Please Critique and help me with my Sci-FI races.

[ngilop]

Hey guys, I am going to be running a sci fi campaign soon and I have 1 finished to my liking and have a few more mostly done. I'd like each race to have 4 racial traits (well I guess other than humans, I can do with 3 or even 2 there) Id also like at least 2 more races, having mind blink right now but my notes I have that I want 8 choices for races, also I have Robot. (yes the Zul'culan are 'greys' and the anunnaki are of the ancient aliens sort). thought it be interesting to toss in a little 'myth sort of true'

Just here hoping to get some ideas for the races I have right now, and some suggestions for a couple more.

HUMAN
Can set 1 die roll as a natural 6 twice per session. This may not be used more than once in any given scene.


ACEPHALI (A-seph-alley)
Are 6 to 6 and a half foot tall plant beings with brown or green barrel shaped bodies. They have 3 legs arranged like a tripod and 3 long tentacles instead of arms. They have 3 eyes spaced evenly around their bodies
Have all around vision, granting them advantage when applicable.
Gain Reach with melee weapons without that weapon normally having the reach attribute. Can use reach weapons against adjacent targets.
Have 3 tentacles, which allows them to wield and hold up to 3 hands’ worth of equipment increasing the number of items they have ready. This allows them to wield 2-handed weapons or perform an action which requires 2 hands and still have 1 free, but does not afford any extra attacks or any special abilities.
Gain advantage on any attempt to resist trip or knock back attempts.


ZUL’CULAN (Zool-coo-lan)
Are small-bodied beings, typically 3 and a half to 4 feet tall, with smooth grey-colored skin, enlarged hairless heads and large black eyes. Their humerus and thighs are the same lengths as their forearms and shins. They have no hair anywhere on the body, including the face, and no noticeable outer ears or noses, but only small openings or orifices for ears and nostrils.
Start at Rank 3 (Average) in MIND, but start at Rank 1 (Incompetent) in STRENGTH.
Gain advantage on checks that involve their own racial or cultural history.



NESSU (Ness-oo)
Are blue skinned humanoids the same height, though slight smaller built, than humans with short forehead antennae.
Can Astral Travel the ability to separate their consciousness from their body, enabling travel almost anywhere. While the astral body is absent, the physical body remains in a coma and is completely defenseless. This allows the Nessu to see and hear where they are, but are unable to affect or manipulate any of their surroundings while projected.
Have a limited form of telepathy, within a middling range can detect emotions; such as rage, sadness, lust, or fear.


STRAZZEN (Strah-zen)
Are crocodilian-like humanoids who stand 7 to 8 feet tall, are thick with muscle, and are covered in tough, scaly skin, that range a gamut of colors, though brownish green is by far the most common.
Start with 5 life plus STRENGTH.
Can make a second melee attack if they do not move with their tails at Incompetent [-4] as a light melee weapon. A Strazzen can never increase their ranks in their tail, whether for quality or damage.
Can make a melee attack with their claws and teeth, treat as if this is a single medium melee weapon.

Anunnaki (An-new-nahk-ee)

[brian 333]

Majari

3 stages of life make the Majar unique from most other intelligent races.

Crawlers are best described as centipedes, but only the first three segments of their caramel-colored, cigar-shaped, ten-segmented bodies have true legs. The last seven segments have paired pseudopeds which have suction cups on their bottoms which aid in walking and climbing. Though they cannot speak they can communicate via a semaphore language using the antenna-like chemical sensors located above their eyes, which resemble black glass orbs about the size of a man's palm. Crawlers grow to two meters in length and can mass up to 100 kilos.

Nymphs emerge from the moulted shell of the five year old crawler. While crawlers have no sex organs, nymphs do; all nymphs are male.
The last seven segments of the crawler atrophy, forming a fat 'tail' and the last two pair of legs grow long enough to walk upright. The first pair develop hands of four opposable fingers, and they develop the ability to make and use tools. They retain their antennae and gain the ability to speak too. Nymphs are less than 75kg and stand under 1.6m

Brooders become female in their final moult. They loose their legs and the atrophied tail swells to accommodate the egg-laying and brooding they wil be doing. Brooders become mindless egg layers which move but little between final moult and death, which follows.
Brooding typically begins after thirty years as a nymph.

[Joethegoblin]

Some food for thought.

Have you thought about the biological path of the alien species? About their path to sapience, and their eventual ability to build complex societies and being able to advance technologically?
And if they are not humnoid and/or not built symetrically, how would they accomplish that?

(Not a critisism on what you have written, rather a interesting train of thought on generating aliens)

For example, your tree people have three hands. Almost all life advanced life forms on earth are symetrically built. Appendages come in pairs. And how did the tree people benefit from having an uneven number of appedages?
Perhaps the third on3 did not have the same evolutionary role as the others? Perhaps because the tree people's range of movement is limited, so a 3rd appendage is a grasper to reach outside of range of motion.

And now to make things more interesting, a non humanoid technologically advanced race? Which can make things very interesting, as most equipment is incompatable for humanoids