Four armed race

[KittenMagician]

A friend of mine and I conducted a thought experiment on what a race with four arms might look like mechanically. We are open to thoughts and suggestions and are also considering a blend of the two ideas.

## Four Armed race (FAR)

i went for a simple no fluff concept. fluff can always be added later.


Ability Score Increase: Your Strength score is increased by 2 and your Dexterity score is increased by 1.

Age: FAR mature at a rate similar to humans and have a similar life span.

Alignment: In general FAR are neither good or bad and more than likely will follow to be chaotic.

Size: FAR are a similar size to humans and way a little bit more. Your size is Medium.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Four Arms: You have four fully functioning arms. You can use your arms in any way that any other race can use its normal two. You may wield up to two one handed weapons without the light property and two more with the light property. If you are only wielding one handed weapons that have the versatile property you may use 2 hands on wielding them as long as your second pair of hands are free. You may only wield more than one weapon with the heavy property or more than one shield if you have a strength score of 15.

While wielding at least 2 weapons or no weapons (unarmed attacks only) you may make an additional attack when you take the attack action. This ability will stack with any Extra attack feature gained from a class. If you wield 3 weapons you may make a single attack as a bonus action as per the two weapon fighting rules. If you are wielding 4 weapons you can make 2 attacks with this bonus action both of which follow the two weapon fighting rules. If you use the monk's flurry of blows bonus action you may make 2 additional attacks as part of that bonus action. If at least one of your hands is free you can perform the somatic components of any spell you cast.


I apologize if mine is confusingly worded. I haven't quite figured out how to word it concisely as there isn't a good frame of reference in the D&D right now.



Four-Armed Player Race Outline
Author’s note: The overview of this race is that they are a biologically created race of creatures
created to be the standing military of a physically weaker race. They are biologically created to
be strategically minded warriors with a focus on martial skill. This is just lore being made up,
but the core aspect of the race is built around the idea of having four arms.
General Racial Abilities:
- +1 Intelligence – Strategically minded
- Multi-Limbed: You have four arms and hands and can use them for the purposes of
handling objects in the same way. In addition, if one of your hands is free, you can
perform spells that require somatic components while still wielding weapons.
- Multi-attack: If at least two of your hands are free or holding light weapons, you can
make two additional attacks as a bonus action. You can do this a number of times a day
equal to your intelligence modifier.
Author’s Note: I don’t know how to incorporate more into this, but I like the idea of
scaling various usable weapons and extra attacks in the method presented in the other
build for this race instead of this concept. I fully admit that this is not as versatile for
what the intended concept of building the race around the four arms, I think I am having
trouble reconciling the balance issues in my brain.
- Proficient with simple weapons
- You have a Climb speed equal to you walking speed
Subraces:
Author’s Note: I envisioned two variants created for this race: a Strength-Based variant that
served as the frontline warriors and protectors, and a Dexterity-Based variant serving as the
scouts, assassins, and ranged fighters. I also went lighter on the abilities here, but I would be
open to more being added to this concept/section
- Strength
o +2 to Strength
o You can choose to have proficiency in either athletics checks or strength saving
throws
- Dexterity
o +2 to Dexterity
o You can choose to have Proficiency in Stealth checks or dexterity saving throws



thanks for your feed back and suggestions.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Adding extra attacks? Ew. No.


Four-Armed. You have four arms and may use them in the same way any other race uses two. You only benefit from the effects of holding one shield, regardless of how many you are wielding, and you can only hold one weapon with the heavy property at a time.

This is all that is required. It increases versatility and allows players to feel like they have four arms without effecting game balance. It's remarkably weak without other abilities, of course. But fluff is half the race, so.

[Damon_Tor]

My 5e thri-kreen works as follows:


Four Arms You have four weaker arms where most humanoids have two. Wielding a shield or weapon, except a light weapon, requires one extra hand.

This means a thri-kreen can use four light weapons, a light weapon and a two-handed weapon, two one-handed weapons, it a one-handed weapon and a shield. However, they have a ton of "free hand" versatility. They could switch between a bow and a great sword freely because even though it takes three hands to wield either weapon, they can hold them in just one.