Travelers of the Multiverce
Spelljammer Confirmed~
Creating your Character.
This document starts off with the new player creation rules for races. These rules apply to every new race. A quick breakdown for those people who missed the discussions around them last week (which is understandable there was a great deal of noise to feedback) :
Ability Score Increases : +2, +1 in whatever you want, standard and on top of your dice or point buy.
Languages: Common + 1 other, + whatever bones your DM decides to throw at you.
Creature Type: You get one, and only one (which is nice because having two types basically only gave you multiple weaknesses and no benefits)
Life Span: Same as a Human.
Height and weight: Same as a Human.
Basically, the new rules boil down to do what you want or ask your DM. Personally, I am not fond of defaulting to the same life span and height and weight as a human. It doesn't quite jell for me that (in this case) an elf, a hippo, a small gliding ape, a clockwork gnome, an ooze, and an insectoid, all typically weigh 60 kg (132lbs). What is most egregious to me is that somehow the Small characters are just as tall as a Medium sized human.
They should, at the very least, include a series of ranges for you to pick from depending on your body type. Though I do acknowledge that defining those body types could be a pain. Maybe start out with Small and Medium (those are already in the rules), then throw on modifiers like “Powerful” and “Lithe” for more variety.
I missed a line, they do.
Anyway, on to the races themselves.
Astral Elf
Continuing the tradition of having an elf for every type of environment.
I wonder if this is intended to be a subrace, the PHB elf has Darkvision, Keen Senses, Fey Ancestry, and Trance. Unique to this elf are:
Astral Fire
Pick one, Dancing Lights, Light, or Sacred Flame. Of note, this is an easy way to get radiant damage for your arcane spellcaster. Otherwise, you already have Darkvision.
Radiant Soul
These elves are harder to kill than most, any form of healing when you are at 0 hp automatically stops you from dying and brings you back to consciousness. That said, this will exasperate the problem some groups have with “Whack-A-Mole” style combat and encourage DMs to attack the PC when they are down, leading to a much deadlier game than they intended.
Trance Proficiencies
You gain two extra proficiencies in whatever tool or weapon you want. Handy, the worst you could do with it is give a Rogue a wider weapon selection, which is fine in itself as it would reduce the number of rapiers running around.
Over all, it's mostly on par with other elves. Personally I would change Astral Fire to let you get any Cleric cantrtip, delete Radiant Soul, and rename Astral Fire into Radiant Soul. That would turn them into an alternate High Elf, which itself is fine.
Autognome
Potentially Outmoded?
They are a small race with 30' movement speed. Which is just about the only exceptional thing about them.
Unlike Warforged, these are Constructs, flat out. Making them immune to quite a few spells:
Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting (8th level)
Antilife Shell (5th level)
Blight (4th level)
Cure Wounds (1st level)
Heal (6th level)
Healing Word (1st level)
Mass Cure Wounds (5th level)
Mass Heal (9th level)
Mass Healing Word (3rd level)
Phantasmal Force (2nd level)
Power Word Heal (9th level)
Prayer of Healing (2nd level)
Spare the Dying (cantrip)
There are also a few spells that only target humanoids:
Animate Dead (3rd level)
Calm Emotions (2nd level)
Charm Person (1st level)
Create Undead (3rd level)
Crown of Madness (2nd level)
Dominate Person (5th level)
Hold Person (2nd level)
Magic Jar (6th level)
Reincarnate (5th level)
Simulacrum (7th level)
And possibly more, this is an old list. As you can see, it's mostly just Charms, Healing, and Reanimation. They do, however, get an ability that somewhat mitigates this problem:
True Life
They can use Mending to spend a hit die. And benefit from a small list of spells below:
Cure Wounds
Healing Word
Spare the Dying
This is in addition to the list of healing spells that just work on Constructs anyway. Regenerate, Goodberry, Aura of Vitally, and a few others.
This typing and ability is great in t1 of play, and not so much beyond it. Given that most people play in t1 very few people will see the downside, but it will become a downside eventually.
Armored Casing
Automatically walk around in a Chain Shirt with none of the drawbacks. Except this doesn't let you use a shield like the Lizardfolk's Natrual Armor ability. Oversight or Intentional? Judging by the rest of the Autognome I am leaning toward the former rather than later.
Built for Success
An intrinsic Bless that you can use PB/LR. Very handy and fun.
Mechanical Nature
Slightly different than the Warforged's Constructed Resilience.
They trade being immune to sleep for advantage on saving throws against paralysis. Over all I think I would rather have immunity than advantage against.
However, this ability is kind of wonky when you consider the next ability.
Sentry's Rest
Instead of sleeping for a long rest you stay motionless. The reason this is weird is because Autognomes actually need to sleep or suffer the drawbacks of exhaustion and the like. Making this ability very strange to use.
Specialized Design
Two free tool proficiencies is ok. Though again, not as good as the Warforged who get their pick of Skill+Tool instead. I do miss that one UA feature that let the warforged integrate a tool into their body, that would be fun to bring back.
Over all, the Autognome suffers from being “not quite as good as similar options.” Though I believe this to be an unintentional result of oversight rather than intentional design. Sentry's Rest in particular, leads me to assume they meant that the Autognome doesn't have to sleep, even if it they don't actually have the ability that makes it so they don't suffer from the effects of not sleeping.
Giff
Can you smell the gunpowder? Cause I can't, not even the mini-culture blurb goes into it, which is a notable omission.
They have a swim speed? What? Where did that come from? Hippo's don't swim, they “moonwalk” across the river beds. I guess mechanically there wouldn't be a distinction in 5e. Still seems weird given how much of the racial power budget must have been spent on it.
Damage Dealer.
They reroll 1's but only on melee damage dice, once per turn. Yeah, I mean they are famed for their strength, but also their guns. Allowing this to work with all weapons wouldn't be out of line at all, especially considering how minor the bonus is. A better bonus maybe, +PB damage to an attack roll once per turn?
Hippo Build
Its a more powerful Powerful Build. This actually feels better than the natural swim speed because it makes them better at swimming by providing advantage on STR checks.
The Giff seem underwhelming as just another “Big and Strong” race, even if they are effectively bigger and stronger than the rest. I guess a little fluff does go a long way.
Hadozee
Glide my pretties!
This race can be medium or small. A bit of a retcon, they used to be just medium. They also have a climbing speed.
Dexterous Feet.
Instead of letting you use your foot as a hand (which has limited but dramatic applications given how locomotion works) you can Use and Object as a bonus action, just like a Thief. Handy and fun, if a bit of a misnomer.
Glide
You get a pseudo-flying speed. This has a weird interaction with the Falling rules from XGtE. Given that you “Fall” 500' a round, you can use this to glide up to 2500' a round. That is a lot of distance in a short period of time. Maybe there should be a cap on the fall distance per turn?
So in summery, make them omnidextrous, and cap the glide speed.
Plasmoid
I actually had no idea these people existed. I appreciate the descriptions of how their biology just kind of works like a humanoids despite being totally different because I can imagine the slew of questions.
As oozes, they are way better than the constructs that the Autognomes are. Heck, they are even better than the Fey races in terms of spell vulnerabilities.
They can be either medium or small. However, their other abilities make this distinction less important than on other races.
Amorphous.
They can squeeze into any 1' gap, and have advantage on grappling.
Darkvision
The standard. Which is a weird thing to say because most of the other races in this UA don't have it.
Hold Breath
I suppose this ability is more to curb questions than being actually practical. Without a swim speed (Why don't they have a swim speed? Or a climb speed? Those are thing oozes do.) it seems like the ability only there so they don't have to absorb nasty stuff through their pores at all times, which is kind of gross to think about.
Natural Resilience
You would think an ooze would be more resistant to weapon damage than acid or poison. But at this point being resistant to poison is a normal thing for PC races.
Shape self
This is 50% fluff. It lets you effortlessly change your body type from Gloop of the Herculoids to an anmie style goo-person on the fly. There is, however, no mechanical benefit to either (other than maybe slipping out of restraints, which you could already do with the Amorphous ability) and you can only summon up to two legs, two arms, and one head. Which limits the shenanigans.
The other part of this ability gives you an additional 10' pseudopod that functions basically the same way as Mage Hand does, but as a bonus action. Fun.
If there is one thing this race is missing, it's the Long-Limbed ability of the Bugbear. It would actually make more sense for this stretchy-limbed amorphus creature to have a suddenly extendable reach than a solid humanoid.
Thri-Kreen
Invested in the Infestation.
They are a Monstrosity. Which is the best creature type so far, given that they have absolutely no spell based weaknesses.
They can also opt in to be small. Which is more beneficial than it would appear at first glance due to how their arms work.
Chameleon Carapace
Another odd armor calculation that doesn't work with shields, despite their other abilities specifically talking about shields.
Also, as an action, you can switch out your cammo. Not really that great in terms of action economy unless you have two turns to set up. But it is persistent so you don't have to spend a bonus action to re-apply it every turn.
Darkvision
The standard comes back.
Secondary Arms
The ability we were all wondering about. How do you handle multiple limbs in 5e.
As it turns out, there is much you can do with it.
You have two normal arms that can hold anything, and your two bonus arms can only manipulate objects or hold light weapons. This enables a few fighting styles.
Two weapon fighting + shield. You can hold a shield in one of your main arms and use any combination of the other arms to attack. You can even manipulate an object with your free arm.
Hand Crossbow + Shield. One of the most powerful fighting styles, the one that was specifically nerfed with errata rather than a ruling, is back. You can reload with your secondary arms and still have a claw free for casting spells or whatever.
Warcastering. Your main arms can have any combination of weapons, items, and shield, and you will still have your secondary arms for performing somatic components of spells.
What it doesn't work with:
Two-handed weapon + shield. Secondary arms can't be used to hold a shield or wield a two-handed weapon.
Bows + shield. Same as above, even if the secondary arms could potentially feed you ammo.
Two-handed weapon + Two Weapon Fighting. You need two light weapons for Two Weapon Fighting.
Sleepless Revitalization
Unlike the Autognome, the Thri-kreen doesn't require sleep and can just chill for 8 hours instead.
Thri-Kreen Telepathy
This is actually the most powerful form of telepathy available to a race. It allows multiple people in on the same telepathic conversation, which they can presumably respond to mentally rather than verbally, as no action.
The Thri-Kreen is powerful, but not in the ways you would have expected at first.
dnd.wizards.com
