Is this ready for publishing, what do you think? Is it balanced? Have any opinions? Should I make small deer and goat based subraces? My biggest worry is the Bound Away ability. It's really flavorful, and fits the idea of the race, but I worry that what amounts to a near free repositioning at the start of every encounter might be a bit much. The flavor of the idea is a burst that makes every encounter at least a chase, even if they end up caught in the end. Sort of a head start. One of the main things I compared it too are the Tabaxi ability to go twice their speed whenever they want so long as they move zero at some point between uses. Basically what a cheetah does. I also compared it to the goblin disengage and and hide at will as a bonus action. I figure it's slightly more powerful than both, but unlike them usable once per combat, and only at a specific time. If it is unbalanced, what changes would you make that maintain the flavor idea of the ability?
Zelletaur are friendly and helpful by nature but you have learned to take it to a whole new level. You have now learned to effectively help others with minimal effort.
Increase your Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You are now capable of taking the help action as a bonus action on any turn in which you do not make an attack or casts a spell that affects an enemy creature, or deals damage to another creature.
Prerequisite: Zelletaur
You have honed the legendary ability of zelletaur to escape capture to near perfection. You gain the following benefits:
Increase your Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
Whenever you take the dodge, action you do not provoke Opportunity Attacks while moving til the beginning of your next turn.
YES. Great. I love it when someone offers a homebrew that may be slightly on the weak side, rather than adding stuff and stuff because they want their race to do everything. I feel like your race is balanced, and even has room for a little bit more. In detail:
Leaps and Bounds
It's fun, but references a rule that I'm pretty sure a lot of people neglect, or don't even know exist (I actually had to look it up, I always linked jumping with a Dexterity(acrobatics), oups). In most cases, it won't do anything.
Playful
Yes, free proficiency, always nice. Limited to a list that's wide enough to have some appeal to any build, so that's good.
Antelopean Physique
Again, climbing probably don't come up all that often, having advantage to land on your feet makes for some cool superhero landing, but I'm not sure this feature will come up all that often.
Ability Score Increase
Balanced, and makes sense.
Fey
Hard to quantify the effect of that. It makes you immune to a lost of charms, so the effect might be DM dependant (does you DM often have his NPC use charm person or Dominate person ?).
Bound Away
Ok, I'm not sure what the intent is here. As written, this does nothing. The dash action doesn't let you move, it only gives you extra speed for the current turn, and since you're out of initiative, it would at best apply for the person who won initiative. If the intent it to have them move, you should just say they can move up to their speed. If the intent is to indeed have a dash, as in, an increase in speed for their actual turn, you should say that the dash remains in effect until the end of their turn.
It's a... Nice gimmick. I can see use for any character class as well, a caster could use this to hide before fight begins, while a martial character could instantly engage enemies in melee, stopping them from moving towards the most vulnerable members of the party.
All in all, one circumstantially useful defining trait, a proficiency, and 2 traits that will probably never come up. I feel like there's room for a tiny bit of extra oomph, probably aimed at out-of-combat interaction. If I understand correctly, they're basically the halfling version of centaurs, maybe they should be able to push/pull/lift as a creature one size bigger ?
The racial feat is cool as well, I like the idea and the design behind it. I have to worry about the balance in case of a monk character, but it would take a ki point to "abuse", so i guess that's ok. I'm not sure I would allow it to increase charisma, since it's about being agile and taking hits. I get that it's reminiscent of the racial ability increase, but maybe dex or con instead ?
I used dash specifically because I wanted it to be able to stack with abilities that improved dash. Maybe I should add that it's a special dash action that allows you to move your speed out of turn.
As for increased pull, lift, etc. They're based on gazelle, not beasts of burden, they aren't built for that in the slightest. Add much of any weight and they can no longer bound, which is how they move. They don't run like horses and other beasts of burden do. Is also what gives them insane maneuverability, and is how gazelle avoid predators.
Basically gazelle are quick to dash, turning almost any encounter into a chase, but they can't outrun most predators in a straight run. So what gazelle are really good at is at the last second, just before the predator pounces, leaping to the side changing direction on a dime, causing the predator to overshoot, and allowing the gazelle to gain a great distance while the predator tries to recover, and regain speed. This ability is kind of what I'm trying to represent with the gazelle escape feat. As for the charisma bonus, I wanted to keep it to their racial ability scores like most racial feats. The charisma bonus did bother me at first, but as social creatures I just sort of re-flavored the charisma boost as sort of an increase to the ability to "evade" bad social situations. So it's adding to another aspect of the race that allows them to avoid trouble. Also the dodge action is about avoiding a hit so I'm not sure Con is any more appropriate than Cha.
How's this for bound away?
When startled you are capable of great bursts of speed. At the start of combat you may make a special movement that counts as a Dash as a reaction to rolling initiative that does not provoke Opportunity Attacks and allows you to move your speed immediately. You may even take this reaction while surprised.
Though the way that's worded it might imply they're getting double their move and not just an out of turn movement that counts as a dash for other feats and abilities... If anyone has any suggestions on how to word this, I'd appreciate it, is kind of the races most important feature, as it's what sets them apart...
Maybe just remove the whole dash thing. Just make it allow you to move your speed as a special reaction to the start of combat that provokes no opportunity attack that may even be used during a suprise round.
How's this?
At the start of combat you may move your speed as a reaction to rolling initiative. While moving in this way you do not provoke opportunity attacks. This is a special reaction that may be taken while surprised.
What kind of interaction with Dash are you thinking of ? On the top of my head, I can't really see any, but I might be missing something. So I would probably just stick to the last wording.
If you want your feat to improve charisma, you could maybe add a small out-of-combat effect that relates to social interaction ? This could even be an improvement of a racial feature you could add, because their charismatic and playful nature isn't really reflected in their traits for now, besides the +1 charisma.
But really, I think if you wanted to publish as is, it seems balanced to me.
It's reflected a bit in thier skill bonus. Not sure what minor social ability I could give them and most racial feats only give one adder beside a stat.
Maybe seperate the two stat adds into two feats. Maybe have one that gives them plus one charisma and the ability to use the help action as a bonus action.
Or something similar to the Martial Adept feat but with bardic inspiration.
At your suggestion to add a little more, something a bit socially, I added this racial ability.
Happy Little Helper
There's nothing zelletaur like doing more than help others. In fact they do so, so often, that they've developed ways to do so safely. Whenever a zelletaur uses the help action in combat the zelletaur may also take the dodge action as a bonus action.
Also added this as another racial feat. Yes the two abilities are built to not work together, the feat is basically an upgraded version of the ability where they can do anything while helping another.
Do these work? Or is this a bit much?
Prerequisite: Zelletaur
Zelletaur are friendly and helpful by nature but you have learned to take it to a whole new level. You have now learned to effectively help others with minimal effort.
Increase your Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You are now capable of taking the help action as a bonus action.
Oh and one more thing, about the flavor of the race. Does it seem reasonable? I was going for something light and fun, but also reasonable and believable. I want them to be fun and something that could reasonably survive and exist in the world.
My desire was to avoid the absurdities of things like Kender and Tinker Gnomes, that it takes serious cognitive dissonance to not believe they haven't either gotten wiped out, or killed themselves off? This way they could fill the fun and silly role, but in a way that doesn't destroy the credibility of a setting.
I'll be honest, I didn't read the background, since i'm usually more interested in the creativity of mechanics than lore. But I really like the visuals of these creatures, and I think they're very interesting (and I might steal them ;) ).
On the subject of Happy Little Helper, my complaint would be that it's another combat feature, but it's a cool one. I actually enjoy how the feat does not combo, but gives additional options. Options are good. They're what makes a round interesting. I think that Help as a bonus action is a bit strong though. Some classes don't always have something to do with their bonus action, and giving advantage to an ally for "free" is always appealing.
I was thinking - since they're half halfling, could they maybe have a feature inspired by a halfling feature ? Maybe being able to reroll any 1 on a charisma ability check ? It's not as powerful as the Halfling's lucky, but it speak both to their origins and their friendly nature ?
I kind of like that it's somewhat powerful though, as it encourages players to use the help action more often, though, perhaps I could instead have it allow for say, the ability to take a dash as a bonus action whenever you use the help action. I like the idea of encouraging the help action with this race, it encourages a less violent more helpful character which fits better than increasing pure combat powers. Helping is a combat power, but one that uses distractions and stuff while the other character is the one actually being violent...
Hrm, maybe allow it to be kind of like sanctuary or invisibility, have it allow you to use the help action as a bonus action in any turn in which you do not take a hostile action.
Also feel free to steal them, will be posting them and the feats soon as I get this ironed out. Been putting a lot of work into them, has become kind of a pet project.
As for the charisma idea, I kinda like it, except that I don't see them rerolling 1's on say... intimidate...
Also, while Happy little Helper is technically a combat feat, it's one that involves using interactive rather than blatantly violent actions on the character's part. Sort of a social combat ability as it involves working with others.
How about this instead?
Prerequisite: Zelletaur
Zelletaur are friendly and helpful by nature but you have learned to take it to a whole new level. You have now learned to effectively help others with minimal effort.
Increase your Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You are now capable of taking the help action as a bonus action on any turn in which you do not make an attack or casts a spell that affects an enemy creature, or deals damage to another creature.
Oooh I really like the design of that feat. I don't know if it's a good feat, because a bard will probably get a lot more mileage out of it than, say, a sorcerer, but I really enjoy the thematic tie-in to the bonus. I think it works great as-is.
I think Happy Little Helper works great as is. Again, bards tend to have little to do at the early levels, this might help them.
Bards might actually benefit a little too much from this race compared to other classes, but I might be wrong on this one, and honestly, i doesn't really matter.
Do keep in mind that both bardic inspiration and these abilities both take up a bonus action, so bards aren't necessarily getting as much bang for their buck as you're thinking.
Also, keep in mind that the help action typically isn't that great in combat due to action economy. It suffers from the same problems as true strike. You're basically giving up an action so that you or someone else can get advantage on another action, when it's usually in all ways better to have two normal actions.
The main thing the feat really does is allow a zelletaur to do things like cast buff spells, use healing items, or other helpful things along side the help action.
If I had to choose between giving someone inspiration, or giving them advantage, advantage will usually come out ahead. But it's ok, as you said, it creates more options for the bard, and it does cost a feat to help as a bonus action, with a restriction that even bard won't always fulfill.
Yeah, but think of it this way, it still limits action economy similar to what the help action does as an action, by limiting you from taking hostile actions. While yes there's more you can do along side it, you're still required to give up an actual attack to give someone else advantage.
Though casting haste on your warrior friend, then granting them advantage on their next attack is certainly win.
Also you can bardic inspire from a distance. Without a special ability saying otherwise, you have to be next to someone to help them.
Is this ready for publishing, what do you think? Is it balanced? Have any opinions? Should I make small deer and goat based subraces? My biggest worry is the Bound Away ability. It's really flavorful, and fits the idea of the race, but I worry that what amounts to a near free repositioning at the start of every encounter might be a bit much. The flavor of the idea is a burst that makes every encounter at least a chase, even if they end up caught in the end. Sort of a head start. One of the main things I compared it too are the Tabaxi ability to go twice their speed whenever they want so long as they move zero at some point between uses. Basically what a cheetah does. I also compared it to the goblin disengage and and hide at will as a bonus action. I figure it's slightly more powerful than both, but unlike them usable once per combat, and only at a specific time. If it is unbalanced, what changes would you make that maintain the flavor idea of the ability?
Oh and as a bonus two zelletaur racial feat.
Zelletaur are friendly and helpful by nature but you have learned to take it to a whole new level. You have now learned to effectively help others with minimal effort.
You have honed the legendary ability of zelletaur to escape capture to near perfection. You gain the following benefits:
YES. Great. I love it when someone offers a homebrew that may be slightly on the weak side, rather than adding stuff and stuff because they want their race to do everything. I feel like your race is balanced, and even has room for a little bit more. In detail:
Leaps and Bounds
It's fun, but references a rule that I'm pretty sure a lot of people neglect, or don't even know exist (I actually had to look it up, I always linked jumping with a Dexterity(acrobatics), oups). In most cases, it won't do anything.
Playful
Yes, free proficiency, always nice. Limited to a list that's wide enough to have some appeal to any build, so that's good.
Antelopean Physique
Again, climbing probably don't come up all that often, having advantage to land on your feet makes for some cool superhero landing, but I'm not sure this feature will come up all that often.
Ability Score Increase
Balanced, and makes sense.
Fey
Hard to quantify the effect of that. It makes you immune to a lost of charms, so the effect might be DM dependant (does you DM often have his NPC use charm person or Dominate person ?).
Bound Away
Ok, I'm not sure what the intent is here. As written, this does nothing. The dash action doesn't let you move, it only gives you extra speed for the current turn, and since you're out of initiative, it would at best apply for the person who won initiative. If the intent it to have them move, you should just say they can move up to their speed. If the intent is to indeed have a dash, as in, an increase in speed for their actual turn, you should say that the dash remains in effect until the end of their turn.
It's a... Nice gimmick. I can see use for any character class as well, a caster could use this to hide before fight begins, while a martial character could instantly engage enemies in melee, stopping them from moving towards the most vulnerable members of the party.
All in all, one circumstantially useful defining trait, a proficiency, and 2 traits that will probably never come up. I feel like there's room for a tiny bit of extra oomph, probably aimed at out-of-combat interaction. If I understand correctly, they're basically the halfling version of centaurs, maybe they should be able to push/pull/lift as a creature one size bigger ?
The racial feat is cool as well, I like the idea and the design behind it. I have to worry about the balance in case of a monk character, but it would take a ki point to "abuse", so i guess that's ok. I'm not sure I would allow it to increase charisma, since it's about being agile and taking hits. I get that it's reminiscent of the racial ability increase, but maybe dex or con instead ?
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I used dash specifically because I wanted it to be able to stack with abilities that improved dash. Maybe I should add that it's a special dash action that allows you to move your speed out of turn.
As for increased pull, lift, etc. They're based on gazelle, not beasts of burden, they aren't built for that in the slightest. Add much of any weight and they can no longer bound, which is how they move. They don't run like horses and other beasts of burden do. Is also what gives them insane maneuverability, and is how gazelle avoid predators.
Basically gazelle are quick to dash, turning almost any encounter into a chase, but they can't outrun most predators in a straight run. So what gazelle are really good at is at the last second, just before the predator pounces, leaping to the side changing direction on a dime, causing the predator to overshoot, and allowing the gazelle to gain a great distance while the predator tries to recover, and regain speed. This ability is kind of what I'm trying to represent with the gazelle escape feat. As for the charisma bonus, I wanted to keep it to their racial ability scores like most racial feats. The charisma bonus did bother me at first, but as social creatures I just sort of re-flavored the charisma boost as sort of an increase to the ability to "evade" bad social situations. So it's adding to another aspect of the race that allows them to avoid trouble. Also the dodge action is about avoiding a hit so I'm not sure Con is any more appropriate than Cha.
How's this for bound away?
When startled you are capable of great bursts of speed. At the start of combat you may make a special movement that counts as a Dash as a reaction to rolling initiative that does not provoke Opportunity Attacks and allows you to move your speed immediately. You may even take this reaction while surprised.
Though the way that's worded it might imply they're getting double their move and not just an out of turn movement that counts as a dash for other feats and abilities... If anyone has any suggestions on how to word this, I'd appreciate it, is kind of the races most important feature, as it's what sets them apart...
Maybe just remove the whole dash thing. Just make it allow you to move your speed as a special reaction to the start of combat that provokes no opportunity attack that may even be used during a suprise round.
How's this?
At the start of combat you may move your speed as a reaction to rolling initiative. While moving in this way you do not provoke opportunity attacks. This is a special reaction that may be taken while surprised.
What kind of interaction with Dash are you thinking of ? On the top of my head, I can't really see any, but I might be missing something. So I would probably just stick to the last wording.
If you want your feat to improve charisma, you could maybe add a small out-of-combat effect that relates to social interaction ? This could even be an improvement of a racial feature you could add, because their charismatic and playful nature isn't really reflected in their traits for now, besides the +1 charisma.
But really, I think if you wanted to publish as is, it seems balanced to me.
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It's reflected a bit in thier skill bonus. Not sure what minor social ability I could give them and most racial feats only give one adder beside a stat.
Maybe seperate the two stat adds into two feats. Maybe have one that gives them plus one charisma and the ability to use the help action as a bonus action.
Or something similar to the Martial Adept feat but with bardic inspiration.
At your suggestion to add a little more, something a bit socially, I added this racial ability.
Happy Little Helper
There's nothing zelletaur like doing more than help others. In fact they do so, so often, that they've developed ways to do so safely. Whenever a zelletaur uses the help action in combat the zelletaur may also take the dodge action as a bonus action.
Also added this as another racial feat. Yes the two abilities are built to not work together, the feat is basically an upgraded version of the ability where they can do anything while helping another.
Do these work? Or is this a bit much?
Zelletaur are friendly and helpful by nature but you have learned to take it to a whole new level. You have now learned to effectively help others with minimal effort.
Oh and one more thing, about the flavor of the race. Does it seem reasonable? I was going for something light and fun, but also reasonable and believable. I want them to be fun and something that could reasonably survive and exist in the world.
My desire was to avoid the absurdities of things like Kender and Tinker Gnomes, that it takes serious cognitive dissonance to not believe they haven't either gotten wiped out, or killed themselves off? This way they could fill the fun and silly role, but in a way that doesn't destroy the credibility of a setting.
I'll be honest, I didn't read the background, since i'm usually more interested in the creativity of mechanics than lore. But I really like the visuals of these creatures, and I think they're very interesting (and I might steal them ;) ).
On the subject of Happy Little Helper, my complaint would be that it's another combat feature, but it's a cool one. I actually enjoy how the feat does not combo, but gives additional options. Options are good. They're what makes a round interesting. I think that Help as a bonus action is a bit strong though. Some classes don't always have something to do with their bonus action, and giving advantage to an ally for "free" is always appealing.
I was thinking - since they're half halfling, could they maybe have a feature inspired by a halfling feature ? Maybe being able to reroll any 1 on a charisma ability check ? It's not as powerful as the Halfling's lucky, but it speak both to their origins and their friendly nature ?
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I kind of like that it's somewhat powerful though, as it encourages players to use the help action more often, though, perhaps I could instead have it allow for say, the ability to take a dash as a bonus action whenever you use the help action. I like the idea of encouraging the help action with this race, it encourages a less violent more helpful character which fits better than increasing pure combat powers. Helping is a combat power, but one that uses distractions and stuff while the other character is the one actually being violent...
Hrm, maybe allow it to be kind of like sanctuary or invisibility, have it allow you to use the help action as a bonus action in any turn in which you do not take a hostile action.
Also feel free to steal them, will be posting them and the feats soon as I get this ironed out. Been putting a lot of work into them, has become kind of a pet project.
As for the charisma idea, I kinda like it, except that I don't see them rerolling 1's on say... intimidate...
Also, while Happy little Helper is technically a combat feat, it's one that involves using interactive rather than blatantly violent actions on the character's part. Sort of a social combat ability as it involves working with others.
How about this instead?
Zelletaur are friendly and helpful by nature but you have learned to take it to a whole new level. You have now learned to effectively help others with minimal effort.
Oooh I really like the design of that feat. I don't know if it's a good feat, because a bard will probably get a lot more mileage out of it than, say, a sorcerer, but I really enjoy the thematic tie-in to the bonus. I think it works great as-is.
I think Happy Little Helper works great as is. Again, bards tend to have little to do at the early levels, this might help them.
Bards might actually benefit a little too much from this race compared to other classes, but I might be wrong on this one, and honestly, i doesn't really matter.
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Do keep in mind that both bardic inspiration and these abilities both take up a bonus action, so bards aren't necessarily getting as much bang for their buck as you're thinking.
Also, keep in mind that the help action typically isn't that great in combat due to action economy. It suffers from the same problems as true strike. You're basically giving up an action so that you or someone else can get advantage on another action, when it's usually in all ways better to have two normal actions.
The main thing the feat really does is allow a zelletaur to do things like cast buff spells, use healing items, or other helpful things along side the help action.
Oh and it's officially published so steal away.
For your stealing convenience.
Zelletaur
Zelletaur Escape
Zelletaur Helper
If I had to choose between giving someone inspiration, or giving them advantage, advantage will usually come out ahead. But it's ok, as you said, it creates more options for the bard, and it does cost a feat to help as a bonus action, with a restriction that even bard won't always fulfill.
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Yeah, but think of it this way, it still limits action economy similar to what the help action does as an action, by limiting you from taking hostile actions. While yes there's more you can do along side it, you're still required to give up an actual attack to give someone else advantage.
Though casting haste on your warrior friend, then granting them advantage on their next attack is certainly win.
Also you can bardic inspire from a distance. Without a special ability saying otherwise, you have to be next to someone to help them.
Now to begin work on their cousins the roetaur.