Kender homebrew

slightlyprime

First Post
Kender:

Ability score increase: dexterity increases by 2 and charisma by 1.

Age: A kender's natural lifespan is about 100 years. They age slowly, remaining childlike in comparison to other races even when their bodies slow down. Kender view death as the next great adventure, and do not linger long in sadness after the passing of a loved one.

Alignment: A kenders wanderlust leads most to be chaotic but their childlike innocence and kind hearts causes most kender to be of good alignment.

Size: Kender are generally between 3 and 4 feet tall and average around 80 pounds. Their size is Small.

Speed: your base walking speed is 30ft.

Darkvision: All kender have keen eyes, within 60 feet of you, treat dim light as bright, darkness as dim light.

Fearless: A kender's childlike innocence prevents them from fully grasping the consequences of their actions, providing them with the overconfidence of human youth. Kenders are immune to the frightened condition and do not experince fear. When you fail a fear check, you only get the feeling of butterflies in your stomach. Though they feel no fear for themselves, they can and do fear for the safety of their friends and family.

Nimbleness: You can move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than yours.

Languages : Kender can read, speak and write Common and Kenderspeak.

Curiosity: Whilst kender have no concept of property ownership, and detest thieving they have a tendency to ‘borrow' items of interest for indeterminate amounts of time. You gain proficiency in sleight of hand checks and start with 5 extra trinkets.

Taunt: Kender are masters at the art of insulting people, using a wide repertoire of taunts, sarcasm, rudeness, and insults. This is possible due to the shocking insights into an individual's character flaws that a kender can gain through his or her intense curiosity. As an action you designate one creature within 60ft, you learn 1 character flaw if they possess any, additionally you can unleash a string of sarcasm, insults and crude comments against the target. If the target understands you it must succeed on an insight check contested by your performance check, if they fail they cannot take reactions and have disadvantage on the next ability check or attack roll they make before the start of your next go. Whether they save or fail the creature has advantage on subsequent checks against this ability for the next 24 hrs. Using this ability to taunt is risky as it highlights the irritating nature of some kender causing creatures within 60ft of you to be more likely to choose you as the target of their attacks, however, there is no mechanical obligation that they must.

Weapon proficiency: you become profficient with hoopaks.

Hoopaks: mellee martial weapon.
staff, with spear tip at one end and sling at the other.
Damage: 1d4 bludgeoning or piercing (melee) or 1d4 bludgeoning (range)
Special : versatile (1d6), ammunition, sling range (60/240), spear range (20/60)
Note : The versatile trait of the hoopak applies to both melee and ranged attacks. counts as a ranged weapon when used for the sling. Also as an action you can make it make a noise by slinging it in a circle.

I feel that this is a balanced race but was curious on other peoples opinions. I noticed that a lot of homebrews of the kender had a very powerful taunt mechanic that was equal or better than the panache ability of the swashbucker from scag. I feel it is more in line with vicous mockery but instead of psychic damage you remove their reaction attacks.
Thanks to anyone who made kender homebrews as i probs took a mechanic or inspiration from it.
 

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Jediking

Explorer
-Speed is 30 ft. All other Small races are typically 25 ft. Why the difference?

-Fearless: Immunity to fear is a powerful ability that some classes (ex Paladin) do not get until level 10. Maybe make it advantage instead?

-Curiosity: Proficient in Sleight of Hand skill seems fine, but this flavour is opening up stealing from anyone. Saying "I didn't steal it, I just borrowed without permission" won't fly well in a party.

-Taunt: Too wordy. Try and simplify the language and action required. It also kind of forces any Kender PC to take the Performance skill to utilize it. Either give them the Vicious Mockery cantrip straight up or maybe rework it as a distraction/aggro technique (see: Protection fighting style, Goblin Boss ability). Seems powerful against even high Wisdom creatures (especially higher CR creatures where disadvantage is a big deal) as they won't necessarily be proficient in Insight.


Overall, I think Taunt needs some reworking and any immunity should be handled carefully as a racial trait. Kender has a bad rep (and rightfully so I think) and your flavour seems to be bringing it up. Your Kender seems a bit of a mix of Lightfoot Halfling and Forest Gnome but without much difference from either.

Try and find it's identity besides just being a child-like nuisance. Keep most of that as flavour (borrowing, mischievous), but make the mechanical aspects a little more broad and use game terms to help describe any actions.
 

slightlyprime

First Post
I increased the speed to 30ft to show their energetic attitude and they are fast because they want to get to the interesting places faster. Kinda lameish reason but didn't see it as a big deal.

Personally don't like taunt as part of a race, and vicous mockery is magical so didn't fit the theme in my opinion. However, taunt is a big deal to kender so i put something in there which I felt wasn't too powerful.

Fearless, whilst better than halflings advantage vs fear I felt was about equal to elves immune to magical sleep plus advantage vs charm, also whilst lots of big bads have fear effects by that point many classes have a way to deal with fear aura. Therefore I didn't think it was very significant as monks, fighters indomitable ability, halflings, anyone with a high wisdom save and berserker barbarians are fine against fear most of the time.Sure none of them are immune but frightened is normally not quite as bad as some charmed effects in my opinion.

I agree kender don't work well in many parties due to stealing, however, kender only take interesting things so a shiny spoon is good but a jewl or sword are kinda dull, so they can work depending on the player. Was going to play a kender in upcoming campaign where we are using the dmg variant with rotating dm, but felt it wouldn't work well as it is oathbreaker pally and an evil dragon creature from dragonlance (forgot name) which is a berserker barbarian (we modified the class so no exhaustion and intimidating presence uses str rather than cha). So kender would have been a problem not because of stealing but would have been killed for telling the paladin to not kill innocents, (in a funny group that balance is secondary to fun). So not actually going to use the class now in the close future but if i did feel it is moderatley playable except taunt which is a lame ability but necessary for flavour.

I will take on your advice though of rewording taunt, it is overly verbose and is too different to other races, really tempted to just drop the ability all together.
 

slightlyprime

First Post
I was tempted to do it as a halfing subrace but felt any taunt mechanic would be approximately equal to lucky so didn't want kender to get both.
 

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