Level Up (A5E) Revamped the Jenn (And now added the Unshaped)

[Faolyn]

Fascinating set! At first I was a little surprised to see those 3 choices grouped together, but then it dawned on me, "But of course they belong together, they are all shape-shifters!"

Base abilities seem good; Alter Self can be potent but it's limited to once per day.

Yeah, I wanted a balance between the Changelings at-will and the Shifter's 1/rest abilities, while also allowing them to make relatively minor changes. My other option is to make alter self available at 3rd level and then change all of the gift-granted spells to 5th level. It would still be easily available, since I assume that a large percentage of LU players are still going to start at 3rd level.

Hamadryad: The only ability here that gave me pause was the Vines power. Since it appears to be at-will and usable as a bonus action, I can see it being problematic in the hands of devious players; for example, as a bonus action I could keep making Grapple checks every round in addition to my normal action; even if the strength of the grapple is low, it could still be very annoying and eventually the dice gods will win in my favor.
A Proposal: What if it normally can work like a Mage Hand, but the hamadryad can add a temporary boost to grapple, pull, or push or manipulate a larger object? This boost would be usable once per short or long rest.

Very good point. I had modeled the vines after the Loxodon trunk, but you make a very important point. It should be, as you say, more like a mage hand. I should specify that you still need to use an action (or one of your attacks, if you have multiple attacks) to do so.

Zoanth: Here I feel they could use a little buff. The 1d6 natural weapon damage is nice, but not as useful if you have access to higher-damaging weapons. I might make the natural attack a finesse attack as well, so a Rogue Zoanth might be able take advantage of the ability.
A Couple Proposals: While Shapechanging, perhaps the Zoanth should also gain Darkvision and/or +5 movement? And taking inspiration from Eberron's "Shifter" race, maybe a "Once per Long Rest" ability could give them some temporary hit points?

Eberron shifters stay in beastform for a minute, I think, and then have to complete a rest, whereas with the zoanth can shift any time. But I can definitely see giving them darkvision as well.

For whatever reason, I rarely give my heritages darkvision, unless it's part of their standard monster statblock, like with my version of goblins.

Thanks again for inviting feedback!

Thanks for providing it! My friends like my work but aren't familiar with LU (yet!) so they're not necessarily the best judges.

 

[thundershot]

I'm working on a book. It's slow though--I don't have any experience doing for-publication stuff.

The hair thing is mostly made up. I just thought it was a neat image*. Plus, since they're no longer a type of planetouched, I wanted to replace the horns and tail with something that equally inhuman. Changing their hair so it's more like elemental matter seemed like a good way to do it.

* Entrapta is my favorite character on She-Ra.

Take all the time you need!

It's funny you mention Entrapta -- I decided to recently binge She-Ra in anticipation of the He-Man Revelation show and ended up unexpectedly liking She-Ra a whole lot more

Wow, I was totally thinking of making an Entrapta-inspired NPC for my campaign. To me, she was the breakout character of that show. I look forward to seeing more development on these and others…