Talk:Beeforged (5e Race)

One of the things this race completely misses is how insect swarms actually work. Swarms of Insects have a reach of 0 on their attacks and the Swarm trait both prevents them from regaining hit points and allows them to occupy another creatures space. How does this work in the context of Beeforged?

• Wasp Nest; Swarms can't heal, so that part doesn't work. Swarms can already occupy a creatures space so that text does nothing. It does let them stay with a moving target, though if the target is grappled their movement is 0 anyway so the target can't actually escape. And if their movement is 0 from being grappled, the difficult terrain is also meaningless. If you remove automatic grapple the whole thing works better, the reduced movement and automatic-chase actually matter.

• Wasp Nest cont.; the line "they can hold the object and use it as a weapon as if you were using it" needs A LOT of clarification. Do they use your ability scores and proficiency to attack? Should a first level beeforged barbarian be able to make 6 greatsword attacks per round? If it was raging, would the bees get the damage bonus? Wielding a weapon also sidesteps the reduced damage of the swarm's Bites attack from lost hp.

• No! Not the bees!; Is this intended to only modify the swarm's Bites attack or does it also improve the damage of weapons they're wielding with Wasp Nest?

• Swarm Armor; again, swarms can already occupy your space. Your swarm CANT attack others while they are shielding you, because to shield you they have to share your space and their reach is 0 feet. That's actually a good trade-off, though 110 hp of buffer with physical damage resistance is pretty damn invincible.

• Stinging Swarm; With a 0 reach, the swarm can only attack creatures who's space it occupies. While doing so diminishes the benefit of Swarm Armor (trade-offs are good), the fact that you can stack as much as 20d4 worth of attacks to trigger automatically every time a specific creature attacks you is probably too much.

Fixing these issues; the race is still absurdly potent at 1st level compared to any other racial choices. Assuming you do nothing else with your swarm but attack with them until they die, you get 5 Cr 1/2 beasts for 24 hours with no concentration. This outclasses the conjure animals spell on every metric, but for the sake of argument we can call it equivalent. An earth or air genasi gets a level 2 spell once per long rest (and not much else), where this is better than a 3rd level spell on the same interval. Except you can ALSO reclaim bees for extra healing. An insect swarm has 22 hit points, so when used for just healing it's 110 HP per day. This may not heal conditions like the 6th level Heal spell, but it's far more HP. The fact that it's self only is a bigger penalty, I suppose we can call that an equivalent to one spell level lower? All said, the effects of a Swarm Creation are somewhere between a 3rd or 5th level spell depending on how you use it and that's just not appropriate as a racial feature. If you take away the HP recovery effect, and start with only one swarm at first (with an additional swarm at 6th, 11th & 16th) you're closer to an acceptable balance.

That's just analyzing the Swarm Construction trait and it's dependents; +2/+2 Ability Score bonuses, Hive Repair, and the other subrace features also have problems. Removing Plant Pheromones and Hive Repair helps reinforce the focus of this race, calling out the bees. Each of the subraces need a similar focus, simplifying their features and narrowing their scope. Honeybee is in range of this; cut Honey Maker, reduce the ability score increase by 1 and you're left with: +1 Ability Score, 1 skill proficiency, a non-magical feature equivalent to a 1st level spell (grease). Wasp and hornet can follow the same paradigm. --Vaegrim (talk) 08:00, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Changed many things based on what you said and other things as well. Introduced lots of nerfs by adding on to the list in Mostly Bees to offset the usefulness of this race. I want to at least keep Honey Maker and drop Honey Slip, since I would like the bees to make edible honey in some form. The other sub-races can do without their last feature just fine, but I already went ahead and changed how those work, so tell me how they look now. BotsandBolts (talk) 05:29, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

You've added at the same rate you removed features though. Flight and Large size are both complex features on their own, dramatically changing the dynamic of the race. Your change to swarm creation effectively limits them to four swarms rather than five, but now they're almost-familiars that broadcast their senses back to the character. Cutting down all the personal healing features was a good change but Swarm Creation is still enormous in addition to the TWO major benefits each of the subraces contain. Honeybee is still the model here; If you want to focus on Honey Maker then cut Honey Slip and change make the Honey lose its healing benefits after 24 hours. Then it's a +1/+1 with a skill proficiency and a free lesser healing potion every day. That's a good standard for the power level of a subrace.--Vaegrim (talk) 23:16, 25 May 2017 (UTC)