Children of the depth

[autistic_lilix]

Hello (Yeah, I'm always saying "hello" when starting a thread, deal with it but I'm polite).
I've been adviced to put this here to get feedback, so here we go!

Children of the depth are deep sea creatures. They live around the midnight zone (so about 3000 feet deep or 1000 meters if you don't use the imperial system), sometimes higher, sometimes a bit deeper. They are a predatorial specie organized in tribes, directed by up to three leaders at the time, representing the current tribe's generations (they have a whole system I won't go too deep into). They are a predatorial race, hunting in small packs while the rest of the tribe watch over the young. Once they are in age to go hunting with the pack, they get a bioluminescent tattoo, representing their coming of age. Latter if they accomplish important things for the tribe, they might get aditionnal tattoos symbolizing those accomplishments.

• Ability Score Increase. They value knowledge over all, so they get a +2 in Intelligence. Their sturdy build gives them an aditionnal +1 in Strenght.
• Age. They age faster than humans, being able to go hunt from age 6, but live about the same time.
• Size. They are often slightly taller than humans, and sturdily build for swimming. Their size is Medium
• Speed. Most of them won't ever set foot on land. They have a 15 feet walking speed and a 30 feet swimming speed.
• Alignement. They tend to be inclined toward neutrality and order. Most are lawful neutral or true neutral.
• Limited Amphibious. Just like Locathah, they can breath both under and above water but need to be immerged at least once every 4 hours in order not to suffocate.
• Natural Armor. They have thick shark-like skin. When not wearing armor, they get a 12+Dexterity modifier AC.
• Blindsight. They use echolocation to hunt. They get a 30 feet blindsight on land, going up to 45 feet in water.
• Bioluminescent tattoos. Their tattoos light up in the dark and in water, making them easy preys for foes without darkvison.
• Mute. They speak in ultrasounds and appear mute to anyone who can't hear ultrasounds.
• Dry skin. All fire or heat related dammage reduce their speed in half (rounded down, so 7, 3, 1 and 0). If they reach a speed of 0, they need to be immediately hydrated. If they can't manage to hydrate their skin, they take a D4 dammage.
• Bite. They have very sharp ranges of teeth they can use as melee weapons.
• Languages. They understand Common and Aquan, tho they cannot speak it. They can write in those languages considering they know how to write (Intelligence above 5)

This is so much longer than I expected, and I doubt it's a good sign, but we'll see!

[kosh49]

The first thing that makes this difficult to evaluate is all of its weaknesses. Most races do not have weaknesses other than things like slow movement. There is a precedent for the Limited Amphibious, which appears to be a copy of the Locathah ability. But this also has:
A 15 foot walking speed (no official race has a walking speed less than 20 feet)
Tattoos
Mute
Dry Skin
The extremely slow speed is an annoyance unless you are in a fully aquatic campaign where it is irrelevant. The other 3 while they may be thematic are all really bad, and would make me not want to take this race
The Tattoos do not seem to provide any advantage to the creature, which raises the question "Why do they have these?" If they are deliberately applied (as the word tattoos implies) there presumably would be a reason why they would choose to apply something that has an obvious drawback. If they are natural (which is implied by the word bioluminescent) you have to wonder how a species with this kind of drawback is not hunted to extinction by all of the assorted predators in the ocean unless they tattoos are giving them an off-setting advantage. I assume the idea is that these cr3atures glow enough to be unable to hide in darkness making them unable to hide in the dark without actually providing enough light to be useful, but as written this is a trait that would steer me away from this race.
Mute is particularly problematic - these creatures are going to be hard to include in a party unless everyone is playing either this race or has easy access to two-way telepathy.
Dry skin is bad because fire damage is very common in D&D, and this looks like it will kill you faster than Exhaustion (which is generally considered a brutal mechanic).

The bite damage is not specified, which makes that feature incomplete.

I use Detect Greater Balance to evaluate races. Blindsight was a bit of a problem for me, first because it is better than darkvision and no other race has it, and second because it has two different ranges. I finally settled on 8 points splitting the difference between a guess of 6 for the base 30 foot range and a guess of 9 for the 45 foot range (as opposed to 4 for 60 foot darkvision and 6 for 120 foot darkvision). I might be a little low on that. For the bite, I assumed a 1d6+Strength attack. That got me to 15 points before I assigned anything for Tattoos, Mute, and Dry Skin, all of which are straight drawbacks that will only reduce the total further. The target is roughly 28. Even if I undervalued Blindsight some, the Bite Attack is 1d10+Strength, and you ditch all 3 of the drawbacks I ignored, that only leaves you at 22 at most, which is still weaker than all of the official races except for the vanilla human and the minotaur.

[Catullus64]

Hello! (I don't think you need to defend opening threads with hello.)

This race will work pretty well in a campaign set in or closely around the ocean, and be an absolute mess for any other kind of campaign. With that observed, there are a few things I would tweak about them.

If they're going to have such drastically slow walking speed, their swimming speed should probably be 35 or 40 to compensate.

The Limited Amphibiousness and Dry Skin rules should be folded into one, they represent essentially the same part of the fantasy, and Dry Skin as worded is very fiddly, not to mention deeply punishing. Myself, I would shelve Dry Skin. Limited Amphibiousness is already sufficient to make a PC roleplay these creatures' dependence on water. I would also perhaps have the timer on Limited Amphibious inflict penalties slightly less extreme than immediate suffocation after 4 hours. Levels of exhaustion for every 8 hours without immersion, perhaps?

Note that most other races with Natural Armor features have it at 13 + Dexterity Modifier.

For the ultrasound thing, you're going to have a lot of work to do to decide which creatures can hear ultrasounds, a group that probably won't include most of your PCs. Consider the effect that will have on running a game for a Child of the Depth PC.

[autistic_lilix]

The extremely slow speed is an annoyance unless you are in a fully aquatic campaign where it is irrelevant. The other 3 while they may be thematic are all really bad, and would make me not want to take this race

The speed was kinda hard for me to determine since I don't understand the imperial system (why feet???Why????) and I mostly use cases to determine distances, but yeah, converted into meters it's pretty bad and I didn't realise it. Since they are meant to be faster in water, I think I'm going to make it 20 and 40 or 25 and 40. Thank you for pointing that out!

The Tattoos do not seem to provide any advantage to the creature, which raises the question "Why do they have these?" If they are deliberately applied (as the word tattoos implies) there presumably would be a reason why they would choose to apply something that has an obvious drawback.

They use it as a lure. It's just that. Kinda like the anglerfish's esca if you want (well at least for the females but male anglerfishes are just even grosser than females, so we don't mention them). They don't see in the dark, and it's not enough to see much (tho it can help discern shapes) but it is an obvious sign of "there's something here". Kind of a parenthesis but a lot of bioluminescent animals are predators in real life, it's too much of a risk for preys to just have those shining signs that basically say "I'm here!". It would be useless and a huge drawback if used solo, and you're 200% right about that one, but it's not meant to be.

Dry skin is bad because fire damage is very common in D&D, and this looks like it will kill you faster than Exhaustion (which is generally considered a brutal mechanic).

Noted! This one being absolutely unimportant to the race I'll just throw that one out. (Good ridance tbh)

I use Detect Greater Balance to evaluate races.

Ok, I looked that one up and it's really helpful! I'll try to balance the race a little with it (even if I don't think I'll reach 28, but hey, as long as it's not too low) and either update the OG post or just post the updated version in this thread to see the evolution. Thank you so much for the feedback, it was incredibly useful!

[autistic_lilix]

Here's the edited version! I switched pronouns from third to second person (it's soooo much easier that way), changed the description a bit, got rid of a few drawbacks, filled in some blanks and added little pluses. It's overall more adapted to a non-ocean centered adventure, while still being most fit for a sea adventure (which is sort of logical for deep sea creatures).

Children of the depth are mysterious deep sea creature, seemingly descending from unknown land creatures. They are rarely ever seen venturing out of deep waters, and even more rarely seen walk on land, although some can go pretty far on earth to uncover secrets of long since lost civilizations. Not much is know about them.

• Ability Score Increase: Children of the depth value knowledge above all. You get a +2 Intelligence and a +1 Dexterity
• Age:You age faster than humans, but live about as long.
• Alignement:Children of the depth tend to be inclined toward law and neutrality. Most are lawful neutral or true neutral.
• Size:Children of the depth tend to be taller and broader than humans, although never more than by one head. Your size is Medium
• Speed: You have a base walking speed of 25 feet, and a swimming speed of 45 feet.
• Blindsight:Children of the depth use echolocation to hunt. You have a blindsight range of 30 feet on land, and 45 feet underwater.
• Natural Armor:Your thick sharp-like skin grant you a base AC of 13+Dexterity modifier.
• Fangs and Claws:On your turn, you can make an unarmed strike to scratch or bite an ennemy within range. You use your Constitution modifier to attack. On a hit, you deal d10 piercing damage +your Constitution modifier.
• Natural Proficiencies:You chose two skills from the following list to add half your proficiency modifier: Acrobatics, Athletics, Intimidation, Nature and Survival.
• Limited Amphibious:You can breath both on land and underwater but need to be fully immerged in water once every 24 hours, otherwise taking a level of exhaustion every 2 hours.
• Bioluminescence:You have bioluminescent symbols symbolic of your achievment tattooed on your body, making you an easy target in the dark. Your allies can spot you and help you in the dark, regardless of whether or not they have darkvision.
• Mute:You speak in a frequency too high for normal ears to hear, therefore appearing to be mute to anyone around you unable to hear ultrasounds.
• Languages:You can read and write in Common and Aquan. Additionally, you can deciffer ancient runes from most dead languages.

And that's pretty much everything I think? I'll add an illustration of the race later (probably) and I might lower the dammages of the fangs and claws and compensate by adding potential poisoning or poison dammages? We'll see.

[kosh49]

I'm coming up with 35, less whatever penalties are appropriate for the Tattoos and the Mute. After the revisions this race is probably fine, although I still think Mute is going to make it difficult to incorporate them into a party that is not exclusively Children of the depth.

The imperial system is a bit of a mess because the small units are roughly based on human body size (an inch is about the length of a thumb, a foot is about the length of a foot, a yard is about the length of an arm). I think the word mile is based on a Roman unit of distance based on 1,000 steps, but I do not think the standard mile actually matches the size of that unit and I do not know what it is actually based on. The ratios between all of these units make no sense because they were all established more or less independently. The original meter was based on a fraction of the circumference of the earth, which really is not any better as a basis for length measurements, but having all length unit conversions be just powers of 10 is soo much better than the imperial system. And the current meter is based on a set number of wavelengths of a certain frequency of light, which while it is very arbitrary it does tie the meter to a reproducible physical constant. I am irritated that the US government caved to pressure and abandoned the half-hearted attempt they made to convert the country to the metric system when I was a child. Being one of the few places in the world that uses an outdated and illogical measurement system instead of the logical world standard does us no favors.

If you need a frame of reference to convert feet into meters so it is easier to wrap your head around, 3 meters is almost exactly 10 feet (~1.6% error). Although for balancing things in the game it is more important that the numbers line up to comparable things in the system than that the numbers make sense from a real world point of view.