Quote from OoklaTheMok >>

I believe I already know the answer (and I suspect I won't be satisfied with it) but, has retention of natural armor/weapons been clarified anywhere?  For example, I suspect that a Tortle that becomes Reborn after character creation loses Claws, Hold Breath, Natural Armor, and Shell Defense and only gains Deathless Nature and Knowledge from a Past Life.

If I am correct, WOTC has incentivized people to pick races with good movement options (e.g., Tiefling (Winged), Fairy, Owlin, Aarakocra, Triton, etc.) and avoid races with strong inherent features (that they just lose anyway.)

The Grung is another interesting case.  Do they lose Water Dependency and Standing Leap along with Amphibious, Poison Immunity, and Poisonous Skin once transitioned to a Lineage?  Dhampir and Hexblood would be straight downgrades; Reborn would be either a slightly negative or positive trade, depending on how the Player values each feature.

 

 
Sigh.

OTL

RAW?  Correct.  Tortles lose their armor, their natural weapons, and their Withdraw move when pieces of tortle are stitched back together into the Reborn husk of a once-living creature.  Same with grung.  Same with everything else.  Gothic lineages, as has been discussed dozens of times before, are a fundamental alteration of your natural essence.  They're not a Halloween costume you pull on and discard freely.  If a player cannot accept this, then they cannot play the change in lineage.

If a DM permits otherwise?  That's on the DM.  if a player can convince a DM to let them play a half-tortle, half-tiefling, half-dragonborn with all of the tortle's traits, all of the tiefling's traits including wings, all of the dragonborn's traits including the enhanced breath weapon from Fizban's Book of Nonsense, and all of the traits of a dhampir, a reborn, and a hexblood besides without any of the drawbacks?  Cool.  That DM is shortly going to deeply regret allowing this to happen, but it's their game.  They'll learn better than to allow players to stack up half a dozen different species in one statblock real quick after running a game for their dragon turtle demon vampire zombie hag.  With warforged arms for integrated weapons, to boot.

 There's a legitimate question of "how would you create a character who retains existing character features but also acquires a lineage", it's not per se an unreasonable concept, but there probably isn't a way of doing it without house rules and possibly inconvenient interactions with other game mechanics. For example, a mechanic such as

Reborn: you have died and been reborn. Build your character normally, then apply a -1 penalty to all ability scores and add the Deathless Nature and Knowledge from a Past Life traits.

is not overpowered and might be underpowered, but it's pretty inconsistent with the normal paradigms of 5e.

Quote from OoklaTheMok >>

I believe I already know the answer (and I suspect I won't be satisfied with it) but, has retention of natural armor/weapons been clarified anywhere?  For example, I suspect that a Tortle that becomes Reborn after character creation loses Claws, Hold Breath, Natural Armor, and Shell Defense and only gains Deathless Nature and Knowledge from a Past Life.

If I am correct, WOTC has incentivized people to pick races with good movement options (e.g., Tiefling (Winged), Fairy, Owlin, Aarakocra, Triton, etc.) and avoid races with strong inherent features (that they just lose anyway.)

The Grung is another interesting case.  Do they lose Water Dependency and Standing Leap along with Amphibious, Poison Immunity, and Poisonous Skin once transitioned to a Lineage?  Dhampir and Hexblood would be straight downgrades; Reborn would be either a slightly negative or positive trade, depending on how the Player values each feature.

Question: do you think races are balanced? I'm not talking about lineages or Reborn specifically, I'm asking if you think races in general are balanced. I'm asking because I think the notion that WotC incentivized players to pick races with good movement options is, no offense, kind of silly. Players are incentivized to pick a race that suits their character anyway (and any race with innate flight is usually a prime target for DMs to ban or houserule). If you're looking for an even exchange, that'll require a complete overhaul of the races as they are to begin with. If you're not satisfied with Reborn, by all means houserule or homebrew away. I encourage anyone and everyone to try and make the game better for them. Keep in mind though that imbalance is acceptable as long as there is an upper limit to that imbalance and the game doesn't break while it stays under that limit. Reborn getting all Reborn qualities on top of all the qualities of any given base race, that probably skirts that upper limit.  

I think I know the answer to this, but just wanted to confirm with others. The Dhampir bite--does not qualify as a magical weapon? I've been toying with creating a Barbarian Reborn or Dhampir. The Reborn is a better match from a purely character optimization method, but the Dhampir version is more aligned with my vision of the character. I like the bite mechanic better than the Past Lives mechanic for Reborn because it can be applied to either ability checks or attacks, while Past Lives is only ability checks and is limited to 1d6. But I'm a bit concerned that as the character levels up, we'll be fighting so many characters with resistance to weapons that are not magical that the bite will become very ineffective. I'm more concerned about that than the lack of synergy with Rage, which doesn't bother me.

Here's an additional wrinkle to this question. I'm considering choosing Path of the Beast barbarian...and when raging the bite, claws or tail does count as a magic weapon after level 6. So...with that path, I could see some logic behind allowing the bite to be considered a magic weapon. Maybe it's not RAW but it's consistent so I'll have to see what my DM thinks but wondered what anyone else thought about this. Thanks for your advice. 

You are correct that the bite is not magical on its own and thus would not hold up well in later levels.

The wording of Path of the Beast actually takes me to the opposite conclusion. It's explicitly making those weapons magical as a part of the feature because the default is that those types of weapons are not magical. If you can just throw that property on a bite, why not a mundane sword or bow? There should probably be some kind of investment required.

If someone in your campaign has Hoard of the Dragon Queen, it has an item called insignia of claws that makes unarmed strikes/natural weapons magical. I'd recommend going with that or your DM could just create a similar item.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

You are correct that the bite is not magical on its own and thus would not hold up well in later levels.

The wording of Path of the Beast actually takes me to the opposite conclusion. It's explicitly making those weapons magical as a part of the feature because the default is that those types of weapons are not magical. If you can just throw that property on a bite, why not a mundane sword or bow? There should probably be some kind of investment required.

If someone in your campaign has Hoard of the Dragon Queen, it has an item called insignia of claws that makes unarmed strikes/natural weapons magical. I'd recommend going with that or your DM could just create a similar item.

Funny, we're in that campaign right now...but with other characters. Thanks for the tip.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

If someone in your campaign has Hoard of the Dragon Queen, it has an item called insignia of claws that makes unarmed strikes/natural weapons magical. I'd recommend going with that or your DM could just create a similar item.

 Or you can use the eldritch claw tattoo from Tasha's.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from scatterbraind >>

If someone in your campaign has Hoard of the Dragon Queen, it has an item called insignia of claws that makes unarmed strikes/natural weapons magical. I'd recommend going with that or your DM could just create a similar item.

 Or you can use the eldritch claw tattoo from Tasha's.

Oooh that's a super cool item! Love it. 

Do changelings keep shapeshifting when they go linage? I don't understand this topic that much but I'm guessing no? NVM I got my answer.