I recently created a DnD character just for fun, and decided to make his race more complete by writting this homebrew race: the Nycter. It is heavily based on what I could find on that creature which was present in DnD 3.5.
Had a blast writing my first homebrew content, and spent a few days reading a lot about the possibilities and how to balance it. Even used the Detect Balance: a 5e Homebrew Race Guideto be sure this race was fun, rich, but fair (arriving at a score of 24, right in the average of races).
Do tell me what you think could be improved, if you find something you have thoughts about! I'm anxious but happy to hear about it.
Overall I like this race and what you've done. However, it is severely behind the vanilla races in terms of mechanical advantages. In summary, they have 1 less ability score increase, weakness to sunlight (no darkvision), and vulernability to thunder damage, in exchange for 40 foot fly speed, activated blindsight, and a bite attack. You are mostly giving benefits and then canceling them out with other penalties, and I think over penalizing. I would remove sunlight weakness and thunder vulnerability. Other than that, I would reword some features to align better with existing race features.
Flight - While you are not wearing medium or heavy armor you have a flying speed of 40 feet. While flying in this way, your hands are unavailable to hold objects, make melee weapon attacks, or perform somatic components for casting spells.
Fangs - Rename to Bite. - Your fanged maw is a natural weapon, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal piercing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
Sun Sickness - Remove this feature.
Echolocation - Consider rewording. - Something like: As an action, you can emit a high frequency sound in all directions. Until the end of your turn you gain Blindsight out to a distance of 30 feet. You can't use this feature while you are Deafened.
Sensible Hearing - Rename to Keen Hearing. - Remove the deafened clause. It is redundant, since you can't hear at all while deafened. - Remove the vulnerability to Thunder damage.
For the subclass options, you don't need to add a specific feature detailing what they normally eat. That is flavor that can be explained in their introduction, unless you plan to add a mechanic benefit or penalty associated with their eating habits.
Hunting Cry - The Stunned condition is a very powerful disabling ability. I would reduce the effect to just Incapacitated.
Overall I like this race and what you've done. However, it is severely behind the vanilla races in terms of mechanical advantages. In summary, they have 1 less ability score increase, weakness to sunlight (no darkvision), and vulernability to thunder damage, in exchange for 40 foot fly speed, activated blindsight, and a bite attack. You are mostly giving benefits and then canceling them out with other penalties, and I think over penalizing. I would remove sunlight weakness and thunder vulnerability. Other than that, I would reword some features to align better with existing race features.
Flight - While you are not wearing medium or heavy armor you have a flying speed of 40 feet. While flying in this way, your hands are unavailable to hold objects, make melee weapon attacks, or perform somatic components for casting spells.
Fangs - Rename to Bite. - Your fanged maw is a natural weapon, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal piercing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
Sun Sickness - Remove this feature.
Echolocation - Consider rewording. - Something like: As an action, you can emit a high frequency sound in all directions. Until the end of your turn you gain Blindsight out to a distance of 30 feet. You can't use this feature while you are Deafened.
Sensible Hearing - Rename to Keen Hearing. - Remove the deafened clause. It is redundant, since you can't hear at all while deafened. - Remove the vulnerability to Thunder damage.
For the subclass options, you don't need to add a specific feature detailing what they normally eat. That is flavor that can be explained in their introduction, unless you plan to add a mechanic benefit or penalty associated with their eating habits.
Hunting Cry - The Stunned condition is a very powerful disabling ability. I would reduce the effect to just Incapacitated.
Ok, so I reviewed most of your points.
I really appreciate the rewording of some elements, I agree that streamlining might help the general approach! :)
For the fact that you consider this race behind, you might have skipped some elements: they have 3 ASI (2 base ones, with one added by their subrace) and they do have darkvision (60ft). As for the rest, I think sunlight weakness and thunder vulnerability are quite needed to compensate for flight and echolocation, two very impactful skills in game. The Detect Balance document really allowed me to find out where this race was placed compared to the others, pushing me to add a vulnerability. The goal of this race is also to avoid sharing the exact same skills as other races (for example, the way flight works letting more freedom to the player with a scaling system). My goal was not to make a Aarakocra 2.0, if you know what I mean.
Though I totally agree with two elements: I think I'll add a penalty associated to the eating habits of the subrace, and the change of condition for hunting cry makes sense (I was still thinking this skill was too strong). Thanks!
Something I may consider since it can make it so you have to give them fewer weaknesses to compensate for flight if you do it is doing what the folks who wrote Humblewood did with the bird folk. Instead of straight-up flight, you can give them a glide ability with rules text similar to this:
Glide. Using your arms, you can slow your fall, and glide short distances. When falling you can use your reaction to spread your arms and slow your descent. While doing so, you continue to fall gently at a speed of 60 feet per round, taking no fall damage when you land. If you would fall at least 10 feet in this way, you may fly up to your movement speed in one direction you choose, although you cannot choose to move upwards, landing in the space you finish your movement. You cannot glide while carrying heavy weapons or wielding a shield (though you may drop any held items as part of your reaction to spread your arms). You cannot glide while wearing heavy armor, or if you are encumbered.
For the whole not holding weapon things while flying ... you should hook up the batfolk with flying battle skills, Such as using there feet to hold or fasten sharp weapon or gauntlets with blades to attack enemies as they fly by , along with some kind of magical power that allows something to work similar to the way a dragon uses fire . I think it would be bad ass if they had there clawed feet or weapons tip with poison . Clearly these bat like creatures need to be more like bats ... they would make great assassins. Especially since there wings would make great Rouge like hoods and clocks when they wrap themselves up . I absolutely love the idea with this race and can't wait to see it all worked out
As long as this is bumped up, I'd caution people against the "points-based" approach from that Detect Balance spreadsheet. This typically results in very strong features that are presumably "balanced" by vulnerabilities, but in reality players are going to behave in a way that maximizes the strong features and minimizes the vulnerabilities.
Homebrew link should be repaired! Sorry, DnD Beyond made changes that kinda broke direct links (because of renaming of categories, womp womp). I might also want to update this one day, when DnD Beyond's homebrew tool works a bit better. Right now, it's a bit too much of a struggle.
Hi everyone!
I recently created a DnD character just for fun, and decided to make his race more complete by writting this homebrew race: the Nycter.
It is heavily based on what I could find on that creature which was present in DnD 3.5.
You can access the homebrew page here:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/species/298620-nycter-bat-folk
Had a blast writing my first homebrew content, and spent a few days reading a lot about the possibilities and how to balance it. Even used the Detect Balance: a 5e Homebrew Race Guide to be sure this race was fun, rich, but fair (arriving at a score of 24, right in the average of races).
Do tell me what you think could be improved, if you find something you have thoughts about! I'm anxious but happy to hear about it.
Overall I like this race and what you've done. However, it is severely behind the vanilla races in terms of mechanical advantages. In summary, they have 1 less ability score increase, weakness to sunlight (no darkvision), and vulernability to thunder damage, in exchange for 40 foot fly speed, activated blindsight, and a bite attack. You are mostly giving benefits and then canceling them out with other penalties, and I think over penalizing. I would remove sunlight weakness and thunder vulnerability. Other than that, I would reword some features to align better with existing race features.
Flight
- While you are not wearing medium or heavy armor you have a flying speed of 40 feet. While flying in this way, your hands are unavailable to hold objects, make melee weapon attacks, or perform somatic components for casting spells.
Fangs
- Rename to Bite.
- Your fanged maw is a natural weapon, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal piercing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
Sun Sickness
- Remove this feature.
Echolocation
- Consider rewording.
- Something like: As an action, you can emit a high frequency sound in all directions. Until the end of your turn you gain Blindsight out to a distance of 30 feet. You can't use this feature while you are Deafened.
Sensible Hearing
- Rename to Keen Hearing.
- Remove the deafened clause. It is redundant, since you can't hear at all while deafened.
- Remove the vulnerability to Thunder damage.
For the subclass options, you don't need to add a specific feature detailing what they normally eat. That is flavor that can be explained in their introduction, unless you plan to add a mechanic benefit or penalty associated with their eating habits.
Hunting Cry
- The Stunned condition is a very powerful disabling ability. I would reduce the effect to just Incapacitated.
Ok, so I reviewed most of your points.
I really appreciate the rewording of some elements, I agree that streamlining might help the general approach! :)
For the fact that you consider this race behind, you might have skipped some elements: they have 3 ASI (2 base ones, with one added by their subrace) and they do have darkvision (60ft). As for the rest, I think sunlight weakness and thunder vulnerability are quite needed to compensate for flight and echolocation, two very impactful skills in game. The Detect Balance document really allowed me to find out where this race was placed compared to the others, pushing me to add a vulnerability. The goal of this race is also to avoid sharing the exact same skills as other races (for example, the way flight works letting more freedom to the player with a scaling system). My goal was not to make a Aarakocra 2.0, if you know what I mean.
Though I totally agree with two elements: I think I'll add a penalty associated to the eating habits of the subrace, and the change of condition for hunting cry makes sense (I was still thinking this skill was too strong). Thanks!
Something I may consider since it can make it so you have to give them fewer weaknesses to compensate for flight if you do it is doing what the folks who wrote Humblewood did with the bird folk. Instead of straight-up flight, you can give them a glide ability with rules text similar to this:
Glide. Using your arms, you can slow your fall, and glide short distances. When falling you can use your reaction to spread your arms and slow your descent. While doing so, you continue to fall gently at a speed of 60 feet per round, taking no fall damage when you land. If you would fall at least 10 feet in this way, you may fly up to your movement speed in one direction you choose, although you cannot choose to move upwards, landing in the space you finish your movement. You cannot glide while carrying heavy weapons or wielding a shield (though you may drop any held items as part of your reaction to spread your arms). You cannot glide while wearing heavy armor, or if you are encumbered.
For the whole not holding weapon things while flying ... you should hook up the batfolk with flying battle skills, Such as using there feet to hold or fasten sharp weapon or gauntlets with blades to attack enemies as they fly by , along with some kind of magical power that allows something to work similar to the way a dragon uses fire . I think it would be bad ass if they had there clawed feet or weapons tip with poison . Clearly these bat like creatures need to be more like bats ... they would make great assassins. Especially since there wings would make great Rouge like hoods and clocks when they wrap themselves up . I absolutely love the idea with this race and can't wait to see it all worked out
As long as this is bumped up, I'd caution people against the "points-based" approach from that Detect Balance spreadsheet. This typically results in very strong features that are presumably "balanced" by vulnerabilities, but in reality players are going to behave in a way that maximizes the strong features and minimizes the vulnerabilities.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I'm super curious to play one, but the homebrew link appears broken!
Honestly if I was gonna make a Batman character I would have picked this race easy 10000/10
Homebrew link should be repaired! Sorry, DnD Beyond made changes that kinda broke direct links (because of renaming of categories, womp womp).
I might also want to update this one day, when DnD Beyond's homebrew tool works a bit better. Right now, it's a bit too much of a struggle.
I tried to use your species. But! Its mildly broken? It put advantage on every single skill instead of just perception for hearing.