Spriggan Gnome / Gnome-Titan

[Segev]

Modeled off of the Spriggan from 3.5 and the Spriggan Gnome from earlier editions, this is an attempt at a weird Gnome subrace. I tried to capture the "they get sneak attack when small, but not when large" mechanic and to follow some semblence of the pattern for how things behave when they get bigger in 5e, leading to an interesting mechanic where they get an extra die of damage on melee attacks sometimes when they're small, and all the time when they're large.

There's a potentially powerful ability in the clause that causes all shapeshifting effects to end when they use their Hideous Growth ability, but I didn't want it to be something they could use to transform from (say) being a hawk to being a giant hawk that can be ridden while flying.

No spells when small, here, but to encompass the fear effect, they get proficiency in Intimidation. They keep it when large because large things are naturally intimidating.

Fortunately, I don't need to mess around with stat adjustments; 5e seems to frown on those. Instead, I just give them a +1 Strength, confident that being Small will keep them from having too much of a "strongman" carry-weight, while being Large will dramatically increase their effective lifting strength.

I still fear this may be too much. It's definitely slanted towards melee combat types, and I'm amused by the mental image of a gnome carrying around heavy weapons to trigger Conniving Awkwardness, only to have it just be "fitting" when they're Large. But the Gnomish +2 Int still could make a "genius bruiser" type gish effective. And I suppose even a straight-up wizard or other caster might enjoy the temporary hit points from getting huge. But please let me know if this seems either too much or (less likely) too little for a gnomish subrace.

I am unsure whether to call it "Spriggan Gnome" because apparently "spriggans" are a kind of plant monster in 5e, hence the alternate "Gnome-Titan" name.

Spriggan Gnome/Gnome-Titan

Ability Score Adjustment: You are unusually strong for your size. Gain +1 Strength.
Conniving Awkwardness: The unnatural strength of a Spriggan Gnome/Gnome-Titan is hard enough to spot that enemies often misjudge their own vulnerability when the little monsters appear too awkward or uncoordinated to attack effectively, and thus leave themselves open to greater injury when hit. While you are Small or smaller, if you have disadvantage on a melee attack roll, you may roll one more damage die than the weapon would normally allow.
Horrible Vissage: Large creatures are naturally frightening, but even when small, you can twist your face into unnatural contortions of malice and horror. You are trained in Intimidation.
Hideous Growth: As an action on your turn, when Small or smaller, you can choose to magically swell to Large size. If you do, any other shapeshifting magics on you end. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying grows with you, but reverts to its natural size should it be separated from you. Items only grow enough to be proportionate for you in your large form (so Heavy weapons do not remain out-sized for you).

When you activate this ability, or as an action on your turn while it is active, you may roll any number of your hit dice and add your Constitution modifier to them. Gain temporary hit points equal to the sum. Hit dice rolled this way are not available for Short Rest healing or the use of this ability until you take a Long Rest.

While you are Large from this ability, your base walking speed increases to 40 ft., and weapons you wield that grew with you deal one more die of damage than they normally would.

You may remain Large from this ability for as long as you wish, but must maintain Concentration, or you revert to your natural size, along with any equipment that grew with you.

[JNAProductions]

How often can you use Hideous Growth?

[Segev]

How often can you use Hideous Growth?

At will. Which is why it uses your Concentration, so you can't self-buff other than that. And it ends if you're KO'd. ...thinking more on it, the fact that taking damage can knock you out of it is a problem, design-wise.

I had thought of once or twice per short rest, but I'm starting with "at will" because the source inspiration has no limit to its use.

As-is, it's a speed buff, makes the extra damage die they can normally only get by having disadvantage to hit into a thing they just get, and increases their carry capacity. And gives them access to their hit dice as temp hp at a time outside of short rests.

[JNAProductions]

At low levels, it's close to double damage. 2d12 Greataxe damage isn't QUITE double, since there's your Strength modifier to consider, and because it does require Concentration, it's not compatible with Rage.

It's still far too good to be an at-will ability. It's better than Enlarge, in some ways, which isn't available at all till 3rd level and isn't available at-will unless you're a level 18 Wizard.

Edit: It seems like you're considering the worst case scenario for it. Namely, a caster who gets 2d6 instead of 1d6 damage, and has their concentration eaten up. Not a Fighter who swings for 2d12 and has nothing to concentrate on anyway.

[Segev]

At low levels, it's close to double damage. 2d12 Greataxe damage isn't QUITE double, since there's your Strength modifier to consider, and because it does require Concentration, it's not compatible with Rage.

It's still far too good to be an at-will ability. It's better than Enlarge, in some ways, which isn't available at all till 3rd level and isn't available at-will unless you're a level 18 Wizard.

Edit: It seems like you're considering the worst case scenario for it. Namely, a caster who gets 2d6 instead of 1d6 damage, and has their concentration eaten up. Not a Fighter who swings for 2d12 and has nothing to concentrate on anyway.

Solid points. So, remove Concentration, and replace it with some sort of limitation?

Maybe they roll a hit die and add their Constitution modifier, and gain that many temp hp, and lose one temp hp per round. When the temp hp are gone, they revert unless they spend a bonus action rolling another die to top off?

Maybe they can roll that die as a non-action if they hit 0 temp hp. Real damage gets through, but they can avoid shrinking by rolling more temp hp onto it.


I don't like that this makes them unable to maintain the size very long, but it would be useful in combat at least while having a way to beat through it.

[Twelvetrees]

Hideous Growth: As an action on your turn, when Small or smaller, you can choose to magically swell to Large size. If you do, any other shapeshifting magics on you end. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying grows with you, but reverts to its natural size should it be separated from you. Items only grow enough to be proportionate for you in your large form (so Heavy weapons do not remain out-sized for you).

When you activate this ability, or as an action on your turn while it is active, you may roll any number of your hit dice and add your Constitution modifier to them. Gain temporary hit points equal to the sum. Hit dice rolled this way are not available for Short Rest healing or the use of this ability until you take a Long Rest.


You may want to consider revising the section in italics. Right now, as far as I can see, there's no reason for a character not to use Hideous Growth and then spend all of their Hit Dice to gain a tremendous amount of temporary hit points that last for the rest of the day.

Changing the ability so that the temporary hit points only lasted as long as Hideous Growth did might make it more balanced.

What was your goal with the temporary hit points? I think there might be some interesting design room in changing Hideous Growth to work more like Armor of Agathys, with the form lasting only so long as the temporary hit points do.

[Segev]

You may want to consider revising the section in italics. Right now, as far as I can see, there's no reason for a character not to use Hideous Growth and then spend all of their Hit Dice to gain a tremendous amount of temporary hit points that last for the rest of the day.

Changing the ability so that the temporary hit points only lasted as long as Hideous Growth did might make it more balanced.

What was your goal with the temporary hit points? I think there might be some interesting design room in changing Hideous Growth to work more like Armor of Agathys, with the form lasting only so long as the temporary hit points do.

Actually, you caught an editing mistake: I had meant for the temp hp to go away when the gnome returned to normal (Small) size, and didn't include that.

Your idea of having the temp hp be a limiter on the duration is interesting, too.

This is probably over-complicated, but I'll use it as a starting point that might be able to be edited down:
Hidious Growth: As an action on your turn, when Small or smaller, you can choose to expend any number of your hit dice (making them unavailable for short rest hit point recovery) and add your Constitution modifier to them. You gain a number of temporary hit points equal to the value rolled (with a minimum total equal to the number of hit dice rolled), and magically swell to Large size if you gained at least one. When you swell to Large size in this way, any other shapeshifting magics on you end. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying grows with you, but reverts to its natural size should it be separated from you. Items only grow enough to be proportionate for you in your large form (so Heavy weapons do not remain out-sized for you).

You remain Large as long as you retain any of these temporary hit points.

You may choose to maintain Concentration on this ability when you initially swell to Large size. If you do not, or you cease Concentrating on this ability at any time, you take one hit point of damage each round at the end of your turn. (You cannot resume Concentration once you lose it.)

Of note, this offers no ability to voluntarily resume Small size other than to lose all the temp hp. Either slowly, by ceasing Concentration, or more quickly by beating oneself up.

I put the Concentration thing in so that it can be used long-term. I recognize that bruiser types may not have much they want to Concentrate on, but it's still something they need to keep up. The degrading temp hp lets them have some efficacy of their size in a fight, short-term, even if they need to Concentrate on something else or get hit and lose Concentration (but not if the hit was hard enough to wipe out their temp hp), while still ensuring they can't stay large indefinitely.

Though I'm tempted to just let them stay Large indefinitely, with the limit being more on how often they can switch sizes. That's probably too powerful, though.

[LibraryOgre]

My initial objection to "Gnome-Titan" is that the Gnome Titans are a specific subrace in the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting.

[Segev]

My initial objection to "Gnome-Titan" is that the Gnome Titans are a specific subrace in the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting.

I heard it in Knights of the Dinner Table. I don't like the name, either, but it's the best I can think of besides "Spriggan Gnome." And since "Spriggans" are weird plant-things in 5e for some reason, that also is fraught as a name. I'm open to suggestions.

[Twelvetrees]

Thinking about this some more, the problem is twofold:

There isn’t that much room in gnome subraces for abilities as powerful as Hideous Growth. The existing gnome subraces get an ability boost, a trait that deals with ability checks and then a fluff ability (with Deep Gnomes getting better darkvision and the ability to speak Undercommon instead).

You’ve got the ability boost, and the ability check trait covered, but Conniving Awkwardness and Hideous Growth are not so much fluff abilities as they are straight-up power ups.

Your stated design goal is
to capture the "they get sneak attack when small, but not when large" mechanic so let’s see what we can do with that with your existing mechanics.

Sneak attack when small

Bolting something similar to a class ability onto a race makes this difficult out of the gate. Right now, Conniving Awkwardness is the trait you use for this – and I fear it is going in the opposite direction of your stated design goal. More damage is where this trait shares a resemblance with sneak attack, but only getting it when you have disadvantage will encourage using Heavy weapons, which are not what one usually imagines being used for a sneak attack.

Three possibilities for you to consider:

- Keep the ability as-is. It’s a little powerful, to be sure, especially if using something like a Greataxe.
- Use something similar. Bugbears get a fun ability called Surprise Attack that could be used as inspiration. Add a limitation onto it like “This trait can only be used while you are Small.”


If you surprise a creature and hit it with an attack on your first turn in combat, the attack deals an extra 2d6 damage to it. You can use this trait only once per combat.
- Remove Conniving Awkwardness entirely. Is having a sneak attack-like feature a necessary part of this race?

Growing large

I…hmm. Hideous Growth is most assuredly not a fluff ability. That puts this subrace head and shoulders above the other gnomish subraces, so I’m going to give a suggestion for how to make it a fluff ability and then suggestions for what you could do with the trait as it currently exists.

Fluff

- Something along the lines of being able to grow to Medium size and gain the Powerful Build trait as an action. This still allows Heavy weapons to be used, of course, but it’s much more limited than what Hideous Growth is right now, so it comes closer to being in line with a fluff ability.

Current iteration

- I would agree that staying Large indefinitely is too strong. Can you explain what you’re going for with the temporary hit points? With the sources for the 3.5 Spriggan that I’ve looked at, becoming Large seemed to be much more the point than gaining health. With that in mind, what would happen if you tied spending hit dice to duration of size change? What would your thoughts be on something like each hit dice spent enabling the Spriggan Gnome to become Large for 1 minute?

[Segev]

I like the borrowing from surprise attack. 2d6 may also be too much. I could see it being just an extra die of the weapon type. Heck, for further limitation: it only works on creatures with the Surprised condition.

Surprise Attack: When Small or smaller, if you hit a creature with a weapon attack that has the Surprised condition, it is a critical hit.

I had a more complicated explanation of adding an extra die of damage from the weapon, but I was then contemplating that being too strong with a critical hit on top of that, and realized that if I just made it a crit, it would take care of that stacking problem and require less explanation. Am I forgetting anything about crits that makes them too strong here? They're definitely not a half-orc, so don't get the half-orc's extra damage.


The large size is the thing I want most, because that's faithful to the original. I am always disappointed when PC-able things get "almost, but not quite" versions of powers and abilities that monsters have. The extra hp were... well, I think my thought process was that they're going to be wading into combat and might need that since they are otherwise pretty poor at it. But that's not right, is it? Because they'll have whatever hp their class gives them. It's not like they have a con penalty or anything.

The extra die of damage is inspired by Enlarge's +1d4, but I wanted it to be more exotic than that (hence matching the die type).

That said, while I prefer not to cop out with Medium+Powerful Build... perhaps just the ability to cast enlarge on themselves once per short rest, and the caveat that when they're Medium or larger they have Powerful Build. This would mean getting enlarge from other sources also helps them.

I'd honestly love to have them switching between small and large at will, and staying in either size indefinitely, but I don't see how to make that balanced.

[Twelvetrees]

I like the borrowing from surprise attack. 2d6 may also be too much. I could see it being just an extra die of the weapon type. Heck, for further limitation: it only works on creatures with the Surprised condition.

Surprise Attack: When Small or smaller, if you hit a creature with a weapon attack that has the Surprised condition, it is a critical hit.

I had a more complicated explanation of adding an extra die of damage from the weapon, but I was then contemplating that being too strong with a critical hit on top of that, and realized that if I just made it a crit, it would take care of that stacking problem and require less explanation. Am I forgetting anything about crits that makes them too strong here? They're definitely not a half-orc, so don't get the half-orc's extra damage.


The crit is much stronger than 2d6 of extra damage when a creature is surprised - a crit would also double things like paladin's smites or rogue's sneak attacks. What you've got right now is half of the Assassinate ability from Assassin Rogues.


I think you may be able to get away with enabling Spriggan Gnomes to use enlarge at will if you put that ability in a feat. Deep Gnomes' Svirfneblin Magic feat serves as a good example of this sort of thing being okay, considering what it gives them: nondetection at will and blindness/deafness, blur, and disguise self once per day.

[Segev]

The crit is much stronger than 2d6 of extra damage when a creature is surprised - a crit would also double things like paladin's smites or rogue's sneak attacks. What you've got right now is half of the Assassinate ability from Assassin Rogues.


I think you may be able to get away with enabling Spriggan Gnomes to use enlarge at will if you put that ability in a feat. Deep Gnomes' Svirfneblin Magic feat serves as a good example of this sort of thing being okay, considering what it gives them: nondetection at will and blindness/deafness, blur, and disguise self once per day.

Let's try this, then:

Surprise Attack: While Small or smaller, your weapon attacks deal 1d4 extra damage of the same type as the weapon attack against Surprised and Frightened creatures.
Hideous Growth: When Medium or Larger, you gain the Powerful Build trait, which doubles your carry capacity. At 5th level, when you would become Medium or larger, instead of gaining Powerful Build, you actually become one size category larger than you otherwise would.



New feat: Spriggan Magic
Requirement: Spriggan Gnome
You can cast enlarge on yourself at will.
When Small or smaller, you may target one creature within 60 feet of which you are mutually aware. That creature must make a Wisdom save, DC 8+[your proficiency bonus]+[your Charisma modifier] or become Frightened of you for one minute. It may repeat the save at the end of its turn each round. On a success, it shakes off the effect. You may do this once, may do it again after you have taken a Long Rest.



I still don't like this, because Hideous Growth gives rules that grand advantages when the gnome gets larger, but no indication in the race that he has the ability to do so. It will take build resources, either yours or the party mage's, to achieve that. I need to look up dueargar and see how often they can use enlarge on themselves.

[Twelvetrees]

I think Surprise Attack is in a good place.

I would agree that Hideous Growth is in an odd spot right now. On the topic of how often duergar can use enlarge, they get the ability to cast it at 3rd level and can use it 1/long rest. That is much less often than what you want for Spriggan Gnomes, from my understanding, so let’s see what we can do about that.

It sounds like you aren’t that in favor of a feat. What if we combined this subrace with techniques used to create Feral Tieflings? I think you could likely get away with giving Spriggan Gnomes enlarge 1/short rest if the ability to do so replaced Gnome Cunning.

[Segev]

I actually don’t mind a feat. What I don’t like is the weirdness of a non-feat bonus that doesn’t do anything without deliberate build effort.

Giving up gnome cunning is a possibility. I don’t entirely like subraces messing with base racial features, but it is one way to rebalance a subrace. And gnome cunning is less important to this design.


Still, thinking on using feats...

What if they got Enlarge 1/long rest at level 3, and at level 5 Enlarge made them grow two size categories instead of one? Then the feat can upgrade it to Enlarge at will, and add the scare effect.


Of course, there's always abandoning doing this as a race at all. Bladesinger is a subclass that's race-exclusive. Why not a Barbarian subclass that requires you to be a gnome?


Path of the Spriggan Gnome (really needs a better name)
You must be a gnome to enter this subclass.

When you enter this subclass, your shadow grows grotesquely, as if cast by a Large, twisted version of yourself.

Small but Vicious: At third level, when you enter this path, you gain the Rogue's Sneak attack, as per a rogue of your Barbarian level, minus 1d6, but only when Small or smaller.

Terrifying Growth: At third level, when affected by anything that would increase your size to Medium or larger, you grow one additional size category. When raging, you are affected by the Enlarge/Reduce spell, but only to make yourself larger. You do not need to concentrate on this spell while raging. While Large, you actually match your shadow.

Scary: When you reach 6th level, you gain the ability, while Small or smaller, you may give up one of your attacks to make a special attack with a Charisma (Intimidation) check against a foe that can see your shadow and whom you can see within 30 feet. They may oppose it with either a Wisdom save or a Wisdom (Insight) check (their choice). If you win this check, they are Frightened of you until the end of their next turn. This needs rethinking. It's better than the 10th level Berserker's Frightful Presence ability.

Prolonged Growth: At 6th level, when your Rage ends, you may choose to begin concentrating on your Enlarge/Reduce spell to maintain your size. If you do, you may remain under its effects until you stop Concentrating on it.

Startling Presence: At 10th level, while Small or smaller, you gain the ability to cast fear once with this trait. You can cast it again after you've Raged. While Small or smaller, you have Advantage on attack rolls against creatures who are Frightened or Surprised.

Unrestricted Growth: At 14th level, it no longer requires Concentration for you to maintain Enlarge, and you may cast it on yourself at will without using components.



This is a bit messy, and I think I need to reshuffle the abilities in level a bit. But it's a rough sketch, and I'd appreciate analysis to help me with said level reshuffling.



Not sure I like it better as a subclass than a subrace, but it certainly gives more room to add impressive powers.