Anime in general is based on "Go to level 20 and kill the baddest enemy we can find."
Oh wait, go to level 40 and kill a new even harder enemy.
Wait, now it's level 80.
Repeat geometrically until the series ends.
At it's heart, dnd is a medieval fantasy game. It isn't meant for creating world-ending space characters who fight other world-ending space characters.
The core d20 mechanical system might be able to support a shounen framework, but the baselines D&D is built around aren’t compatible with most of the typical examples
Anime in general is based on "Go to level 20 and kill the baddest enemy we can find."
Oh wait, go to level 40 and kill a new even harder enemy.
Wait, now it's level 80.
Repeat geometrically until the series ends.
At it's heart, dnd is a medieval fantasy game. It isn't meant for creating world-ending space characters who fight other world-ending space characters.
Seems like that also describes the D&D game loop. Kill the bad guys, take their stuff, use that stuff and a level up to kill bigger bad guys. And like more than half the campaigns I’ve heard of and/or played in involve stopping some ancient evil from rising and destroying the world. Maybe not from space, but coming from the far realm or the abyss is not functionally any different.
Anime in general is based on "Go to level 20 and kill the baddest enemy we can find."
Oh wait, go to level 40 and kill a new even harder enemy.
Wait, now it's level 80.
Repeat geometrically until the series ends.
At it's heart, dnd is a medieval fantasy game. It isn't meant for creating world-ending space characters who fight other world-ending space characters.
Seems like that also describes the D&D game loop. Kill the bad guys, take their stuff, use that stuff and a level up to kill bigger bad guys. And like more than half the campaigns I’ve heard of and/or played in involve stopping some ancient evil from rising and destroying the world. Maybe not from space, but coming from the far realm or the abyss is not functionally any different.
The difference is that the protagonists in D&D are not able to destroy planets by accident. And they don't need to learn a new secret ultra super super secret move to defeat the new villain because he's immune to the secret ultra super move that used to defeat the last villain. And the fights don't stop so that the characters can have a flashback of the last time they fought a villain and had a flashback inside of that flashback.
Anime in general is based on "Go to level 20 and kill the baddest enemy we can find."
Oh wait, go to level 40 and kill a new even harder enemy.
Wait, now it's level 80.
Repeat geometrically until the series ends.
At it's heart, dnd is a medieval fantasy game. It isn't meant for creating world-ending space characters who fight other world-ending space characters.
Seems like that also describes the D&D game loop. Kill the bad guys, take their stuff, use that stuff and a level up to kill bigger bad guys. And like more than half the campaigns I’ve heard of and/or played in involve stopping some ancient evil from rising and destroying the world. Maybe not from space, but coming from the far realm or the abyss is not functionally any different.
At the basic conceptual level it's not, which is why I said I could seem someone building an anime framework around the d20 game mechanics system. However, 5e doesn't operate on nearly the same power scale as DBZ, so trying to directly cross the two over in play will likely result in either the Saiyan players being nerfed to be in line with the rest of the party and thus not getting to play out their fantasy, or the Saiyan players getting to play out their fantasy and either instantly walking over combat encounters or the rest of the party getting squashed by/having to hang back against enemies scaled appropriately so Saiyans.
And the fights don't stop so that the characters can have a flashback of the last time they fought a villain and had a flashback inside of that flashback.
I’m totally going to do this to my players next time they fight that recurring necromancer enemy. 😀
Anime in general is based on "Go to level 20 and kill the baddest enemy we can find."
Oh wait, go to level 40 and kill a new even harder enemy.
Wait, now it's level 80.
Repeat geometrically until the series ends.
At it's heart, dnd is a medieval fantasy game. It isn't meant for creating world-ending space characters who fight other world-ending space characters.
Seems like that also describes the D&D game loop. Kill the bad guys, take their stuff, use that stuff and a level up to kill bigger bad guys. And like more than half the campaigns I’ve heard of and/or played in involve stopping some ancient evil from rising and destroying the world. Maybe not from space, but coming from the far realm or the abyss is not functionally any different.
At the basic conceptual level it's not, which is why I said I could seem someone building an anime framework around the d20 game mechanics system. However, 5e doesn't operate on nearly the same power scale as DBZ, so trying to directly cross the two over in play will likely result in either the Saiyan players being nerfed to be in line with the rest of the party and thus not getting to play out their fantasy, or the Saiyan players getting to play out their fantasy and either instantly walking over combat encounters or the rest of the party getting squashed by/having to hang back against enemies scaled appropriately so Saiyans.
You can even see that in the show itself, where human characters like Roshii and Mr Satan trained their whole lives to reach the pinnacle of human capability only to be easily outshown by Saiyan children.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It's fascinating to me that people enjoy relentlessly bagging on anyone who enjoys anime around this place. Constantly berating and belittling people for their enjoyment while telling them to get lost. And yet, when someone says "I'm tired of Tolkien. I'd rather stop playing than do another stupid March of the Ringbearers campaign", they get accused of what amounts to D&D Heresy for not worshipping seventy year old stories as the absolute zenith, pinnacle, and culmination of all things fantasy forever.
Funny how that works.
ScienceCal: it is unlikely in the extreme that an 'Official' Saiyan species would ever be implemented in D&D. That's a crossover that would, unfortunately, make a lot of the existing fan base irate, and while I absolutely understand the desire, there is some sense in the idea that faithfully recreating a Saiyan's innate abilities would be difficult while remaining in relative balance with the rest of the game. A character's power, in D&D 5e, is supposed to derive largely from their class, with species and background providing seasoning. You can make an attempt at this, as Saiyans at base have the Oozaru form, the Zenkai boost, and a predilection both cultural and genetic for easily learning ki manipulation.
While none of this can go full blast, the Oozaru form can be patterned after the rules for lycanthropy complete with Wis saves for avoiding becoming a rampaging mindless beast, while Zenkai can be done as combat boosts for being Bloodied. Permanent Zenkai boosts are harder, we don't want to encourage Namek-ing, but even in the source material Zenkai has fallen off now. The two Saiyans who matter have been openly stated as reaching and then surpassing the limits of how far Zenkai could take them.
The Sun Soul monk subclass was specifically built for people who want to play a ki-blasting warrior straight out of Dragon Ball, and can provide a good baseline for how to incorporate ki blasts and ki techniques in a fair manner. One could develop rules for 'projecting' melee attacks over a set range to mimic ki blasts in other classes as well, to offer more variety. New secret techniques and specialized training can come in the form of feats to do things like Kaio Ken or Instant Transmission. So long as everybody is on board, what's the harm?
And because this specifically pissed me off enough to break my exile and answer it...
The difference is that the protagonists in D&D are not able to destroy planets by accident. And they don't need to learn a new secret ultra super super secret move to defeat the new villain because he's immune to the secret ultra super move that used to defeat the last villain. And the fights don't stop so that the characters can have a flashback of the last time they fought a villain and had a flashback inside of that flashback.
Learning a new Ultra Super Secret Move sure sounds a lot like leveling up, doesn't it? Can't beat the BBEG if you don't level up. I've seen plenty of highly skilled DMs utilize flashbacks and in medias res to heighten the stakes and create tension and investment. Anything that can be done poorly can also be done well. The BBEGs in D&D campaigns routinely threaten to erase civilization and eradicate all life, to the point where many players are sick of world-ending stakes. They may not physically crack the planet, but their effect on the world would be largely indistinguishable from dusting the world.
The Legend of Vox Machina is a beloved and wildly successful adaptation of a D&D campaign in which all the characters are shown as using crazy powers to battle deadly, highly lethal enemies that threaten entire realms. As someone who has seen a lot of anime in her days, I can tell you that LoVM is very, very anime-coded. Keyleth is straight up a bender, and Scanlan's Hand Magic is closer to ki projection than conventional magic. Grog literally got a Zenkai boost during the fight with Kevdak (most people don't power up and win a brawl after having an arm-thick stake of wood shoved through their organs), Pike has gone Super Saiyan more than once via her projections, and they're all dramatically faster and more acrobatic than a tabletop character because that makes for good TV. Even the spellcasters are easily as parkour-y as the most elite monks in tabletop terms.
Yes, Dragon Ball's power scaling is well and truly out of control. So is Western comic's. Point of fact: in most power scaler communities I've seen, Western comics routinely and easily defeat Dragon Ball in terms of sheer universe-threatening stupidity of strength. People enjoy flashy, cinematic, awesome battles against crazy foes. Why do folks insist on denigrating people who want to bring those awesome battles to their own games?
Ive played a homebrewed saiyan character and it is absolutly fun, but what happens if it becomes official i would soo love that
tell me what you think about this idea
By default D&D is based on Medieval Fantasy. That is very different from Anime. For that reason alone I think it is a horrible idea to be honest. If you and your d&d group thinks playing in an Anime world is fun, then by all means do that. Do not assume all of us want to do so though!
Ive played a homebrewed saiyan character and it is absolutly fun, but what happens if it becomes official i would soo love that
tell me what you think about this idea
By default D&D is based on Medieval Fantasy. That is very different from Anime. For that reason alone I think it is a horrible idea to be honest. If you and your d&d group thinks playing in an Anime world is fun, then by all means do that. Do not assume all of us want to do so though!
This is misleading on two fronts. First, there is a pretty wide range of "defaults" for D&D. Sure, your Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk settings are all fairly traditional medieval fantasy. But there is also Eberron, which is more akin to a steampunk fantasy given its level of technology. Ravenloft, which is firmly gothic horror. Dark Sun's postapocalyptic fantasy. Everything about places like the Feywild, which are more fantastical. And that does not even get into the numerous other third party contents and homebrew worlds that span other story. D&D is a system, not a genera - it is a system that lends itself best to fantasy because of its use of magic items and spells, but fantasy is an extremely wide category that can be applied to a whole bunch of different subgenera.
Second, and this seems to be the case in a lot of posts here, folks seem to be forgetting that anime is a style, not a genera. There are plenty of medieval fantasy anime -be it historical anime or numerous isekai worlds. In fact, there are multiple animes out there which are clearly explicitly inspired by games like D&D - and may even reference game rules in the system. Maybe DBZ might not be the easiest thing to adapt to D&D, but you cannot write off an entire artistic style just because some individual entries in that style would be a difficult fit.
Now, would I want to see official D&D content based on other IP? Not necessarily. But would I want to see an official world that took elements from Eastern history, culture, and animation? Absolutely - I think it would be good for the game to branch out into other cultures and types of fantasy. Given how Wizards knocked it out of the park with their heavily anime-inspired Magic set Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, I think they probably do have the talent pool and skill to make some kind of fun product with anime roots.
BlaineSimple (youtube channel) offers many homebrew adaptations of Anime (since he likes to play/DM anime-like campaings himself). I Haven't perused his creations and don't know if he tackled DBZ like homebrews but is something to look for. Also may not be adapted to 5e2024, and since is 3rd party power level is probably on the high end.
As for Dnd Beyond, its probably very difficult they add something similar to that concept but one never knows since they started adding many 3rd party materials. For sure there could be things in the current Homebrew in beyond.
Who is bagging on anime? The point is it's a fundamentally different way to power. I love One Punch Man, but Saitama is to the point he can break the universe. Dnd progression is relatively linear. Anime power is exponential. They even showed a graph on OPM heading to infinity. Naruto and DBZ basically the same thing.
As a kid i remember playing sayans in a homebrew campaing my brother made (based on 2ed dnd at the time), he litterally designed the "sayan" race/class and the "samurai" class/kit (Rourumi Kenshin based) so we could play the power fantasy and ditch around energy rays and stupid sword techniques from our favorite shows. They were obviously broken but the opponents my brother maid us fight were also the same or modified dragons (other sayans-ki warriors, and other samurais for the samurai)... That was a crazy adventure for our dnd summer games (since I was too young to play with my brothers group back then).
Who is bagging on anime? The point is it's a fundamentally different way to power. I love One Punch Man, but Saitama is to the point he can break the universe. Dnd progression is relatively linear. Anime power is exponential. They even showed a graph on OPM heading to infinity. Naruto and DBZ basically the same thing.
Dungeon Meshi
Frieren
Hell, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is so punishing and brutal, a DM who ran The Campaign of the Show would be accused of being an old school Killer DM out to gib his players.
And of course, Record of Lodoss War is a classic forty-year-old anime that was directly based on the creator's ongoing tabletop campaign.
Four I can rattle off, off the top of my head, that are grounded in the sort of "realistic" fantasy D&D people say anime cannot ever possibly fathom.
If you want to cite One Punch Man, which is deliberate satire of the overpowered nonsense in shounen beat-'em-ups, and two of the biggest shounen power fantasy series out there as 'the default' for anime? Perhaps we should compare those to their equivalent in D&D - a Monty Haul campaign where everybody is level 20 by the fifth session, everybody is armed to the teeth with dozens of legendary items, people are gestalting into new classes, and the entire goal is crazy over-the-top action.
Assuming that anyone who wants to play to their favorite tropes and stories is just a powergaming jackwad is rather disingenuous, is it not?
One of the main keys of D&D is from zero to hero. Other point of Dragon Ball is the "syndrome of Boo", when the main villain is defeated in the next arc the new enemy is stronger and then the heroes have to train and level-up again. If the strongest villain appeared in the begining then the heroes would be doomed.
Son Woku is inspired in the Monkey-King character from "Journey to the West", and here the closest PC specie to the Monkey-King is the hanuman from "Oriental Adventures".
The current criteria to design a new PC specie is to avoid all possible typecasting. If a PC is designed to be a good barbarian, spellcaster or stealth class but chossing other class would be to waste the racial traits then it is not a right design for 5e standards.
I don't mind about loyal adaptatations, and I would retouch the monkey-tail. The change would be in full moon the saiyan becomes a monkey-furry version, stronger but keeping mainly her mind, only suffering disavatange in Wis save checks about emotional self-control. The monkey tale would be a weak-point but not too much. If somebody catchs the tail the saiyan suffers disavantage in balance, Str and Des checks. She is weaker but she can kick you ass. Usually when they are going to fight the tail is hidden within the armour or hidden in a backpack, or around the waistline like a belt. With some racial feat the tail is no more her weak point, and even this can hold a light weapon, for example a dagger or be a natural weapon.
The saiyans keep young until the 80 years but after they are as old like humans. Their lifespan isn't longer, only the younghood.
Seems like that also describes the D&D game loop. Kill the bad guys, take their stuff, use that stuff and a level up to kill bigger bad guys. And like more than half the campaigns I’ve heard of and/or played in involve stopping some ancient evil from rising and destroying the world. Maybe not from space, but coming from the far realm or the abyss is not functionally any different.
Getting stronger and fighting stronger things fits with D&D just fine. The problem with shonen battle anime though is the scaling, which tends to outpace heroic fantasy incredibly quickly. And DBZ takes that to an entirely different level right from the jump.
Like, even as babies, saiyans are a level of power that is capable of depopulating entire planets. Your choices are to try and contort D&D into that particular box, or make something called a "saiyan" that isn't one at all.
Ive played a homebrewed saiyan character and it is absolutly fun, but what happens if it becomes official i would soo love that
tell me what you think about this idea
Near impossible to balance,
Your looking at something either
As race that gets a bonus when bloodied
A race that just has higher potential example this species can naturally go to 22 str dex con but limited to 14 int wis cha
Or a race that every time true resurrection is cast on them they get a +1 to their lowest stat.
You would likely be better reskinnibg an orc.
Anime in general is based on "Go to level 20 and kill the baddest enemy we can find."
Oh wait, go to level 40 and kill a new even harder enemy.
Wait, now it's level 80.
Repeat geometrically until the series ends.
At it's heart, dnd is a medieval fantasy game. It isn't meant for creating world-ending space characters who fight other world-ending space characters.
The core d20 mechanical system might be able to support a shounen framework, but the baselines D&D is built around aren’t compatible with most of the typical examples
Seems like that also describes the D&D game loop. Kill the bad guys, take their stuff, use that stuff and a level up to kill bigger bad guys. And like more than half the campaigns I’ve heard of and/or played in involve stopping some ancient evil from rising and destroying the world. Maybe not from space, but coming from the far realm or the abyss is not functionally any different.
The difference is that the protagonists in D&D are not able to destroy planets by accident. And they don't need to learn a new secret ultra super super secret move to defeat the new villain because he's immune to the secret ultra super move that used to defeat the last villain. And the fights don't stop so that the characters can have a flashback of the last time they fought a villain and had a flashback inside of that flashback.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
At the basic conceptual level it's not, which is why I said I could seem someone building an anime framework around the d20 game mechanics system. However, 5e doesn't operate on nearly the same power scale as DBZ, so trying to directly cross the two over in play will likely result in either the Saiyan players being nerfed to be in line with the rest of the party and thus not getting to play out their fantasy, or the Saiyan players getting to play out their fantasy and either instantly walking over combat encounters or the rest of the party getting squashed by/having to hang back against enemies scaled appropriately so Saiyans.
I’m totally going to do this to my players next time they fight that recurring necromancer enemy. 😀
You can even see that in the show itself, where human characters like Roshii and Mr Satan trained their whole lives to reach the pinnacle of human capability only to be easily outshown by Saiyan children.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah, once Super Saiyan became a thing the humans all stopped having much to contribute.
It's fascinating to me that people enjoy relentlessly bagging on anyone who enjoys anime around this place. Constantly berating and belittling people for their enjoyment while telling them to get lost. And yet, when someone says "I'm tired of Tolkien. I'd rather stop playing than do another stupid March of the Ringbearers campaign", they get accused of what amounts to D&D Heresy for not worshipping seventy year old stories as the absolute zenith, pinnacle, and culmination of all things fantasy forever.
Funny how that works.
ScienceCal: it is unlikely in the extreme that an 'Official' Saiyan species would ever be implemented in D&D. That's a crossover that would, unfortunately, make a lot of the existing fan base irate, and while I absolutely understand the desire, there is some sense in the idea that faithfully recreating a Saiyan's innate abilities would be difficult while remaining in relative balance with the rest of the game. A character's power, in D&D 5e, is supposed to derive largely from their class, with species and background providing seasoning. You can make an attempt at this, as Saiyans at base have the Oozaru form, the Zenkai boost, and a predilection both cultural and genetic for easily learning ki manipulation.
While none of this can go full blast, the Oozaru form can be patterned after the rules for lycanthropy complete with Wis saves for avoiding becoming a rampaging mindless beast, while Zenkai can be done as combat boosts for being Bloodied. Permanent Zenkai boosts are harder, we don't want to encourage Namek-ing, but even in the source material Zenkai has fallen off now. The two Saiyans who matter have been openly stated as reaching and then surpassing the limits of how far Zenkai could take them.
The Sun Soul monk subclass was specifically built for people who want to play a ki-blasting warrior straight out of Dragon Ball, and can provide a good baseline for how to incorporate ki blasts and ki techniques in a fair manner. One could develop rules for 'projecting' melee attacks over a set range to mimic ki blasts in other classes as well, to offer more variety. New secret techniques and specialized training can come in the form of feats to do things like Kaio Ken or Instant Transmission. So long as everybody is on board, what's the harm?
And because this specifically pissed me off enough to break my exile and answer it...
Learning a new Ultra Super Secret Move sure sounds a lot like leveling up, doesn't it? Can't beat the BBEG if you don't level up.
I've seen plenty of highly skilled DMs utilize flashbacks and in medias res to heighten the stakes and create tension and investment. Anything that can be done poorly can also be done well.
The BBEGs in D&D campaigns routinely threaten to erase civilization and eradicate all life, to the point where many players are sick of world-ending stakes. They may not physically crack the planet, but their effect on the world would be largely indistinguishable from dusting the world.
The Legend of Vox Machina is a beloved and wildly successful adaptation of a D&D campaign in which all the characters are shown as using crazy powers to battle deadly, highly lethal enemies that threaten entire realms. As someone who has seen a lot of anime in her days, I can tell you that LoVM is very, very anime-coded. Keyleth is straight up a bender, and Scanlan's Hand Magic is closer to ki projection than conventional magic. Grog literally got a Zenkai boost during the fight with Kevdak (most people don't power up and win a brawl after having an arm-thick stake of wood shoved through their organs), Pike has gone Super Saiyan more than once via her projections, and they're all dramatically faster and more acrobatic than a tabletop character because that makes for good TV. Even the spellcasters are easily as parkour-y as the most elite monks in tabletop terms.
Yes, Dragon Ball's power scaling is well and truly out of control. So is Western comic's. Point of fact: in most power scaler communities I've seen, Western comics routinely and easily defeat Dragon Ball in terms of sheer universe-threatening stupidity of strength. People enjoy flashy, cinematic, awesome battles against crazy foes. Why do folks insist on denigrating people who want to bring those awesome battles to their own games?
Please do not contact or message me.
By default D&D is based on Medieval Fantasy. That is very different from Anime. For that reason alone I think it is a horrible idea to be honest.
If you and your d&d group thinks playing in an Anime world is fun, then by all means do that. Do not assume all of us want to do so though!
This is misleading on two fronts. First, there is a pretty wide range of "defaults" for D&D. Sure, your Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk settings are all fairly traditional medieval fantasy. But there is also Eberron, which is more akin to a steampunk fantasy given its level of technology. Ravenloft, which is firmly gothic horror. Dark Sun's postapocalyptic fantasy. Everything about places like the Feywild, which are more fantastical. And that does not even get into the numerous other third party contents and homebrew worlds that span other story. D&D is a system, not a genera - it is a system that lends itself best to fantasy because of its use of magic items and spells, but fantasy is an extremely wide category that can be applied to a whole bunch of different subgenera.
Second, and this seems to be the case in a lot of posts here, folks seem to be forgetting that anime is a style, not a genera. There are plenty of medieval fantasy anime -be it historical anime or numerous isekai worlds. In fact, there are multiple animes out there which are clearly explicitly inspired by games like D&D - and may even reference game rules in the system. Maybe DBZ might not be the easiest thing to adapt to D&D, but you cannot write off an entire artistic style just because some individual entries in that style would be a difficult fit.
Now, would I want to see official D&D content based on other IP? Not necessarily. But would I want to see an official world that took elements from Eastern history, culture, and animation? Absolutely - I think it would be good for the game to branch out into other cultures and types of fantasy. Given how Wizards knocked it out of the park with their heavily anime-inspired Magic set Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, I think they probably do have the talent pool and skill to make some kind of fun product with anime roots.
As for Dnd Beyond, its probably very difficult they add something similar to that concept but one never knows since they started adding many 3rd party materials. For sure there could be things in the current Homebrew in beyond.
Who is bagging on anime? The point is it's a fundamentally different way to power. I love One Punch Man, but Saitama is to the point he can break the universe. Dnd progression is relatively linear. Anime power is exponential. They even showed a graph on OPM heading to infinity. Naruto and DBZ basically the same thing.
As a kid i remember playing sayans in a homebrew campaing my brother made (based on 2ed dnd at the time), he litterally designed the "sayan" race/class and the "samurai" class/kit (Rourumi Kenshin based) so we could play the power fantasy and ditch around energy rays and stupid sword techniques from our favorite shows. They were obviously broken but the opponents my brother maid us fight were also the same or modified dragons (other sayans-ki warriors, and other samurais for the samurai)... That was a crazy adventure for our dnd summer games (since I was too young to play with my brothers group back then).
Dungeon Meshi
Frieren
Hell, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is so punishing and brutal, a DM who ran The Campaign of the Show would be accused of being an old school Killer DM out to gib his players.
And of course, Record of Lodoss War is a classic forty-year-old anime that was directly based on the creator's ongoing tabletop campaign.
Four I can rattle off, off the top of my head, that are grounded in the sort of "realistic" fantasy D&D people say anime cannot ever possibly fathom.
If you want to cite One Punch Man, which is deliberate satire of the overpowered nonsense in shounen beat-'em-ups, and two of the biggest shounen power fantasy series out there as 'the default' for anime? Perhaps we should compare those to their equivalent in D&D - a Monty Haul campaign where everybody is level 20 by the fifth session, everybody is armed to the teeth with dozens of legendary items, people are gestalting into new classes, and the entire goal is crazy over-the-top action.
Assuming that anyone who wants to play to their favorite tropes and stories is just a powergaming jackwad is rather disingenuous, is it not?
Please do not contact or message me.
One of the main keys of D&D is from zero to hero. Other point of Dragon Ball is the "syndrome of Boo", when the main villain is defeated in the next arc the new enemy is stronger and then the heroes have to train and level-up again. If the strongest villain appeared in the begining then the heroes would be doomed.
Son Woku is inspired in the Monkey-King character from "Journey to the West", and here the closest PC specie to the Monkey-King is the hanuman from "Oriental Adventures".
The current criteria to design a new PC specie is to avoid all possible typecasting. If a PC is designed to be a good barbarian, spellcaster or stealth class but chossing other class would be to waste the racial traits then it is not a right design for 5e standards.
I don't mind about loyal adaptatations, and I would retouch the monkey-tail. The change would be in full moon the saiyan becomes a monkey-furry version, stronger but keeping mainly her mind, only suffering disavatange in Wis save checks about emotional self-control. The monkey tale would be a weak-point but not too much. If somebody catchs the tail the saiyan suffers disavantage in balance, Str and Des checks. She is weaker but she can kick you ass. Usually when they are going to fight the tail is hidden within the armour or hidden in a backpack, or around the waistline like a belt. With some racial feat the tail is no more her weak point, and even this can hold a light weapon, for example a dagger or be a natural weapon.
The saiyans keep young until the 80 years but after they are as old like humans. Their lifespan isn't longer, only the younghood.
Other weak point is they need to eat more food.
Getting stronger and fighting stronger things fits with D&D just fine. The problem with shonen battle anime though is the scaling, which tends to outpace heroic fantasy incredibly quickly. And DBZ takes that to an entirely different level right from the jump.
Like, even as babies, saiyans are a level of power that is capable of depopulating entire planets. Your choices are to try and contort D&D into that particular box, or make something called a "saiyan" that isn't one at all.
My question is only one for know. What exactly is a "saiyan character" in D&D?