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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Monster PC Races: Naga, Angels, and Yugoloth



Yddisac
2017-07-21, 11:43 PM
Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Nice to meet you, I guess. :'u

I finally got the Monster Manual the other day, and I was very enchanted with some of the creatures in there. The problem is, they didn't fit my usual setting for D&D games at all. So I made a new setting to accommodate some of those nasties. In this setting, though, quite a few of those monsters become free-ranging sentient creatures that could be PCs. So I got to work making some playable races out of them. The naga caught my attention, the angel fit my setting, and my girlfriend wanted to play as an arcanaloth, so here we are.

Fluff is omitted; since I made these for my own setting, I figure it'd just be confusing to pile that on. My naga for this setting are medium and play a little nicer with the usual balancing standards for D&D PC races. That said, I did put together a variant naga that matches the Monster Manual version better.

I've never really tried to make PC races in 5e before, so I'd be grateful for any feedback you had to offer. I hope these seem reasonably balanced and fun to play.


NAGA
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2.
Size. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern colour in darkness, only shades of grey.
Serpentine Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.
Forked Tongue. Through hissing and body language, you can communicate simple ideas with snakes, reptiles, and serpentine creatures. Naga have an affinity for other reptiles, and such creatures often become more active and outgoing when a naga is nearby.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common, Celestial, and Draconic.
Subrace. Naga that serve different deities and have different temperaments take various physical forms, but they generally fall into two categories: the powerful Guardian Naga and the bewitching Spirit Naga.

GUARDIAN NAGA
Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Guardian's Blessings. You know the thaumaturgy cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the shield of faith spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the command spell as a 3rd-level spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

SPIRIT NAGA
Ability Score Increase. Choose either your Intelligence or your Charisma score. That ability score increases by 1.
Spirit's Blessings. You know the minor illusion cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the charm person spell as a 1st-level spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the detect thoughts spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. If you chose to increase your Intelligence score, Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells; if you chose Charisma, Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Notes: This one certainly seems fun to me, as the race features lend themselves well to the kinds of social shenanigans I'm fond of. Hopefully it also helps some other types of characters, what with the Strength increase and one-per-day shield of faith.



NAGA
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2.
Size. Your size is Large.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 40 feet.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern colour in darkness, only shades of grey.
Serpentine Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.
Serpent's Fangs. You are proficient with your unarmed strikes, which deal 1d6 piercing damage.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Celestial.
Subrace. The variant naga uses the exact same subraces as the normal naga.

Notes: If you wanna go true M.M. naga with this one, it'll need special weapons that don't require hands to use. I'd personally just give it fancy fang "weapons" that match the weapons they'd want to use anyway (2d6 or 1d8 finesse) and let them get enchanted to keep up with the rest of the party's magic weapons. Someday I might come back to this and give it some scaling poison damage to obviate the need for weapons, but that day is not today.



ANGEL
Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 2, and your Charisma score increases by 1.
Size. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 40 feet.
Divine Body. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance to poison damage. You do not age, you are immune to disease, and you do not need to sleep.
Subrace. An angel created by a deity will have many unique traits granted by its deity. The deva and cherub listed below are common manifestations used by many deities.

DEVA
Radiance. You know the light cantrip.
Healing Touch. As an action, you can touch another creature. The target magically regains 2d8 hit points. The amount healed increases to 4d8 at 6th level, 6d8 at 11th level, and 8d8 at 16th level.
After you use your healing touch, you can't use it again until you complete a long rest.

CHERUB
On Angel's Wings. You have a flying speed of 30 feet. You must be in a space wide enough to accommodate your wingspan to fly. Your wingspan is equal to twice your height.
You cannot fly in normal backpacks or armor. The cost to alter your gear to be suitable for flight is equal to half the cost of the gear.

Notes: Not sure about Healing Touch. I tried to scale it so it would continue to be useful throughout the game, but that kind of scaling vastly outperforms, e.g., the PHB Dragonborn, so I'm afraid I might have overdone it.



YUGOLOTH
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Size. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern colour in darkness, only shades of grey.
Teleport. You can cast the *misty step* spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for this spell.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Infernal.
Subrace. The yugoloth fall into four categories: the arcanaloth, the mezzoloth, the nycaloth, and the ultroloth.

ARCANALOTH
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Charisma score increases by 1.
Devil's Tongue. You have proficiency in the Deception skill.
Hell's Arcana. You can cast the comprehend languages spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the alter self spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the invisibilty spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. You can only target yourself with these spells. Intelligence is your casting ability for these spells.

MEZZOLOTH
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength and Dexterity scores increase by 1.
Scrambler. Your walking speed increases by 10 feet.
Creature of Darkness. You can cast the darkness spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest.
In addition, your darkvision allows you to see in magical darkness as if it were nonmagical darkness.

NYCALOTH
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2.
Size. Your size is Large.
Fiendish Wings. You have a flying speed of 30 feet. You must be in a space wide enough to accommodate your wingspan to fly. Your wingspan is equal to twice your height.
You cannot fly in normal backpacks or armor. The cost to alter your gear to be suitable for flight is equal to half the cost of the gear.

ULTROLOTH
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Charisma score increases by 1.
Armoured Mind. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed or frightened.
Hypnotic Gaze. Your eyes sparkle with opalescent light as you target one creature you can see within 30 feet of you. If the target can see you, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed until the end of your next turn. The charmed creature is stunned. The DC for this saving throw is 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus.
After using this ability, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

Potato_Priest
2017-07-23, 06:18 PM
Alright, let's take a look at balance.

Nagas look fine.

Angels are too OP for my tastes, the deva in particular. 3 damage resistances, 2 saving throw advantages and healing that's significantly better than a 1st level spell all make for an insane package.

My reccomendation would be to reduce healing to the character's level, and take away either the poison resistance feature or the other resistance feature.

The yugoloths are fine I think, apart from the ultraloth and arcanoloth getting too much ability score improvement. I'd reduce them to +1 to cha and int ( or +2 to int, no cha for the arcanoloth) and leave it at that.

Yddisac
2017-07-23, 07:51 PM
Very fair on the angels. I'll probably just take away the damage resistances altogether.

My logic for the arcanaloth and ultraloth was that, well, +2 Int isn't exactly a huge benefit for most characters. The half-elf gets away with having +4 total to stats, and its +2 is in Cha, which isn't the most useful stat combat-wise; Int is worse, and is arguably the worst ability score in the game. Personally, I feel comfortable allowing the high ability scores knowing that they're relatively unhelpful.

Thanks for the feedback :)

LordSamuel
2017-07-25, 05:49 AM
I think for nagas, they are more....umm..Deft or Tenacious rather than strong, so, what about Dex or Con +2 instead of Str?

Yddisac
2017-07-25, 06:49 PM
Hm, you reckon? I was honestly just going off the M.M. stat line when I picked Strength. I'd definitely want to keep that for the variant race, since it powers their natural weapons. For the main race, though... Constitution would make Guardian Naga better for sure, since Con/Wis is a much more natural combination of stats than Str/Wis (it's better for, e.g., clerics). Everyone loves getting Constitution, after all.

I'll think that one over. It almost feels overkill, giving Con instead of Str, but I admit I'm tempted. It opens up a lot of character options, after all. (Plus, you have a point; when I think of a naga, great strength isn't immediately what comes to mind :v)