Hi to all, and thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and leave me feedback.
Kuhl' Volatuvespi – Latest Version:
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Race Title
Singular
Kuhl' Volatuvespi
"I am a Kuhl' Volatuvespi."
Plural
Kuhl' Volatuvespi
"We are Kuhl' Volatuvespi."
Shortened
Singular: Kuhl' / Vespi
"I am a Kuhl'."
Plural: Kuhl' / Vespi
"We are Kuhl'."
Cultural Note
Kuhl' Volatuvespi are more likely to refer to themselves as Kuhl', while outsiders or foreigners typically call them Vespi.
Adjective
Kuhlan / Vespan
"Kuhlan nation"; "Vespan architecture"
Inspiration
Kuhl's Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus Kuhlii) is a small plain-nosed bat of the Vespertilionid family that was named after Heinrich Kuhl, a German Zoologist. In South Africa, it is one of the less common bats, and is found in the provinces of Limpopo, North West, and Gauteng.
"Volatus" and "vesper" are both Latin words that, when combined, loosely can be understood to mean "flying night".
Music, musical performance, and sound in general, are intrinsic to Khulan culture and society. They're naturally gifted musicians, and much of their developments in science and technology were made with the advancement of music also in mind. Khul' have very fine control over their extremely intricate nasal, throat and vocal muscles, allowing them to emit sounds with a wide range of colour, texture, and frequency. While this is beneficial musically, it's also very useful for communicating with each other, navigating, and hunting. Much of their architecture, infrastructure, and engineering can be manipulated with sound. They are omnivorous, with diets consisting of insects, small animals such as rodents, seeds, and fruit. The Khul' are also a noctural society.
To expand upon: History with Dwarven societies due to Khulan societies developing alongside certain Dwarven populations in caves / mountains
Basics
Size (Adult)
Medium – Between 4' and 5' (1,2m to 1,5m) (Same as Dwarves)
Age & Maturity
They mature faster than humans do, in terms of mind and body, and reach adulthood by 14 years. On average, Khul' do not live for more than 60 years.
Alignment
Neutral Good
Khul' value just and fair laws that treat their adherents with respect and equality. While they are not afraid to challenge injustice, they will typically avoid physical violence when they can.
Movement
Walking: 35 ft (Standard is 30 ft)
Flying: 30 ft (Standard is 30 ft)
Linguistic Proficiency
Common – Written and Spoken; Dwarvish – Good Speech, Poor Writing; Music Notation
Abilities
Primary
Intelligence: +2
Khul' value practical and theoretical education for the purposes of enabling artistic self-expression, and the improvement of society.
Secondary
Dexterity: +1
Due to their flight, small frames, and light bones, Khul' are agile and nimble.
Traits
(Name?) Roosting Mentality / Leather-Clad
Weakness to Cold Temperatures.
Damage sustained by Kuhl' from the cold is doubled, and prolonged exposure to the cold can be fatal.
Khul' sleep in very close proximity to each other for the purposes of preserving body heat, and avoid sleeping on their own, or in uninsulated environments, when they can.
Vampiric
Slight Weakness to Direct Sunlight.
Rolls made or actions taken while exposed to direct sunlight are slightly debuffed.
Khul' are not acclimated to sunlight, due to their civilisations historically being developed underground in massive mountains or caverns. They prefer to go to the surface at night when the sun has set.
(Name?) Bat-Blind / Short-Sighted
Perception and/or Investigation Checks Based on Sight are Debuffed.
Due to their sophisticated echolocation and sound-based technology, Khul' are less dependent on sight than other races, resulting in slightly weaker vision compared to others.
Echolocation
Blindsight (30 ft).
Being nocturnal, in addition to their sonar navigation, Khul' can distinguish shapes and movement in the absence of light.
(Name?) Beast Speech
Khul' can loosely converse with small animals such as small birds, cats, rats, and snakes. The success of this is based on a roll / check.
Perception and/or Investigation Checks based on Hearing are Boosted.
Khul' possess large ears over which they have fine motor control. They are able to detect frequencies from a higher range than humans.
(Name?) Long-Fingered
Proficiency in Sleight of Hand (Dexterity).
Extremely long and thing fingers. (also helps with instruments)
(Name?) Virtuoso
Proficiency in Performance (Charisma).
Khul' are skilled in either singing, or a musical instrument.
(Name?) Weaker Version of Mimicry from Kenku
Khul' can accurately mimic sounds they've heard, including voices, due to their sophisticated nose, throat, and voice muscles. The success of this is dependent on a Deception roll, and can be countered by a Wisdom or Intelligence Check three out of five times.
Synaesthesia
Khul' associate certain frequencies or sounds with other sensations or experiences. (Might make for cool puzzles?)
Wow. For one thing you haven’t really described much very well, and this seems simultaneously both under and overpowered somehow.
You write things like “slightly rebuffed,” and “boosted,” but those don’t really mean anything and you haven’t given and details so I have no clue what you intend. You also mention saving throws and ability checks, but never mention the DCs for them or how to calculate the. It needs more details basically.
Your race has a flying speed and 30-foot blindsight, each of which would be strong—very strong all by itself, but you included both. And you have a bunch of proficiencies and other stuff too, but you also gave it a bunch of nerfs which make it hard to play. It’s very confusing. I would focus on the main points and maybe condense things where you can.
Also, the whole thing about bats having poor eyesight is actually a myth.
Wow. For one thing you haven’t really described much very well, and this seems simultaneously both under and overpowered somehow.
You write things like “slightly rebuffed,” and “boosted,” but those don’t really mean anything and you haven’t given and details so I have no clue what you intend. You also mention saving throws and ability checks, but never mention the DCs for them or how to calculate the. It needs more details basically.
Your race has a flying speed and 30-foot blindsight, each of which would be strong—very strong all by itself, but you included both. And you have a bunch of proficiencies and other stuff too, but you also gave it a bunch of nerfs which make it hard to play. It’s very confusing. I would focus on the main points and maybe condense things where you can.
Also, the whole thing about bats having poor eyesight is actually a myth.
Thank you for the feedback!
Yes, you are correct, I haven't been specific at all, mainly because I just wanted to throw all my ideas onto a page, then refine from there. Your comments are very helpful.
I understand what you mean about it being complicated. I had the same thought. I do personally like the complexity, however. Maybe once I've finalised and simplified the main race, I can introduce subraces.
Regarding the flight and blindsight, do you think it would be acceptable if I nerf the flight by making it so that the player must return to the ground by the end of the turn?
Regarding the cold and sunlight debuffs, I feel like Vampiric is more iconic, so perhaps I'll remove the cold weakness. I like the visual of them needing to huddle together for sleep like real bats, so I'll keep that behaviour in.
Fortunately I am aware that bats don't have poor eyesight, but it's always fun to find inspiration from myths. Thanks for pointing it out, though.
Sposta is right, it needs more detail. The flight alone is very powerful.
I will say that synesthesia is a really interesting idea for a racial trait.
I'm glad you like Synesthesia! I can't imagine it will be useful for combat, but it would be interesting if incorporated into communication or puzzles, somehow.
Thank you for your thoughts :) I gave a detailed reply to Sposta.
Wow. For one thing you haven’t really described much very well, and this seems simultaneously both under and overpowered somehow.
You write things like “slightly rebuffed,” and “boosted,” but those don’t really mean anything and you haven’t given and details so I have no clue what you intend. You also mention saving throws and ability checks, but never mention the DCs for them or how to calculate the. It needs more details basically.
Your race has a flying speed and 30-foot blindsight, each of which would be strong—very strong all by itself, but you included both. And you have a bunch of proficiencies and other stuff too, but you also gave it a bunch of nerfs which make it hard to play. It’s very confusing. I would focus on the main points and maybe condense things where you can.
Also, the whole thing about bats having poor eyesight is actually a myth.
Thank you for the feedback!
Yes, you are correct, I haven't been specific at all, mainly because I just wanted to throw all my ideas onto a page, then refine from there. Your comments are very helpful.
I understand what you mean about it being complicated. I had the same thought. I do personally like the complexity, however. Maybe once I've finalised and simplified the main race, I can introduce subraces.
Regarding the flight and blindsight, do you think it would be acceptable if I nerf the flight by making it so that the player must return to the ground by the end of the turn?
Regarding the cold and sunlight debuffs, I feel like Vampiric is more iconic, so perhaps I'll remove the cold weakness. I like the visual of them needing to huddle together for sleep like real bats, so I'll keep that behaviour in.
Fortunately I am aware that bats don't have poor eyesight, but it's always fun to find inspiration from myths. Thanks for pointing it out, though.
Thank you again; I appreciate it :)
Sure thing. For what it’s worth, if it were me I would keep the cold thing and drop vampiric. For one, sunlight sensitivity has been done to death and people don’t really like it as they feel it’s too punishing, but the cold thing is a little different than everything else out there so that’s cool. For another, when I think “vampiric” I don’t think sunlight issues first and foremost, I think bloodsucking which your race doesn’t seem to do.
Also, a lot of people really dislike having culture and race all mixed up together. Some just finfd it too constraining but others feel it is actually offensive and noninclusive. If you want to to avoid those issues, I suggest removing the racial traits you gave them based on cultural stuff and just stick to the biological stuff. Keep the cultural information, just don’t use it to make your traits is all. That would include stuff like the +2 Intelligence because of their cultural proclivities towards education (that’s one of those things people get really offended by), and some of the proficiencies (the dwarvish language, the Virtuoso trait). Perhaps consider +2 Dex and +1 Con or maybe Wis. You could describe them as being disease resistant and hearty or something to justify the Con, or say that their superior senses make them very tuned into their environments as a justification for Wis. But to be honest, you might want to drop the fixed racial ASIs entirely and just go with the floating ASIs like all the newer races get. It’s safer that way.
I’m one of the people who liked the fixed racial ASIs like races used to get and like you’re currently using. Apparently I’m in the minority on that though, and I’ve been flat out told by people that my opinion is “wrong” and if I didn’t change it that means I’m “a racist piece of 💩.“ 🤷♂️ I just thought I like strong orcs, nimble elves, and stout dwarves, but I guess my opinion is wrong somehow, and I definitely don’t want to be any type of 💩, so…. Yeah, that’s a thing.
Just fair warning is all.
About the vision problems, penalties to Perception and/or investigation because of their weak vision is the kind of thing a lot of players will think makes a race not worth playing. Combined with the fact that you ostensibly included it because of the race’s reliance on sonic technology is another one of those cultural bleedovers that people tend to complain about and that’s pretty much a recipe for folks not liking it.
Sposta is right, it needs more detail. The flight alone is very powerful.
I will say that synesthesia is a really interesting idea for a racial trait.
I'm glad you like Synesthesia! I can't imagine it will be useful for combat, but it would be interesting if incorporated into communication or puzzles, somehow.
Thank you for your thoughts :) I gave a detailed reply to Sposta.
I think I homebrewed a synesthesia spell at some point. The basic idea is that the caster could easily gain the same information from their visual and auditory senses, so basically, they could not be blinded or deafened unless they were both simulatneously.
This does a lot of things, and frankly I think step 1 needs to be letting some of these features go. Flight is an extremely powerful trait by itself, and so is 30 ft Blindsight. I would not expect a race with either of those traits--let alone both--to also have 6 other positive traits (+walking speed, +perception/investigation "boost", +Sleight of Hand proficiency, +Performance proficiency, +Beast Speech, +Mimicry; I'm not even counting Synesthesia because I'm not sure what it does mechanically).
The three negative traits don't clearly counterbalance the large suite of positive ones: it's hard for a DM to say, for example, "this is a sight-based check and only a sight-based check", especially when a creature has 30 ft of hearing-based Blindsight and whatever Synesthesia is. This is probably why Monsters of the Multiverse removed Keen Hearing and Keen Smell from most monsters that had those traits, and replaced them with a general Perception bonus. MotM also notably cut Sunlight Sensitivity from at least the Duergar and Kobold (they may have cut it entirely, but I didn't feel like checking every single underdark race across two sources); I would be very careful about reintroducing a mechanic that official sources tried and then later rolled back. It says something about how popular those traits may have been with players.
My advice would be this: try to write a version of this with no more than 3 positive traits, and no more than 1 negative trait. Figure out which traits are truly core to what the species is. Cut everything else. You can still include things like Synesthesia in the cultural description (and I think you should, it's very cool despite being mechanically unclear) but if you're not sure what a feature exactly does, or you can't explain it to someone else, cut it. Once you've identified the core identity of the species, you may be able to layer additional things on top of it if you have power budget left.
EDIT: This looks really negative on a re-read so I wanted to add some encouragement. I think this species is rad as heck, and I would probably include it in my next campaign if you got it a bit more streamlined. I absolutely know what it is like to have a cool idea and just keep adding to it until you're way outside the realm of what's playable. You've got a diamond here, it just needs cut and polish before it can shine.
I think I homebrewed a synesthesia spell at some point. The basic idea is that the caster could easily gain the same information from their visual and auditory senses, so basically, they could not be blinded or deafened unless they were both simulatneously.
That's really cool! Thanks for sharing! As a spell, it's fantastic. I imagine it would be too OP if it were an inherent ability of my race, however, since they have so many other abilities already.
I've uploaded a Google Drive link to an updated PDF if you'd care to have a peek. It's progress, at least!
Sure thing. For what it’s worth, if it were me I would keep the cold thing and drop vampiric. For one, sunlight sensitivity has been done to death and people don’t really like it as they feel it’s too punishing, but the cold thing is a little different than everything else out there so that’s cool. For another, when I think “vampiric” I don’t think sunlight issues first and foremost, I think bloodsucking which your race doesn’t seem to do.
Also, a lot of people really dislike having culture and race all mixed up together. Some just finfd it too constraining but others feel it is actually offensive and noninclusive. If you want to to avoid those issues, I suggest removing the racial traits you gave them based on cultural stuff and just stick to the biological stuff. Keep the cultural information, just don’t use it to make your traits is all. That would include stuff like the +2 Intelligence because of their cultural proclivities towards education (that’s one of those things people get really offended by), and some of the proficiencies (the dwarvish language, the Virtuoso trait). Perhaps consider +2 Dex and +1 Con or maybe Wis. You could describe them as being disease resistant and hearty or something to justify the Con, or say that their superior senses make them very tuned into their environments as a justification for Wis. But to be honest, you might want to drop the fixed racial ASIs entirely and just go with the floating ASIs like all the newer races get. It’s safer that way.
I’m one of the people who liked the fixed racial ASIs like races used to get and like you’re currently using. Apparently I’m in the minority on that though, and I’ve been flat out told by people that my opinion is “wrong” and if I didn’t change it that means I’m “a racist piece of 💩.“ 🤷♂️ I just thought I like strong orcs, nimble elves, and stout dwarves, but I guess my opinion is wrong somehow, and I definitely don’t want to be any type of 💩, so…. Yeah, that’s a thing.
Just fair warning is all.
About the vision problems, penalties to Perception and/or investigation because of their weak vision is the kind of thing a lot of players will think makes a race not worth playing. Combined with the fact that you ostensibly included it because of the race’s reliance on sonic technology is another one of those cultural bleedovers that people tend to complain about and that’s pretty much a recipe for folks not liking it.
I super appreciate the warning. I should've expected that DnD players would be extremely passionate about things like that. Frankly, if a person is offended by the notion that receiving an education makes you more intelligent, I'd think them very unreasonable, and I wouldn't have much to say to them other than, "it's a fantasy game". I will offer an alternative justification for the +2 intelligence, though, to please anyone who might end up playing my no-name homebrew race, and take issue with this: regard it as musical intelligence, or the skills to make and play music, and use music notation. Since music is an essential aspect of their culture, they will of course study a little bit of music. I will also clarify that no, that doesn't necessarily mean western or European musical standards and conventions. Same goes for the educational aspect. I'm an educator, and I will be the first one to say that I disprove of much of what western "education" is. When I speak about education, I mean it to be highly pragmatic: basic literacy and numeracy, critical reasoning, and kinaesthetic learning, as well as moral and spiritual education for the purposes of developing the self, and encouraging individualism and self-expression in a society with a strong sense of community.
At the end of the day, I like storytelling, and this is just a fantasy game, so if anyone ever wants to play as a khul', I encourage them to keep what they like, and change what they don't like.
With that out of the way, I'm still on the fence about the "bat blindness" (disadvantage to sight-based perception / investigation checks). I feel like it's necessary due to the blindsight, but I have given the blindsight a bunch of failure conditions, which might be more than enough. I'm also deciding between the cold weakness, or sunlight weakness. I'm leaning towards the cold weakness, since you mentioned it's less common. Regardless, I updated and clarified a lot, so you're welcome to peek at in the PDF I shared through Google Drive.
This does a lot of things, and frankly I think step 1 needs to be letting some of these features go. Flight is an extremely powerful trait by itself, and so is 30 ft Blindsight. I would not expect a race with either of those traits--let alone both--to also have 6 other positive traits (+walking speed, +perception/investigation "boost", +Sleight of Hand proficiency, +Performance proficiency, +Beast Speech, +Mimicry; I'm not even counting Synesthesia because I'm not sure what it does mechanically).
The three negative traits don't clearly counterbalance the large suite of positive ones: it's hard for a DM to say, for example, "this is a sight-based check and only a sight-based check", especially when a creature has 30 ft of hearing-based Blindsight and whatever Synesthesia is. This is probably why Monsters of the Multiverse removed Keen Hearing and Keen Smell from most monsters that had those traits, and replaced them with a general Perception bonus. MotM also notably cut Sunlight Sensitivity from at least the Duergar and Kobold (they may have cut it entirely, but I didn't feel like checking every single underdark race across two sources); I would be very careful about reintroducing a mechanic that official sources tried and then later rolled back. It says something about how popular those traits may have been with players.
My advice would be this: try to write a version of this with no more than 3 positive traits, and no more than 1 negative trait. Figure out which traits are truly core to what the species is. Cut everything else. You can still include things like Synesthesia in the cultural description (and I think you should, it's very cool despite being mechanically unclear) but if you're not sure what a feature exactly does, or you can't explain it to someone else, cut it. Once you've identified the core identity of the species, you may be able to layer additional things on top of it if you have power budget left.
EDIT: This looks really negative on a re-read so I wanted to add some encouragement. I think this species is rad as heck, and I would probably include it in my next campaign if you got it a bit more streamlined. I absolutely know what it is like to have a cool idea and just keep adding to it until you're way outside the realm of what's playable. You've got a diamond here, it just needs cut and polish before it can shine.
I genuinely appreciate the thorough feedback and encouragement. Just after you commented, I uploaded a PDF (via Google Drive) with a lot of clarification, and I feel more equipped to "trim the fat" now. My problem is, I kept thinking of traits that would make sense realistically given that it's based on a bat, and I was neglecting the fact that this is a game that has to be fair and balanced in the end. I'm still struggling to find a good balance, but next, I'll be removing the sleight of hand bonus, the beast speech, and probably the sunlight weakness in favour of the cold weakness. I'm also considering removing the "bat blind". As for the flight and blindsight, if at all possible, I would rather have a nerfed flight so that the blindsight can be the stronger of the two. Although I would love to keep both abilities, the theming around music and sound is more important to me, so if push comes to shove, I'll remove the flight entirely.
Thanks for pointing out that it can be confusing to have purely sound-based or sight-based checks. What I was imagining for a sound-based check, was eavesdropping on a distant conversation, or listening for a faint / faraway sound. As for sight-based checks... That doesn:t make a lot of sense. Reading from far away? Trying to recognise faraway faces in a crowd? Idk. I'll probably remove those buffs/nerfs. What I might end up doing instead, is making you clumsier if you're deafened or your ears or covered, by applying something like a -2 to your dexterity. That's clearer and more in line with the sound theming.
It's less about whether an education makes you more intelligent, and more about whether an education is a racial trait. There's basically two schools of thought on this: traditionally, D&D has included both biology and culture in racial features, but recently they've started to move towards "species" representing biology only.
The traditional approach assumes that every race has a monoculture that influences the development of every member of that race; with this approach you can easily say that every Bat-person gets an education, every Dwarf learns to wear heavy armor and use an axe, and every Human gets to have a beautiful, varied life experience that leaves them a unique gem in the multiverse.
The new school argues that Humans shouldn't be the only ones who get to have beautiful, varied life experiences. It questions the notion that adventurers are always typical representatives of a racial monoculture (or, indeed, that a racial monoculture should exist in the first place). It asks: "if a gnome is raised by wolves, are they still smarter on average than a human commoner?", or perhaps more pointedly, "why are fantasy games full of tropes we see used to dehumanize real life people?"
Now if it's not clear already I obviously subscribe to the new school myself, but it does come with some downsides. WotC has adopted the new school approach somewhat in more recent material, but they've also used it as an excuse to just... Leave blank any suggestion of meaningful culture for most races. I think there's a happy medium where suggestions can be made without locking the player in mechanically (or implying some humanoids are biologically smarter than others). It's as easy as saying "typical Kuhl culture in *Setting Name* prioritizes comprehensive education for all young people. Characters raised among the Kuhl might take +2 Intelligence when they choose ASIs at character creation."
It's less about whether an education makes you more intelligent, and more about whether an education is a racial trait. There's basically two schools of thought on this: traditionally, D&D has included both biology and culture in racial features, but recently they've started to move towards "species" representing biology only.
The traditional approach assumes that every race has a monoculture that influences the development of every member of that race; with this approach you can easily say that every Bat-person gets an education, every Dwarf learns to wear heavy armor and use an axe, and every Human gets to have a beautiful, varied life experience that leaves them a unique gem in the multiverse.
The new school argues that Humans shouldn't be the only ones who get to have beautiful, varied life experiences. It questions the notion that adventurers are always typical representatives of a racial monoculture (or, indeed, that a racial monoculture should exist in the first place). It asks: "if a gnome is raised by wolves, are they still smarter on average than a human commoner?", or perhaps more pointedly, "why are fantasy games full of tropes we see used to dehumanize real life people?"
Now if it's not clear already I obviously subscribe to the new school myself, but it does come with some downsides. WotC has adopted the new school approach somewhat in more recent material, but they've also used it as an excuse to just... Leave blank any suggestion of meaningful culture for most races. I think there's a happy medium where suggestions can be made without locking the player in mechanically (or implying some humanoids are biologically smarter than others). It's as easy as saying "typical Kuhl culture in *Setting Name* prioritizes comprehensive education for all young people. Characters raised among the Kuhl might take +2 Intelligence for an ASI at character creation."
I understand what you mean. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the clarification! What you said at the end is exactly what I meant. OK... I'll re-think that and offer the player more background and choice. I feel like this is also a problem that can potentially be solved by introducing subraces.
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Hi to all, and thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and leave me feedback.
Kuhl' Volatuvespi – Latest Version:
Unhide the spoiler to view the embedded images from the V2.5 PDF (Flavourless).
Original Post Below (Unhide Spoiler):
Race Title
Singular
Kuhl' Volatuvespi
"I am a Kuhl' Volatuvespi."
Plural
Kuhl' Volatuvespi
"We are Kuhl' Volatuvespi."
Shortened
Singular: Kuhl' / Vespi
"I am a Kuhl'."
Plural: Kuhl' / Vespi
"We are Kuhl'."
Cultural Note
Kuhl' Volatuvespi are more likely to refer to themselves as Kuhl', while outsiders or foreigners typically call them Vespi.
Adjective
Kuhlan / Vespan
"Kuhlan nation"; "Vespan architecture"
Inspiration
Kuhl's Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus Kuhlii) is a small plain-nosed bat of the Vespertilionid family that was named after Heinrich Kuhl, a German Zoologist. In South Africa, it is one of the less common bats, and is found in the provinces of Limpopo, North West, and Gauteng.
"Volatus" and "vesper" are both Latin words that, when combined, loosely can be understood to mean "flying night".
Music, musical performance, and sound in general, are intrinsic to Khulan culture and society. They're naturally gifted musicians, and much of their developments in science and technology were made with the advancement of music also in mind. Khul' have very fine control over their extremely intricate nasal, throat and vocal muscles, allowing them to emit sounds with a wide range of colour, texture, and frequency. While this is beneficial musically, it's also very useful for communicating with each other, navigating, and hunting. Much of their architecture, infrastructure, and engineering can be manipulated with sound. They are omnivorous, with diets consisting of insects, small animals such as rodents, seeds, and fruit. The Khul' are also a noctural society.
To expand upon: History with Dwarven societies due to Khulan societies developing alongside certain Dwarven populations in caves / mountains
Basics
Size (Adult)
Medium – Between 4' and 5' (1,2m to 1,5m) (Same as Dwarves)
Age & Maturity
They mature faster than humans do, in terms of mind and body, and reach adulthood by 14 years. On average, Khul' do not live for more than 60 years.
Alignment
Neutral Good
Khul' value just and fair laws that treat their adherents with respect and equality. While they are not afraid to challenge injustice, they will typically avoid physical violence when they can.
Movement
Walking: 35 ft (Standard is 30 ft)
Flying: 30 ft (Standard is 30 ft)
Linguistic Proficiency
Common – Written and Spoken; Dwarvish – Good Speech, Poor Writing; Music Notation
Abilities
Primary
Intelligence: +2
Khul' value practical and theoretical education for the purposes of enabling artistic self-expression, and the improvement of society.
Secondary
Dexterity: +1
Due to their flight, small frames, and light bones, Khul' are agile and nimble.
Traits
(Name?) Roosting Mentality / Leather-Clad
Weakness to Cold Temperatures.
Damage sustained by Kuhl' from the cold is doubled, and prolonged exposure to the cold can be fatal.
Khul' sleep in very close proximity to each other for the purposes of preserving body heat, and avoid sleeping on their own, or in uninsulated environments, when they can.
Vampiric
Slight Weakness to Direct Sunlight.
Rolls made or actions taken while exposed to direct sunlight are slightly debuffed.
Khul' are not acclimated to sunlight, due to their civilisations historically being developed underground in massive mountains or caverns. They prefer to go to the surface at night when the sun has set.
(Name?) Bat-Blind / Short-Sighted
Perception and/or Investigation Checks Based on Sight are Debuffed.
Due to their sophisticated echolocation and sound-based technology, Khul' are less dependent on sight than other races, resulting in slightly weaker vision compared to others.
Echolocation
Blindsight (30 ft).
Being nocturnal, in addition to their sonar navigation, Khul' can distinguish shapes and movement in the absence of light.
(Name?) Beast Speech
Khul' can loosely converse with small animals such as small birds, cats, rats, and snakes. The success of this is based on a roll / check.
(Name?) Big-Eared / Sensitive Hearing / Heightened Hearing
Perception and/or Investigation Checks based on Hearing are Boosted.
Khul' possess large ears over which they have fine motor control. They are able to detect frequencies from a higher range than humans.
(Name?) Long-Fingered
Proficiency in Sleight of Hand (Dexterity).
Extremely long and thing fingers. (also helps with instruments)
(Name?) Virtuoso
Proficiency in Performance (Charisma).
Khul' are skilled in either singing, or a musical instrument.
(Name?) Weaker Version of Mimicry from Kenku
Khul' can accurately mimic sounds they've heard, including voices, due to their sophisticated nose, throat, and voice muscles. The success of this is dependent on a Deception roll, and can be countered by a Wisdom or Intelligence Check three out of five times.
Synaesthesia
Khul' associate certain frequencies or sounds with other sensations or experiences. (Might make for cool puzzles?)
I personally don't like that it has a faster walking speed than flying speed?
I would just make both of those 30 feet and flight or flying would be one of it's major racial abilities.
Also having blindsight of 30 feet would be another.
Might as well throw in Keen Hearing, advantage on Perception checks that rely on hearing.
(PS: if your DM is generous or you're feeling like adding some power creep, you could give it natural armor of 12.)
(2nd PS: or maybe while you are in dim light or darkness you can attempt to hide as a bonus action.)
Thank you for the feedback! Yes, I agree the extra walking speed is probably unnecessary.
I like the hiding. It works well with them being small, light, and accustomed to darkness.
Keen hearing is great! I already added the same trait with a non-standard name. I'll fix that.
What is your justification for the 12 natural armour?
Wow. For one thing you haven’t really described much very well, and this seems simultaneously both under and overpowered somehow.
You write things like “slightly rebuffed,” and “boosted,” but those don’t really mean anything and you haven’t given and details so I have no clue what you intend. You also mention saving throws and ability checks, but never mention the DCs for them or how to calculate the. It needs more details basically.
Your race has a flying speed and 30-foot blindsight, each of which would be strong—very strong all by itself, but you included both. And you have a bunch of proficiencies and other stuff too, but you also gave it a bunch of nerfs which make it hard to play. It’s very confusing. I would focus on the main points and maybe condense things where you can.
Also, the whole thing about bats having poor eyesight is actually a myth.
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It may be a stretch but bats usually have leathery skin, and light armor's most common types are leather (AC 11) or studded leather (AC 12).
Sposta is right, it needs more detail. The flight alone is very powerful.
I will say that synesthesia is a really interesting idea for a racial trait.
Thank you for the feedback!
Yes, you are correct, I haven't been specific at all, mainly because I just wanted to throw all my ideas onto a page, then refine from there. Your comments are very helpful.
I understand what you mean about it being complicated. I had the same thought. I do personally like the complexity, however. Maybe once I've finalised and simplified the main race, I can introduce subraces.
Regarding the flight and blindsight, do you think it would be acceptable if I nerf the flight by making it so that the player must return to the ground by the end of the turn?
Regarding the cold and sunlight debuffs, I feel like Vampiric is more iconic, so perhaps I'll remove the cold weakness. I like the visual of them needing to huddle together for sleep like real bats, so I'll keep that behaviour in.
Fortunately I am aware that bats don't have poor eyesight, but it's always fun to find inspiration from myths. Thanks for pointing it out, though.
Thank you again; I appreciate it :)
Very interesting! Thank you! Perhaps if I add subraces, this would be a great idea.
I'm glad you like Synesthesia! I can't imagine it will be useful for combat, but it would be interesting if incorporated into communication or puzzles, somehow.
Thank you for your thoughts :) I gave a detailed reply to Sposta.
Sure thing. For what it’s worth, if it were me I would keep the cold thing and drop vampiric. For one, sunlight sensitivity has been done to death and people don’t really like it as they feel it’s too punishing, but the cold thing is a little different than everything else out there so that’s cool. For another, when I think “vampiric” I don’t think sunlight issues first and foremost, I think bloodsucking which your race doesn’t seem to do.
Also, a lot of people really dislike having culture and race all mixed up together. Some just finfd it too constraining but others feel it is actually offensive and noninclusive. If you want to to avoid those issues, I suggest removing the racial traits you gave them based on cultural stuff and just stick to the biological stuff. Keep the cultural information, just don’t use it to make your traits is all. That would include stuff like the +2 Intelligence because of their cultural proclivities towards education (that’s one of those things people get really offended by), and some of the proficiencies (the dwarvish language, the Virtuoso trait). Perhaps consider +2 Dex and +1 Con or maybe Wis. You could describe them as being disease resistant and hearty or something to justify the Con, or say that their superior senses make them very tuned into their environments as a justification for Wis. But to be honest, you might want to drop the fixed racial ASIs entirely and just go with the floating ASIs like all the newer races get. It’s safer that way.
I’m one of the people who liked the fixed racial ASIs like races used to get and like you’re currently using. Apparently I’m in the minority on that though, and I’ve been flat out told by people that my opinion is “wrong” and if I didn’t change it that means I’m “a racist piece of 💩.“ 🤷♂️ I just thought I like strong orcs, nimble elves, and stout dwarves, but I guess my opinion is wrong somehow, and I definitely don’t want to be any type of 💩, so…. Yeah, that’s a thing.
Just fair warning is all.
About the vision problems, penalties to Perception and/or investigation because of their weak vision is the kind of thing a lot of players will think makes a race not worth playing. Combined with the fact that you ostensibly included it because of the race’s reliance on sonic technology is another one of those cultural bleedovers that people tend to complain about and that’s pretty much a recipe for folks not liking it.
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I think I homebrewed a synesthesia spell at some point. The basic idea is that the caster could easily gain the same information from their visual and auditory senses, so basically, they could not be blinded or deafened unless they were both simulatneously.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/homebrew/creations/view?entityTypeId=1118725998&id=1000592
This does a lot of things, and frankly I think step 1 needs to be letting some of these features go. Flight is an extremely powerful trait by itself, and so is 30 ft Blindsight. I would not expect a race with either of those traits--let alone both--to also have 6 other positive traits (+walking speed, +perception/investigation "boost", +Sleight of Hand proficiency, +Performance proficiency, +Beast Speech, +Mimicry; I'm not even counting Synesthesia because I'm not sure what it does mechanically).
The three negative traits don't clearly counterbalance the large suite of positive ones: it's hard for a DM to say, for example, "this is a sight-based check and only a sight-based check", especially when a creature has 30 ft of hearing-based Blindsight and whatever Synesthesia is. This is probably why Monsters of the Multiverse removed Keen Hearing and Keen Smell from most monsters that had those traits, and replaced them with a general Perception bonus. MotM also notably cut Sunlight Sensitivity from at least the Duergar and Kobold (they may have cut it entirely, but I didn't feel like checking every single underdark race across two sources); I would be very careful about reintroducing a mechanic that official sources tried and then later rolled back. It says something about how popular those traits may have been with players.
My advice would be this: try to write a version of this with no more than 3 positive traits, and no more than 1 negative trait. Figure out which traits are truly core to what the species is. Cut everything else. You can still include things like Synesthesia in the cultural description (and I think you should, it's very cool despite being mechanically unclear) but if you're not sure what a feature exactly does, or you can't explain it to someone else, cut it. Once you've identified the core identity of the species, you may be able to layer additional things on top of it if you have power budget left.
EDIT: This looks really negative on a re-read so I wanted to add some encouragement. I think this species is rad as heck, and I would probably include it in my next campaign if you got it a bit more streamlined. I absolutely know what it is like to have a cool idea and just keep adding to it until you're way outside the realm of what's playable. You've got a diamond here, it just needs cut and polish before it can shine.
That's really cool! Thanks for sharing! As a spell, it's fantastic. I imagine it would be too OP if it were an inherent ability of my race, however, since they have so many other abilities already.
I've uploaded a Google Drive link to an updated PDF if you'd care to have a peek. It's progress, at least!
I super appreciate the warning. I should've expected that DnD players would be extremely passionate about things like that. Frankly, if a person is offended by the notion that receiving an education makes you more intelligent, I'd think them very unreasonable, and I wouldn't have much to say to them other than, "it's a fantasy game". I will offer an alternative justification for the +2 intelligence, though, to please anyone who might end up playing my no-name homebrew race, and take issue with this: regard it as musical intelligence, or the skills to make and play music, and use music notation. Since music is an essential aspect of their culture, they will of course study a little bit of music. I will also clarify that no, that doesn't necessarily mean western or European musical standards and conventions. Same goes for the educational aspect. I'm an educator, and I will be the first one to say that I disprove of much of what western "education" is. When I speak about education, I mean it to be highly pragmatic: basic literacy and numeracy, critical reasoning, and kinaesthetic learning, as well as moral and spiritual education for the purposes of developing the self, and encouraging individualism and self-expression in a society with a strong sense of community.
At the end of the day, I like storytelling, and this is just a fantasy game, so if anyone ever wants to play as a khul', I encourage them to keep what they like, and change what they don't like.
With that out of the way, I'm still on the fence about the "bat blindness" (disadvantage to sight-based perception / investigation checks). I feel like it's necessary due to the blindsight, but I have given the blindsight a bunch of failure conditions, which might be more than enough. I'm also deciding between the cold weakness, or sunlight weakness. I'm leaning towards the cold weakness, since you mentioned it's less common. Regardless, I updated and clarified a lot, so you're welcome to peek at in the PDF I shared through Google Drive.
Thank you so much, once again. You're awesome.
I genuinely appreciate the thorough feedback and encouragement. Just after you commented, I uploaded a PDF (via Google Drive) with a lot of clarification, and I feel more equipped to "trim the fat" now. My problem is, I kept thinking of traits that would make sense realistically given that it's based on a bat, and I was neglecting the fact that this is a game that has to be fair and balanced in the end. I'm still struggling to find a good balance, but next, I'll be removing the sleight of hand bonus, the beast speech, and probably the sunlight weakness in favour of the cold weakness. I'm also considering removing the "bat blind". As for the flight and blindsight, if at all possible, I would rather have a nerfed flight so that the blindsight can be the stronger of the two. Although I would love to keep both abilities, the theming around music and sound is more important to me, so if push comes to shove, I'll remove the flight entirely.
Thanks for pointing out that it can be confusing to have purely sound-based or sight-based checks. What I was imagining for a sound-based check, was eavesdropping on a distant conversation, or listening for a faint / faraway sound. As for sight-based checks... That doesn:t make a lot of sense. Reading from far away? Trying to recognise faraway faces in a crowd? Idk. I'll probably remove those buffs/nerfs. What I might end up doing instead, is making you clumsier if you're deafened or your ears or covered, by applying something like a -2 to your dexterity. That's clearer and more in line with the sound theming.
Thank you so very much. It means a lot!
It's less about whether an education makes you more intelligent, and more about whether an education is a racial trait. There's basically two schools of thought on this: traditionally, D&D has included both biology and culture in racial features, but recently they've started to move towards "species" representing biology only.
The traditional approach assumes that every race has a monoculture that influences the development of every member of that race; with this approach you can easily say that every Bat-person gets an education, every Dwarf learns to wear heavy armor and use an axe, and every Human gets to have a beautiful, varied life experience that leaves them a unique gem in the multiverse.
The new school argues that Humans shouldn't be the only ones who get to have beautiful, varied life experiences. It questions the notion that adventurers are always typical representatives of a racial monoculture (or, indeed, that a racial monoculture should exist in the first place). It asks: "if a gnome is raised by wolves, are they still smarter on average than a human commoner?", or perhaps more pointedly, "why are fantasy games full of tropes we see used to dehumanize real life people?"
Now if it's not clear already I obviously subscribe to the new school myself, but it does come with some downsides. WotC has adopted the new school approach somewhat in more recent material, but they've also used it as an excuse to just... Leave blank any suggestion of meaningful culture for most races. I think there's a happy medium where suggestions can be made without locking the player in mechanically (or implying some humanoids are biologically smarter than others). It's as easy as saying "typical Kuhl culture in *Setting Name* prioritizes comprehensive education for all young people. Characters raised among the Kuhl might take +2 Intelligence when they choose ASIs at character creation."
I understand what you mean. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the clarification! What you said at the end is exactly what I meant. OK... I'll re-think that and offer the player more background and choice. I feel like this is also a problem that can potentially be solved by introducing subraces.