D&D General Mimics should be a viable PC option


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As I think I have made clear in the past, I'm very keen on supporting player enthusiasm. So the questions that follow from this are:
  1. What do you want from playing a mimic? How will it contribute to your play experience?
  2. How do you propose to deal with the extremely significant limitations of mimics? If you're an ordinary mimic, you don't have hands, you don't naturally learn languages (and you have severely reduced Intelligence), and you don't have any connection to social structures to address this stuff. That's going to make it very hard to be any kind of class, even a Barbarian.
  3. Are you willing to accept altered, reduced, or delayed mimic powers? We would of course need to discuss it beforehand, so this wouldn't be a mere fiat declaration from me.
If the player and I can work that out to our mutual satisfaction, then yes, I am 100% supportive of them playing a mimic. For my part, because of the complexities of implementing this monster (and other similar sorts of monsters) as player characters, I don't really see much benefit in a universal one-size-fits-all implementation, unless it's both really well-designed and well-liked by most people who want to play mimics. And, frankly, I'm kind of skeptical that that's feasible on the grand scale.
 

Sounds like it could be a lot of fun...the obvious choice for a spy or infiltrator-type character, but would be really interesting just to play as a mimic doing mimic things, trying to understand the nature of its food sources...like a cattle rancher who wants to turn into a cow so that he can study them more closely. :)

The Dungeon Master's Guide has some tips for creating a custom race, and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything expands on them. If you do create it, please post it here!
 


Ability Score. Str, Con and Wis scores each increase by 1.
Monstrosity. Your creature type is monstrosity.
Age. Mimics reach what passes for adulthood at around 10, but can live as long as a century.
Size A mimic's true form is amorphous, but can draw itself up to a height of about 6 feet. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 15 feet.
Shapechanger. Your natural form is amorphous and as an action you can polymorph into an inanimate object of Medium or Small size that you have seen, or back into your true form. You retain all of your normal statistics while in this form.
Any equipment you carry can be contained within you (as long as your shape has the dimensions to accommodate it), dropped or used if appropriate. If you die, you revert to your true blob form.
Unassuming Form. While polymorphed as an unassuming object you are considered hidden (full cover). As long you do not move you are not spotted by perception checks and other creatures have disadvantage to investigation checks to detect that you are not a normal object.
Suprise Attack. If a Large or smaller creature enters a space within 5 feet of you (or simply interacts with you), you can use your reaction to rapidly extend up to two of your limbs and make an attack against the creature. If you attack you are no longer considered hidden.
Amorphous Grappler. You are able to form pseudopods that give advantage on grapple checks
No Armor.
Due to the amorphous nature of your true form, you cannot benefit from armor, though you can use a shield. Your natural Armor Class is equal to 12 + your Dex modifier and you are immune to the prone condition.
Starting at 5th Level, you can form a hardened carapace on yourself (cast the barkskin spell without material components). You regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest.
Bite. Your maw is a natural weapon, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal piercing damage equal to 1d4 + your Str, At 6th level, your bite deals an additional 1d4 acid damage.
 
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My son was reading one of the recent D&D books - it has a young mimic bard in it. In the section he read out to me, it turned itself into a musical instrument so it could play itself to use Bardic Inspiration.

If the tone was right, I’d have no problem with a PC mimic.
 


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