D&D 5E Preview Witchlight's New Rabbit People

You can take a look at the harengons, a rabbit-themed race in the upcoming Wild Beyond the Witchlight, over at D&D Beyond.

Harengons are medium or small humanoids with a bonus to initiative, Dexterity saving throws, and a 'rabbit hop' which lets them jump up to five times their proficiency bonus without provoking opportunity attacks.

Creature Type. You are a Humanoid.

Size. You are Medium or Small. You choose the size when you select this race.

Speed. Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Hare-Trigger. You can add your proficiency bonus to your initiative rolls.

Leporine Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

Lucky Footwork. When you fail a Dexterity saving throw, you can use your reaction to roll a d4 and add it to the save, potentially turning the failure into a success. You can’t use this reaction if you’re prone or your speed is 0.

Rabbit Hop. As a bonus action, you can jump a number of feet equal to five times your proficiency bonus, without provoking opportunity attacks. You can use this trait only if your speed is greater than 0. You can use it a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

When you create a harengon or fairy using the rules from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, you can choose to increase one ability score by 2 and another by 1, or choose to increase three different scores by 1. Further, you know Common and will choose one other language to learn.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Lupin handle dog/wolf folk well and they're a legacy race so I wouldn't think too many would be upset with them, rodent folk could easily be handled by something vaguely Nezumi-esque (Either MTG Nezumi or L5R ones), plus its another good space. Anthropod folk have their various bits and bobs, with Thri-Kreen as the stand out, but also there was an Underdark beetle race at some point

Which just leaves racoon folk which, theoretically could slip in Tanuki but they're more shapeshifters who are racoons

4e had hengeyokai, which included tanuki IIRC, as well as several others.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Remember when the Teenage Mutant Monk Tortles went back in time and met Harengon Yojimbo (Samurai)? And their mentor Splinter (were-rat cleric) came with them and they fought Strahd von Zarofoot?

Yeah, me neither, but what an awesome a) set of action figures and b) D&D adventure that would be!

Hasbro would dare to launch the action figures. I say it seriously. Have you seen the TNMT/power rangers crossover? comic and toys.

Other option is like new "guests" in a future Magic: the Gathering Beyond Universe set.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Who is the "they" in this situation? WotC? Or the people, like me, who have been advocating for this change? Because if it's the latter, I'll have you know that this is absolutely not true. I don't want D&D to become a point-buy system like GURPS. I want distinct races/lineages. I just wanted a change from the Racial ASIs that were present in the PHB up until TCoE. I got that change. I'm content now. There is no "slippery slope". It's all good.

I was talking about WotC, not you or any other poster. With all the changes made to the race mechanics, it really does feel sometimes like they'd prefer to just make a point system or pure ala carte and be done with it, but they dont think they can get away with it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I was talking about WotC, not you or any other poster. With all the changes made to the race mechanics, it really does feel sometimes like they'd prefer to just make a point system or pure ala carte and be done with it, but they dont think they can get away with it.

Okay. Any statements for WotC to back up that opinion, or is just a hunch? Because, IMO, WotC has shown themselves to be quite fond of the race/lineage system.

 

[Scribe]

WotC has shown themselves to be quite fond of the race/lineage system.

Then why continue to water it down and ruin it?

Every release since MToF has removed more distinction between the PC options being added.

Less defined, every book. No thanks.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Then why continue to water it down and ruin it?

Every release since MToF has removed more distinction between the PC options being added.

Less defined, every book. No thanks.

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. They "watered it down" once, and haven't continued to make any more changes to it since. It was Tasha's changes, and that was it. Neither Van Richtens nor the upcoming books that have races/lineages in them have made additional changes to the race/lineage system. They just took the changes that Tasha's implemented as an optional rule and ran with it as the base. That's one change, not "continuing to water it down and ruin it" and "getting less defined very book".

MToF wasn't a pivot-point for this, either. TCoE was. Everything up until then was more or less standard to how races worked in the PHB (Eberron may be the one exception, but that was setting specific and effect base D&D 5e's design at all).

 

[NaturalZero]

Then why continue to water it down and ruin it?

The reason I like what they're doing is that it's literally the exact opposite of watering it down.

When you water down an alcoholic drink, you're adding the same liquid that's in a bunch of other drinks and leaving less of what makes it different. If you remove ability score mods from race, you're removing the same mechanical widget that 134,535 other races also get and leaving the part that makes the race unique - features.

Look at the harengon. It's just racial features. They removed the water part that was the same as alllll of the other races and left you with the distilled essence of the race. This whole process that they're doing with races is taking out the filler and leaving the important narrative and qualitative mechanics.

 

[Bird Of Play]

I can't imagine that I won't be making a Harengon character named Frank, at some point.

View attachment 143874

Way ahead of you!

http://www.thegeekgirlproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/WalterCop-383x512.jpg

.....But, in all seriousness, this is what D&D came down to? Bunny people? I mean, the game really is getting less and less like a fantasy Tolkien-inspired tabletop game, and more and more like an anime-ish hack'n'slash videogame.

I hate it so much one day I'l make a cute bunny person in my campaign, to use this race...... and it'll turn out being some abomination archdemon of hell.

 

[MarkB]

Way ahead of you!

http://www.thegeekgirlproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/WalterCop-383x512.jpg

.....But, in all seriousness, this is what D&D came down to? Bunny people? I mean, the game really is getting less and less like a fantasy Tolkien-inspired tabletop game, and more and more like an anime-ish hack'n'slash videogame.

I hate it so much one day I'l make a cute bunny person in my campaign, to use this race...... and it'll turn out being some abomination archdemon of hell.

Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes...

 

[Hexmage-EN]

IIRC, the 2E Spelljammer adventure Heart of the Enemy had a ship owned by a wizard and crewed by rabbit people (although I think all those rabbit people had been created by magic by the wizard or something).

I've been thinking of doing a 5E adaptation of that adventure for years, and now with harengon I'm a little bit more inclined to actually do so.