Talk:Ankou Wraith (5e Race)

This race could benefit from taking more out of how newer races like reborn handle being born of a base race. This also has a lot of downsides, as if you were really on the edge of falling apart, which I don't know would be fun to play or if it should be a variant rule for rotting undead players instead.

• ASI for this race is a base -3 and then a possible +1 based on your sub. These decreases make it very difficult or almost no fun to pick the race for even casting classes since it takes down a weak caster's HP capability even further. It also relegates you essentially to either a charisma or intelligence caster (unless you don't take the -1 wis sub) and sticks you in the rear for pretty much all combat even if you want to play a martial class.
• Degradation is weird because it should be damaging, but there is no actual mechanics tied to it. So you have a rotting arm, but you can still use two-handed weapons. This trait is less a trait and more a fluff bit that would be in the physical description as a result
• Auravision has no real ramifications in wording. "they are aware of living things or objects that have been recently handled"... What does "handled" mean? This should probably go into something like the undead monster trait life sense to make for better wording.
• Undead affinity could just do away with the vulnerability, or change it to disad in save throws
• Out of time is highly campaign specific and might even be inappropriate for a race, better suited as something for a background maybe. It could be something composite in the race.
• Death's ward should increase your wisdom, if anything. Constitution is traditionally a physical fortitude stat, compared to wisdom which represents willpower
• Black fungus is extremely detrimental in terms of numbers. A -10 penalty doesn't really exist in 5e. At most you have disadvantage.
• Domain of death sounds like you need to be a cleric. It should be in a flavor portion
• Divine blessing sub gives an overall +0 in ASI with con and str cancelling. However, that means this overall decreases your con by 2. In general, these decreases to ASI were done away with in 5e due to shoehorning races into certain roles. However, in this case, it is really just debilitating.
• Divine Will doesn't make the most sense in what it is trying to do. In older editions, this would be something like an outsider being able to pass on despite the nature of them not having a soul. Look at how Fallen Angel (5e Race)'s outcast trait handles this
• Arcane stasis sub is another +0 and it nicks at your wisdom... for some reason.
• Clear composition doesn't really do anything because degradation doesn't do anything explicitly. This is more an appearance thing again.

Overall this race is underpowered and imbalanced for play. The wording for traits needs to be properly tied to mechanics and could benefit from looking over first party content of similar nature.--Yanied (talk) 11:49, 30 June 2023 (MDT)