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.

 

[Ath'kethin]

It was a pretty logical decision. Everyone was only reading it for the articles, anyway.

I'm pretty sure I still have my old T-shirt somewhere.

 

[Azzy]

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

Tanuki are not raccons. In the west they're known as "raccon dogs", but they're actually neither.

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

Yep, they've been around since 1e. I really want them back for 5e. It's actually my biggest want for this edition.

 

[Azzy]

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.

Oh god, there is so much more to fantasy than just Tolkien. I love Tolkien's work, don't get me wrong, but D&D needs to evolve to handle more than just the staid same old same old. Rabbitfolk wouldn't have been my first choice, either, but it's a heck of a lot better than just another elf or dwarf subrace.

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.

You do you, man.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Everyone needs to look on the positive side of all this... you had SEVEN YEARS to play the game before WotC finally introduced rabbit-folk and owl-folk to the game. If this was the 4E era we would have gotten them in Year 2. And if this was the era of 3E? Mongoose Publishing would have had The Quintessential Cottontail on the shelves within 30 days out of the gate.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Not at all, but ok

 

[Minigiant]

Rabbitfolk are fine.

But when is D&D gonna get a dogfolk?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Not at all, but ok

Yeah, because back when D&D was all about Tolkien-fantasy, the game wasnt a loot-based hack'n slash, no sir!

And let's be real, for how long D&D has been ''tolkien-fantasy''? Maybe 4-5 minutes into its publication, just before the company started throwing crashed spacecrafts, cartoons with talking baby unicorns, giant space hamsters etc?

 

[Ulfgeir]

Humanoid rabbits/hares do have historical precedents. Look at old mediaeval manuscripts. Often vicious rabbitfolk beating up knights. Will look for examples once I get home (no fun doing it through the phone)..

 

[Tonguez]

Humanoid rabbits/hares do have historical precence. Look at old mediaeval manuscripts. Often vicious rabbitfolk beating up knights. Will look for examples once I get home (no fun doing it through the phone).

This one is interesting too

 

[Scribe]

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.

If you believe ASI, and Alignment are filler, this makes sense.

They could have done exactly as you say with the rabbit, added these nice, thematic features AND left the definition provided by ASI and alignment, and then I would believe Wizards isn't moving intentionally away from the system provided in the PHB.

Size? Humanish. Small or Medium.
Age? Humanish.
Language? Pick one.
Alignment? Whatever.
Appearance? Whatever, but roughly what Humans are in terms of Physical dimensions.
ASI? Whatever.

Watered down.

It's again this false narrative of a binary choice.

We could have interesting race mechanics and everything else, but no.