Talk:Mobian (5e Race)
I see what is being made here. I am a huge fan of Sonic the Hedgehog. I am here to provide the unsolicited criticism our fandom is famous for. I assume this is based on the SatAM/Archie iteration, considering the name? In any case, I believe that trying to represent every type of "mobian" through a single race would be incredibly difficult and nearly impossible to balance.
For example, if anyone wanted to actually play Sonic himself, their walking speed would be 6,756ft., the distance sound actually travels in 6 seconds, which is the duration of 1 combat round. (The dash action would double that, so that seems to be pretty on-par with how Sonic works.) Aside from being grossly overpowered, giving the player infinite mobility options in ALL tabletop combat, (As nobody has a table/grid large enough to limit such a character's movements) it would also be anticlimactically boring for the person using it. Going fast in real time is exciting- but in narrative time it just means lost opportunities for stuff to happen. Similar issues appear if someone wants to play Tails, Rouge, or Charmy. All of whom can fly, which is one of the least stable traits an RPG character can possess, as its balance relies on the maturity and experience levels of both the player and DM, AND the playstyle of the game the character is in. Knuckles would need a climbing, tunneling, AND restricted flying speed, and his unarmed strikes would need to put out enough damage to smash boulders up to several times his size, roughly large class (AC17, HD5d10). That is insanely powerful for 5e. All of these characters have exhibited the capacity to curl up into a ball which, while having limited movement control, (Which there is no way to meaningfully simulate in 5e) turn the user into an indestructible ball of death.
Then we get to the interaction with class features. How much do you know about the religious faiths of Moebius' people? How well was this even covered by the source material? That might be useful for anyone who plans to be a cleric or paladin. Or does it make sense for a mobian to worship a deity from an alternate reality? Does the sorcerer class make sense if a mobian chooses draconic ancestry but is not even vaguely draconic? What if a player builds Knuckles as his race, but chooses a class that doesn't make sense, like wizard?
In the absence of their individual powers, which vary so wildly that a subrace would be inappropriate to represent them, a mobian is mechanically just a reskinned halfling. Even the DMG supports that as precedent, with its advice about representing anthropomorphic mice using halflings without any mechanical change whatsoever. Most mobiants are small woodland creatures, mostly rodents, and any other type of creature has been reduced in size to be of the same scale, and to have similar physical qualities.
So, how are we going to make this? --Kydo (talk) 12:03, 2 October 2016 (MDT)
- Racial class levels :) Marasmusine (talk) 12:37, 2 October 2016 (MDT)
- The anonymous user did an excellent job working on this race, good job.--Blobby383b (talk) 14:27, 7 August 2017 (MDT)