Is it possible to mistake a tabaxi for an animal if it walked on four legs?
My biggest issue is the structural/mechanic problem: two-legged walkers can only walk awkwardly and with great difficulty on four legs (at least that's the case when I try). Would a tabaxi moving on all fours look natural (enough not to raised eyebrows all on its own)? Their feet/ankles (usually) are animal-like, but their knees are humanoid.
RAW, no. Tabaxi gain no mechanical advantage to disguise themselves as a non-humanoid.
Fantasy worlds are inherently weird and the line between "monsters" and "people" is blurred, but for the purposes of the game, basic traits, such as creature type, are assumed to be painfully obvious unless the rules or DM state otherwise.
IN GENERAL, anthropomorphic animal races (tabaxi, tortle, loxodon, aarakocra, kenku, owlin, harengon, giff, thrikreen, grung, etc.) have proportions similar to humans, as least in terms of limb length. Try to crawl like an animal, and you’ll find that your legs are too long compared to your arms. The same should hold true for a Tabaxi.
Ask your DM. There’s no RAW or RAI advantage to passing yourself off as a wild animal while playing an anthropomorphic animal race, but some DMs might allow it.
Is it possible to mistake a tabaxi for an animal if it walked on four legs?
Yes i'd say it's possible with a check of some sort to see if within distance the morphologic differences are spotted or not, but closer inspection would certainly discover them.
Is it possible to mistake a tabaxi for an animal if it walked on four legs?
My biggest issue is the structural/mechanic problem: two-legged walkers can only walk awkwardly and with great difficulty on four legs (at least that's the case when I try). Would a tabaxi moving on all fours look natural (enough not to raised eyebrows all on its own)? Their feet/ankles (usually) are animal-like, but their knees are humanoid.
I imagine they wouldn't look much more natural than a human. There are a lot of things to give it away: head/neck orientation, shoulder shape, clothes, leg length and thickness.
Maybe with practice and a specially made disguise it could pass at a long distance. Maybe...
I was thinking I could have a tabaxi rogue who spied on his noble " owner's " enemies by pretending to be a pet who travelled with him (when the noble igets caught/arrested, the tabaxi has to go on the run and join an adventuring party). Maybe the tabaxi would have dwarfism like a munchkin cat, except since tabaxi limbs are already so long, the result would look like a normal animal cat? Also, tabaxi are rare to begin with so maybe not everyone would recognize one walking on two legs as a person or one walking on four legs as an animal.
But, unless this bit of context changes any minds, I don't think that character backstory would work now.
I was thinking I could have a tabaxi rogue who spied on his noble " owner's " enemies by pretending to be a pet who travelled with him (when the noble igets caught/arrested, the tabaxi has to go on the run and join an adventuring party). Maybe the tabaxi would have dwarfism like a munchkin cat, except since tabaxi limbs are already so long, the result would look like a normal animal cat? Also, tabaxi are rare to begin with so maybe not everyone would recognize one walking on two legs as a person.
But, unless this bit of context changes any minds, I don't think that character backstory would work now.
Thanks everyone for your input!
I'm just imagining some cat man living with a (partially?) blind old person pretending to be a normal cat to get free food and a place to live.
The limb length is the least of the anatomical issues to overcome in comparing humans with true quadrupeds. Our spines are different (quadrupeds have a single curve in their spine, while our spines are s-shaped), the pelvis (ours are designed to have our legs extending straight down from our spines, but, in quadrupeds, the pelvis is curved so that the legs are roughly perpendicular to the spine), the feet and ankles are different, along with hands and shoulders. Humans with a less s-shaped spine or a pelvis with a slight curve to it, have serious back problems and other issues as well.
But, there is nothing to say that the noble might not have had a magic item (e.g., a collar) that would allow the tabaxi to look like a large cat, with the noble being arrested when the tabaxi wasn't wearing the collar.
I was thinking I could have a tabaxi rogue who spied on his noble " owner's " enemies by pretending to be a pet who travelled with him (when the noble igets caught/arrested, the tabaxi has to go on the run and join an adventuring party). Maybe the tabaxi would have dwarfism like a munchkin cat, except since tabaxi limbs are already so long, the result would look like a normal animal cat? Also, tabaxi are rare to begin with so maybe not everyone would recognize one walking on two legs as a person.
But, unless this bit of context changes any minds, I don't think that character backstory would work now.
Thanks everyone for your input!
A Druid's Wildshape would suit your purposes better. You can use your Wildshape to turn into a cat, retaining your mental ability scores, and you can short-rest as a cat to regain your Wildshapes to keep it up. You'd just have to be careful to hide where they won't find you when you sleep, because you can't remain in Wildshape while sleeping.
Keep in mind, a typical housecat is a Tiny creature, and even if you homebrew a Tabaxi to be Small, you're still significantly bigger than a housecat.
Everyone, meet Afton Karwan, a rogue Thief tortle nicknamed Kitty.
Afton had fond memories of growing up as part of a travelling merchant caravan and it taught her many useful skills (how to haggle, how to recognize when a deal was good or bad, and how to handle the dangers encountered on the road), but that life ended when a sickness swept across the land, killing most caravan members, including her parents. By the time the illness had run its course, Afton was left penniless, friendless, and alone in a strange land with only the family’s heirloom magic ring that allowed the wearer to wild shape like a druid into feline animals.
At first she resisted the efforts of the local street kids and gangs that encouraged her to steal (she knew the value of hard work and had been raised to hate thieves) but a girl’s gotta eat, and she eventually became an expert cat burglar (pun totally intended) with the help of her family ring. Now that she’s old enough to earn a proper wage, Afton is trying to leave her thieving ways behind her, but bad habits die hard. Maybe if she joins a travelling adventure group, she can satisfy her sticky-fingered and excitement-craving urges while still earning the wage of an honest day’s work.
The ring allows the wearer to mimic regular druid Wild Shape almost identically, except the wearer can only shape into feline animals and all the rules affected by druid level are instead controlled by the level of whatever class they actually are.
Questions: Is it called Wild Shape or Beast Shape? Do you think it's fair that the item requires attunement?
Everyone, meet Afton Karwan, a rogue Thief tortle nicknamed Kitty.
Afton had fond memories of growing up as part of a travelling merchant caravan and it taught her many useful skills (how to haggle, how to recognize when a deal was good or bad, and how to handle the dangers encountered on the road), but that life ended when a sickness swept across the land, killing most caravan members, including her parents. By the time the illness had run its course, Afton was left penniless, friendless, and alone in a strange land with only the family’s heirloom magic ring that allowed the wearer to wild shape like a druid into feline animals.
At first she resisted the efforts of the local street kids and gangs that encouraged her to steal (she knew the value of hard work and had been raised to hate thieves) but a girl’s gotta eat, and she eventually became an expert cat burglar (pun totally intended) with the help of her family ring. Now that she’s old enough to earn a proper wage, Afton is trying to leave her thieving ways behind her, but bad habits die hard. Maybe if she joins a travelling adventure group, she can satisfy her sticky-fingered and excitement-craving urges while still earning the wage of an honest day’s work.
The ring allows the wearer to mimic regular druid Wild Shape almost identically, except the wearer can only shape into feline animals and all the rules affected by druid level are instead controlled by the level of whatever class they actually are.
Questions: Is it called Wild Shape or Beast Shape? Do you think it's fair that the item requires attunement?
Any tips or suggestions?
Did you ask your DM if you could homebrew a magic item and have it starting out?
Answers to questions: wild shape. Yes absolutely require attunement.
Suggestion: a bit unfair to druids to give a class feature wholesale and have it scale off character level. I suggest toning it down and rewording it so druids can actually use it too. Maybe instead of wild shape, just have the ring change your size and shape into that of a cat, but leave your stats alone?
Or just take druid levels and be a race that doesn't need sleep.
"you have to have seen the creature before", (she's a city girl and has maybe seen one or two exotic felines as a pet or zoo animal, but unless it's low CR she wouldn't be able to become it until she reaches a higher level)
"Your druid level determines the beasts you can transform into, as shown in the Beast Shapes table. At 2nd level, for example, you can transform into any beast that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower that doesn’t have a flying or swimming speed."
"You can stay in a beast shape for a number of hours equal to half your druid level (rounded down)."
"While you are transformed, the following rules apply:" blah blah blah (all identical to regular druid, refer to #2 link)
Also, the ring doesn't turn her into a cat forever! She just gains 1 or 2 Wild Shape spell slots per long rest.
Also, also, I don't have a DM yet. Any DM that agreed to this character at their table would know any homebrew stuff going in. This is just an idea I'm exploring.
"you have to have seen the creature before", (she's a city girl and has maybe seen one or two exotic felines as a pet or zoo animal, but unless it's low CR she wouldn't be able to become it until she reaches a higher level)
"Your druid level determines the beasts you can transform into, as shown in the Beast Shapes table. At 2nd level, for example, you can transform into any beast that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower that doesn’t have a flying or swimming speed."
"You can stay in a beast shape for a number of hours equal to half your druid level (rounded down)."
"While you are transformed, the following rules apply:" blah blah blah (all identical to regular druid, refer to #2 link)
Also, the ring doesn't turn her into a cat forever! She just gains 1 or 2 Wild Shape spell slots per long rest.
Also, also, I don't have a DM yet. Any DM that agreed to this character at their table would know any homebrew stuff going in. This is just an idea I'm exploring.
Magic items don't scale with character levels. The closest you get to that are Legendary Magic Items that Awaken to reveal more of their true power. What you have is wholesale taking a primary feature of a different class and tacking it onto a different class without giving up anything in exchange for that.
If I were running a game and permitted players to start with one Uncommon Magic Item and permitted homebrew, this is what I'd permit based on what you requested:
Heirloom ring: (Uncommon Magic Item, Requires Attunement): This ring has 2 charges. As an action the character may expend a charge to transform into a Cat (Druid's Wildshape wording here, but can only transform into cats). The transformation lasts for 2 hours, and the ring regains charges every evening at dusk.
Your reaction makes me feel like I didn't do a good job explaining the ring.
[Snip]
Also, the ring doesn't turn her into a cat forever! She just gains 1 or 2 Wild Shape spell slots per long rest.
Also, also, I don't have a DM yet. Any DM that agreed to this character at their table would know any homebrew stuff going in. This is just an idea I'm exploring.
I understood. Even limiting it to only felines is still heavily encroaching on one of the druid's main class features. Which is unbalanced. Magic items also tend to avoid effects that scale based on level or that recharge on a short rest (unless you were planning to change this to per day?), because the magic comes from the item and the item doesn't share your levels.
That is why I proposed an alternative that completely dropped wild shape and just gave you the ability to assume the form a cat (without taking the cat's stats) for a limited amount of time per day.
Or for simplicity, you can just have the ring let you polymorph yourself into a cat.
Just trying to help make a convincing magic item instead of an obvious homebrew that gives class features to avoid having to multiclass.
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Is it possible to mistake a tabaxi for an animal if it walked on four legs?
My biggest issue is the structural/mechanic problem: two-legged walkers can only walk awkwardly and with great difficulty on four legs (at least that's the case when I try). Would a tabaxi moving on all fours look natural (enough not to raised eyebrows all on its own)? Their feet/ankles (usually) are animal-like, but their knees are humanoid.
RAW, no. Tabaxi gain no mechanical advantage to disguise themselves as a non-humanoid.
Fantasy worlds are inherently weird and the line between "monsters" and "people" is blurred, but for the purposes of the game, basic traits, such as creature type, are assumed to be painfully obvious unless the rules or DM state otherwise.
IN GENERAL, anthropomorphic animal races (tabaxi, tortle, loxodon, aarakocra, kenku, owlin, harengon, giff, thrikreen, grung, etc.) have proportions similar to humans, as least in terms of limb length. Try to crawl like an animal, and you’ll find that your legs are too long compared to your arms. The same should hold true for a Tabaxi.
Ask your DM. There’s no RAW or RAI advantage to passing yourself off as a wild animal while playing an anthropomorphic animal race, but some DMs might allow it.
Yes i'd say it's possible with a check of some sort to see if within distance the morphologic differences are spotted or not, but closer inspection would certainly discover them.
I imagine they wouldn't look much more natural than a human. There are a lot of things to give it away: head/neck orientation, shoulder shape, clothes, leg length and thickness.
Maybe with practice and a specially made disguise it could pass at a long distance. Maybe...
I was thinking I could have a tabaxi rogue who spied on his noble " owner's " enemies by pretending to be a pet who travelled with him (when the noble igets caught/arrested, the tabaxi has to go on the run and join an adventuring party). Maybe the tabaxi would have dwarfism like a munchkin cat, except since tabaxi limbs are already so long, the result would look like a normal animal cat? Also, tabaxi are rare to begin with so maybe not everyone would recognize one walking on two legs as a person or one walking on four legs as an animal.
But, unless this bit of context changes any minds, I don't think that character backstory would work now.
Thanks everyone for your input!
I'm just imagining some cat man living with a (partially?) blind old person pretending to be a normal cat to get free food and a place to live.
The limb length is the least of the anatomical issues to overcome in comparing humans with true quadrupeds. Our spines are different (quadrupeds have a single curve in their spine, while our spines are s-shaped), the pelvis (ours are designed to have our legs extending straight down from our spines, but, in quadrupeds, the pelvis is curved so that the legs are roughly perpendicular to the spine), the feet and ankles are different, along with hands and shoulders. Humans with a less s-shaped spine or a pelvis with a slight curve to it, have serious back problems and other issues as well.
But, there is nothing to say that the noble might not have had a magic item (e.g., a collar) that would allow the tabaxi to look like a large cat, with the noble being arrested when the tabaxi wasn't wearing the collar.
A Druid's Wildshape would suit your purposes better. You can use your Wildshape to turn into a cat, retaining your mental ability scores, and you can short-rest as a cat to regain your Wildshapes to keep it up. You'd just have to be careful to hide where they won't find you when you sleep, because you can't remain in Wildshape while sleeping.
Keep in mind, a typical housecat is a Tiny creature, and even if you homebrew a Tabaxi to be Small, you're still significantly bigger than a housecat.
THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!!!!
Everyone, meet Afton Karwan, a rogue Thief tortle nicknamed Kitty.
Afton had fond memories of growing up as part of a travelling merchant caravan and it taught her many useful skills (how to haggle, how to recognize when a deal was good or bad, and how to handle the dangers encountered on the road), but that life ended when a sickness swept across the land, killing most caravan members, including her parents. By the time the illness had run its course, Afton was left penniless, friendless, and alone in a strange land with only the family’s heirloom magic ring that allowed the wearer to wild shape like a druid into feline animals.
At first she resisted the efforts of the local street kids and gangs that encouraged her to steal (she knew the value of hard work and had been raised to hate thieves) but a girl’s gotta eat, and she eventually became an expert cat burglar (pun totally intended) with the help of her family ring. Now that she’s old enough to earn a proper wage, Afton is trying to leave her thieving ways behind her, but bad habits die hard. Maybe if she joins a travelling adventure group, she can satisfy her sticky-fingered and excitement-craving urges while still earning the wage of an honest day’s work.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/5879279-ring-of-feline-wild-shaping
The ring allows the wearer to mimic regular druid Wild Shape almost identically, except the wearer can only shape into feline animals and all the rules affected by druid level are instead controlled by the level of whatever class they actually are.
Questions: Is it called Wild Shape or Beast Shape? Do you think it's fair that the item requires attunement?
Any tips or suggestions?
Did you ask your DM if you could homebrew a magic item and have it starting out?
Answers to questions: wild shape. Yes absolutely require attunement.
Suggestion: a bit unfair to druids to give a class feature wholesale and have it scale off character level. I suggest toning it down and rewording it so druids can actually use it too. Maybe instead of wild shape, just have the ring change your size and shape into that of a cat, but leave your stats alone?
Or just take druid levels and be a race that doesn't need sleep.
Your reaction makes me feel like I didn't do a good job explaining the ring.
druidlevel determines the beasts you can transform into, as shown in the Beast Shapes table. At 2nd level, for example, you can transform into any beast that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower that doesn’t have a flying or swimming speed."druidlevel (rounded down)."Also, the ring doesn't turn her into a cat forever! She just gains 1 or 2 Wild Shape spell slots per long rest.
Also, also, I don't have a DM yet. Any DM that agreed to this character at their table would know any homebrew stuff going in. This is just an idea I'm exploring.
Magic items don't scale with character levels. The closest you get to that are Legendary Magic Items that Awaken to reveal more of their true power. What you have is wholesale taking a primary feature of a different class and tacking it onto a different class without giving up anything in exchange for that.
If I were running a game and permitted players to start with one Uncommon Magic Item and permitted homebrew, this is what I'd permit based on what you requested:
Heirloom ring: (Uncommon Magic Item, Requires Attunement): This ring has 2 charges. As an action the character may expend a charge to transform into a Cat (Druid's Wildshape wording here, but can only transform into cats). The transformation lasts for 2 hours, and the ring regains charges every evening at dusk.
I understood. Even limiting it to only felines is still heavily encroaching on one of the druid's main class features. Which is unbalanced. Magic items also tend to avoid effects that scale based on level or that recharge on a short rest (unless you were planning to change this to per day?), because the magic comes from the item and the item doesn't share your levels.
That is why I proposed an alternative that completely dropped wild shape and just gave you the ability to assume the form a cat (without taking the cat's stats) for a limited amount of time per day.
Or for simplicity, you can just have the ring let you polymorph yourself into a cat.
Just trying to help make a convincing magic item instead of an obvious homebrew that gives class features to avoid having to multiclass.