Hi folks - this is my first homebrew race that I've attempted, so now that my Elder Spawn race is approved, I would love to get some feedback to work on any technical issues that may come up with the race, particularly since I've never done this before and am slightly worried about the balance of cantrips for the race. 

The elder spawn is designed as a far realm counterpart to the teifling, and are intended to be the result of profane rituals in various cults, whether willingly or otherwise. 

I think the race looks good, and the spell-like abilities you gave it are most definitely fitting and I'd say balanced overall, being utility spells.

I was almost about to comment on the bonus to Charisma, due to the overall average grotesque appereance, but then remember it works both ways :p

Nice work, and very well executed!

 I really like this race. I think it actually works incredibly well for an NPC villain I am incorporating into my current campaign that is dealing with a lot of Far Realm weird fantasy issues. I will definitely use this as the base race for the dreaded Nemarshud the Foul.

As for a PC race, I can see the appeal as well, and while I was initially very hesitant about all of the cantrips they get, I gave it a bit more leeway when I considered the negative social interactions a character like this is bound to encounter. They would be truly alien everywhere they went and would be even more readily maligned than even tieflings for the sheer horror of their appearance. I would as a DM really enforce that social stigma upon any player that chose to play one, because without that drawback 3 daily cantrips (even utility spells like these) is almost too good of a bonus, especially if the player then goes on to become a warlock or sorcerer. 

Good job overall.

Thanks! I'd be interested to see how well it goes, having done only minimal play-testing of it myself. I was also considering making it so that you need to choose either message or mage hand, although I agree that it was intended to have massive social implications as a downside. In a campaign where the DM didn't want to make the social stuff as important, would this be an appropriate fix?

I will try to remember to come back here to let you know how it goes when they meet one of these in villain form. 

Yes, I believe it would be a good fix.

You know, social implications can so subjective and are difficult to balance a race or class around, in a dungeon crawl it would just never come up, allowing the cantrips to be a huge boon with no drawbacks, while in a game of city intrigue the character would be horribly crippled without the ability to disguise their disfigurement, but even then, if the DM just forgot about it or ignored it, then its no big deal.

An arcane caster, who the cantrips benefit probably the most, would skirt the negative impacts from appearance handily with Disguise Self and Alter Self, so for at least an hour per casting these characters would be treated as normal. Meanwhile a fighter taking this race would likely cause shrieks of horror everywhere they went unless wrapped up like a leper, which just engenders a different sort of horror. Naturally this dichotomy runs the risk of anyone who even considers this race to lean heavily towards caster classes.

A great player though I think would lean into this race and really use it as a springboard for awesome roleplay, so in that case I would want to reward them with the full lot of cantrips.

It looks interesting.  I probably would have made the alignment lean towards chaos rather than neutrality, but otherwise seems fun.