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.

 

[Bird Of Play]

The audience is diverse and cosmopolitan, not the game.
They're not selling to the game; they're selling to the audience.

Eh, we can agree with this.
But after all it's a bit hypocrite of me to complain because when -I- first started to play D&D at like 14 years old, I, too, made my characters and stories a bit anime-ish.
Maybe I feel like it's aiming more and more at kids..... because they know the adults like me are still sticking to the editions they played when they were kids?

Entirely untrue. There are thousands of words of difference to include different racial features and appearances.

I think there should be some actual different stats if I'm a tiny dude or if I'm almost a giant. It makes sense to at least put modifiers for stuff like strength or wisdom, depending on the race you choose.
I know what you're thinking: a human may be tiny or a giant, too! Well, and this is why we make random dice rolls, to see if our character is one or the other. But the racial modifiers make sure it's harder for the tiny gnome to be a buff barbarian, or for the huge orc to be a wise mage.

.....I think I went offtopic here, whoops. Anyway: rabbit people are mediocre, booh! That's all, that's my take.

 

[Scribe]

Oh a "Suggested Racial Abliity Adjustment" would be great.

However 5e has been on a "if it's really easy and optionial, let DMs do themselves" mindset 30 days after the DMG was published.

"Float the +2/+1, whatever."

 

[Minigiant]

This is why racial ASIs work.

They encourage people to play to type. Most characters of races with +2 dex will have high dex b/c people will make that choice based on the little push they get. While at the same time it's not actually a big deal so if someone wants to play a +2 dex race with low dex it isn't a big deal in the scheme of things.

You missed my point.
A large percentage of the community want to play against type but can't get over the minor +2 bonus.

WOTC got away from racial ASIs because of that. That and the ability scores not being balanced against each other.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There is a horror movie, the night of the lepus, based in a book, and this suggest me as source of inspiration a dread domain in the Ravenloft setting. Harengons are possible in G'Henna caused by some curse, but not linked with the dark lord and his false religion.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Rant zone below!

First of all, MY books of the 2nd edition don't have any of that rabbitfolks, catfolks, all-races-are-equal-even-if-one-is-2-meters-height-and-the-other-is-half-a-meter, crap.
Yes, everyone is humanoid somehow, but making other animals into humanoid too isn't solving the fact that everything from giants to feys to demons is human-shaped. How does adding rabbit-people make the game more fantasy or original?


Don't even get me started on the sanitizing part. I remember the manual explicitly mentioned that the derro kept prisoners as sex slaves. Nowadays, I worry just mentioning this in this forum may get me a moderator warning (please don't!), as if mentioning something was akin to endorsing it.


And shall I mention how the combat changed to make sure you keep hitting enemies and watch the number go up while you gulp down potions - just like you'd do in a videogame? Or how the prices changed so buying stuff feels more like it'd feel in a videogame (300 gold pieces for a armour, not 30) so you can stash loot.


So what happens when you remove any vague reference to heavy subjects, then add cute animal people, then turn the combat into a videogame combat?

I apologize for the off topic. But c'mon. They saw the market and changed the game accordingly, over the years.

/rant

Yeah, I realized recently that I've simply aged out of the modern version of a lot of things I loved when I was younger. Companies gotta go where the money is, so I dont blame them for no longer caring what I like. But I dont have to follow along either.

 

[MarkB]

Eh, we can agree with this.
But after all it's a bit hypocrite of me to complain because when -I- first started to play D&D at like 14 years old, I, too, made my characters and stories a bit anime-ish.
Maybe I feel like it's aiming more and more at kids..... because they know the adults like me are still sticking to the editions they played when they were kids?

Or because there are other adults who are enjoying the current version just fine.

WotC goes where the money is, and the 40+ generation with plenty of disposable income is still a great source of revenue.

 

[Faolyn]

Rant zone below!

First of all, MY books of the 2nd edition don't have any of that rabbitfolks, catfolks, all-races-are-equal-even-if-one-is-2-meters-height-and-the-other-is-half-a-meter, crap.

My 2e books were all over the place in what races could do depending on size. One small creature gets a bonus against large monsters, another one doesn't. There was no consistency.

Yes, everyone is humanoid somehow, but making other animals into humanoid too isn't solving the fact that everything from giants to feys to demons is human-shaped. How does adding rabbit-people make the game more fantasy or original?

Explain how it doesn't make the game more fantastic. Seriously.

Also, I started with 2e. Everything was pretty much humanoid there, too. That's why they had The Complete Book of Humanoids.

Well, humanoid was a term specifically for monstrous human-shaped beings. Pretty human-shaped beings were demi-humans.

I found this link that seems to list most 2e playable races. There were options for playing tiny faeries, like pixies, sprites, and fremlins. And half-dragons (not dragonborn). And rules for playing biotech-transhumanoidist-surgeon insect-people. And monkey-people. And rogue modrons. And kender.

And that site doesn't even mention all the animal-folk races of Mystara.

And don't forget all those basic D&D Creature Crucible books which not only allowed for faeries and lycanthropes, but also had the "Top Ballista" book, for all those people who wanted to play gnomes in airships.

Did these options make the game more or less fantastic or original? Maybe you only play with what's in the 2e PH, and that's fine for you, but don't pretend that there weren't tons of other races in 2e and before.

Don't even get me started on the sanitizing part. I remember the manual explicitly mentioned that the derro kept prisoners as sex slaves. Nowadays, I worry just mentioning this in this forum may get me a moderator warning (please don't!), as if mentioning something was akin to endorsing it.

No one says that you can't have sex slaves in your game. Go ahead and have all the sex slaves you want. Why should the books--which are being sold to everyone, not just you--have such things in them? I mean, are you really saying that you want to force other people to play games where sex slaves are the default?

You're getting upset that they're trying to include "cute animal races" which you aren't required to allow as an option. But it's a bad thing if the writers don't include actual objectively terrible real-world issues like sex slavery?

And shall I mention how the combat changed to make sure you keep hitting enemies and watch the number go up while you gulp down potions - just like you'd do in a videogame? Or how the prices changed so buying stuff feels more like it'd feel in a videogame (300 gold pieces for a armour, not 30) so you can stash loot.

In all the games I've played or DMed in the past 30 years or so, I think I've had one instance where a potion was gulped down to keep a person alive. And that's because I force-fed a potion to the downed cleric in a game a month or two back. Maybe it's just your games?

Also, I just checked armor prices in 2e and 5e:

Chain mail costs 75 gp in both editions.
Full plate costs 4,000-10,000 and plate mail (I didn't bother to check the difference) [edit: 600 gp] in 2e. In 5e, full plate costs 1,500 gp, half plate in 5e costs 750 and a breastplate costs 400.
Hide armor costs 15 gp in 2e, 10 gp in 5e
Leather armor costs 15 gp in 2e, 10 gp in 5e
Padded costs 4 gp in 2e, 5 gp in 5e
Splint costs 80 gp in 2e, 200 gp in 5e
Studded leather costs 20 gp in 2e, 45 gp in 5e

So I don't know where you're getting that armor that used to cost 300 gp now only costs 30 gp, when the only truly significant price drop is for full plate--and 5e is a game that isn't supposed to be quite as treasure-heavy as 2e. And some 5e armor costs more.

The exact opposite happened. They've removed anything that would make the game diverse, including racial differences between a ORC and a GNOME..... and then they added animalpeople and how is that cosmopolitan?

I ain't even mad, I'm still using the 2nd edition books to play so whatever. I'm just disappointed because that stuff is what the kids starting D&D will probably learn to use.

Orcs have Darkvision, Aggressive, Primal Intuition, and Powerful Build.

Gnomes have Gnome Cunning and Darkvision, and one of Natural Illusionist and Speak With Small Beasts; Artificers Lore and Tinker; or Superior Darkvision and Stone Camouflage.

How on earth are their racial traits the same?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Those kids should get off my lawn.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

giant space hamsters

Don't forget the miniature giant space hamsters. Those are even more important!

 

[Weiley31]

Don't forget the miniature giant space hamsters. Those are even more important!

GO FOR THE EYES, BOO!!!!