Oh man, posting in a new forum is always so nerve-wracking.
I'm currently working on a playable race for "awakened" gryphons. So far it's only a project for homebrewing practice and fun. The main purpose, and challenge, of this project is to develop a race with an unavoidably quadruped build - these gryphons naturally cannot use their talons as hands any more than a regular eagle could, which means they explicitly cannot wield weapons, shields, tools etc. It has been going pretty smoothly, but I hit a snag when trying to determine the damage of their natural weapon attacks.
Though my first instinct was to base them on aarakocra and tabaxi, giving them 1d4 slashing (for talons) or 1d4 piercing (for beak), I was reminded that aarakocra and tabaxi attacks are built as backup weapons, since they can still use their hands to wield more powerful weapons. The same is not the case with gryphons.
After going through a few options, I settled with the beak dealing 1d8 piercing, and the talons 2d4 slashing. These then increase based on character level: - Beak increases with 1d8 on 8th level (2d8) and on 15th level (3d8) - Talons increases with 1d4 on 8th level (3d4), 12th level (4d4), and 16th level (5d4).
It was my intention to have different dice damage so as to give the two weapons somewhat different mechanical flavor, but to let them scale up at different paces so that the highest damage avg is passed back and forth between them, to encourage a potential gryphon player to use both weapons rather than just settle with the most powerful one and ignore the other.
Naturally, they don’t have any light weapon kind of property, so they can only be used on the same round if the chosen class gives the Extra attack feature. However, the talons have the finesse property, so that if someone wants to play a dexterity-based gryphon they may do so, at the cost of limiting oneself to one, rather than two, weapons.
However, I still worry I ended up with too high damage. I feel like they’d be reasonably balanced if playing a damage-dealing barbarian/fighter/etc (considering that you’re missing out on virtually all magical weapons for these). The hope is that rogues/rangers/monks will be balanced by the dex-discouraging design, and that magic users will be balanced by the focus on physical over mental stats. Additionally, the games I’m in and have in mind when designing this are often highly roleplay-focused, favoring social encounters over combat. In such situations, I imagine that a large, rare creature without hands and down-prioritized mental stats is at some obvious disadvantage, which should help balance them overall in a campaign. But is that really enough to temper the damage they can do, when they DO get to fight?
So basically: does this build seem fine to you, or badly overpowered? If so, which alternative choices of dice or level-increases would you recommend?
Another option I’m considering is to remove the level scaling, and create a series of feats that increases damage instead (thinking kind of like how the dragonmarks worked as feats in UA?), which could be added using the optional feats rule, or as boons based by plot development etc.
Hello!
Oh man, posting in a new forum is always so nerve-wracking.
I'm currently working on a playable race for "awakened" gryphons. So far it's only a project for homebrewing practice and fun. The main purpose, and challenge, of this project is to develop a race with an unavoidably quadruped build - these gryphons naturally cannot use their talons as hands any more than a regular eagle could, which means they explicitly cannot wield weapons, shields, tools etc. It has been going pretty smoothly, but I hit a snag when trying to determine the damage of their natural weapon attacks.
Though my first instinct was to base them on aarakocra and tabaxi, giving them 1d4 slashing (for talons) or 1d4 piercing (for beak), I was reminded that aarakocra and tabaxi attacks are built as backup weapons, since they can still use their hands to wield more powerful weapons. The same is not the case with gryphons.
After going through a few options, I settled with the beak dealing 1d8 piercing, and the talons 2d4 slashing. These then increase based on character level:
- Beak increases with 1d8 on 8th level (2d8) and on 15th level (3d8)
- Talons increases with 1d4 on 8th level (3d4), 12th level (4d4), and 16th level (5d4).
It was my intention to have different dice damage so as to give the two weapons somewhat different mechanical flavor, but to let them scale up at different paces so that the highest damage avg is passed back and forth between them, to encourage a potential gryphon player to use both weapons rather than just settle with the most powerful one and ignore the other.
Naturally, they don’t have any light weapon kind of property, so they can only be used on the same round if the chosen class gives the Extra attack feature. However, the talons have the finesse property, so that if someone wants to play a dexterity-based gryphon they may do so, at the cost of limiting oneself to one, rather than two, weapons.
However, I still worry I ended up with too high damage. I feel like they’d be reasonably balanced if playing a damage-dealing barbarian/fighter/etc (considering that you’re missing out on virtually all magical weapons for these). The hope is that rogues/rangers/monks will be balanced by the dex-discouraging design, and that magic users will be balanced by the focus on physical over mental stats. Additionally, the games I’m in and have in mind when designing this are often highly roleplay-focused, favoring social encounters over combat. In such situations, I imagine that a large, rare creature without hands and down-prioritized mental stats is at some obvious disadvantage, which should help balance them overall in a campaign. But is that really enough to temper the damage they can do, when they DO get to fight?
So basically: does this build seem fine to you, or badly overpowered? If so, which alternative choices of dice or level-increases would you recommend?
Another option I’m considering is to remove the level scaling, and create a series of feats that increases damage instead (thinking kind of like how the dragonmarks worked as feats in UA?), which could be added using the optional feats rule, or as boons based by plot development etc.
Here is the WIP of the race for reference: https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/696687-awakened-gryphon-homebrew
Thank you in advance for any help! If you have any comments to offer on other aspects of the build, I’m all ears for that too. :)