Discussion:Universal Android Variant? Feasible or Foolish?

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EthrixTheProtogen (talk) 15:38, 5 September 2023 (MDT)

It started with an idea. As things do.

For a sci-fi campaign where robots, tech, and cybernetics are the norm, and I wanted to add some homebrew races to the mix. Now there are many resources for androids, cyborgs, and whatever, but I've only seen ones specific to certain races, or neutral in their making to be simply an "Android," nothing more, nothing less. But in a sort of Detroit, Become [Race] fashion, I wondered if there was a way to make a robotic or part-cybernetic creature out of...well...whatever race you want. I had a snake-person in a non-D&D roleplaying group, just a freeform, throw text at each other situation, and her whole shtick is that she had been unwillingly made into a cyborg-clone-thing, trying to still be herself while managing this...new development, in secret.

To get to the point, I had an idea, what if there was one sort of "Universal Subrace" if you will, some subrace that could attach itself to the end of any character sheet, altering things like AC, HP, maybe some modifiers and special events, while preserving the player's originally chosen race?

If so, I'd love to make it, I have some great ideas, but...it's an odd ask, and of course, it may not be balanced to all races, but if I were to go about this, what sort of format would I need to use? Since subraces are, well, a variation on one specific race, so that's sort of out of the window. It's definitely not a class. Is it a...status? Is it so homebrew that it just needs to happen completely separately of any predefined notion of character creation and instead is just a few scratched in notes from your psychotic DM?

I'd love to hear some thoughts about this.