We have talked a lot about lore and feel for the race as it pertains to what a lot of people want from the feel of the Ardling, but not much discussion has come about from playing the Ardling and how it feels in game.
So I am going to talk about my most recent experience with the most recent Ardling.
I made a couple characters to give the ardling a shot, the ones I tried were Climber Monk, Flier Cleric, and Dasher Rogue. I took Magic Initiate at level 1 for the monk with Bless, Guidance, Resistance and Thaumaturgy from the divine Magic ability, this was done to give the monk a more divine feel, which I wanted of course on my Ardling. For the Cleric I took the Musician because I already had enough divine from the cleric part and I thought it would make a good support character. Finally, rogue I took the Lucky Feat to really utilize skills on the rogue. I took Heavy armor on the Cleric because I felt no need for thaumaturge because Ardling's single extra cantrip basically got the Cleric all the Cantrips it would ever need anyway and I wasn't trying to make a skill monkey Cleric.
As far as the racial abilities came into effect. Perception is perception and a few races provide this or another extra skill so not a big deal. The Extra cantrip made certain choices on Cleric less appealing rather than more, and for Rogue the resistance cantrip was nice, but wasn't very flavorful.
In terms of Ancestry.
The climb speed came up rarely, but I also realized it would end up redundant after level 9 and Monk's gained the ability to run up walls the extra damage was so small that it almost felt like it wasn't there. In the case of the monk magic initiate made me feel more celestial than my race did, but it was nice to be able to fit a flavor cantrip like Thaumaturgy into my cantrip list. All-in-all I honestly felt like I received next to no benefit from my race on the monk. Ironically, Cleric was similar. Flier did give me advantage on jump and, knowing that I would want to take advantage of that and heavy armor I did give my Cleric Decent strength and Athletics proficiency. It made getting SOME places a little easier, but still nothing compared to the wizard in that regard. Falling never came up, but it was a short test so to be expected there. Finally Rogue, I thought this with racer would be the stand out, but the truth is even in the rare occasion where I felt dashing was what I wanted out of my bonus action it was rare that I couldn't reach what I needed to with just normal movement and a normal dash. This is going to be even rarer on a class that doesn't get to dash as a bonus action.
Ultimately, each of the animal "forms" were ultimately super situational and underwhelming and made me feel like I was playing a class with no race under most occassions, as the flavor of the race so rarely showed its head, pun intended.
Finally, in terms of gameplay the prior Ardling was vastly superior, adding spell options to classes that normally couldnt get them or freeing up spell preps were much better, and ensuring a similar ability to reach places to wizards misty step. The lack of mechanical benefits on the new ardling really hurts the pallet.
I personally have not played an Ardling, but I ran a game for one last night. Rogue Racer build and the results were pretty much the same as yours. The player said that the idea was great in their head, but the end result was mediocre at the table.
Thank you for taking the time to write this up. Playtesting gives us so much more insight into these changes than we can guess based on reading them alone. I appreciate it a lot. I thought the new abilities looked pretty cool, but it sounds like they are a lot weaker than they seemed. When we test them, I'll put our results here too.
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We have talked a lot about lore and feel for the race as it pertains to what a lot of people want from the feel of the Ardling, but not much discussion has come about from playing the Ardling and how it feels in game.
So I am going to talk about my most recent experience with the most recent Ardling.
I made a couple characters to give the ardling a shot, the ones I tried were Climber Monk, Flier Cleric, and Dasher Rogue. I took Magic Initiate at level 1 for the monk with Bless, Guidance, Resistance and Thaumaturgy from the divine Magic ability, this was done to give the monk a more divine feel, which I wanted of course on my Ardling. For the Cleric I took the Musician because I already had enough divine from the cleric part and I thought it would make a good support character. Finally, rogue I took the Lucky Feat to really utilize skills on the rogue. I took Heavy armor on the Cleric because I felt no need for thaumaturge because Ardling's single extra cantrip basically got the Cleric all the Cantrips it would ever need anyway and I wasn't trying to make a skill monkey Cleric.
As far as the racial abilities came into effect. Perception is perception and a few races provide this or another extra skill so not a big deal. The Extra cantrip made certain choices on Cleric less appealing rather than more, and for Rogue the resistance cantrip was nice, but wasn't very flavorful.
In terms of Ancestry.
The climb speed came up rarely, but I also realized it would end up redundant after level 9 and Monk's gained the ability to run up walls the extra damage was so small that it almost felt like it wasn't there. In the case of the monk magic initiate made me feel more celestial than my race did, but it was nice to be able to fit a flavor cantrip like Thaumaturgy into my cantrip list. All-in-all I honestly felt like I received next to no benefit from my race on the monk. Ironically, Cleric was similar. Flier did give me advantage on jump and, knowing that I would want to take advantage of that and heavy armor I did give my Cleric Decent strength and Athletics proficiency. It made getting SOME places a little easier, but still nothing compared to the wizard in that regard. Falling never came up, but it was a short test so to be expected there. Finally Rogue, I thought this with racer would be the stand out, but the truth is even in the rare occasion where I felt dashing was what I wanted out of my bonus action it was rare that I couldn't reach what I needed to with just normal movement and a normal dash. This is going to be even rarer on a class that doesn't get to dash as a bonus action.
Ultimately, each of the animal "forms" were ultimately super situational and underwhelming and made me feel like I was playing a class with no race under most occassions, as the flavor of the race so rarely showed its head, pun intended.
Finally, in terms of gameplay the prior Ardling was vastly superior, adding spell options to classes that normally couldnt get them or freeing up spell preps were much better, and ensuring a similar ability to reach places to wizards misty step. The lack of mechanical benefits on the new ardling really hurts the pallet.
Great feedback. Thanks for sharing.
I personally have not played an Ardling, but I ran a game for one last night. Rogue Racer build and the results were pretty much the same as yours. The player said that the idea was great in their head, but the end result was mediocre at the table.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Thank you for taking the time to write this up. Playtesting gives us so much more insight into these changes than we can guess based on reading them alone. I appreciate it a lot. I thought the new abilities looked pretty cool, but it sounds like they are a lot weaker than they seemed. When we test them, I'll put our results here too.