Hello all! I have a question about homebrew race balance for you.
One of my players was asking to play as a half-giant in our next campaign, and they seemed really invested in a character concept so I made up a race template for them. I don't want it to feel overpowered or underwhelming, but I know they really want to feel powerful and have nova potential so here is what I came up with. Does this seem right? My primary concern is the Unrivaled Might ability, I tried to balance it against goblin ability Fury of the Small but I'm not sure if I succeeded.
Half-Giant
Ability Score Increase: your Strength score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Age: Half-giants reach adulthood by 25 and often live to 100.
Alignment: Half-Giants tend to follow their own path, but generally don't act aggressively like some of their giant ancestors. They tend to be chaotic good.
Size: Half-giants are frequently 9 feet tall but rarely pass 10 feet, your size is medium.
Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Unrivaled Might: When you damage a creature with a melee attack and the creature is your size or smaller, you can cause the attack to deal extra damage to the creature. The extra damage equals (1d4*1/2 level rounded down, minimum 1d4). Once you use this trait you may not use it again until you finish a long rest.
Powerful build: You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Acclimated to the Cold: You have advantage on saves against cold-based effects, and cold-based attacks have disadvantage against you.
Languages: You can speak, read, and write common and giant.
Unrivaled Might is overpowered. The easiest way to make a half-giant is just reflavor Goliaths or Firbolgs (they effectively were half-giants in 2e) and call them half-giants.
I know that would be the easiest, but it wouldn't have the uniqueness that they are looking for. How would you fix Unrivaled might though? I figured it wouldn't be too bad as most of the time it is going to deal about 2-3xlevel damage once per long rest, whereas the goblin ability gets to deal 3xlevel damage per long rest essentially (assuming three short rests per adventuring day).
How many short rests you have per day varies widely by DM, but the biggest issue is max damage. Your max damage is twice what a goblin can do, and goblins already have one of the most powerful racial damage bonuses. Compare to the one extra damage dice for half orcs. Doing a little extra damage in several fights is useful, while doing a lot of extra damage in one fight potentially ends the fight. It can completely ruin a climactic fight if one character just kills the boss in one round.
Yeah, you're right this just made me think of Assassinate and that's a totally broken combo. I guess I'll just reskin the goblin racial ability and use that instead. Thank you for your answer!
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Hello all! I have a question about homebrew race balance for you.
One of my players was asking to play as a half-giant in our next campaign, and they seemed really invested in a character concept so I made up a race template for them. I don't want it to feel overpowered or underwhelming, but I know they really want to feel powerful and have nova potential so here is what I came up with. Does this seem right? My primary concern is the Unrivaled Might ability, I tried to balance it against goblin ability Fury of the Small but I'm not sure if I succeeded.
Half-Giant
Unrivaled Might is overpowered. The easiest way to make a half-giant is just reflavor Goliaths or Firbolgs (they effectively were half-giants in 2e) and call them half-giants.
I know that would be the easiest, but it wouldn't have the uniqueness that they are looking for. How would you fix Unrivaled might though? I figured it wouldn't be too bad as most of the time it is going to deal about 2-3xlevel damage once per long rest, whereas the goblin ability gets to deal 3xlevel damage per long rest essentially (assuming three short rests per adventuring day).
How many short rests you have per day varies widely by DM, but the biggest issue is max damage. Your max damage is twice what a goblin can do, and goblins already have one of the most powerful racial damage bonuses. Compare to the one extra damage dice for half orcs. Doing a little extra damage in several fights is useful, while doing a lot of extra damage in one fight potentially ends the fight. It can completely ruin a climactic fight if one character just kills the boss in one round.
Yeah, you're right this just made me think of Assassinate and that's a totally broken combo. I guess I'll just reskin the goblin racial ability and use that instead. Thank you for your answer!