Making a draft for a homebrew version of the human race, nothing about lore yet.

The traits include +1 to 3 ability scores, the "relentless endurance" trait (can be found in half-orcs trait description), and maybe magic resistance. No feats or proficiencies.

Is this balanced?

What are you removing from vHuman to replace this with?

If they are losing a feat then they will be somewhat weaker than a half orc. Adding magic resistance means that compared to a half orc they have magic resistance and flexbility in their extra skill in place of savage attacks and darkvision which is probably pretty balanced.

If they are losing nothing their skill proficiency (or nothing at all) you are making what is already one of the most powerful races significantly more powerful (And extra ASA and relentless endurance are both features that have significant impact)

Quote from Jegpeg >>

What are you removing from vHuman to replace this with?

If they are losing a feat then they will be somewhat weaker than a half orc. Adding magic resistance means that compared to a half orc they have magic resistance and flexbility in their extra skill in place of savage attacks and darkvision which is probably pretty balanced.

If they are losing nothing their skill proficiency (or nothing at all) you are making what is already one of the most powerful races significantly more powerful (And extra ASA and relentless endurance are both features that have significant impact)

 

 

I should have clarified, this isn't based on the variant human racial traits, but it is a homebrew human race or sub-race, I guess.

This seems pretty strong. Magic resistance? And relentless endurance? The lack of proficiencies is a bit of a slap on the wrist but advantage against all spells is really strong. The ability to not get one shot along with it is pretty good too. 

I am pretty sure I’d say it’s not a balanced class. I don’t want to say it’s overpowered. It has two overpowered features, but it lacks the basic stuff most races have, proficiencies and more flavourful bits. I honestly think magic resistance really shouldn’t be a racial thing as that is so much power that limits what you can do without overshadowing any other race. 

I'll make a poll for more opinions about resistance

Resistance to all magic seems pretty strong.

It's as broken as you the DM make it to be.

While inherent balance for certain things in D&D exists, at the end the balance of any game is going to swing based on how the DM runs the game.  If this human becomes the target of every single magical attack with zero reason as to why they are attacking them?  It's beyond busted.  If it is an extremely low magic campaign and the character is rarely targetted by it?  It's lackluster.

That said, magic resistance by itself is strong.  

Quote from Spideycloned >>

It's as broken as you the DM make it to be.

While inherent balance for certain things in D&D exists, at the end the balance of any game is going to swing based on how the DM runs the game.  If this human becomes the target of every single magical attack with zero reason as to why they are attacking them?  It's beyond busted.  If it is an extremely low magic campaign and the character is rarely targetted by it?  It's lackluster.

That said, magic resistance by itself is strong.  

Well, what if there was a racial trait that could fix this problem? This doesn't necessarily have to be a racial trait actually, but I think this may fix the issue you brought up of being week in low magic campaigns and OP in high magic campaigns.

Here is a racial trait idea: character gains a meter that grants two different features depending on its threshold. Exceeding the threshold grants a magic sub-trait, while receding it grants a martial sub-trait. Whenever the character is directly affected by magical effects the meter builds up; buildup stacks for each magical effect they are exposed to and increases at a faster rate depending on how powerful the magical effects are: if they are spells then they are based on spell slot levels, if they are not technically spells then they are based on how comparatively powerful they are to spells. Receiving damage or conditions from non-magical sources subtracts buildup. Meter threshold is determined by the magic to non-magic ratio in the campaign.

Here are some possible options for the martial feature:

• Resistance to a damage type that isn't magic based
• Bonus proficiency to strength or dexterity ability checks
• Bonus proficiency to strength or dexterity saving throws

Quote from vovuey1 >>

Here is a racial trait idea: character gains a meter that grants two different features depending on its threshold. Exceeding the threshold grants a magic sub-trait, while receding it grants a martial sub-trait. Whenever the character is directly affected by magical effects the meter builds up; buildup stacks for each magical effect they are exposed to and increases at a faster rate depending on how powerful the magical effects are: if they are spells then they are based on spell slot levels, if they are not technically spells then they are based on how comparatively powerful they are to spells. Receiving damage or conditions from non-magical sources subtracts buildup. Meter threshold is determined by the magic to non-magic ratio in the campaign.

 It reads like too much book-keeping required for this meter.

Magic resistance imo is a bit too good. Especially paired with something as good as relentless endurance. 

But there are things you could do to play into the magic resistance thing without just say, giving advantage to all saves from magical effects. Perhaps advantage against certain conditions afflicted by magic such as charm, similar to what elves get. Or something like Indominatble, letting you once a day reroll a failed save against magic, or once a short rest let you roll a 1d4 and add it to a save against magic etc. You don't need to abandon the idea of magical resistance thematically but I would shy away from something like 'advantage on all magic saves.' Especially if the race gets relentless endurance and the magic resistance thing isn't the only big mechanically powerful thing they get. 

My general rule of thumb when homebrewing a race is to take an existing race that's somewhat close to what I want, and then tweak things. If I want to add a major, mechanically powerful feature, I replace one on the race. If I want to add proficiencies I replace the old ones, etc. Not all class features need to be powerful, it's okay to have one solid, mechanically powerful one, and some situational flavor ones and some proficiencies etc. 

Magic resistance is a campaign-dependent thing.  Historically I've been deeply against awarding it as a species freebie given how incredibly lopsided it is and how it just kinna removes enemy spellcasters as a threat.  Then I played a three-month minicampaign as a satyr to put my ideas to the test and see for myself if all the various things I was testing with that character were as good/bad as people claimed.  Magic resistance didn't come up once.

It's a trait that will either be wildly overtuned, allowing your given PC(s) to straight-up ignore enemy spellcasters every session, or it'll be a meme and your magic-resistant guy will be left chuckling over how convinced they were that they were finally gonna get to be Ohh Pee.  There's not really any in-between, I don't think.  Either the trait is ridiculous, or it's the other kind of ridiculous.  The twilight band where it comes up often enough to be relevant without being so omnipresent as to be Ohh Pee feels like it's going to be pretty damn narrow.  But if you want to do it, then give it a whirl.  Worst case, you have to lean on dudes with sharpened metal instead of dudes with magic sparklies.  Oh well.

The whole point of humans is that they are the "normal" pick. The whole point of non-human races is that they can be innately magical. This just seems like you wanted to make something very strong.

In terms of humans with more thematic racial traits, you could also look at the 'Mark of' human subraces. I forget what book they're from, but they provide some options for human as well that have a bit more flavor than boring standard human and 'just take a feat' variant humans. 

Or if you still want to make your own human option they could serve as a template. 

I think straight across the board Magic Resistance is too powerful, but it's more balanced if you give it limitations... something like Gnome Cunning, which gives advantage on Magic Saving Throws, but only if they target Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, so they're still just as susceptible to the more common DEX saves. I think you might be able to reverse that to represent a humans innate toughness, so they have advantage on DEX, STR, and CON saving throws.

I guess the question is Why are you changing the human race? Do you think it is too week, are you running a campaign where humans can't wield magic so they are resistant to it? Is the world high magic or low magic. Regardless, if the players have options to play other races, your humans should be balanced with the other player options. If it is campaign where you only play humans then it will be less of a problem. Just do not count on the encounter builder giving you balanced encounters. I am curious as to your thought process. Magic resistance in normal D&D campaign would probably be too powerful.

Quote from vovuey1 >>

Quote from Spideycloned >>

It's as broken as you the DM make it to be.

While inherent balance for certain things in D&D exists, at the end the balance of any game is going to swing based on how the DM runs the game.  If this human becomes the target of every single magical attack with zero reason as to why they are attacking them?  It's beyond busted.  If it is an extremely low magic campaign and the character is rarely targetted by it?  It's lackluster.

That said, magic resistance by itself is strong.  

Well, what if there was a racial trait that could fix this problem? This doesn't necessarily have to be a racial trait actually, but I think this may fix the issue you brought up of being week in low magic campaigns and OP in high magic campaigns.

Here is a racial trait idea: character gains a meter that grants two different features depending on its threshold. Exceeding the threshold grants a magic sub-trait, while receding it grants a martial sub-trait. Whenever the character is directly affected by magical effects the meter builds up; buildup stacks for each magical effect they are exposed to and increases at a faster rate depending on how powerful the magical effects are: if they are spells then they are based on spell slot levels, if they are not technically spells then they are based on how comparatively powerful they are to spells. Receiving damage or conditions from non-magical sources subtracts buildup. Meter threshold is determined by the magic to non-magic ratio in the campaign.

Here are some possible options for the martial feature:

• Resistance to a damage type that isn't magic based
• Bonus proficiency to strength or dexterity ability checks
• Bonus proficiency to strength or dexterity saving throws

The design philosophy of 5th edition is to make mechanics very easy and very static(they do a thing, and they only do the thing).  This runs opposed to that.  Now you're running something that not only the player is going to have to manage and track, you'll eventually question if it's right and then the players on the other side will have to keep that in mind when targetting people since if the player can have it, so can the npcs/enemies.

I would never, ever consider this suggestion.  I would consider magic resistance, but never this.

In a different system I'd play around with it, but not 5th.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

The whole point of humans is that they are the "normal" pick. The whole point of non-human races is that they can be innately magical. This just seems like you wanted to make something very strong.

 Kinda, but I also want to make the race make sense. Maybe I should add these racial traits as class features instead or something.

Quote from Nyr_Ventus >>

But there are things you could do to play into the magic resistance thing without just say, giving advantage to all saves from magical effects. Perhaps advantage against certain conditions afflicted by magic such as charm, similar to what elves get. Or something like Indominatble, letting you once a day letting you once a day reroll a failed save against magic, or once a short rest let you roll a 1d4 and add it to a save against magic etc. You don't need to abandon the idea of magical resistance thematically but I would shy away from something like 'advantage on all magic saves.' Especially if the race gets relentless endurance and the magic resistance thing isn't the only big mechanically powerful thing they get.

 Indomitable sounds interesting

Quote from doomwh >>

I guess the question is Why are you changing the human race? Do you think it is too week, are you running a campaign where humans can't wield magic so they are resistant to it? Is the world high magic or low magic. Regardless, if the players have options to play other races, your humans should be balanced with the other player options. If it is campaign where you only play humans then it will be less of a problem. Just do not count on the encounter builder giving you balanced encounters. I am curious as to your thought process. Magic resistance in normal D&D campaign would probably be too powerful.

I wanted to add something powerful and give me some kind of defense against magic; I make homebrews based on mechanics first and I wanted to see what could work given opinions from community feedback; it's pretty much working: So far I've received posts that magic resistances balance is based on how magic heavy a campaign is; so I thought up my magic/martial meter racial trait, then I got feedback that features are supposed to be static in 5e and that it doesn't necessarily have to be magic resistance, but something similar, so I thought of five different solutions; at least for now:

1. Don't use magic resistances but a trait that gives advantage on magical effects of a certain tag, like control
2. Don't use magic resistance, but a more situational trait that makes it less OP against magic in general, but also add a martial trait so you don't miss out if it's a low magic campaign
3. Make it so that the magic/martial meter locks in one mode for an hour or until a short rest if the meter rises to the top or drops to the bottom; make the meter capacity small and buildup and drop-off significantly by conditions and small amounts of damage. Finally, all conditions and damage applied to the character while in the locked state doesn't affect the meter after unlocking.
4. Magic resistance can only activate a certain number of times per long rest
5. Try something else and see if it fits more thematically as a class feature or a racial trait, depending on what they are.

Quote from Nyr_Ventus >>

Magic resistance imo is a bit too good. Especially paired with something as good as relentless endurance. 

But there are things you could do to play into the magic resistance thing without just say, giving advantage to all saves from magical effects. Perhaps advantage against certain conditions afflicted by magic such as charm, similar to what elves get. Or something like Indominatble, letting you once a day reroll a failed save against magic, or once a short rest let you roll a 1d4 and add it to a save against magic etc. You don't need to abandon the idea of magical resistance thematically but I would shy away from something like 'advantage on all magic saves.' Especially if the race gets relentless endurance and the magic resistance thing isn't the only big mechanically powerful thing they get. 

 

My general rule of thumb when homebrewing a race is to take an existing race that's somewhat close to what I want, and then tweak things. If I want to add a major, mechanically powerful feature, I replace one on the race. If I want to add proficiencies I replace the old ones, etc. Not all class features need to be powerful, it's okay to have one solid, mechanically powerful one, and some situational flavor ones and some proficiencies etc. 

 What if it's only advantage on magical effects with the control tag?