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BigB
2020-02-25, 01:57 PM
Hi. So I've always been fascinated by characters that can transform, both in Games as well as in movies and tv.
And I'm pretty sure that a Saiyan race for D&D isn't that strange of an idea. But all the existing versions I've found are either lacking elements I want or very unbalanced.
So I decided to make my own. So for starters, a problem a lot of the existing versions have, is using Goku and Vegeta as a template for an average Saiyan. I didn't.
For starters, firing Ki-blasts like Kamehameha and Final Flash isn't a basic ability. In fact, the only Ki-based ability I kept, is the ability to create a fake moon to enable the transformation to Oozaru.
To keep them more in line with existing races, I actually used the official Half-Orc race as a basis. So here's what I wrote.


Saiyans live out in the wilderness, where they can hunt and fish for their food. They looks mostly human, with the exception of them having a prehensile brown-furred tail. While they can use this tail to carry light-weight items, Saiyans usually keep their tail wrapped around their waist like a belt.
Saiyans are usually tall and muscular with black hair.
- Ability Score Increase: +2 to Strength and +1 to Constitution
- Age: Can live up to about 2 centuries.
- Alignment: Neutral
- Size: Same as humans
- Speed: Base walking speed is 30 feet.
- Menacing: You gain proficiency in the Intimidation skill.
- Relentless Endurance: When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.
- Oozaru Form: During a full moon, if you look up at the moon, you transform into an Oozaru. Roll an Intelligence check (DC21 – Character Level). If you succeed, you are in full control. If you fail,
you go berserk. As an Oozaru you are considered a Huge Creature and your Strength and Constitution each goes up by +3. The transformation ends when the source of the moonlight
is removed or if someone cuts of your tail.
* Fake Moon: you have the ability to create a palm-sized fake moon which lasts for five minutes and allows you to transform into an Oozaru.
* Golden Oozaru Form: By turning into an Oozaru while in one of your Super Saiyan forms, you instead turn into a Golden Oozaru. Roll an Intelligence Check (DC31 – Character Level). If
you succeed you are in full control. If you fail, you go berserk. You get +4 on your Strength and Constitution. If you are in control, you turn into a Super Saiyan 4.
- Super Saiyan: You have learned to harness the innate powers of the Saiyan race and transform into what is called a Super Saiyan. Once per long rest you can transform for one round per Character
Level. You get +1 to Strength and Dexterity. Your speed goes up by 5 feet.
* Super Saiyan 2: You can sacrifice two rounds of your Super Saiyan transformation for one round of Super Saiyan 2. In this form you get +2 to strength, +1 to Dexterity and your speed
goes up by 5 feet.
* Super Saiyan 3: You can sacrifice four rounds of your Super Saiyan transformation for one round of Super Saiyan 3. In this form you get +3 to strength, +1 to Dexterity and your speed
goes up by 10 feet.
* Super Saiyan 4: By controlling your Golden Oozaru form, you activate your transformation into Super Saiyan 4. This form lasts for 1 round per Character Level and you get +3 to
strength, +1 to Dexterity and Constitution and your speed goes up by 10 feet. After the first Transformation, you can activate this form at will with the same conditions
as the basic Super Saiyan form, except you require a tail.
* Super Saiyan God: By performing a ritual with five other Super Saiyans the Super Saiyan can one time achieve a new form called Super Saiyan God. First the Saiyan must defeat the
other five Super Saiyans in combat, when victorious the losing five transfer their power to the winning Saiyan. This requires a CON save of DC20 for the Saiyan
receiving the energy and a CON save of DC15 for the ones giving energy. If any of the six fail their CON save, the ritual fails and the ones who failed their roll receive
2 points of exhaustion (3 points on a Critical Fail). After the first transformation the same power is now available as Super Saiyan Blue. Both forms last for 1 round per
Character Level and give +3 to Strength, +1 to Dexterity and +10 feet to Speed.
- Languages: Saiyans speak, Read and Write Common and one other language of choice


So, yeah, as you can see, it's a lot of text. I'm still not sure which version is better, this one, or my previous version where I locked away Super Saiyan transformations behind level-walls, making it more like a character class than a character race.
Thoughts?

aimlessPolymath
2020-02-25, 04:12 PM
I'm not particularly proficient in 5e, but I'll point out that it rarely modifies ability scores mid-play, because it forces a recalculation of many attributes. Instead, I'd suggest modeling effects on the barbarian's Rage ability: resistance to weapon damage plus a flat bonus to damage rolls.

-Re: super saiyans, most 'super mode' abilities are set at a flat 1 minute duration, rather than 1 round/level. Additionally, the effects don't seem particularly impactful to me.
-The False Moon seems like something a racial feat might provide, since it's a learned ability; as a feat, it might come with advantage on the Intelligence check to keep control of yourself.

BigB
2020-02-25, 05:45 PM
I'm not particularly proficient in 5e, but I'll point out that it rarely modifies ability scores mid-play, because it forces a recalculation of many attributes. Instead, I'd suggest modeling effects on the barbarian's Rage ability: resistance to weapon damage plus a flat bonus to damage rolls.

Right, I guess it isn't really all that clear in the way I typed it out. It's not supposed to be a increase of the actual ability scores, but of the modifier. For example, When in Super Saiyan 1 form, you get to add +1 to all your Str and Dex rolls on top of your usual modifiers.


Re: super saiyans, most 'super mode' abilities are set at a flat 1 minute duration, rather than 1 round/level. Additionally, the effects don't seem particularly impactful to me.

I know the duration of the Super Saiyan forms are a bit ... short. I don't like that either. My original design was that you unlock Super Saiyan 1 when your character reaches Level 2 and lasts for 1 minute per character level. Then at Level 5 you get Super Saiyan 2, at Level 10 there's Super Saiyan 3 and at Level 15 you got Super Saiyan 4 (This version of my Saiyan Race was made before Dragonball Super came out and stuff like Super Saiyan God existed). But that system felt too much like a player class. The system I have in place now is a way to lock away higher Super Saiyan forms until the character itself is stronger. Otherwise you end up with a Level 1 Saiyan that knows how to go Super Saiyan 3.


The False Moon seems like something a racial feat might provide, since it's a learned ability; as a feat, it might come with advantage on the Intelligence check to keep control of yourself.

Actually, in the longer description I made about how Saiyans live and such, I explain how learning to create a False Moon is a rite of passage for young Saiyans, along with learning how to maintain control of their Oozaru form. That's why I kept the DC for a regular Oozaru to a managable number, unlike the Gold Oozaru which I purposely made pretty high.
Edit: I did forget to mention: I do have a Racial Feat in mind called Natural Super Saiyan, which allows the Saiyan to stay into Super Saiyan 1 form for twice as long as normal.

aimlessPolymath
2020-02-25, 06:32 PM
Right, I guess it isn't really all that clear in the way I typed it out. It's not supposed to be a increase of the actual ability scores, but of the modifier. For example, When in Super Saiyan 1 form, you get to add +1 to all your Str and Dex rolls on top of your usual modifiers.

That clears things up significantly.


My original design was that you unlock Super Saiyan 1 when your character reaches Level 2 and lasts for 1 minute per character level. Then at Level 5 you get Super Saiyan 2, at Level 10 there's Super Saiyan 3 and at Level 15 you got Super Saiyan 4 (This version of my Saiyan Race was made before Dragonball Super came out and stuff like Super Saiyan God existed). But that system felt too much like a player class. The system I have in place now is a way to lock away higher Super Saiyan forms until the character itself is stronger. Otherwise you end up with a Level 1 Saiyan that knows how to go Super Saiyan 3.

I definitely follow that strictly locking it to levels makes it feel like part of character advancement (although I'll point out that a level 2 Saiyan can currently go SS2 for one round per day). I'm not actually convinced that Super Saiyan should be available as part of the base race, though; at level 3, the players should be struggling to beat an owlbear, which is roughly a Dragon Ball monster, not DBZ. There's something of an incongruity for a) each and every members of the race to be able to activate it (which might be culturally justified), and b) after entering this legendary state...for the character to still struggle against a troll.

My current feeling is that the ability to enter any SS mode might be locked behind a racial feat; compare Dragon Wings on the dragonborn, for example, where it's a racial attribute that any of them could have, but most of them don't.

A side note- in standard 5e, encounters last about 3 rounds usually.


Actually, in the longer description I made about how Saiyans live and such, I explain how learning to create a False Moon is a rite of passage for young Saiyans, along with learning how to maintain control of their Oozaru form. That's why I kept the DC for a regular Oozaru to a managable number, unlike the Gold Oozaru which I purposely made pretty high.

Sounds good to me.


I also dug up a few other (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Saiyan_(5e_Race)) examples (https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Saiyan_(5e_Race))of how other people handled saiyans.

MagneticKitty
2020-02-25, 09:09 PM
I think it's too much. I would go with just monkey form and some base things they get all the time. Maybe stong build (high carry capacity), and increased jump height or something.
base it on shifter, not half orc. Use shifter for a model on how monkey works. You can shift on purpose with your fake moon and get temp hp and size increase to large only for one minute.

On actual full moon you get the same things as before but maybe like natural weapons 1d8 bludgeoning or something.

Then if you are feeling really overzealous, build a barbarian subclass that gets slowly increasing abilities when they rage (go super saiyan)

BigB
2020-02-26, 05:47 AM
I definitely follow that strictly locking it to levels makes it feel like part of character advancement (although I'll point out that a level 2 Saiyan can currently go SS2 for one round per day). I'm not actually convinced that Super Saiyan should be available as part of the base race, though; at level 3, the players should be struggling to beat an owlbear, which is roughly a Dragon Ball monster, not DBZ. There's something of an incongruity for a) each and every members of the race to be able to activate it (which might be culturally justified), and b) after entering this legendary state...for the character to still struggle against a troll.

My current feeling is that the ability to enter any SS mode might be locked behind a racial feat; compare Dragon Wings on the dragonborn, for example, where it's a racial attribute that any of them could have, but most of them don't.

Ah, but things about Super Saiyan have. Yes, there's a state called Legendary Super Saiyan, but so far, only two characters have managed to achieve this form: Broly and Kale.
Regular Super Saiyan is actually a transformation every single Saiyan CAN achieve, quite easily in fact. Something to do with focusing your energy in a specific spot on your body.


A side note- in standard 5e, encounters last about 3 rounds usually.

You haven't met my group :p For starters our DM likes to throw tough enemies our way. It's quite common for at least one of us to go down every encounter.


I also dug up a few other examples of how other people handled saiyans.

I've seen them. I've read them. That's why I started building my own, because it was lacking what I'm looking for in a Saiyan race.

BigB
2020-02-26, 05:53 AM
I think it's too much. I would go with just monkey form and some base things they get all the time. Maybe stong build (high carry capacity), and increased jump height or something.
base it on shifter, not half orc. Use shifter for a model on how monkey works. You can shift on purpose with your fake moon and get temp hp and size increase to large only for one minute.

On actual full moon you get the same things as before but maybe like natural weapons 1d8 bludgeoning or something.

Then if you are feeling really overzealous, build a barbarian subclass that gets slowly increasing abilities when they rage (go super saiyan)

Well, like I said in the intro, I built the race because I want to use the ability to go Super Saiyan and creating a (sub)class just feels wrong, because Saiyans are a race, not a class.

I only added the Oozaru thing so that I could add Super Saiyan 4. Otherwise I would have just created Universe 6 Saiyans, who don't have tails and thus no Oozaru form. :p

MagneticKitty
2020-02-26, 11:32 AM
It's an interesting pipe dream. For a one shot where crazy stuff is allowed sure maybe.
But I don't think most dms would allow it with this many features in a full game unless everyone got a very powerful home brew race. And for some settings that's fine. But I would not put it in alongside the phb races and feel ok with it myself.

I'm just rating it from a balance perspective. If you're doing an all saiyan game where all the players are this and you plan for the higher power curve it's fine.

If I remember right (and it's been a while so correct me if I'm wrong)
Up until the z fighters, super saiyan didn't go past super saiyan 1. It was a big deal when goku could go even further beyond. So you could argue turning saiyan should be a class (learned with great practice) and not a race. Maybe a race specific subclass similar to blade singer being elf specific. In other words, goku got there because he practiced a lot and was a great physical fighter.

BigB
2020-02-26, 04:53 PM
It's an interesting pipe dream. For a one shot where crazy stuff is allowed sure maybe.
But I don't think most dms would allow it with this many features in a full game unless everyone got a very powerful home brew race. And for some settings that's fine. But I would not put it in alongside the phb races and feel ok with it myself.

I'm just rating it from a balance perspective. If you're doing an all saiyan game where all the players are this and you plan for the higher power curve it's fine.

I've been working really hard on making it not OP, hence the massive time limit on the transformations. I'm still trying to figure out a way to keep Super Saiyan 4 and remove the Oozaru transformations at the same time.


I remember right (and it's been a while so correct me if I'm wrong)
Up until the z fighters, super saiyan didn't go past super saiyan 1. It was a big deal when goku could go even further beyond. So you could argue turning saiyan should be a class (learned with great practice) and not a race. Maybe a race specific subclass similar to blade singer being elf specific. In other words, goku got there because he practiced a lot and was a great physical fighter.

Yes, back in the Cell Games saga it was a big deal that Gohan was able to go past Super Saiyan into Super Saiyan 2. (Yes, it was Gohan, not Goku who went Super Saiyan 2 first. The original intent was for Gohan to take over as main character after the Cell Games, but ultimately they brought Goku back because he was just more popular.) However, by the time of the Buu Saga, going Super Saiyan wasn't special anymore. Mere children like Trunks and Goten were able to go Super Saiyan.
And now, in Dragonball Super, they introduced even more Saiyans and they learned how to achieve Super Saiyan without the emotional push, but just by focusing their energy into a single spot on their back between their shoulders, which triggered the transformation. And one of these Saiyans has been shown to achieve Super Saiyan 2 with just the same method. So at this point in the show, going Super Saiyan has nothing to do with physical training and more with knowing just how to focus your energy (so basically meditation).