D&D 5E Balancing Grung for 2024 Campaign

[plecostomus]

My first character ever was a grung, and I would like to include them as an option in a 5E 2024 campaign. However, I don't think I should include them as-is because of changes in how 2024 species are designed, and because their original design was not necessarily for regular campaigns anyway.

I've included a picture above so you can see how cute grung are. We're going to ignore the art where they have giant human molars.

Here's the stats:

Grung 2014 (One Grung Above)
DEX+2 / CON+1
Size: Small
Speed: 25 walking and 25 climbing
Languages: Grung
Age: "Grungs mature to adulthood in a single year", 50 year max

Traits
Arboreal Alertness. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.
Amphibious. You can breathe air and water.
Standing Leap. Your long jump is up to 25 feet and your high jump is up to 15 feet, with or without a running start.
Poison Immunity. You’re immune to poison damage and the poisoned condition.
Poisonous Skin. Any creature that grapples you or otherwise comes into direct contact with your skin must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or become poisoned for 1 minute. A poisoned creature no longer in direct contact with you can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
You can also apply this poison to any piercing weapon as part of an attack with that weapon, though when you hit the poison reacts differently. The target must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or take 2d4 poison damage.
Water Dependency. If you fail to immerse yourself in water for at least 1 hour during a day, you suffer one level of exhaustion at the end of that day. You can only recover from this exhaustion through magic or by immersing yourself in water for at least 1 hour.

---

My initial thoughts:

1. Remove DEX+2 / CON+1 per 2024 rules. Backgrounds take care of that now.
2. Remove Language per 2024 rules. Maybe some flavor text about grung being able to communicate in frog noises ("Grung language"). My grung's noises were based on the infamous desert rain frog.
3. 2024 PHB on age: "Members of most species live for about 80 years, with exceptions noted in the text about the species in this chapter. Regardless of life span, members of all species reach physical maturity at about the same age. Your character can be any age that isn’t beyond their species’ normal life span."
   
   My grung was a full adult at 2 years old, which everyone thought was very funny, but seemingly that and shortened lifespans are no longer a thing (the only exceptions in the PHB are longer-than-standard).
   
   I think I can let this go. You would just have to decide if the tadpole stage is still a few months followed by a juvenile stage of typical years, or if your tadpoles are getting all Lord of the Flies for years before adult grung emerge from the pools. There's plenty of weird lore to write about frog people without focusing on age. And this is all in the flavor area anyway, not really changing any mechanics. I only included this because at the time grung were written, it was an itemized part of the species.
4. 2024 gnomes are at 30 movement speed but do not have an additional movement type. My grung had a swim speed and not a climb speed. Maybe give players a choice, tree frog vs. regular frog? Or be a real sicko and give them both. You'd have to leave the base speed at 25 in that case though...right?
   
   Once again, my experience with my grung is she was a monk, so she got very fast very quickly, and she ended up climbing walls anyway...people might want to play other classes as a grung though.
   
   Another speed reference: Aarakocra and Fairy are at 30/30 walk/fly as of MOTM, but can't fly with medium/heavy armor.
5. Arboreal Alertness, eh. Perception is certainly valuable. I feel like removing this for "balance" is a cry for help instead of genuine balancing for Poison Immunity/Poisonous Skin. On the other hand, grung have so many unique mechanics it feels this was padded on because other species have something like it, and it isn't actually necessary.
6. Amphibious, Standing Leap stay as is. Good frog traits. Amphibious kind of calls attention to grung not having a swim speed.
7. Poison Immunity should probably just be removed as it is massively OP? They can be immune to grung poison. My grung did not have this trait so I can't speak to it in practice.
   
   Adjusting the immunity to be for poison damage only feels like granting immunity to the Poisoned condition anyway, except that you would still suffer from the rider ("You have Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks")—sounds confusing!
8. Water Dependency should probably be removed for the same reason Sunlight Sensitivity is no longer a thing. It rarely came up for my grung anyway. It did have some cute roleplay (she slept in a barrel of water...sometimes spiked with wine) but that can be done without a mechanical effect. Water Dependency is presumably the balance "anchor" that is supposed to let grung have all these other mechanics, but as I said it really didn't come up in my campaign. We were not playing a nautical campaign, I didn't get to swim a lot. But water is easy to find or make in a magical world.
9. Poisonous Skin is the one I really need help with. My DM played this as the grung had to make continuous contact (i.e. stand on somebody, because she is Small after all, or grapple or hold part of their body) to initiate the contact poison. The default way this works is the grung can poison on any contact. Keeping in mind the Poisoned condition rider is vital here too ("You have Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks"), but also the fact that many monsters have poison damage resist and Poisoned condition immunity, or so the internet tells me.
   
   Sidenote: Roleplay-wise my DM immediately specified my grung could "poison on demand", so that she could still do things like give her friends a hug. I'm not sure that's actually what I wanted. I was planning to play her as being very touch-averse and staying covered up most of the time. But this might a Sunlight Sensitivity situation.

Let me know what you think, including if something is setting off an alarm and I haven't mentioned it.

 

[aco175]

Sounds like you thought about most of the things. I would strip things down to a base creature and then add feats for special things or something that is more a sub-type grung. Poison skin is one and maybe climb or swim being another. Have a base creature that is about on par with the other races and go from there.

I'm not sure why they are immune to poison and the poisoned condition. I can see poison of the same frog type they are but not from a snake or bee sting. I guess 5e has all poison as a generic poison. Same with the condition. I see it as more having poison running its course through your body and it takes as long to purge as for you to make a save. They could still have the condition regardless of what you do with the damage.

Water dependency is useless like sunlight sensitivity. It makes sense roleplay-wise but generally playing it never comes up or is just a hoop to make players jump.

Poison skin if not moved to a feat can be a uses per day thing or 1/rest. I can see using a bonus action to coat a weapon to deal (+1d6) poison per tier like a cantrip. Maybe a feat can double this damage. Most poison damage needs to be part of a hit before it takes the additional damage, so just touching should not be a problem anyways. I see it as more a DM hoop thing as well. Skip all the "You are walking through a crowd and bump into someone". or "I strip naked before jumping into combat". Just go with a few times per day coolness and let the player figure out how it happens.

 

[plecostomus]

Sounds like you thought about most of the things. I would strip things down to a base creature and then add feats for special things or something that is more a sub-type grung. Poison skin is one and maybe climb or swim being another. Have a base creature that is about on par with the other races and go from there.

I'm not sure why they are immune to poison and the poisoned condition. I can see poison of the same frog type they are but not from a snake or bee sting. I guess 5e has all poison as a generic poison. Same with the condition. I see it as more having poison running its course through your body and it takes as long to purge as for you to make a save. They could still have the condition regardless of what you do with the damage.

Water dependency is useless like sunlight sensitivity. It makes sense roleplay-wise but generally playing it never comes up or is just a hoop to make players jump.

Poison skin if not moved to a feat can be a uses per day thing or 1/rest. I can see using a bonus action to coat a weapon to deal (+1d6) poison per tier like a cantrip. Maybe a feat can double this damage. Most poison damage needs to be part of a hit before it takes the additional damage, so just touching should not be a problem anyways. I see it as more a DM hoop thing as well. Skip all the "You are walking through a crowd and bump into someone". or "I strip naked before jumping into combat". Just go with a few times per day coolness and let the player figure out how it happens.

Thanks for your thoughts! The idea of charges for poisonous skin is great, since I think some other 2024 species use that model.

RE: poison immunity, D&D has a certain RPG logic (or Pokemon logic, if you prefer) that if a monster is poisonous then the monster is probably resistant to poison. This helps players when they see a monster exhale a poisonous breath or has a poison sting on its tail, they know they probably shouldn't use poison damage on that monster. It's not connected to reality.

And this "elemental poison" logic extends to PCs when you're talking about something like yuan-ti (looks like a snake > therefore poisonous > therefore resistant to poison) or grung.

The other thought I had on this is One Grung Above contains a party of only grung characters (er, and one "albino dwarf"), so they possibly just made them poison immune (copying the Volo-era yuan-ti trait) to make sure they didn't poison each other.

 

[billd91]

Grung 2014 (One Grung Above)
DEX+2 / CON+1
Size: Small
Speed: 25 walking and 25 climbing
Languages: Grung
Age: "Grungs mature to adulthood in a single year", 50 year max

Traits
Arboreal Alertness. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.
Amphibious. You can breathe air and water.
Standing Leap. Your long jump is up to 25 feet and your high jump is up to 15 feet, with or without a running start.
Poison Immunity. You’re immune to poison damage and the poisoned condition.
Poisonous Skin. Any creature that grapples you or otherwise comes into direct contact with your skin must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or become poisoned for 1 minute. A poisoned creature no longer in direct contact with you can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
You can also apply this poison to any piercing weapon as part of an attack with that weapon, though when you hit the poison reacts differently. The target must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or take 2d4 poison damage.
Water Dependency. If you fail to immerse yourself in water for at least 1 hour during a day, you suffer one level of exhaustion at the end of that day. You can only recover from this exhaustion through magic or by immersing yourself in water for at least 1 hour.

As you pointed out, backgrounds take care of the stat adjustments so those go away.
Speed: nobody small is penalized 5' in movement to these should go to 30, having a climb (or swim) speed isn't a big deal
Age: eh, don't sweat it, not a factor

Keep Amphibious, Aboreal Alertnetss, and Standing Leap as they are.
For Poison Immunity, steal the same properties as Dwarven Resilience.
Ditch Water Dependency.
For Poisonous Skin - ditch the poison damage on piercing weapons and I think it's still fine. Maybe add "Any creature that isn't a fellow Grung that grapples you...etc.

And I think you'd be fine.

 

[plecostomus]

Grung 2024
Size: Small
Speed: Your walking speed is 30 feet, and you have a swimming speed and climbing speed equal to your walking speed.

Traits
Arboreal Alertness. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.
Amphibious. You can breathe air and water.
Standing Leap. Your long jump is up to 25 feet and your high jump is up to 15 feet, with or without a running start.
Grung Resilience. You have Resistance to Poison damage. You also have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Poisoned condition. You are immune to the effects of another grung's Poisonous Skin trait.
Poisonous Skin. Any creature that grapples you or otherwise comes into direct contact with your skin must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or become Poisoned for 1 minute. A Poisoned creature no longer in direct contact with you can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. Other grung are immune to this effect.

---

Notes:

1. Speed: We ball. Phrasing here is the style used in MOTM (e.g. on Sea Elf), so the extra movement types can scale with any movement abilities the character acquires. Decided to stay away from subspecies for this since 2024 doesn't have them except for elves and tieflings and gnomes which kind of still do...
2. Adjusted Poison Immunity to a copy of Dwarven Resilience (thanks @billd91!)
3. Removing the Poisonous Skin piercing poison leaves a zero-damage Poisoned condition (only the rider effect) which is DC12 CON and requires melee range so I think it can be left without charges. Only possible annoyance is monk grung with 4+ unarmed attacks per turn.
   • Alternately, use Dragonborn Breath Weapon rules to scale the DC and apply charges:
     • Avoiding Poisoned condition is a CON saving throw (DC 8 plus your CON modifier and Proficiency Bonus)
     • "You secrete enough poison to use Poisonous Skin a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest."
4. Water Dependency gone because we all agree it's a bad idea.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Thanks for your thoughts! The idea of charges for poisonous skin is great, since I think some other 2024 species use that model.

RE: poison immunity, D&D has a certain RPG logic (or Pokemon logic, if you prefer) that if a monster is poisonous then the monster is probably resistant to poison. This helps players when they see a monster exhale a poisonous breath or has a poison sting on its tail, they know they probably shouldn't use poison damage on that monster. It's not connected to reality.

And this "elemental poison" logic extends to PCs when you're talking about something like yuan-ti (looks like a snake > therefore poisonous > therefore resistant to poison) or grung.

The other thought I had on this is One Grung Above contains a party of only grung characters (er, and one "albino dwarf"), so they possibly just made them poison immune (copying the Volo-era yuan-ti trait) to make sure they didn't poison each other.

Yeah I’d make them resistant instead of immune, and make the poison be a thing they can do.

Or ditch the poison and make them have advantage to end grapples and be able to stick to any flat surface.