D&D 5E Elemental Bender "Subrace" for an Avatar Campaign

[Hriston]

Here's what I've come up with for a Bender human variant:

Elemental Bender Traits​

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All of these elemental bender traits replace the human’s Ability Score Increase trait.​

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Ability Score Increase. Two different ability scores of your choice increase by 1.​

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Elemental Bending. Choose one of the following options:​

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Air Bending. You know the gust cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the expeditious retreat spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the gust of wind spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest.​

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Earth Bending. You know the mold earth cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the earth tremor spell as a 2nd-level spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the Maximilian’s earthen grasp spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest.​

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Fire Bending. You know the produce flame cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the burning hands spell as a 2nd-level spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the scorching ray spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest.​

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Water Bending. You know the shape water cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the cure wounds spell as a 2nd-level spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the calm emotions spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest.​

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Dexterity is your spellcasting ability for these spells.​

About the campaign: The intention is to play a game set in the world of Avatar. It will probably be a game where there's one PC that's a Way of the Four Elements Monk, the Avatar. I started out thinking I could use Genasi for benders, but when I took a look at them, they had a lot of things that weren't thematically appropriate or just missed the mark, so I decided to homebrew this human variant. Other changes I'm making for this campaign are somewhat minimal:

• Human only: benders, standard human, and variant human
• Classes/subclasses restricted to:
  • Barbarian: Berserker and Totem Warrior
  • Fighter: Battle Master and Champion
  • Monk: Open Hand, Shadows, and (of course) Four Elements
  • Rogue: Assassin and Thief
• Banned feats: Magic Initiate and Ritual Caster

I know this is an idea that's been floating around. There's a few old threads on the subject, but none of them propose this sort of approach or really anything close to fully realized that I could find. I wouldn't be surprised if there has been an Avatar RPG on the market at some time. I haven't looked. I wanted to try doing this with D&D. Any thoughts?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You could get more elaborate - have you looked at the dragonmarked subraces in the Eberron book as a model? You could particularly use the "add these spells to your class list" mechanic.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I take it you haven't seen Incarnate: The Last of the Lacers on DMs Guild? It's functionally a 5e based Avatar campaign book with bending classes, though details have been changed. Honestly one of the best products I've seen on DMs Guild and it is PWYW. Might give you some ideas, if nothing else.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Bending seems considerably more powerful and versatile than the options shown here as subclasses. I think banding-based classes might be a better approach.

 

[Xeviat]

These would be fine for benders who aren't really focusing on their talent, but I'd make a bender class and likely build it on the warlock chassis. @Fanaelialae , I'll have to check that book out!

 

[Fenris-77]

If you are going to use the Way of the Four Elements monk I'd probably hack it a little to make it less meh. The Ki costs for the spells are generally too high across the board for example.

 

[NotAYakk]

Benders should be modeled as a class, not a subclass or race. They are both something you are born with, and something you spend your entire life mastering.

For people who are only dabblers, subclasses would work better than your racial abilities. It would let you customize them to using bending to enhance their main focus.

I wouldn't recommend hooking tightly to the Avatar fiction. You are using D&D, you should shape D&D to look like Avatar fiction, but don't tie strongly to it. (But in any case, most water benders cannot heal; having every water bender get a cure spell is not in line with Avatar's fiction.)

 

[Eyes of Nine]

If you are going to use the Way of the Four Elements monk I'd probably hack it a little to make it less meh. The Ki costs for the spells are generally too high across the board for example.

I thought the same thing. I also thought - wait, isn't the only character in Avatar that can actually bend multiple elements Ang - the titular Avatar himself?

So I might actually ban Way of 4 Elements as a subclass; or if someone picks it, they have to pick a specific element and are only limited to that element.

Also - my resident Avatar fan (my younger son) reminded me of the pseudo elemental bending - lightning, blood, and metal. Would be cool to somehow fold that in.

Otherwise, I really like the basis you have here. If my to-read list wasn't already stupid long, I'd DL that Incarnate book.

 

[Hriston]

You could get more elaborate - have you looked at the dragonmarked subraces in the Eberron book as a model? You could particularly use the "add these spells to your class list" mechanic.

No, I haven't. Are they substantially similar to the ones in the UA article? Looking at those now, I can see that the Mark of Storm "Headwinds" trait is quite similar to what I've done with Air bending, except it's for half-elves rather than humans.

I assume the mechanic to which you're referring is the Greater Dragonmark feat? I think something like that could allow for further development of bending ability, although it would amount to a racial feat in this context, of which I'm not a huge fan. Of course there's already the Elemental Adept feat which has some synergy with bending as I've presented. as well as Spell Sniper, War Caster, and possibly some others.

My main idea though is for increased ability to come mainly from class progression, in keeping with conventional D&D. I think what I've maybe failed to do with the subraces above is to have provided some way for their bending to synergize with class features. The first thing that comes to mind actually is to somehow say that some of the spells count as unarmed strikes.

 

[Fenris-77]

If you have an agnostic resource, like Ki points, you could also spend that Ki to add elemental damage and effect directly to unarmed strikes. Kind of a like build your own spell thing, spend a point to add a d6 elemental damage, spend another two to add a 5' radius burst, or whatever.