I designed this race based on a novel I've been working on for...well...way, way too long. The race in my book is similar to the Astomoi from Pathfinder, so I wanted to make my own homebrew conversion using that race as a base. I hope to use the race in an upcoming Spelljammer campaign.
Also, this uses "psionics," which I'm using in the same way the UA does. It's just magic with a different hat on and in no way effects gameplay.
Voidwalkers come from a distant, forgotten world. Their home planet orbits a black hole, which its inhabitants worship as a Goddess of Creation and Destruction, Wonder and Terror. Communing and finally becoming one with their goddess is driving force in their culture, which has existed for millions of years. From birth, they train themselves in mastery of the mind and spirit. The most enlightened lead their society, proving their wisdom and goodness by both displaying their psionic power and improving the welfare of their people. Think of it as a sort of Buddhist Theocracy, whose ultimate goal is to find enlightenment through detachment and universal love. Evil members of their race are rare and extremely powerful, using the psionic power granted through detachment to try to reconstitute their original empire, which was vast and terrible.
Each year (about 100 years of earth time), the leader of their race sets off to become one with their goddess. The most powerful can use their psionic abilities to leave the planet and travel safely through the void, moving directly into the black hole (without being spaghettified) by dissolving their physical matter into pure thought.
Once they enter the black hole, they become one with their goddess, reaching true enlightenment. Most move on from the mortal realm, fulling dissolving themselves. Some choose to remain, acting as bodhisattvas (Buddhists who stop themselves from full enlightenment by retaining attachment to their people in order to serve as teacher and guide). Those who do so reconstitute their bodies out of a paradox, unifying pure void and the impossibly dense matter of the black hole.
These travelers leave the black hole fully changed into something like Pathfinder's Astomoi. (I know this doesn't matter and is wholly immature, but I keep wanting to say "I made them first!"). However, their memories are completely lost. They know only that they had a home and that they must return to complete their purpose. As a final test, their goddess deliberately conceals the location of their own solar system. Those who find their way home are rare and are celebrated as saints. They do not take an active role in their society except to guide those who search them out in their quest for enlightenment and to defend their people from evil. Evil Voidwalkers who return are true terrors. They attract the attention of beings from the Far Realms, who use them to destroy everything in the galaxy on a quest to find their home system and devour their goddess.
Voidwalker adventurers are most often driven the quest to find their home, to learn all they can of creation, and to engage the universe with the four elements of unconditional love, (again, in the Buddhist sense) Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity.
They look sort of like less this, with less definition and no swirling colors.
Before I get into the stats, I'd like to preface this by saying all I'm looking for is feedback on balance.
Voidwalker
Aberration (Immune to effects that target humanoids and vulnerable to effects that target Aberrations—Protection from Good and Evil, etc.)
+1 Int, Wis, Cha, -2 Str
Resistance to Psychic Damage
Vulnerability to Force and Thunder
Disadvantage against all Force and Thunder Effects.
Advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma Saving Throws
Telepathy 100 ft.
Blindsight 100 ft.
Speed 15 ft. Fly 60 ft.
Special Abilities:
Strange Sight: Void walkers are completely blind. They can only see within 100 ft of their blind sense. For the next 100 ft, everything is lightly obscured. After that, everything is heavily obscured. However, Voidwalkers attunement with the cosmic order allows them to "see" all celestial bodies, even through the matter of a planet. Distance is irrelevant.
There is No Space: Once leaving atmosphere, a Voidwalker may spend one week in meditation, communing with the universe itself. They may then dissolve their bodies and travel through the Astral Plane at the speed of thought. Traveling this way takes one week. After the week passes, they appear in the void outside their intended destination. If they were to appear inside matter, they are harmlessly shunted to a safe area of the void. If their concentration is disrupted, the attempt fails. After arriving, the Voidwalker must spend one week reconstituting their bodies (Dr. Manhattan style).
(IDK if this is overpowered, but if so, would extending the total time from three weeks to three months make it more reasonable?)
I'm Not There: As a reaction, the Voidwalker may cast misty step, removing themselves from danger and appearing 30 ft away. They may not use this ability until after completing a short rest.
I Have No Mouth But I Must Speak: Voidwalkers have no mouth, and may only speak through telepathy. They do not need to share a language with the listener. Additionally, there is no way to speak to anything with less than 3 Intelligence or anything immune to psychic contact.
Nothing moves through Nothing: Their black forms and telekinetic flight make Voidwalkers particularly hard to detect. They have advantage on Stealth rolls at night as well as against detection by sound.
I Need Stillness to Be: All Voidwalkers have disadvantage against all sound effects and are vulnerable to Thunder damage.
Truly No Thing: Voidwalkers are disrupted by areas of Anti-Magic. They instantly disappear and must make a DC 14 Charisma Saving throw with Disadvantage or take 1d4 Thunder damage (to which they are vulnerable) per character level. A successful saving throw halves this damage.
Bound only By Will: The bodies of Voidwalkers are held together by sheer force of will and pure force can disrupt their forms. They have Disadvantage against Force based effects and Vulnerability to Force Damage.
Dissolution: When injured, Voidwalkers bleed dark matter into the space around them. Imagine blood or squid ink in water. Double the cost of material components to return the Voidwalker to life.
I'm hoping the drawbacks cancel out the benefits, though I'm a little worried I've overcompensated with too many harsh flaws. Thoughts?
For some reason, I keep seeing the character I want to play looking like Spider-Man Noir or the Shadow without the white eyes and lines. Voidwalkers don't generally wear clothes, but will adopt the local customary garb. For some reason I want him to dress like a detective.
This has cool flavoring but I think it would be ore cool as an NPC, not a player. There are too many abilities, The flaws greatly out match the benefits . If a player were to play this race they would not have a fun time, forgetting abilities and having too many disadvantages.
Having vulnerability to two damage types (even two relatively rare ones) and disadvantage on saves against spells and effects that cause those damage types is by itself enough for me to say that the race is underpowered. Remember that Disintegrate is a force effect, which means that getting hit by it is almost certainly going to be a one-shot kill.
Honestly, I would probably be more in favor of redesigning this race from the ground up than attempting to balance it as is- its abilities are all over the place right now and honestly I don't think that you can really balance it out while keeping those abilities intact.
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.
Do you have any recommendations for a redesign? I know I want the stats, flight, telepathy, psychic damage resistance, the advantage on Int, Wis, & Cha saves.
Would removing the thunder, force, and anti-magic drawbacks leave the race overpowered?
The Interplanetary Teleport, Misty Step and Stealth abilities aren't super necessary, but they fit the concept in my head.
I'd also been considering giving them a skill that matches the concept, but that might be too much.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I designed this race based on a novel I've been working on for...well...way, way too long. The race in my book is similar to the Astomoi from Pathfinder, so I wanted to make my own homebrew conversion using that race as a base. I hope to use the race in an upcoming Spelljammer campaign.
Also, this uses "psionics," which I'm using in the same way the UA does. It's just magic with a different hat on and in no way effects gameplay.
Voidwalkers come from a distant, forgotten world. Their home planet orbits a black hole, which its inhabitants worship as a Goddess of Creation and Destruction, Wonder and Terror. Communing and finally becoming one with their goddess is driving force in their culture, which has existed for millions of years. From birth, they train themselves in mastery of the mind and spirit. The most enlightened lead their society, proving their wisdom and goodness by both displaying their psionic power and improving the welfare of their people. Think of it as a sort of Buddhist Theocracy, whose ultimate goal is to find enlightenment through detachment and universal love. Evil members of their race are rare and extremely powerful, using the psionic power granted through detachment to try to reconstitute their original empire, which was vast and terrible.
Each year (about 100 years of earth time), the leader of their race sets off to become one with their goddess. The most powerful can use their psionic abilities to leave the planet and travel safely through the void, moving directly into the black hole (without being spaghettified) by dissolving their physical matter into pure thought.
Once they enter the black hole, they become one with their goddess, reaching true enlightenment. Most move on from the mortal realm, fulling dissolving themselves. Some choose to remain, acting as bodhisattvas (Buddhists who stop themselves from full enlightenment by retaining attachment to their people in order to serve as teacher and guide). Those who do so reconstitute their bodies out of a paradox, unifying pure void and the impossibly dense matter of the black hole.
These travelers leave the black hole fully changed into something like Pathfinder's Astomoi. (I know this doesn't matter and is wholly immature, but I keep wanting to say "I made them first!"). However, their memories are completely lost. They know only that they had a home and that they must return to complete their purpose. As a final test, their goddess deliberately conceals the location of their own solar system. Those who find their way home are rare and are celebrated as saints. They do not take an active role in their society except to guide those who search them out in their quest for enlightenment and to defend their people from evil. Evil Voidwalkers who return are true terrors. They attract the attention of beings from the Far Realms, who use them to destroy everything in the galaxy on a quest to find their home system and devour their goddess.
Voidwalker adventurers are most often driven the quest to find their home, to learn all they can of creation, and to engage the universe with the four elements of unconditional love, (again, in the Buddhist sense) Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity.
They look sort of like less this, with less definition and no swirling colors.
Before I get into the stats, I'd like to preface this by saying all I'm looking for is feedback on balance.
Voidwalker
Aberration (Immune to effects that target humanoids and vulnerable to effects that target Aberrations—Protection from Good and Evil, etc.)
+1 Int, Wis, Cha, -2 Str
Resistance to Psychic Damage
Vulnerability to Force and Thunder
Disadvantage against all Force and Thunder Effects.
Advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma Saving Throws
Telepathy 100 ft.
Blindsight 100 ft.
Speed 15 ft. Fly 60 ft.
Special Abilities:
Strange Sight: Void walkers are completely blind. They can only see within 100 ft of their blind sense. For the next 100 ft, everything is lightly obscured. After that, everything is heavily obscured. However, Voidwalkers attunement with the cosmic order allows them to "see" all celestial bodies, even through the matter of a planet. Distance is irrelevant.
There is No Space: Once leaving atmosphere, a Voidwalker may spend one week in meditation, communing with the universe itself. They may then dissolve their bodies and travel through the Astral Plane at the speed of thought. Traveling this way takes one week. After the week passes, they appear in the void outside their intended destination. If they were to appear inside matter, they are harmlessly shunted to a safe area of the void. If their concentration is disrupted, the attempt fails. After arriving, the Voidwalker must spend one week reconstituting their bodies (Dr. Manhattan style).
(IDK if this is overpowered, but if so, would extending the total time from three weeks to three months make it more reasonable?)
I'm Not There: As a reaction, the Voidwalker may cast misty step, removing themselves from danger and appearing 30 ft away. They may not use this ability until after completing a short rest.
I Have No Mouth But I Must Speak: Voidwalkers have no mouth, and may only speak through telepathy. They do not need to share a language with the listener. Additionally, there is no way to speak to anything with less than 3 Intelligence or anything immune to psychic contact.
Nothing moves through Nothing: Their black forms and telekinetic flight make Voidwalkers particularly hard to detect. They have advantage on Stealth rolls at night as well as against detection by sound.
I Need Stillness to Be: All Voidwalkers have disadvantage against all sound effects and are vulnerable to Thunder damage.
Truly No Thing: Voidwalkers are disrupted by areas of Anti-Magic. They instantly disappear and must make a DC 14 Charisma Saving throw with Disadvantage or take 1d4 Thunder damage (to which they are vulnerable) per character level. A successful saving throw halves this damage.
Bound only By Will: The bodies of Voidwalkers are held together by sheer force of will and pure force can disrupt their forms. They have Disadvantage against Force based effects and Vulnerability to Force Damage.
Dissolution: When injured, Voidwalkers bleed dark matter into the space around them. Imagine blood or squid ink in water. Double the cost of material components to return the Voidwalker to life.
I'm hoping the drawbacks cancel out the benefits, though I'm a little worried I've overcompensated with too many harsh flaws. Thoughts?
For some reason, I keep seeing the character I want to play looking like Spider-Man Noir or the Shadow without the white eyes and lines. Voidwalkers don't generally wear clothes, but will adopt the local customary garb. For some reason I want him to dress like a detective.
This has cool flavoring but I think it would be ore cool as an NPC, not a player. There are too many abilities, The flaws greatly out match the benefits . If a player were to play this race they would not have a fun time, forgetting abilities and having too many disadvantages.
Dakota G
Thanks for the feedback. In this game, at least, I'll be the PC, so I'm not too worried about confusing players.
What amendments would you suggest to bring the drawbacks to a reasonable level?
And thanks again!
GP
Having vulnerability to two damage types (even two relatively rare ones) and disadvantage on saves against spells and effects that cause those damage types is by itself enough for me to say that the race is underpowered. Remember that Disintegrate is a force effect, which means that getting hit by it is almost certainly going to be a one-shot kill.
Honestly, I would probably be more in favor of redesigning this race from the ground up than attempting to balance it as is- its abilities are all over the place right now and honestly I don't think that you can really balance it out while keeping those abilities intact.
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.
Thanks for the input. A few follow up thoughts:
Do you have any recommendations for a redesign? I know I want the stats, flight, telepathy, psychic damage resistance, the advantage on Int, Wis, & Cha saves.
Would removing the thunder, force, and anti-magic drawbacks leave the race overpowered?
The Interplanetary Teleport, Misty Step and Stealth abilities aren't super necessary, but they fit the concept in my head.
I'd also been considering giving them a skill that matches the concept, but that might be too much.