The kenku once served a mysterious, powerful entity on another plane of existence. Some believe they were minions of Grazz't, while others say that they were scouts and explorers for the Wind Dukes of Aaqa. Whatever the truth, according to legend, the kenku betrayed their master. Unable to resist the lure of a beautiful sparkling treasure, the kenku plotted to steal the item and escape to the Material Plane. Unfortunately for the kenku, their master discovered their plan before they could enact it. Enraged, the entity imposed three dreadful curses upon them:
First, the kenku's beloved wings withered and fell away from their bodies, leaving them bound to the earth.
Second, because their ingenuity and skill had turned toward scheming against their patron, the spark of creativity was torn from their souls.
Finally, to ensure that the kenku could never divulge any secrets, their master took away their voices.
Once the entity was satisfied that they had been sufficiently punished, the kenku were set loose on the Material Plane. Since then, the kenku have wandered the world. They settle in places that accept them, usually bleak cities that have fallen on hard times and are overrun with crime.
I use my playing card proficiency to kind of cheese the speech trait. I have 52 phrases that I've memorized (in game my character uses his cards as a keystone to remember phrases). I write each phrase down on a note card and the voice of the person I'm mimicking. Then I shuffle through them to find a good one in each situation. It's kind of like cards against humanity but for RP. Phrases range from "Nice to meet you"-(Feeble old lady voice) to "I am the flail of God, if you had not sinned God would not have sent me."-(Denzel Washington voice.) Other than that it's just straight rogue assassin.
I played a Kenku who was a Giant-Soul Sorcerer (UA) in the one-shot Banquet of the Damned campaign and had loads of fun, and the other PCs also seemed to enjoy having him along as a character. In terms of how I played him, I kept communication to a minimum, parroted useful phrases I'd heard other PCs or NPCs use but in different contexts, often to comic but also helpful effect, used lots of objects as visual aids to get my thoughts across and also used the minor illusion cantrip (an Ordning spell through the Giant-Soul subclass) to create visual aids to help people understand what I was trying to say. That last one really helped a lot. Also things like mimicking animal growls to make a threat, the sound of sizzling bacon to suggest we go eat at the inn, etc.
In terms of other behavior, beyond speaking, whenever there was an opportunity to climb, my character always moved to the highest point in sight, whether that was a bell tower, a roof, a tree, etc, which was my way of expressing his desire to be near the sky. Also, whenever I had the opportunity to choose a new spell or cantrip, if there was any spell that allowed me to fly, levitate, feather fall, jump far, etc, I always chose that spell before any other available spell, as I think a Kenku would grab at any opportunity to regain the race's lost ability to fly.
Now, as I mentioned, I used this character in a one-shot adventure, and it worked really well. Maybe it would be more cumbersome in a longer campaign, but not necessarily.
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Author of Fellozial's Ultimate Guide to Poison, The Primal Gith, and other forthcoming titles at DMs Guild
I played a kenku for a short time on tabletop simulator, I had setup a soundboard and voice changer so I could use different sounds and phrase/voice extracts to communicate, it was fun as hell, but lots of work for what it was
There are 3 things that I use to interpret the "Curse against Creativity" that the Kenku suffer from.
First, is when you're in the middle of explaining something in a language you have learned or are currently learning, but you get to a word and you just plain can't find it for no good reason. You end up using other words that kind of describe the object or concept, but are inherently wrong. For example, you forget the word 'pony', so you instead say 'compressed horse'. Or you're trying to say 'knife', but all you can come up with is 'food weapon'. Except.... this isn't just applied to linguistics, it's applied to everything. You're trying to open a chest, and you turn the key to unlock it, but you don't remember what you have to actually lift the lid to open it, so you stand there confused because nothing is happening.
Second, it's a simple fact that if the Kenku could not innovate in a very basic fashion, they would be extinct as a race, as someone mentioned above. First and foremost, you have to be able to obtain clean drinking water. Anyone who's ever done any kind of wilderness survival will tell you that you have to use a lot of creativity to locate clean water in a hostile environment. In large urbane environments relying on aqueducts and rain catch basins, some sources would be reliable, and others would not. So clearly, 'creativity' was not completely removed, or there would be no more Kenku for people to make characters to play.
Third, and finally, it's pretty obvious that Player Characters are "more" than non-Player Characters. Looking at stats alone, aren't Commoners given full 8's in stats? So they get -1 to everything. Saving throws, ability checks, to-hit DCs, AC, etc. Unless you roll really, really, really badly on your 4d6 drop lowest, you're going to have higher stats. And if you opt to not take Feats, you can grow in these stats over time with Ability Score Increases. Commoners do not. This would suggest that when a player creates a character, that character is not a Commoner. Rather, the character is an advanced, noteworthy, and otherwise extraordinary being. Einstein (Wizard), Mozart (Bard), various "superstar" athletes, Olympic or otherwise (Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger), etc would be examples from our world. It's not far fetched to imagine that a Player Kenku is not a normal Kenku, and that it works more like someone suggested in this thread, that the Kenku's creativity was merely suppressed, not removed, and that individuals are able to overcome what the population at large is not. As such, a Player Kenku might be capable of creating new strategic plans (heavily reliant on aspects or components they are merely mimicking) that an ordinary Kenku could not.
Honestly, for the most part I just have them talk normally unless a good situation arises for them to use their mimicry.
I have a Samurai named Tsen I wrote up who uses fortune cookie wisdom in combat. His master would often impart such wisdom upon him and he made it a point to remember as many of them as possible.
My other one I'm running in a 3.5 campaign is a hopeless plagiarist Bard named Drumstick.He doesn't carry any instruments but instead mimics their sounds while making the motions with his hands. Some of his musical proficiencies include the air lute, air flute, and air drums. Disguise Self is also one of his go to spells and skills and has led to all kinds of shenanigans including getting a large group of goblins to turn on one another by pretending a be their leader while proclaiming that the real leader was an impostor. It was beautiful chaos as they turned on one another before the rest of the party lept from the shadows to finish them off. (And as Drumstick quickly hid in the shadows his work done.)
i only play pbp for the time being but if i got a good table with some good friends, i want to play a kenku and make a soundboard of other characters and use that soundboard to communicate.
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Gash- Lvl14 Goblin Wizard - The High Court of the Aasimar Queen
Haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but I have been slowly creating an extensive song list of different types of mood setting music (loud orchestrated tunes for battle, super creepy strings for stealth/stalking, triumph horns for victory etc.) and then using said list for a Kenku. Bard, whose ‘instrument’ is his mimicked background music. He will then proceed to provide such music despite how inopportune it is for the rest of the party. Like if the party is trying to stealth it’s way into a castle/through a castle, as he tip toes down the hall, my Kenku bard will be providing the “Dunn dun dunnnn...dundundun!”, or as the party starts having to listen to the mid boss/BBEG monologue my bard will start to interrupt them with the humming strains of epic battle/boss music. I will get around the lack of creativity part by essentially never participating in planning of missions/heists. Only adding musical cues to the follow up.
I haven't played myself, but I did play with one, and it was a lot of fun. She usually wrote down any notable quotes she thought she could use, like "Male dragon: "What can I do for you, little ones?""
She generally didn't participate much in the discussion, but she had a habit of throwing our own words back at us. Once, my cleric of Helm didn't want to be involved in a fight. She quoted me "Helm seeks to protect everyone"
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"What do you mean I get disadvantage on persuasion?"
I don't know, Sneet, maybe because your argument is "Submit and become our pet"?
Played one a couple times. Simplest is to be to the letter as it is fun to be literal in terms of things. But player wise know your character has been around enough to have a collection of voices to pull from so you can speak normally. I actually play my kenku as a linguist who unless specifically asked to translate things, will answer the question of 'what does that say?' with either 'nothing as it is words.' or in the language it is written in.
Definitely fun to be more of a minion as you can do the silly ideas and be the one player to reliably follow the plan that was made and can help your gm out a lot if you do planning before to kick off for next session. Though since can be all the classes, it makes sense that you broke up the old tomes enough and re-fragmented it in ponder to figure out a new spell. Or you working on new sound combinations to make a new one.
Aarakocra have a very double bladed sword of a base flying speed. abuse of it can cause headaches, or be a defining feature of party tactics. But at the same time memorizing all these details and mimicry can be how you can recall that short winded bit of advice that you missed or couldn't write down. Can also make the joke where you being brought up in combat would jerk up and beak jab someone. Fluff up a bit to hide a set of lockpicks about you. Claws for fighting and few races can make a grab attack with their foot and then be a monk on the desire to make a woodie the woodpecker joke.
As everyone else already mentioned, the only way of speech by mimicking is pretty sucky, so most DMs (like mine), have decided against it. However, in turn for being able to speak normally, I have to give up the ability to perfectly mimic sounds. I play a rogue (thief subclass) and I gotta say, nothing beats robbing a poor shopkeeper blind like the birb I am. However, if you have no way around the mimicry, it is a good idea to do as the others did and use movie quotes, write in a book, use different sound cues for different situations. You can be pretty creative for a not-so-creative bird.
As a DM who encourages players to role play and feels that flaws and drawbacks make characters more interesting I have a sort of standing rule. As long as you can explain where you heard something, like who said it, what the situation was, and what the adventure birb is trying to say, I generally let my players speak as they want. Far mor hindering is not being able to be creative. So if your playing a Kenku and you want to make a magic sword you need to have seen how one is made. Same with scrolls and potions. Also those creations can not be improved on or modified. As a example, I previously mentioned a Kenku wizard of mine who couldn’t cast his higher level spells until the party bard sat down and read the words for him. Later the bard wanted a magic rapier and asked my Kenku to help her make it. Since he was helping and not leading the construction his curse didn’t come into play. After a few more levels I wanted to make myself a magic dagger. Since I was leading the project the curse was in play, and I couldn’t make the dagger because my only experience with making magic weapons was the bards rapier. So that’s what I made and during downtime had the bard train me in how to use my exact copy of her rapier.
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GM of The Bonus Role - We are playing a 5E game set in my homebrew world of Audra check us out Sunday's at 10 AM CST and follow us at the following social media links. https://www.twitch.tv/thebonusrole @BonusRole
One of my favorite characters has been a kenku bard! She makes her own music from remixing different sounds and melodies she's learned to mimic and she's SUPER fun to play. Our campaign has had a lot of sneaking into and around places, and having mimicry and disguise self has been really helpful for that. It's a bit time consuming, but how I stay true to mimicry is I like to record the sessions, or if i forget to do that i keep really detailed notes about phrases or important new words people say.
I once played a kenku warlock of the raven queen and took the master of myriad forms invocation. He was the party's key into everywhere that they weren't allowed
I've played two Kenku characters. Clink is my Arcane Trickster Rogue, and prior to meeting the party, she picked up most of her phrases from listening in on theater productions. She knew a lot of dramatic phrases and famous quotes, and I ad-libbed whatever I think would sound appropriately melodramatic.
Crash is an NPC in a campaign I'm running, and he lived with pirates before meeting the party. Again, most of those lines are ad-libbed.
in both cases, i would keep note of things the other players said so I could repeat it back to them. I would also specify where the quote came from.
As a sort of home brew rule to make things easier, I can also say "through a series of charades and sound effects, [character] communicates such and such." I've also ruled that the vast majority of Kenku understand Thieve's Cant (or sometimes sign language), which is primarily how they would communicate among each other.
It's really hard to pull off, but it can be SUPER fun! Especially if most of the party get really into character voices. It definitely requires a ton of ad-libbing and thinking about things they would have overheard from the people/places they've been around.
Of course, if you really want to play a Kenku but don't want to deal with Mimicry, you could always talk to your DM about ignoring that particular aspect. I've known a few who have allowed it.
I've recently started playing a Kenku Warlock named "Click Click Click Click Click" (people just call him "Clicks"). He mostly communicates non-verbally and I go for a sort of "Silent Bob" thing for him, where he's just very expressive in other ways (like a lot of players, however, I keep a list of interesting phrases said by other people at the table to toss out whenever it would be funniest). Although he's also a Great Old One Warlock, so if I find myself in a situation where I can't find a way to convey a complex idea while maintaining the Kenku limitations, so in those situations he can just communicate telepathically. He doesn't like to do that, though, because he doesn't have an internal voice of his own... so when he does it the voice people hear is that of his Patron.
I've been playing a Kenku for a dozen sessions or so, and while I was doing my best to strictly stick to quotes In other characters voices it is very restrictive, as intended - but can be a little tedious. Moving forward I'm going go to play the kenku a bit more like a parrot, with some skeksis blended in, speaking in their own voice in broken common/English. When it may require a check or seems appropriate I'll do my best to copy voices as I was, but expect this will make things a bit more fun in future sessions.
The way I rationalize it is my Kenku is an assassin in a guild of assassins. And in order to facilitate communication his mentor spoke just every which word they could possibly think of to him so now he speaks by mimicking his mentors voice. Able to effectively speak freely.
The way I rationalize it is my Kenku is an assassin in a guild of assassins. And in order to facilitate communication his mentor spoke just every which word they could possibly think of to him so now he speaks by mimicking his mentors voice. Able to effectively speak freely.
I've started doing something like that as well. My character doesn't have a "mentor", per se, but he's got a background doing dirty work (mostly forgery), but occasionally he gets jobs just copying books for a local college. So as a result he has two "voices"... a shady cockney accent from someone he worked with regularly when saying things related to plans or crimes, and an upperclass, monotone voice he uses when quoting a professor he works with (mostly for when he makes a successful arcana or history check).
The way I rationalize it is my Kenku is an assassin in a guild of assassins. And in order to facilitate communication his mentor spoke just every which word they could possibly think of to him so now he speaks by mimicking his mentors voice. Able to effectively speak freely.
I've started doing something like that as well. My character doesn't have a "mentor", per se, but he's got a background doing dirty work (mostly forgery), but occasionally he gets jobs just copying books for a local college. So as a result he has two "voices"... a shady cockney accent from someone he worked with regularly when saying things related to plans or crimes, and an upperclass, monotone voice he uses when quoting a professor he works with (mostly for when he makes a successful arcana or history check).
Luckily my characters mentor is an Aarikocra, so I can use an avian inspired regular speech pattern.
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The kenku once served a mysterious, powerful entity on another plane of existence. Some believe they were minions of Grazz't, while others say that they were scouts and explorers for the Wind Dukes of Aaqa. Whatever the truth, according to legend, the kenku betrayed their master. Unable to resist the lure of a beautiful sparkling treasure, the kenku plotted to steal the item and escape to the Material Plane. Unfortunately for the kenku, their master discovered their plan before they could enact it. Enraged, the entity imposed three dreadful curses upon them:
Once the entity was satisfied that they had been sufficiently punished, the kenku were set loose on the Material Plane. Since then, the kenku have wandered the world. They settle in places that accept them, usually bleak cities that have fallen on hard times and are overrun with crime.
I use my playing card proficiency to kind of cheese the speech trait. I have 52 phrases that I've memorized (in game my character uses his cards as a keystone to remember phrases). I write each phrase down on a note card and the voice of the person I'm mimicking. Then I shuffle through them to find a good one in each situation. It's kind of like cards against humanity but for RP. Phrases range from "Nice to meet you"-(Feeble old lady voice) to "I am the flail of God, if you had not sinned God would not have sent me."-(Denzel Washington voice.) Other than that it's just straight rogue assassin.
I played a Kenku who was a Giant-Soul Sorcerer (UA) in the one-shot Banquet of the Damned campaign and had loads of fun, and the other PCs also seemed to enjoy having him along as a character. In terms of how I played him, I kept communication to a minimum, parroted useful phrases I'd heard other PCs or NPCs use but in different contexts, often to comic but also helpful effect, used lots of objects as visual aids to get my thoughts across and also used the minor illusion cantrip (an Ordning spell through the Giant-Soul subclass) to create visual aids to help people understand what I was trying to say. That last one really helped a lot. Also things like mimicking animal growls to make a threat, the sound of sizzling bacon to suggest we go eat at the inn, etc.
In terms of other behavior, beyond speaking, whenever there was an opportunity to climb, my character always moved to the highest point in sight, whether that was a bell tower, a roof, a tree, etc, which was my way of expressing his desire to be near the sky. Also, whenever I had the opportunity to choose a new spell or cantrip, if there was any spell that allowed me to fly, levitate, feather fall, jump far, etc, I always chose that spell before any other available spell, as I think a Kenku would grab at any opportunity to regain the race's lost ability to fly.
Now, as I mentioned, I used this character in a one-shot adventure, and it worked really well. Maybe it would be more cumbersome in a longer campaign, but not necessarily.
Author of Fellozial's Ultimate Guide to Poison, The Primal Gith, and other forthcoming titles at DMs Guild
I played a kenku for a short time on tabletop simulator, I had setup a soundboard and voice changer so I could use different sounds and phrase/voice extracts to communicate, it was fun as hell, but lots of work for what it was
There are 3 things that I use to interpret the "Curse against Creativity" that the Kenku suffer from.
First, is when you're in the middle of explaining something in a language you have learned or are currently learning, but you get to a word and you just plain can't find it for no good reason. You end up using other words that kind of describe the object or concept, but are inherently wrong. For example, you forget the word 'pony', so you instead say 'compressed horse'. Or you're trying to say 'knife', but all you can come up with is 'food weapon'. Except.... this isn't just applied to linguistics, it's applied to everything. You're trying to open a chest, and you turn the key to unlock it, but you don't remember what you have to actually lift the lid to open it, so you stand there confused because nothing is happening.
Second, it's a simple fact that if the Kenku could not innovate in a very basic fashion, they would be extinct as a race, as someone mentioned above. First and foremost, you have to be able to obtain clean drinking water. Anyone who's ever done any kind of wilderness survival will tell you that you have to use a lot of creativity to locate clean water in a hostile environment. In large urbane environments relying on aqueducts and rain catch basins, some sources would be reliable, and others would not. So clearly, 'creativity' was not completely removed, or there would be no more Kenku for people to make characters to play.
Third, and finally, it's pretty obvious that Player Characters are "more" than non-Player Characters. Looking at stats alone, aren't Commoners given full 8's in stats? So they get -1 to everything. Saving throws, ability checks, to-hit DCs, AC, etc. Unless you roll really, really, really badly on your 4d6 drop lowest, you're going to have higher stats. And if you opt to not take Feats, you can grow in these stats over time with Ability Score Increases. Commoners do not. This would suggest that when a player creates a character, that character is not a Commoner. Rather, the character is an advanced, noteworthy, and otherwise extraordinary being. Einstein (Wizard), Mozart (Bard), various "superstar" athletes, Olympic or otherwise (Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger), etc would be examples from our world. It's not far fetched to imagine that a Player Kenku is not a normal Kenku, and that it works more like someone suggested in this thread, that the Kenku's creativity was merely suppressed, not removed, and that individuals are able to overcome what the population at large is not. As such, a Player Kenku might be capable of creating new strategic plans (heavily reliant on aspects or components they are merely mimicking) that an ordinary Kenku could not.
Honestly, for the most part I just have them talk normally unless a good situation arises for them to use their mimicry.
I have a Samurai named Tsen I wrote up who uses fortune cookie wisdom in combat. His master would often impart such wisdom upon him and he made it a point to remember as many of them as possible.
My other one I'm running in a 3.5 campaign is a hopeless plagiarist Bard named Drumstick.He doesn't carry any instruments but instead mimics their sounds while making the motions with his hands. Some of his musical proficiencies include the air lute, air flute, and air drums. Disguise Self is also one of his go to spells and skills and has led to all kinds of shenanigans including getting a large group of goblins to turn on one another by pretending a be their leader while proclaiming that the real leader was an impostor. It was beautiful chaos as they turned on one another before the rest of the party lept from the shadows to finish them off. (And as Drumstick quickly hid in the shadows his work done.)
i only play pbp for the time being but if i got a good table with some good friends, i want to play a kenku and make a soundboard of other characters and use that soundboard to communicate.
Gash - Lvl14 Goblin Wizard - The High Court of the Aasimar Queen
Haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but I have been slowly creating an extensive song list of different types of mood setting music (loud orchestrated tunes for battle, super creepy strings for stealth/stalking, triumph horns for victory etc.) and then using said list for a Kenku. Bard, whose ‘instrument’ is his mimicked background music. He will then proceed to provide such music despite how inopportune it is for the rest of the party. Like if the party is trying to stealth it’s way into a castle/through a castle, as he tip toes down the hall, my Kenku bard will be providing the “Dunn dun dunnnn...dundundun!”, or as the party starts having to listen to the mid boss/BBEG monologue my bard will start to interrupt them with the humming strains of epic battle/boss music. I will get around the lack of creativity part by essentially never participating in planning of missions/heists. Only adding musical cues to the follow up.
I haven't played myself, but I did play with one, and it was a lot of fun. She usually wrote down any notable quotes she thought she could use, like "Male dragon: "What can I do for you, little ones?""
She generally didn't participate much in the discussion, but she had a habit of throwing our own words back at us. Once, my cleric of Helm didn't want to be involved in a fight. She quoted me "Helm seeks to protect everyone"
"What do you mean I get disadvantage on persuasion?"
I don't know, Sneet, maybe because your argument is "Submit and become our pet"?
-Actual conversation in a game.
Played one a couple times. Simplest is to be to the letter as it is fun to be literal in terms of things. But player wise know your character has been around enough to have a collection of voices to pull from so you can speak normally. I actually play my kenku as a linguist who unless specifically asked to translate things, will answer the question of 'what does that say?' with either 'nothing as it is words.' or in the language it is written in.
Definitely fun to be more of a minion as you can do the silly ideas and be the one player to reliably follow the plan that was made and can help your gm out a lot if you do planning before to kick off for next session. Though since can be all the classes, it makes sense that you broke up the old tomes enough and re-fragmented it in ponder to figure out a new spell. Or you working on new sound combinations to make a new one.
Aarakocra have a very double bladed sword of a base flying speed. abuse of it can cause headaches, or be a defining feature of party tactics. But at the same time memorizing all these details and mimicry can be how you can recall that short winded bit of advice that you missed or couldn't write down. Can also make the joke where you being brought up in combat would jerk up and beak jab someone. Fluff up a bit to hide a set of lockpicks about you. Claws for fighting and few races can make a grab attack with their foot and then be a monk on the desire to make a woodie the woodpecker joke.
oh boy, birb time.
As everyone else already mentioned, the only way of speech by mimicking is pretty sucky, so most DMs (like mine), have decided against it. However, in turn for being able to speak normally, I have to give up the ability to perfectly mimic sounds. I play a rogue (thief subclass) and I gotta say, nothing beats robbing a poor shopkeeper blind like the birb I am. However, if you have no way around the mimicry, it is a good idea to do as the others did and use movie quotes, write in a book, use different sound cues for different situations. You can be pretty creative for a not-so-creative bird.
As a DM who encourages players to role play and feels that flaws and drawbacks make characters more interesting I have a sort of standing rule. As long as you can explain where you heard something, like who said it, what the situation was, and what the adventure birb is trying to say, I generally let my players speak as they want. Far mor hindering is not being able to be creative. So if your playing a Kenku and you want to make a magic sword you need to have seen how one is made. Same with scrolls and potions. Also those creations can not be improved on or modified. As a example, I previously mentioned a Kenku wizard of mine who couldn’t cast his higher level spells until the party bard sat down and read the words for him. Later the bard wanted a magic rapier and asked my Kenku to help her make it. Since he was helping and not leading the construction his curse didn’t come into play. After a few more levels I wanted to make myself a magic dagger. Since I was leading the project the curse was in play, and I couldn’t make the dagger because my only experience with making magic weapons was the bards rapier. So that’s what I made and during downtime had the bard train me in how to use my exact copy of her rapier.
GM of The Bonus Role - We are playing a 5E game set in my homebrew world of Audra check us out Sunday's at 10 AM CST and follow us at the following social media links.
https://www.twitch.tv/thebonusrole
@BonusRole
One of my favorite characters has been a kenku bard! She makes her own music from remixing different sounds and melodies she's learned to mimic and she's SUPER fun to play. Our campaign has had a lot of sneaking into and around places, and having mimicry and disguise self has been really helpful for that. It's a bit time consuming, but how I stay true to mimicry is I like to record the sessions, or if i forget to do that i keep really detailed notes about phrases or important new words people say.
I once played a kenku warlock of the raven queen and took the master of myriad forms invocation. He was the party's key into everywhere that they weren't allowed
I've played two Kenku characters. Clink is my Arcane Trickster Rogue, and prior to meeting the party, she picked up most of her phrases from listening in on theater productions. She knew a lot of dramatic phrases and famous quotes, and I ad-libbed whatever I think would sound appropriately melodramatic.
Crash is an NPC in a campaign I'm running, and he lived with pirates before meeting the party. Again, most of those lines are ad-libbed.
in both cases, i would keep note of things the other players said so I could repeat it back to them. I would also specify where the quote came from.
As a sort of home brew rule to make things easier, I can also say "through a series of charades and sound effects, [character] communicates such and such." I've also ruled that the vast majority of Kenku understand Thieve's Cant (or sometimes sign language), which is primarily how they would communicate among each other.
It's really hard to pull off, but it can be SUPER fun! Especially if most of the party get really into character voices. It definitely requires a ton of ad-libbing and thinking about things they would have overheard from the people/places they've been around.
Of course, if you really want to play a Kenku but don't want to deal with Mimicry, you could always talk to your DM about ignoring that particular aspect. I've known a few who have allowed it.
I've recently started playing a Kenku Warlock named "Click Click Click Click Click" (people just call him "Clicks"). He mostly communicates non-verbally and I go for a sort of "Silent Bob" thing for him, where he's just very expressive in other ways (like a lot of players, however, I keep a list of interesting phrases said by other people at the table to toss out whenever it would be funniest). Although he's also a Great Old One Warlock, so if I find myself in a situation where I can't find a way to convey a complex idea while maintaining the Kenku limitations, so in those situations he can just communicate telepathically. He doesn't like to do that, though, because he doesn't have an internal voice of his own... so when he does it the voice people hear is that of his Patron.
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I've been playing a Kenku for a dozen sessions or so, and while I was doing my best to strictly stick to quotes In other characters voices it is very restrictive, as intended - but can be a little tedious. Moving forward I'm going go to play the kenku a bit more like a parrot, with some skeksis blended in, speaking in their own voice in broken common/English. When it may require a check or seems appropriate I'll do my best to copy voices as I was, but expect this will make things a bit more fun in future sessions.
The way I rationalize it is my Kenku is an assassin in a guild of assassins. And in order to facilitate communication his mentor spoke just every which word they could possibly think of to him so now he speaks by mimicking his mentors voice. Able to effectively speak freely.
I've started doing something like that as well. My character doesn't have a "mentor", per se, but he's got a background doing dirty work (mostly forgery), but occasionally he gets jobs just copying books for a local college. So as a result he has two "voices"... a shady cockney accent from someone he worked with regularly when saying things related to plans or crimes, and an upperclass, monotone voice he uses when quoting a professor he works with (mostly for when he makes a successful arcana or history check).
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Luckily my characters mentor is an Aarikocra, so I can use an avian inspired regular speech pattern.