noticeably more power and complexity in this form.

I haven't addressed complexity that much, but it's worth keeping in mind. Complexity comes at a cost; it's the reason that a race with two strong and thematic abilities is probably better designed than a race with one strong ability, four minor abilities, and two drawbacks.

The flumph's complexity budget is pretty high. Flight (with a separate walk speed), darkvision, telepathy + interception, darkvision, prone vulnerability, and a spray attack. We don't need to argue precisely how complex each of these abilities is; the point is there's a lot of 'em. You can see how many more table rows the flumph gets compared to the aarakocra or the dragonborn.

The point is, I'm always on the lookout for stuff that can be cut. Adding a bunch of flavorful ribbon abilities that don't impact raw power is easy, but a focused design that still gets to the heart of the race is more rewarding.

So what's the heart of the flumph? The fly speed is a must-have. So are darkvision and telepathy. Prone Vulnerability isn't strictly necessary, but IMO players would be disappointed if it wasn't there.

That leaves the spray attack and Advanced Telepathy. You could have a PC flumph without either one, but Advanced Telepathy is clearly the more important of the two. Intercepting psychic activity is the core of who they are, why they live where they do, and what their society is. It would be kind of weird not to have it, and it doesn't really add to the power budget.

But the spray attack? That's just there so MM flumphs have a nonlethal way to defend themselves and escape. It might stick in your memory if you've been blasted with it, but I really don't think it's that important. And it's adding unnecessarily to both the power and complexity budgets.

In my opinion, the spray attack has to go.

With all of that in mind, here's where I'm at right now overall:



+2 Int, +1 Wis
Small
5 ft walk, 30 ft fly (no/light armor only)
Darkvision
Common, Undercommon
Telepathy/Advanced Telepathy
Prone Vulnerability


This probably seems like a lot of words just to come back to "your current design, but without hover and without the spray attack". But I hope I've been able to give some useful context for why I strongly support those changes, and how I'm approaching the design in general.

[Crisis21]

Something you might find interesting:

An individual by the name of Tyler Kamstra - clearly a glutton for homebrew punishment - went and statted out player races for every entry in the Monster Manual (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/230312/Monstrous-Races?term=monstrous+races).

[AgentMaineSIGMA]

So, I have to apologize here—in my first response, I didn't realize that Hover was an actual existing ability with a rules meaning. I read your "hover" speed as "basically walking, but technically not touching the ground".

That colored some of my analysis, obviously. Mostly, it meant I thought I was making them stronger by suggesting a fly speed, not weaker.

(For reference, here's the actual rules text on hovering.)

If a flying creature is knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0, or is otherwise deprived of the ability to move, the creature falls, unless it has the ability to hover or it is being held aloft by magic, such as by the fly spell.

With that in mind, I think flumphs should definitely have a fly speed, not hover, for several reasons:


I agree that from a physics perspective, flumphs seem to fly by "hovering" in the colloquial sense (not by flapping wings or something). Still, letting them fall when immobilized also seems intuitive (unlike an air elemental, for instance). The designers seem to agree—if flumphs in the monster manual don't need hover, why do PC flumphs?
A level 1 fly speed on a PC is already very powerful (notice how few features Aarakocra get). There's no balance reason to make it even more powerful.
Falling damage is one of the few factors that balances out the massive tactical advantage of being able to fight every battle from 20 feet in the air.
Staying airborne even when knocked prone basically negates the "Prone Deficiency" ability—the whole point is that when they are knocked prone, they fall straight to the ground (probably upside-down).



That's good, because I think balancing for general play is a more interesting design challenge.

For reference, here's a table comparing flumphs and aarakocra. (I hope it's obvious why I'm constantly comparing to aarakocra—they're the archetypal official race where all of the power comes from having a fly speed.)



Flumph
Aarakocra


+2 Int, +1 Wis
+2 Dex, +1 Wis


Small
Medium


30 ft fly speed (no/light armor)
50 ft fly speed (no/light armor)


5 ft walk speed (med/heavy armor)
25 ft walk speed (med/heavy armor or in small spaces)*


Common + 1 language
Common + 2 languages


1/day spray attack (2d4 + poisoned)
Unarmed strikes deal slashing damage


Darkvision



Telepathy



Intercept telepathic messages



Prone Vulnerability



*I'm comparing the aarakocra's walk speed to the flumph's fly speed, for reasons I explain below.

I've tried to mark the pros and cons where the features line up, highlighting in bold the ones that I think really matter.

Aarakocra clearly favor Dex martials and Wis casters—everything about them says Monk/Ranger/Rogue/Dex Fighter, but a Dex build + flying works for literally any class. A medium size means they can even go classic greataxe Barbarian if you want.

The staggering 50 ft fly speed outpaces the flumph's 30 ft, but IMO it's not needed. I suspect they just imported it from the monster version, and didn't see a need to specifically reduce it for PCs.

The 25 ft walk speed is technically better than the flumph's 5 ft, but wearing med/heavy armor still means losing all of the race's power, so it's not that much better. Note that they increased it from the MM aarakocra's 20 ft walk speed—I think this is to avoid punishing players in places like caves where full-on winged flying doesn't make sense.

IMO, that makes comparing the walk speeds a little misleading, because I would expect a flumph to still use its fly speed in constrained spaces where an aarakocra must walk. In the table, this is why I have the aarakocra's walk speed in red—it's slower than the flumph's 30 ft fly.

On the other side, the flumph gets Int and Wis, pretty strongly pushing us toward some specific casters. FWIW, giving Int and Dex would also be justifiable—the MM flumph has 15 Dex, and implicitly uses Dex for its tendril attack. This would increase the power budget by adding stat synergy, but it's a tool in our design toolbox. The biggest downside is that it would strongly encourage Dex martial classes, which I don't think we really want.

Now, our flumph gets a quite powerful spray attack. In fact, looking at at closer, I suspect it's too powerful to put on a flying creature as-is.

(Note: In the MM text, creatures next to the coated creature are merely poisoned while within 5 feet. You've changed this to actually coating adjacent creatures, making it contagious. I'm going to assume this change is accidental.)

The "poisoned" condition straight-up gives disadvantage on all attack and ability rolls, and that's a pretty powerful thing to apply to one or more enemies for a whole battle with only one save. On top of that, you've added damage that's not there in the MM flumph. I think this is unwarranted power creep, and is going to make your poor dragonborn player feel bad (doubly so because the flumph gets darkvision!).



Flumph
Dragonborn


+2 Int, +1 Wis
+2 Str, +1 Cha


Small
Medium


30 ft fly speed (no/light armor)
30 ft walk speed*


5 ft walk speed (med/heavy armor)



Common + 1 language
Common + 1 language


1/day spray attack (2d4 + poisoned)
1/day spray attack (2d6)


Darkvision
Damage resistance (1 type)


Telepathy



Intercept telepathic messages



Prone Vulnerability



*I'm comparing the dragonborn's walk speed to the flumph's fly speed, for the same reasons as above.

Now, we shouldn't just count the greens and reds to evaluate power levels, especially since the stat boosts push these races in very different directions. Nonetheless, I think it's clear that the flumph has noticeably more power and complexity in this form.

I haven't addressed complexity that much, but it's worth keeping in mind. Complexity comes at a cost; it's the reason that a race with two strong and thematic abilities is probably better designed than a race with one strong ability, four minor abilities, and two drawbacks.

The flumph's complexity budget is pretty high. Flight (with a separate walk speed), darkvision, telepathy + interception, darkvision, prone vulnerability, and a spray attack. We don't need to argue precisely how complex each of these abilities is; the point is there's a lot of 'em. You can see how many more table rows the flumph gets compared to the aarakocra or the dragonborn.

The point is, I'm always on the lookout for stuff that can be cut. Adding a bunch of flavorful ribbon abilities that don't impact raw power is easy, but a focused design that still gets to the heart of the race is more rewarding.

So what's the heart of the flumph? The fly speed is a must-have. So are darkvision and telepathy. Prone Vulnerability isn't strictly necessary, but IMO players would be disappointed if it wasn't there.

That leaves the spray attack and Advanced Telepathy. You could have a PC flumph without either one, but Advanced Telepathy is clearly the more important of the two. Intercepting psychic activity is the core of who they are, why they live where they do, and what their society is. It would be kind of weird not to have it, and it doesn't really add to the power budget.

But the spray attack? That's just there so MM flumphs have a nonlethal way to defend themselves and escape. It might stick in your memory if you've been blasted with it, but I really don't think it's that important. And it's adding unnecessarily to both the power and complexity budgets.

In my opinion, the spray attack has to go.

With all of that in mind, here's where I'm at right now overall:



+2 Int, +1 Wis
Small
5 ft walk, 30 ft fly (no/light armor only)
Darkvision
Common, Undercommon
Telepathy/Advanced Telepathy
Prone Vulnerability


This probably seems like a lot of words just to come back to "your current design, but without hover and without the spray attack". But I hope I've been able to give some useful context for why I strongly support those changes, and how I'm approaching the design in general.

Those arguments make a lot of sense. I see where you're coming from in regards to the fly/hover speed debate, and I'll be changing it to match. When it comes to the spray, how would you feel if I removed the damage on it? It's still a powerful condition, but you only get one per long rest, and the lack of damage means you take nothing away from say the dragonborn.

[Cynthaer]

Those arguments make a lot of sense. I see where you're coming from in regards to the fly/hover speed debate, and I'll be changing it to match. When it comes to the spray, how would you feel if I removed the damage on it? It's still a powerful condition, but you only get one per long rest, and the lack of damage means you take nothing away from say the dragonborn.
Honestly, it's hard to say. My gut says it's more complexity than the overall design needs, but that's just my gut—I think we've reached the point where only playtesting can really answer the remaining questions.

IMO, the first playtest version should have the spray attack. It's more useful to have it and see if it feels like too much, than to not have it and see if it feels like too little.