I used this race for a sci-fi campaign of mine but I've created a version that fits in to any campaign setting. I did my best to try to represent accurately what a race with telepathic abilities would actually be able to do and so that is why this race has a lot of racial features. I'm quite proud of this race as I think it's a pretty interesting one to try and play in a campaign.
Telepaths were once just like humans, until a group of humans from a now forgotten land made a pact with a genie to gain the power of telepathy, over time they began to disassociate with the rest of society, eventually become recluses. Over a long period of time they have become a race that is only ever talked about but rarely seen by others.
Telepaths look mostly human in appearance with one defining difference in that the Telepaths skin is blue and their eyes are yellow. Telepaths tend to be generally wary of others and are not often quick to associate with those they do not know or do not yet trust.
Telepath Traits
Telepaths look mostly human but with blue skin and yellow eyes.
Ability Score Increase
Your Intelligence Score increases by 2 and your Wisdom score increases by 1
Age
Telepaths tend to reach maturity around 20-25 and can live as long as 150 years.
Size
Telepaths tend to be around 4.5-6 feet tall and weigh anywhere from 125-250 pounds. Your size is Medium
Speed
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Alignment
Because of their tendency towards non-interference, Telepaths usually lean towards a more neutral alignment.
Languages
You can speak, read and write common and one other language, as well as communicate with any other creatures telepathically.
Brain Power
Because of your ability to influence others with your will you have proficiency on Persuasion and Insight checks.
Steel Mind
Your mind is a fortress, and therefore it is quite difficult for someone to break past your mental barriers. You are resistant to Psychic Damage and have advantage on saving throws against being charmed.
Empathic Sense
Because of your telepathic senses, you are very adept at reading people's emotions, any insight checks you roll to determine other creatures' motivations or deceptions can be done at Advantage.
Telepathic Communication
You can communicate with creatures Telepathically provided they are able to speak at least one language, do not have an intelligence score lower than 8 and are willing to listen. Your range of Telepathic communication with non-telepathic creatures is 60 feet.
Neural Network
Your telepathic communication ability is powerful but not unlimited, you have the ability to communicate or sense the presence of other telepathic creatures up to a range of 5 miles, however you cannot determine their exact location relative to you, unless they are within 1 mile of you.
Power of Persuasion
As a bonus action you can use your power of Telepathy to reach into the mind of a creature and attempt to direct their actions to your design. You may stipulate one command to them, no longer than a single sentence for them to comply with, as long as this command does not cause them any harm nor conflict with their system of values (e.g. making them attack an ally, or steal something if they are good natured). Once your command is stated the creature must make a Wisdom saving throw to avoid following your command, the DC for this throw is 8 + your Intelligence and your Wisdom modifiers. If the creature is successful, they ignore your command, if they fail, they will follow it to the best of their ability. Your influence on the creature will end if the task given to them is completed, they take damage, they become charmed in some other way, or a time of 10 minutes passes. Once you have used this feature, you cannot use it again until after you finish a long rest.
Proficiency with Persuasion and Insight, advantage on (let's face it) all Insight checks, resistance to psychic damage, advantage against charms, telepathy w/ unlimited creatures within 60ft, and a 1/rest BA janky version of the Suggestion spell.
I think the 60ft telepathy could use a limit on creatures. GOO warlock says you can only communicate with one creature at a time, that you can see, within 30 ft; just as an example.
I don't think it's necessarily a broken race, but definitely on the strong side. I'd recommend either tuning down or removing some abilities. Also, why make Power of Persuasuion work in such a weird way? No other DC in the game operates off two ability modifiers w/o proficiency bonus. I think if you wanted to keep this ability, it'd be easier to say they can cast either Command or Suggestion once/day at their lowest levels as a Bonus Action.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Telepathic communication is only with willing creatures and with a high enough intelligence, the race can't read peoples minds without permission, thats also why the power of persuasion ability is only once a day, also I thought rather than using Int + proficiency, two ability scores would be more well rounded. But I do see your point on that.
Also that's not quite true that no mechanic uses two Ability scores, Unarmored defense typically uses two, barbarians use dex+con in a similar way 10+dex+con, I even had mine originally 10 base but I changed it to 8 to be similar to a spell.
I guess AC is technically a DC, but I should've specified I meant in terms of spell-like effects. Fair play though.
My concern with the Telepathic part isn't that it's broken because you can read minds, but that it's strong because it'll allow you to have fully undetectable conversations with any number of allies within 60ft at the same time - you can have a whole conference call at 1st level. Compared to other low level abilities this blows them out of the water; Rary's Telepathic Bond is the only one similar and that's a pretty high leveled spell. There are definite differences still, but my concern was the number of creatures you can talk to at once. The rest of it seems balanced and fair.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Well like I said, the Telepath can only communicate with one creature at a time, maybe I didn't state that clearly enough in the race descriptions, but essentially it takes concentration to communication telepathically, so you can only do it with one creature at once, so in battle, it would be considered a bonus or free action at best to relay info or some type of strategy and could only do it to one ally per round, so to come up with a whole strategy and tell everyone would take one round per ally. I think it's not too overpowered for situations where you are under time crunch, but its a useful skill to be able to strategize with one ally.
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I used this race for a sci-fi campaign of mine but I've created a version that fits in to any campaign setting. I did my best to try to represent accurately what a race with telepathic abilities would actually be able to do and so that is why this race has a lot of racial features. I'm quite proud of this race as I think it's a pretty interesting one to try and play in a campaign.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/1126295-telepath
Race Description
Telepaths were once just like humans, until a group of humans from a now forgotten land made a pact with a genie to gain the power of telepathy, over time they began to disassociate with the rest of society, eventually become recluses. Over a long period of time they have become a race that is only ever talked about but rarely seen by others.
Telepaths look mostly human in appearance with one defining difference in that the Telepaths skin is blue and their eyes are yellow. Telepaths tend to be generally wary of others and are not often quick to associate with those they do not know or do not yet trust.
Telepath Traits
Telepaths look mostly human but with blue skin and yellow eyes.
Ability Score Increase
Your Intelligence Score increases by 2 and your Wisdom score increases by 1
Age
Telepaths tend to reach maturity around 20-25 and can live as long as 150 years.
Size
Telepaths tend to be around 4.5-6 feet tall and weigh anywhere from 125-250 pounds. Your size is Medium
Speed
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Alignment
Because of their tendency towards non-interference, Telepaths usually lean towards a more neutral alignment.
Languages
You can speak, read and write common and one other language, as well as communicate with any other creatures telepathically.
Brain Power
Because of your ability to influence others with your will you have proficiency on Persuasion and Insight checks.
Steel Mind
Your mind is a fortress, and therefore it is quite difficult for someone to break past your mental barriers. You are resistant to Psychic Damage and have advantage on saving throws against being charmed.
Empathic Sense
Because of your telepathic senses, you are very adept at reading people's emotions, any insight checks you roll to determine other creatures' motivations or deceptions can be done at Advantage.
Telepathic Communication
You can communicate with creatures Telepathically provided they are able to speak at least one language, do not have an intelligence score lower than 8 and are willing to listen. Your range of Telepathic communication with non-telepathic creatures is 60 feet.
Neural Network
Your telepathic communication ability is powerful but not unlimited, you have the ability to communicate or sense the presence of other telepathic creatures up to a range of 5 miles, however you cannot determine their exact location relative to you, unless they are within 1 mile of you.
Power of Persuasion
As a bonus action you can use your power of Telepathy to reach into the mind of a creature and attempt to direct their actions to your design. You may stipulate one command to them, no longer than a single sentence for them to comply with, as long as this command does not cause them any harm nor conflict with their system of values (e.g. making them attack an ally, or steal something if they are good natured). Once your command is stated the creature must make a Wisdom saving throw to avoid following your command, the DC for this throw is 8 + your Intelligence and your Wisdom modifiers. If the creature is successful, they ignore your command, if they fail, they will follow it to the best of their ability. Your influence on the creature will end if the task given to them is completed, they take damage, they become charmed in some other way, or a time of 10 minutes passes. Once you have used this feature, you cannot use it again until after you finish a long rest.
Proficiency with Persuasion and Insight, advantage on (let's face it) all Insight checks, resistance to psychic damage, advantage against charms, telepathy w/ unlimited creatures within 60ft, and a 1/rest BA janky version of the Suggestion spell.
I think the 60ft telepathy could use a limit on creatures. GOO warlock says you can only communicate with one creature at a time, that you can see, within 30 ft; just as an example.
I don't think it's necessarily a broken race, but definitely on the strong side. I'd recommend either tuning down or removing some abilities. Also, why make Power of Persuasuion work in such a weird way? No other DC in the game operates off two ability modifiers w/o proficiency bonus. I think if you wanted to keep this ability, it'd be easier to say they can cast either Command or Suggestion once/day at their lowest levels as a Bonus Action.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Telepathic communication is only with willing creatures and with a high enough intelligence, the race can't read peoples minds without permission, thats also why the power of persuasion ability is only once a day, also I thought rather than using Int + proficiency, two ability scores would be more well rounded. But I do see your point on that.
Also that's not quite true that no mechanic uses two Ability scores, Unarmored defense typically uses two, barbarians use dex+con in a similar way 10+dex+con, I even had mine originally 10 base but I changed it to 8 to be similar to a spell.
I guess AC is technically a DC, but I should've specified I meant in terms of spell-like effects. Fair play though.
My concern with the Telepathic part isn't that it's broken because you can read minds, but that it's strong because it'll allow you to have fully undetectable conversations with any number of allies within 60ft at the same time - you can have a whole conference call at 1st level. Compared to other low level abilities this blows them out of the water; Rary's Telepathic Bond is the only one similar and that's a pretty high leveled spell. There are definite differences still, but my concern was the number of creatures you can talk to at once. The rest of it seems balanced and fair.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Well like I said, the Telepath can only communicate with one creature at a time, maybe I didn't state that clearly enough in the race descriptions, but essentially it takes concentration to communication telepathically, so you can only do it with one creature at once, so in battle, it would be considered a bonus or free action at best to relay info or some type of strategy and could only do it to one ally per round, so to come up with a whole strategy and tell everyone would take one round per ally. I think it's not too overpowered for situations where you are under time crunch, but its a useful skill to be able to strategize with one ally.