D&D 5E Kenku - Poorly thought out race no matter how cool

[JacktheRabbit]

If I say "Right, you need to go left", you've heard all the words for "Go right!" even though it's a different sentence. So at the very least you don't need to have heard the incantation in order, you can use words from other spells and arrange them.

Actually, since the kenku can mimick sounds not just whole words, it could do plenty of others. "knee" is just the first part of "need", etc.

Of course, if you take that to it's logical conclusion, there's only a certain number of unique sounds in a language. Once you can reproduce all of them you should be able to put together any word.

https://www.quora.com/Phonetics-Whi...mongst-the-most-common-languages-in-the-world

The last bit - hooking together heard sounds, plus the kenku's expert ability to duplicate things, comes together for a wizard. Given the directions from a spell book or scroll, they can perfectly (if soullessly) hook together sounds in order to cast.

For me clerical casting is more likely language, though more like how before SALT II some masses were given in Latin. That's easy, it's a language even if it's just one used religiously.

A warlock hearing their invocations in their head from their patron makes sense for a kenku who is promised power.

How a sorcerer does it, since it's all from within them, I have no clue.

This is all just hypothetical, I would not enforce these limits on a player in an actual game, but technically the description says they cannot invent anything new.

Using a part of a sound instead of the whole sound like say run instead of running is not possible based on the described limitation. The same description though would permanently cripple any Kenku creature. A Kenku stranded in a strange land would starve immediately, as by the racial description it would never think to try and eat "that" new food it has never seen before and none of its familiar food is around.

So I think the way to actually run the race is they can fully think and act independently, they are just cursed that they cannot make a sound they have not heard before. No sounding out new words from a book by Kenku.

Just an interesting thought based on poorly worded racial description.

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[Lichemaster]

I'm sure it was a created monster back in the day, this generation thought it would be cool to play a crow-being and did not read the full abilities/text and are now upset\complaining.

Did that sound like a grognard?

 

[Sunseeker]

Solution: replace Kenku with Hengeyokai.

Or just not allow players to play arguably the second most annoying race ever invented short of Kender.

 

[Jester David]

Verbal components to spells are entirely a flavour thing. It's there to make magic feel magical and no real other reason.
Similarly, the kenku speech limitation is also flavour. Their racial mechanics do not explicitly say they can't speak or must repeat said phrases. Instead their ability lets them copy sounds.

How do the two intersect? I imagine the kenku says the magic words in a hodgepodge of mishmashed words and sounds, like a bad text-to-speech program.

A DM ruling that kenku can't be wizards is probably just being a jerk.
There, I said it.
They're crushing a player's plans to play a particular character for no good reason. Rather than working with that player to figure out how the kenku did lean the sounds necessary, they're just bringing down the ban hammer.
That's not cool.
In that instance, the problem isn't in the rules or the rulebooks. It's not in the race. It's in the people running that campaign. And blaming words on a page for enabling the poor social behaviour of a dick DM is just shifting the blame and forgiving someone for being a dink.

 

[Tallifer]

Simply allow Kenku to cast magic using their own squawks and caws. Magic is magical.

 

[Satyrn]

A DM ruling that kenku can't be wizards is probably just being a jerk.

Especially since their write-up in Volo's talks about kenku spellcasters.

 

[GlassJaw]

I like the flavor of kenku a lot. They remind me of Yagharek from Perdido Street Station.

I find the concept that "kenku have no ability to invent new ideas of create new things" more egregious. If that is the case, they should have animal intelligence and be unplayable as a race. I would flat-out ignore this. Period.

I would also treat their mimicry as more of a tendency. They can learn over time how to communicate effectively but have a tendency to repeat specific phrases. I wouldn't even consider whether they have difficulty using magic or not.

 

[GlassJaw]

The Kenku is almost pure ribbon abilities and have a major disability, it's the only race that is worst designed then the Genasi which insanely and horrifically unbalanced.

I don't want to hijack but I don't have any problem with the gensai. I honestly feel they are underpowered.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Flavor is flavor. It means nothing. I wouldn't treat a kenku any different than I would treat another character, including being completely non-mimetic like any elf or dwarf unless the player decides to use the mechanical mimicking ability for something. There is no reason you have to have the kenku be any different.

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[Eltab]

"Kenku invent nothing new" - IRL, how many other cultures have copied and use Western technology because it is easier and faster than re-inventing it on their own?
Kenku may be inclined to copy other peoples' works but that does not make them dumb. They still have to figure out what to copy and how to adapt it to the needs of the moment.

If you listen to Bumblebee in the first live-action Transformers movie, you get a good model for a Kenku reading a scroll. (You also get a headache, trying to work out all those different voices speaking one word each into a coherent sentence.)