Hi, I'm real new to D&D. Always been interested, but finally about two months into playing my first campaign (Strahd) at age 35.
I've been doing a bunch of reading, made it all the way through the PHB, just starting on the DMG, and wanted to try to Homebrew something, just for the exercise of it, if nothing else.
If anyone has the time and the will, I'd love some feedback on it. I spent maybe an hour and a half on actually creating it, then another hour or two refining it with the other more experienced players in my group over Slack.
Link below, any and all input appreciated. Thanks!
I love batfolk, but, that name? C’mon man! Previous dnd editions had two batfolk races: The Desmodu and Nycter. I have a cute little Nycter Twilight Cleric that looks like this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/8d/12/c28d12b29756e0b95e7d5eeb4d344a01.jpg. I just used Aarakocra instead of a homebrew race. Twilight Cleric grants superior Darkvision so it fits very well.
As for your Homebrew: flight AND Blindsight are very powerful features; however, you’ve clearly tried to nerf these features. Blindsight is great but not all bats, especially large flying foxes, have echolocation so you could drop that feature to Darkvsion and still be true to the species. There is a google doc called Detect Balance that is a pretty useful tool for balancing homebrew races. A couple of questions:
Can the race wear medium armor during flight? The Aarakocra is limited to light armor.
Can the race cast spells in flight using their feet?
I wanted to chime in on the same thing... I totally get the theme and story reasons for their 60 foot blindsight, but blindsight is such a powerful ability that it's hard to balance a race that has it. I think it might balance it if they could instead have it as an action. Like, "As an action, a Bruswain may let out a high pitched shriek audible out to 100 feet. The Bruswain then has blindsight out to 30 feet until the end of their next turn". Nerfs it a bit by making it an audible sound the PC has to create, limiting its use. The fact that it's an action means it's something that's not active constantly around them, so they'll have to make a conscious effort to check. Might need a limit on how many times it can be used a day... although it might be fair to extend the range and duration if you limit number of uses. I tried to keep the range and duration fairly low.
I didn't exclude medium like Aarakocra do, and justified it with the lower fly speed. These guys only do 30, Aarakocra do 50. I thought that balanced somewhat.
The lower limbs stuff needs to be rejiggered and juggled some. I've been talking with a few friends about it today, and my conception is that they're less fully functional than hands, maybe like a child's hands. There's discussion of putting lower limb attacks at disadvantage, or maybe treating all lower limb attacks like those for improvised weapons. I don't want it to be just another set of hands to do hand stuff with. So no Spellcasting with feet. Any magic needs to be done on the ground if there's a somatic component, which needs to be explicit in the next version.
I also don't want to treat them as natural weapons. From an RP perspective, a lot of the race's history is about becoming less bestial, and I don't want Tabaxi claws, either.
Working out limbs and stuff has turned out to be the most complicated part of all this.
I thought the Blindsight was nerfed enough by being out to sixty feet, with no other senses beyond that. They're fully blind past 60', and being Deafened or Silenced blinds them completely. which prevents a lot of ranged stuff and felt balanced, but I am open to alternate ways of looking at it.
Hi, I'm real new to D&D. Always been interested, but finally about two months into playing my first campaign (Strahd) at age 35.
I've been doing a bunch of reading, made it all the way through the PHB, just starting on the DMG, and wanted to try to Homebrew something, just for the exercise of it, if nothing else.
If anyone has the time and the will, I'd love some feedback on it. I spent maybe an hour and a half on actually creating it, then another hour or two refining it with the other more experienced players in my group over Slack.
Link below, any and all input appreciated. Thanks!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/294754-bruswain
(and yes, their name is a bad batman joke)
I love batfolk, but, that name? C’mon man! Previous dnd editions had two batfolk races: The Desmodu and Nycter. I have a cute little Nycter Twilight Cleric that looks like this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/8d/12/c28d12b29756e0b95e7d5eeb4d344a01.jpg. I just used Aarakocra instead of a homebrew race. Twilight Cleric grants superior Darkvision so it fits very well.
As for your Homebrew: flight AND Blindsight are very powerful features; however, you’ve clearly tried to nerf these features. Blindsight is great but not all bats, especially large flying foxes, have echolocation so you could drop that feature to Darkvsion and still be true to the species. There is a google doc called Detect Balance that is a pretty useful tool for balancing homebrew races. A couple of questions:
Can the race wear medium armor during flight? The Aarakocra is limited to light armor.
Can the race cast spells in flight using their feet?
I wanted to chime in on the same thing... I totally get the theme and story reasons for their 60 foot blindsight, but blindsight is such a powerful ability that it's hard to balance a race that has it. I think it might balance it if they could instead have it as an action. Like, "As an action, a Bruswain may let out a high pitched shriek audible out to 100 feet. The Bruswain then has blindsight out to 30 feet until the end of their next turn". Nerfs it a bit by making it an audible sound the PC has to create, limiting its use. The fact that it's an action means it's something that's not active constantly around them, so they'll have to make a conscious effort to check. Might need a limit on how many times it can be used a day... although it might be fair to extend the range and duration if you limit number of uses. I tried to keep the range and duration fairly low.
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I didn't exclude medium like Aarakocra do, and justified it with the lower fly speed. These guys only do 30, Aarakocra do 50. I thought that balanced somewhat.
The lower limbs stuff needs to be rejiggered and juggled some. I've been talking with a few friends about it today, and my conception is that they're less fully functional than hands, maybe like a child's hands. There's discussion of putting lower limb attacks at disadvantage, or maybe treating all lower limb attacks like those for improvised weapons. I don't want it to be just another set of hands to do hand stuff with. So no Spellcasting with feet. Any magic needs to be done on the ground if there's a somatic component, which needs to be explicit in the next version.
I also don't want to treat them as natural weapons. From an RP perspective, a lot of the race's history is about becoming less bestial, and I don't want Tabaxi claws, either.
Working out limbs and stuff has turned out to be the most complicated part of all this.
I thought the Blindsight was nerfed enough by being out to sixty feet, with no other senses beyond that. They're fully blind past 60', and being Deafened or Silenced blinds them completely. which prevents a lot of ranged stuff and felt balanced, but I am open to alternate ways of looking at it.
I also clearly don't understand how replies work on this forum, because I thought I was replying to individual posts, not just the thread.
Here's an updated version with some changes made. Not finalized, so not yet shared/published.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/296977-bruswain