Building Playable Golem Race (Soul Golem) feedback welcome

Hi,
this is my first attempt at a homebrew race. The idea started with wanting to play a large race, but circumventing the problems that arise from large creature bonuses. The result is (I think) a blend of monster, Ebberon Warforged and a few golems from the dandwiki. Being new to DnD I want to present you a first draft. I'm hoping that your experience will quickly show me how overpowered this turned out :smallbiggrin: I tried to use jwbjerks "Detect Balance" guide to keep balance somewhat in check. I'm really not sure how the healing rules would play, thoughts? I'd love to hear from you what i should change, add or remove to make this race more balanced. Do you think it makes sense to play a physically large race as a medium one? If you decide to use this race, please let me know I'd love to hear how it turns out! Thanks!

EDIT: I've updated the race description with your feedback!

Soul Golem

Soul Golems are an amalgamation of stone, spirit and necromancy. Powered by arcane runes, their bodies act as vessels for the souls of the departed. Binding a full soul to inanimate matter through necromancy requires a large vessel. Soul golems have a towering physique and hulking proportions to meet those requirements. Whether by the ill will of a crazed mage, accident or by choice, the soul bound to the Golem loses its memories and personality, although given many years, shattered pieces of memory may return. Golems are usually loners, shunned and labeled by society as mere automatons with no will of their own. Their stone body, echoing voice and unmoving faces are unsettling to most folk. Some Golems seek to make the most of their second lives by setting out on adventures. Forging their own legacy, finding their place in the wold or creating an identity of their own. Others seek clues about their past lives and memories.

Traits

Ability Score Increase: Your Str increases by +2, your Con score increases by +2.

Age: Golems do not age, but their starting age is defined by the time the soul got transferred. Their lifespan is limited only by the deterioration of their physical forms.

Alignment: Any.

Size: 10-16ft. 1300Lbs. Your size is Large.

Gender: Soul Golems are physically sexless, but can retain the gender of their previous self.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 25 feet. Your jump distance and height are halved. You do not gain doubled damage dice due to your size.

Names: Some Golems seek gender neutral names like Thunderstone, Rockbreaker or Swiftriver. Others are content with nicknames given to them by the people around them. A few Golems might even remember their own names, while others take on a new name of their own.

Living Construct: You are a living construct that doesn’t need to eat, drink, breathe or sleep. You can not gain benefits from eating foot or drinking potions. You will never become Exhausted due to starvation or thirst, nor can you take damage from suffocation. While resting you must perform maintenance on yourself following the regular resting rules. While repairing yourself, you are aware of your surroundings but have disadvantage on all Perception checks. You are immune to disease and have advantage on saving throws vs Poison. You can’t be stabilized when dying with a Medicine check or spare the dying. Instead, a successful DC 10 Intelligence check or a mending cantrip is needed.

Stone faced: Your unnatural face is unsettling to people. You have disadvantage on Persuasion checks when speaking with non-monster races.

Construct Vulnerabilities: Because of the necromantic energies binding you to your vessel you are vulnerable to radiant damage.

Heavy Body: You may only wear armor specifically constructed for Golems. You always suffer disadvantage on Stealth checks because of your heavy body. You have advantage on Strength checks made to push, pull, lift, or break objects or people. But only when you're large.

Shed/Accumulate: You can spend 10 minutes 3/day to change in or out of a medium sized dwarf Golem (5-7ft) form by shedding or accumulating mass from surrounding stone, dust and debris. While in dwarf state you may disguise yourself and wear robes and other loose fitting garments. You lose advantage on strength checks and your racial bonuses to strength and constitution are halved. Toughness: Due to your massive build your hit point maximum increases by 1, and it increases by 1 every time you gain a level.

Languages: You can speak, read and write Common and the language of your original race, if you remember it.

It's interesting.

I think the reduced speed and the halved leaping height/distance are good, flavorful mechanics for illustrating that they race is a heavy machine race.

I will say that I don't see the point in treating the character as being medium-sized. Being able to be swarmed by more melee foes (especially ones with pack-tactics), is one of the significant disadvantages to being large sized. I'd make the race occupy a 10' x 10' area to retain that disadvantage.

I also don't see the point of having both the Easy Target flaw and the Natural Armor trait. If I were going to have both on the same race, I'd consolidate them by simply reducing the natural armor's granted AC by 1.

Now, with regard to the stat penalties, that's not how 5e handles most PC races. Even when 5e does have them, I think they are ill-considered, and that attribute maximums would be much more appropriate. I also think that due to the scaling increase in attribute costs attribute penalties are unduly punitive toward those using point buy.

MechaPilot said:

It's interesting.

I think the reduced speed and the halved leaping height/distance are good, flavorful mechanics for illustrating that they race is a heavy machine race.

I will say that I don't see the point in treating the character as being medium-sized. Being able to be swarmed by more melee foes (especially ones with pack-tactics), is one of the significant disadvantages to being large sized. I'd make the race occupy a 10' x 10' area to retain that disadvantage.

I also don't see the point of having both the Easy Target flaw and the Natural Armor trait. If I were going to have both on the same race, I'd consolidate them by simply reducing the natural armor's granted AC by 1.

Now, with regard to the stat penalties, that's not how 5e handles most PC races. Even when 5e does have them, I think they are ill-considered, and that attribute maximums would be much more appropriate. I also think that due to the scaling increase in attribute costs attribute penalties are unduly punitive toward those using point buy.

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Thanks for your feedback!

My fear with treating the race as 10x10 would be that you would be easily swarmed and killed. Large monsters usually have higher hp than players to make up for it, but as a player gaining even more hp would be too powerful I think. Although I do lack the experience to tell if 10x10 would really be a problem.

Would you also recommend to let the race have higher reach as well? My understanding is that large races can threaten 10ft instead of 5ft. The extra weapon damage die is being taken care of by not allowing weapons.

The separate listing for -1 AC is to emphasize the fact as well as giving this trait to further subraces.

So you would rather, for example, limit max dex to, 14 instead of subtracting from the stat increase? In this this case I think +4 str would become too powerful, but i really would like to keep +4 str on the drone subrace to make a point about them being potentially stronger than any flesh and bone race.

greel said:

Thanks for your feedback!

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You're welcome.

greel said:

My fear with treating the race as 10x10 would be that you would be easily swarmed and killed. Large monsters usually have higher hp than players to make up for it, but as a player gaining even more hp would be too powerful I think. Although I do lack the experience to tell if 10x10 would really be a problem.

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That is a risk. I think the bigger risk though is that a large creature could be seen as the biggest threat by enemies, who would target it first, and focus fire it till it dropped. However, there are options for handling this.

A feature similar to the Goliath race's ability to shrug off damage once per rest could be included. Alternately, you could have the race start with an additional die of HPs. Both are solid survival abilities. The shrug off damage once per rest offers more uses than the extra die of HPs at first level. But, the extra die of HPs allows for those HPs to be restored through healing.

greel said:

Would you also recommend to let the race have higher reach as well? My understanding is that large races can threaten 10ft instead of 5ft. The extra weapon damage die is being taken care of by not allowing weapons.

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You certainly could. However, that would not be my initial inclination. A large creature has longer arms, sure, but its enemies (because of their relative size) are also farther from where its arms originate. I'd be inclined to stick with the 5 foot reach, especially if it doesn't have the extra length of swinging a weapon.

greel said:

The separate listing for -1 AC is to emphasize the fact as well as giving this trait to further subraces.

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Presumably, all of the subraces will have some degree of natural armor, no? Just incorporate the -1 into the natural armor feature of all the subraces. Also, there really is no reason such a creature can't wear and benefit from regular armor. I'd have the creature's natural armor apply only when it's unarmored. For example, "Your body acts as heavy armor. when unarmored, your AC equals (insert formula here). Using a shield does not negate this ability."

greel said:

So you would rather, for example, limit max dex to, 14 instead of subtracting from the stat increase? In this this case I think +4 str would become too powerful, but i really would like to keep +4 str on the drone subrace to make a point about them being potentially stronger than any flesh and bone race.

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By default, all PCs, barring race or class features that change this, have attribute maximums of 20. Instead of giving the race a +4 Str, I'd give them an ability that increases their Str maximum to 22 or 24. In a like manner, instead of a penalty I'd reduce the race's Dex and Cha maximums from 20 to 18 or 16.

Oh. Because their natural armor counts as heavy armor, I'd also stipulate that the creature always has disadvantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks because it's (effectively) always wearing heavy armor.

Why not just re-skin the Warforged?

Quartz said:

Why not just re-skin the Warforged?

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That's also a good idea. Although it would take some alterations as well because of the large size desired by the op.

Reskinning the warforged was my original idea, but which one? There are so many versions out there and I cannot tell which ones are balanced. Some seem really strong with lots of immunities others are rather bland.
I think I took the warforged and tried to make it large. With large comes an extra weapon dice, -1ac, 10ft reach, 10x10 size, grappling huge creatures. From what I read, the consensus was that these traits would be too powerful for a pc race. So i tried to keep the race medium.

Id also like to leave out the shrink ability, but I'm presuming that would be too much of a pain for the dm to accomodate a large creature for every dungeon, house or similar situation. Having to wait outside also seems kind of boring.

I'll update the race over the weekend with your feedback.

greel said:

Reskinning the warforged was my original idea, but which one? There are so many versions out there and I cannot tell which ones are balanced. Some seem really strong with lots of immunities others are rather bland.
I think I took the warforged and tried to make it large. With large comes an extra weapon dice, -1ac, 10ft reach, 10x10 size, grappling huge creatures. From what I read, the consensus was that these traits would be too powerful for a pc race. So i tried to keep the race medium.

Id also like to leave out the shrink ability, but I'm presuming that would be too much of a pain for the dm to accomodate a large creature for every dungeon, house or similar situation. Having to wait outside also seems kind of boring.

I'll update the race over the weekend with your feedback.

Click to expand...

Being able to grapple huge creatures is fine. If I recall correctly, being large would mean that small-sized foes could move through your space, so that's a mitigating factor, as is the ability for a 10' x 10' space to be mobbed by an additional four creatures.

With regard to your choice of warforged to reskin, I'd start with the one presented in the Unearthed Arcana article. You could also go with a fan-made option, but you have to be even more aware of balance issues with those than you would with WotC material (which still requires some balance awareness, because while they're good, they're not perfect).

As for a large creature being a pain to accommodate, that's not a huge concern. It will certainly be a factor for DMs to consider when deciding to allow the race or not, but don't let it be your deciding factor, especially if you make your own adventures. Despite the name, D&D doesn't have to take place in dungeons. And, when it does, not all dungeons are made by small and medium-sized creatures. A giant-made dungeon or an ogre-made dungeon would suit a large character well.

why do you want to play a large race?