Talk:Felkin (5e Race)

Thanks for addressing some of the issues with the race. I think at the maximum, the race can keep its large size, +4 ASI, metallic diet, and the 40 ft of movement. That doesn't leave much room for anything else because of the inherent benefits imparted from being Large already. Allowing for a Huge carrying capacity pushes it to be allowed to lift a tarrasque, I think. The 1d8 bite attack is also still very strong, and natural weapons in official content don't usually scale past 1d6 + mods. Other than that, the race has gotten some flavor injected into since I last saw, which is great. Some of the stuff still needs links and proper wording, like scores and standard terminology. --Yanied (talk) 11:54, 18 March 2023 (MDT)

No problem. You think we should go for a d6 bite damage dice? I want to make sure the bite is worth using (that, and it's an omnivore the size of a warhorse and very much meant to feel like one), and longswords are pretty easily available. Although Monk is a thing. Anyways, a fair point on the carrying capacity, although it doesn't affect grappling. Anyways I don't know exactly what happened but the abilities aren't displaying. I'm assuming that there's something slightly wrong with the formatting. If someone could tweak that so it displays properly, that would be great. -Creator, 19 March 2023

1d6 bite + dex/str mod sounds fine yep. 5e isn't one to give players a larger damage dice just because of size, so that's the thing. And yeah CC doesnt affect grappling but its just a bit crazy to think some level 1 person can bench a tarrasques weight. Large sizes also can impart inherent benefits like for Large Player Characters (5e Variant Rule).--Yanied (talk) 20:50, 20 March 2023 (MDT)

Alright, I think we've reached a pretty much fully balanced conclusion. I'm surprised you felt that they needed Darkvision, though not complaining. All that really remains is to playtest them more seriously and see how they hold up to some of the better-made classic races like Dwarves and Tabaxi, which isn't something I can easily do myself. Removed the 'Needs balance' notation.

Sure, no problem. I saw darkvision written there so I thought to leave it. It can be removed arguably, or beast's intuition. Beast's intuition is a narrower version of the rogue feature so I'm unsure about it compared to darkvision. Well, for now I'll remove darkvision. The inability to speak common btw is a nice touch since this is a beast type race.--Yanied (talk) 19:39, 21 March 2023 (MDT)

Ever edited a page so much that you get kind of attached to it? I even made my own account! I'm determined to get this race completely fleshed out and to the highest quality I can without abandoning its' unique points. Feedback would be appreciated, and I'll be looking for a good image to add to the page. Anyways, I've added some Racial Feats and Subraces after talking them over with my friends. With any luck they should be quite well balanced, but I'm open to criticism. -Consort

Dragger is interesting in utilizing grappling more uniquely with an increase in speed.--Yanied (talk) 19:23, 31 July 2023 (MDT)

Okay, so I think I can address your concerns with the balance. Let's break it down. -The +4 total ASI and 40ft move is intended as the counterbalance to the one-handedness. Seeing as the one-handedness precludes the use of a shield or most ranged weapons, this means that while the race is a good martial, it can't get into high AC builds or ranged builds, two of the most powerful martial styles. This is also why Constitution is the automatic +2.

-As for the subrace traits, the question isn't so much about how easily other classes can access the abilities, but how impactful the abilities are. Melee countering by using a Reaction can deal good damage, but it's important to remember that even with 20 Constitution, most characters can only take three or four hits. This trait can be nice, but you never want to actually meet the condition to use it, especially seeing as the damage will be much less impressive than just a Hellish Rebuke. The Southern subrace gives an extra skill, which is great for RP but doesn't really do much the race didn't do already. I playtested a bit and found that that 12AC+Dex was pretty mediocre, so after taking it off the base template I upped their natural armour to the standard 13+Dex. Personally I think that Southern bears playtesting to see if it's disproportionately impactful, but I'm confident all of them are about equal in power.

-Feats, The purpose of the resistance to Environmental hazards is to encourage using the feat to drag opponents into dangerous terrain, or at least make it more consistent. While resisting lava is something I actually considered but didn't intend, I opted not to make the wording more specific because most lava will still deal high enough damage to make stepping into it for any purpose other than killing a boss (who should have enough Athletics and minions to avoid being grappled anyways) solidly not worth it. Chimeric Wings on the other hand has to be added because the species that I'm basing this on reasonably often has people make winged individuals, so the option absolutely needs to be there for them. Building on that, the question was how to give them flight in a balanced and unique way. I settled on making their flight slow, unable to deal damage, and requiring you to use Bonus Actions, but with the upside of being able to fly with much heavier things than an Aarakocra, including armour. It's about equal to the Dragon Wings feat for dragonborn that never made it out of Unearthed Arcana. Still, I respect that the wording could be cleaned up, so I'll do that now.

Counterbalancing extreme good traits with bad ones is discouraged in 5e (aka why they removed negative ASIs or discourage it intensely) because it allows you to try and justify putting ridiculous amounts of goodies as long as you put in downsides. This is false balancing and just forces strange situations for players with additional needs for rules to plug what holes are made. Additionally, the cohesion with the whole theme is kind of poor because of the central idea of "oh you only have one hand due to your mouth" and its interaction with other traits to be the major balance. As for the spellcasting bit, something like "You cannot complete the verbal component of spells with material components while holding anything in your mouth other than a Spellcasting Focus" might work better.

This race is also notably a beast type. As defined, "Beasts are nonhumanoid creatures that are a natural part of the fantasy ecology. Some of them have magical powers, but most are unintelligent and lack any society or language. Beasts include all varieties of ordinary animals, dinosaurs, and giant versions of animals." Beast type races are therefore kind of tricky and more often they would fit monstrosities. Additionally, this race is thus vulnerable to spells like dominate beast

Now, Let's break down these subrace traits in length:

• Testosterone:

-Name is a bit strange (I don't get it, do they have an excess of this hormone that makes them faster? Then what about females that convert it to other hormones, assuming they work like humans do?).

-This trait doesn't make sense. Melee attacks in reaction here are not specified in ways of unarmed strikes. They simply allow you to make a melee attack. You can do so with weapons as well. The trait itself is counterintuitive in numbers as well as narrative in reducing the damage to only a 6 at most even if you were holding a stronger melee weapon.

-If you made this trait and say it can never really be used or worth using, even at lower levels, then I don't know why it is here. The repeatability of it is pointless, and it is better off being made into a one-time use trait with recharge like dragonbreath or something.

• Lifestyle Balance:

-This trait isn't necessarily breaking, but it is strange. Also it should be stated if it benefits from the 5th level improvement...

-By strange, I mean why this beast has a charisma skill that isn't intimidation. As stated above, the flavor of beasts in 5e is pretty straightforward that they aren't very intelligent creatures, so it is already stretching it to give them a wide access to all wisdom and charisma options. At most, they would be survivalists, naturalists, intimidators, and a few select others. The lore is also now coming into question for me. They honestly sound like umber hulks at this point, which are monstrosities.

• Tough Hide:

-You stated that this race is unable to wield a shield, thus giving it reason to have a base 13 AC + dex (equivalent to lizardfolk). This runs into the issue of the initial false balance point. Having a 13+dex AC is decent at lower levels. At higher levels, you will thus be pretty much required to rely on magical items (which are DM fiat) because mundane armors can get outclassed pretty quickly at higher levels. Magical items are not factored into 5e character progression RAW.

Onto feats... While the intention of dragging creatures into such terrain is nice, the application is too narrow. That's why the increase of speed while grappling was nice, while the rest of it doesn't really go well. Grappling is something all creatures can do and is a neglected niche in 5e. So increasing your speed with it is nice. But relying on the need for terrain for damage makes it unnecessarily narrow. Dragging with damage is an interesting idea, but the distance can be shortened so it's not totally relying on your DM to make up random rocks to scrape some knees on.

The flight that allows for you to fall needs a way to trigger it other than your bonus action. As written, you just... fall. The last sentence is also a bit specific, so you may as well state its applications in regards to spells like gravity. "Grounded against your will" is a bit vague.

It's not necessarily that this race is too strong that the tag was on. Rather, the balance on it is wacky as heck. The lore also now sounds like it needs a facelift with the changes. Races with wonky balance are not unheard of (Bonthain (5e Race), eg.) but they are highly gimmicky, feeling both extremely weak and also strong (which is also coincidentally the min-maxing feeling we try to avoid with races). Overall, the focal point of balance being the one-mouth-one-hand sort of drags this thing's traits a bit in a loop. I highly suggest a design disclaimer for this.--Yanied (talk) 21:30, 1 August 2023 (MDT)

---

I respect that you're saying this is discouraged in 5e, however one-handedness is the core of the concept for this race from a mechanical standpoint, and I want to build around that so that I get a unique result that still feels good to play. Despite your concerns, it is overall pretty tightly balanced at this point, as far as I can tell. If you think it would fit better being switched to monstrocity, then that can be done. However I would consider Monstrocity a more powerful tag than Beast, and I'm not trying to create something overpowered.

Truth be told, I do actually want to rename Testosterone, I just couldn't think of anything better to call it that wouldn't be painfully generic like 'counter'. But the flavor is where I want it to be in that it represents being more aggressive and likely to react to danger by fighting. I did consider specifying that the attack had to be an unarmed strike, but that becomes mechanically silly since then the trait would likely cause you to drop your weapon. Northern also absolutely doesn't need a super strong trait since they have the best ASI of all three.

Southern's second skill pickup does benefit from the level 5 trait, which is exactly why I'm actually concerned this could be the overpowered one, but it needs actual testing. In any case, it gets to be a charisma skill to represent greater and more intentional integration with society; willingly abandoning the archetypal beast role.

Eastern is basically the original template (albeit with +1 AC since 12+dex turned out weak). I understand your point, but that problem defintely isn't unique to my race here- AC in general becomes very weak at higher levels in 5th edition just because hit rate scales twice as quickly (and to much greater heights) as AC unless your DM is actively dropping you multiple pieces of +1 and +2 armour. I mean, Tiamat has 25AC. A level 5 Ranger can hit that pretty shockingly often. But anyways my point is that even if it's true they'll have to rely on magic armour or items to have decent AC past level 9, everyone else does too.

Dragger does have that free damage component so that you don't need to rely on the DM to put difficult terrain in every map. Considering that I already gave them a 40ft base movespeed, I don't want to buff this feat to the point where an unassisted grapple+drag deals more damage than a decent multiattack, because this feat is also intended to encourage teamplay by having the party druid or wizard set up a Spike Growth for you to then drag people over. While I understand the reason for considering a buff, I believe it would become seriously overpowered if I did. You can do it if you're sure, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Allowing for you to fall without an action is intentional, just because it feels like something that a player will obviously ask their DM about to try and exploit the feat ("Why can't I just drop instead of land, to save my bonus action?"). Most of the wording there is just to allow for that without making it a way to cheese the feat into being stronger than it should be.

Anyways, if any when you're satisfied, please remove that 'needs balance' tag, as it seems I'm not actually meant to touch it.

By the way, should we delete some of the earlier messages to reduce clutter? --Consort (talk) 08:14, 2 August 2023

To clarify, as far as the banner notation goes, I'd actually be fine giving them a trait that makes them vulnerable to spells which target humanoids, but I definitely want to keep the ASI as it is. Dwarves and Half-elves get the +4 ASI, I'm confident that it's not imbalanced.

Thanks ZarHakkar for cleaning up the trait on the Northern, appreciated. -Consort

The spell balancing for beast type is not really the issue, so it can go back to how it was, same as for the construct types. Monstrosity is only marginally more powerful than beast because it is able to learn languages and such unlike a beast. My main concern is the race having a very strange sense of balance as well as the fact that it doesn't seem to be a very cohesive concept. I could envision this race building around its maw as a weapon rather than trying to fit it into a typical warrior/spellcaster archetype, which its one-handedness very obviously interferes with and seems to be the sole-justification for increasing its buffs in other places that don't make as much sense.

In such a race, maybe allowing innate spellcasting that doesn't need the usual components could help it be self-sufficient so it doesn't have to rely on DM-fiat or strange rulings.

Actually, 13 + dex (without being able to benefit from a shield) can be pretty bad from early on since certain builds in 5e already can achieve roughly the same, AND benefit from a shield early on. The need to rely on magical armor is a hinderance to the DM to account for, since, again, magical items are not an inherent part of 5e progression. A less generous DM then could wreck this.

The free damage component, as well as the feat of dragger as a whole, requires that you be able to grapple the target in the first place. So it needs you to narrow yourself into a grapple build to begin with. And then, the need for you to expend your one free hand on this means you are pretty much only going to be dealing damage this way if you invest in this feat. The damage type is also slashing, which I am assuming is nonmagical. This severely hampers it and that's where the overreliance on external factors come in. While expecting teamplay is a great idea, it also is a very specific idea of such gameplay. Narratively, this is super messy, as a beast cannot even tell its friends that it can drag its prey through some spikes, so please make some. Mechanically, it is much more narrow than other teamplay things like an overall temp buff or debuff on enemies, so it also expects your teammates to also shift their gameplay for you.

The lack of a need for an action should be iterated. But honestly, that also is free movement downward, no? And then it's also a possibly ridiculous amount of damage? This runs into the wonky balance with the race again, where it has these things it doesn't seem actually fitted to use as an adventurer to benefit? Also, this lore that you mentioned for whatever this is based on is kind of absent in the original creator's section, so it does still feels out of place.

We generally don't delete talk page content. At most, we archive it.--Yanied (talk) 20:53, 2 August 2023 (MDT)

Look, at this point I don't even know what you want from me, man. What even is a cohesive concept. If what it has is so strong that it's considered to throw the entire balance out, how can we even be talking about something as impactful as innate spellcasting? I feel you've started to move into really picking this apart in ways that are argument for argument's sake.

If you really just can't approve this template even when there's so much other stuff on the site that's much more egregious, why can't you just make a Variant? Take what you like, leave what you don't. --Consort (talk) 08:14, 3 August 2023 (GMT)

I had mentioned the wonky balance wasn't simply too strong, but also that it's essentially sort of lopsided? Basically, creating a large deficit and then trying to cover it in a way that just makes more strange holes, sort of. Innate spellcasting, say, with solely a cantrip or something just to allow for the race to have another utility, is a bit more straightforward than trying to word around one-handedness, essentially.

As for a cohesive concept, it's where narrative/lore/fluff all sort of translate well into the mechanics. You can look at some of the featured articles of 5e races for examples, I guess. In regards to making a variant, I'd just prefer to write some more on this instead if possible.

The changes that I made I'm not entirely sure on the balance number-wise:

• Base AC boost for general race since its a hassle for armor and shields
• lowered ASI and base speed
• split jaws
• used the usual monstrosity language since that's not the biggest contention tbh
• changed aggressive to a dragonborn style thing but focused on the mouth
• moved lifestyle to the southern niche
• made eastern more speed based
• changed dragger damage and added extra carrying benefit
• added level req for flight so its in line with 3rd level spell and added extra buff since it wont be available until 8th level.

I hope I was able to keep the lore intact and connect it to the racial abilities more.--Yanied (talk) 23:53, 3 August 2023 (MDT)

The lore is fine, but I need to ask the critical question: Is this template good enough to compete with Mountain Dwarf, Tabaxi, Fizban Dragonborn, or Half-Elf? Those are (to me) the best templates in the game that are completely accepted by everyone. In the current iteration, is this strong enough to be considered playable while they exist?

I do actually appreciate that you went to so much effort, but please put these changes on their own page as 'Felkin, Variant', as mechanically speaking, this is effectively an entirely different race. --Consort (talk) 07:06, 4 August 2023 (GMT)

Tbh though after some review, I think the only change I would really feel compelled to make is giving them back the +4 ASI. And also the image. They are an established internet thing; they do not look like that. (Need to stop cluttering this page's changelog now)

This is not really that cluttered tbh for a wiki. For some place that has open-editing, it's to be expected for things to get so long.

I've reverted the changes (kept it within 2 edits so that would be easier). But as you can read in the history, the lore was more connected and justified the mechanics, thus making it more cohesive. The mechanics that were changed also kept it in line with first-party content while also keeping that one super big quirk. I personally didn't think the mechanics totally undid the concept but meh, changes gone.

I am assuming you mean this by the internet species.--Yanied (talk) 07:00, 4 August 2023 (MDT)

Yup, that's them. Albeit with some minor changes that bring them a little more in line with how they're treated in the fandom (aka... more intelligent than a dolphin, eats meat too)

Thanks, much appreciated. I'd still be more than happy for you to keep your changes around as 'Felkin, Variant', as the mechanical design of your race certainly wasn't bad, just too big of a departure from what I'd originally envisioned. And I don't think anyone would complain about being able to choose between two templates. I'm going to remove the NeedsBalance tag now, as I think we're finally done with this page.

Oh and by the way, I did actually commission some art that'll be specifically intended for this wiki to use on the page. It's not done yet, but once it is, you can add it to your page of course.

--Consort (talk) 18:06, 4 August 2023 (GMT)

Nah, I'm not really looking to make a variant tbh, just trying to fix whatever I find. For now, rather than risk a long impasse, I would say the following changes for the sake of moving this along into some form of completion and usability for testing in general games:

• Design disclaimer at the top
• some of the scores are not linked and the units are not written out.
• Monstrosity is misspelled.

And then remove the needsbalance. If anyone needs the paper trail, they can find it here in the discussion tab--Yanied (talk) 11:14, 4 August 2023 (MDT)

Just noticed this thing is missing a random height and weight table.--Yanied (talk) 20:41, 3 September 2023 (MDT)