So this just randomly algorithm'd itself into my feed. I'll give you my advice on it based on my own experience with 5e, keeping in mind that I've been playing D&D since the mid-late 90s and have mostly moved onto other systems but still have a pretty good grasp of the 5e baseline: For the most part this is a pretty neat concept. I like that the host is altered and isn't just you swapping your way up to more and more powerful bodies, and that the GM has a degree of say as to how well you can disguise yourself as a specific host's former self. The only things I'd recommend nerfing down a little are your subclass abilities: Mental Assault should probably require line of sight or a bonus action to activate, though I don't think it needs both given it's an Int save VS 1d4. Mental leech should probably be reworded since it's basically "1/long rest you can grapple an enemy and then cast detect thoughts on it, but a failed save causes psychic damage" but is fun in terms of flavor. For Rogue Parasite's abilities it seems rather fair, but I might consider how you'd do the life regen ability in Leech to either work like the Lizardman's Hungry Jaws or the Dhampir's Vampiric Bite. Definitely less of a balance problem and more of something in need of refined wording. I can see some potential hazards from your being able to effectively repossess a body you've lost in battle or being able to easily just continue with your character after losing a body and crawling into someone else, but it wouldn't be the wildest hurdle for most GMs to deal with. I might recommend a host body breaks down rapidly after it dies or that for whatever other reason it is no longer usable as a host body, and potentially remove the ability to take over a corpse that's been dead for more than ten minutes. This will allow a (relatively) ethical solution to your party mate who's renting room in their head to you while they find a new host but also make your pickings much slimmer and more deliberate choices.
You bring up some good points for sure and something Ill have to totally try and work in. I was a little worried about mental leech, I was working on that ability and once I was done I thought "fuck this is pretty close to detect thoughts" I wasn't to sure how to balance it and make it different enough. I did notice I didn't put an action or anything on it so yeah I do need something for it take up, maybe action. Ill have to try and rethink it a little bit to make it different alittle different for sure. I will also need to apply an action to mental assault yeah. For Rogue Parasite's ability I did try and take inspiration from Dhampir's bite. Dhampir's bite does work kinda similiar as its "d4+str (or con) piercing on hit, plus gain damage as health or bonus to ability check" This I gave them the ability they can use while grappling that lets them do d4+str and gain half health. I mean I guess you can add the leech as part of just a base attack cause I did give them just a normal tentacle attack. I suppose I was trying to mimic what an actual leech does. For jumping into the same body I suppose I didn't think about saying the body becomes useless once it dies. I did say that it becomes withered and empty when you leave it which the DM could say that its useless. Something that could spark arguments and the classic "as written vs intended" debate, ill go ahead and add that just to be safe regardless. I also do like shortening the time frame, as its like 2 days now I believe.
@@Mundonnable That's okay, homebrew takes a lot of editorial oversight to get good so it's good that you're looking to get some eyes that can tell you how to make it better. Giving someone a non-damaging level 2 spell like Detect Thoughts as a 1/long rest ability isn't so terrible either: You could honestly just make it that if you grapple an enemy or touch a willing target, you can use Detect Thoughts on them as per the spell and while it's strong it isn't ridiculously OP or anything.
how do classes work with this, I assume the class follows the parasite so say ur aa paladin you can smite when in bug form or as wizard you can cast spells. however this leads to a bit of conflict with necromancy wizard who's 14th level feature states that hp max cannot be lowered. mental assault feels a bit weak considering the low damage and the saving throw, perhaps it levels up as you do like many cantrips. leech feature seems a bit weak too as you can only use it when grappling an opposing creature, you also forgot the 1 in 1d4. hit points seem counter intuitive, it would be weird for a commoner's hp to match the hp you have as say a lvl 20 barbarian, especially since your base form has 1 hp but its not really a problem. good race, wish you could keep some racial features from races u inhabit like as a sub thing. perhaps a table with nerfed attributes where ur inhabited body falls under u get a buff, like (almost) everyone gets dark vision, flying races get 15 feet fly speed and so on
Great feedback! Yeah, I had in mind tha classes followed with you while you are in bug form. So yeah they would still be a paladin or wizard while in bug form. So technically you could still smite while in bug but all your physical stats are set to one (dex, strength, and con). Your HP is also set to 1 so it's not exactly recommended but you could still do it. That does actually raise a good point that you could still carry a good amount of things. As carrying capacity is still like 15 pounds or something so I might change it so you can't carry stuff while in bug form As for casting spells I did look around and from what I have seen. You couldn't cast most spells as you cannot speak, you only have telepathy. The spell requires the sound as verbal components say "The words themselves aren’t the source of the spell’s power; rather, the particular combination of sounds, with specific pitch and resonance, sets the threads of magic in motion." So unless you are like a sorcerer who can cast subtle spells or cast a spell that doesn't require verbal components I would rule that you can't. I was worried about the leech feature, yeah I did think about doing it when you attacked someone you gain health, much like the dhampir bite. But I wanted to do it like an actual leech so I gave them an attack plus that and try and make it more unique. I suppose it can be turned into like a touch attack or something. That would open it up to be used outside of grappling. For the HP thing, I did forget about the necromancy wizards when I made that. In my gut I wanna say the racial thing overrides that for balance? I honestly have no answer for that one. Also yeah it does seem weird but at the same time I find it weird that a little parasite might have almost 200hp. Plus the idea is that as a parasite you need to find a body and try and stay in one as much as you can. So I tried to make your base form really perilous to be in. Yeah I thought about trying to keep some of the racial features when I was first making this race. I was even gonna have them keep some of them, like tortle's shells or the wings from the Arakocra as they are just default and actually part of their body. I was a little worried about making the race to broken/op. I can however look into a nerfed attributes table cause that's not a bad idea, might have that as an option at the bottom or something for both subraces.
quick question, wild shape in bug form, would timer still apply? if ur afraid of the leech feature being too powerful if not in grapple, perhaps you could give them a grappling feature as part of the tentacle feature like you may grapple as a bonus action or instead of attacking. or you could limit it to a number of times per short or long rest. tbh I don't think it levels up well enough with it being still 1d4 at level 20. I see that worrying about the power of this race is a big concern for you, in my opinion make the race how you want and then if its too powerful nerf it later. its easy to scale down the damage dice or take away fly speed. also it'd be weird if you took over the body of an adult dragon and it just became a normal guy, which raises the question, what happens with creatures of larger size. I'd suggest giving the go-ahead but making things at disadvantage or something like exhaustion levels for each size larger.
ummm that is a good question. I suppose it wouldn't apply as you are transforming into something that can live without a host. I would say that the timer is simply just paused and resumes once it falls off. I thought about that and yeah you are right I don't think it does apply very well at later levels. So yeah maybe giving a grapple as a bonus action would work out. I might also add a scaling to it to help keep it valid. I tried to do that, I tried to make a race that I think would be fun to play. It's really only after it is done that I am more worried lol. But as of right now you can't take over creatures that are large size or bigger. I did that to prevent being to busted cause if things didn't really have a size limit. You could technically take over like an ancient red dragon or even the tarrasque. Granted I can see that happening in the story though if you had enough or something. I see it as them just being too big to control.
So this just randomly algorithm'd itself into my feed. I'll give you my advice on it based on my own experience with 5e, keeping in mind that I've been playing D&D since the mid-late 90s and have mostly moved onto other systems but still have a pretty good grasp of the 5e baseline: For the most part this is a pretty neat concept. I like that the host is altered and isn't just you swapping your way up to more and more powerful bodies, and that the GM has a degree of say as to how well you can disguise yourself as a specific host's former self. The only things I'd recommend nerfing down a little are your subclass abilities: Mental Assault should probably require line of sight or a bonus action to activate, though I don't think it needs both given it's an Int save VS 1d4. Mental leech should probably be reworded since it's basically "1/long rest you can grapple an enemy and then cast detect thoughts on it, but a failed save causes psychic damage" but is fun in terms of flavor. For Rogue Parasite's abilities it seems rather fair, but I might consider how you'd do the life regen ability in Leech to either work like the Lizardman's Hungry Jaws or the Dhampir's Vampiric Bite.
Definitely less of a balance problem and more of something in need of refined wording. I can see some potential hazards from your being able to effectively repossess a body you've lost in battle or being able to easily just continue with your character after losing a body and crawling into someone else, but it wouldn't be the wildest hurdle for most GMs to deal with. I might recommend a host body breaks down rapidly after it dies or that for whatever other reason it is no longer usable as a host body, and potentially remove the ability to take over a corpse that's been dead for more than ten minutes. This will allow a (relatively) ethical solution to your party mate who's renting room in their head to you while they find a new host but also make your pickings much slimmer and more deliberate choices.
You bring up some good points for sure and something Ill have to totally try and work in.
I was a little worried about mental leech, I was working on that ability and once I was done I thought "fuck this is pretty close to detect thoughts" I wasn't to sure how to balance it and make it different enough. I did notice I didn't put an action or anything on it so yeah I do need something for it take up, maybe action. Ill have to try and rethink it a little bit to make it different alittle different for sure. I will also need to apply an action to mental assault yeah.
For Rogue Parasite's ability I did try and take inspiration from Dhampir's bite. Dhampir's bite does work kinda similiar as its "d4+str (or con) piercing on hit, plus gain damage as health or bonus to ability check" This I gave them the ability they can use while grappling that lets them do d4+str and gain half health. I mean I guess you can add the leech as part of just a base attack cause I did give them just a normal tentacle attack. I suppose I was trying to mimic what an actual leech does.
For jumping into the same body I suppose I didn't think about saying the body becomes useless once it dies. I did say that it becomes withered and empty when you leave it which the DM could say that its useless. Something that could spark arguments and the classic "as written vs intended" debate, ill go ahead and add that just to be safe regardless. I also do like shortening the time frame, as its like 2 days now I believe.
@@Mundonnable That's okay, homebrew takes a lot of editorial oversight to get good so it's good that you're looking to get some eyes that can tell you how to make it better. Giving someone a non-damaging level 2 spell like Detect Thoughts as a 1/long rest ability isn't so terrible either: You could honestly just make it that if you grapple an enemy or touch a willing target, you can use Detect Thoughts on them as per the spell and while it's strong it isn't ridiculously OP or anything.
how do classes work with this, I assume the class follows the parasite so say ur aa paladin you can smite when in bug form or as wizard you can cast spells. however this leads to a bit of conflict with necromancy wizard who's 14th level feature states that hp max cannot be lowered. mental assault feels a bit weak considering the low damage and the saving throw, perhaps it levels up as you do like many cantrips. leech feature seems a bit weak too as you can only use it when grappling an opposing creature, you also forgot the 1 in 1d4.
hit points seem counter intuitive, it would be weird for a commoner's hp to match the hp you have as say a lvl 20 barbarian, especially since your base form has 1 hp but its not really a problem.
good race, wish you could keep some racial features from races u inhabit like as a sub thing. perhaps a table with nerfed attributes where ur inhabited body falls under u get a buff, like (almost) everyone gets dark vision, flying races get 15 feet fly speed and so on
Great feedback!
Yeah, I had in mind tha classes followed with you while you are in bug form. So yeah they would still be a paladin or wizard while in bug form. So technically you could still smite while in bug but all your physical stats are set to one (dex, strength, and con). Your HP is also set to 1 so it's not exactly recommended but you could still do it. That does actually raise a good point that you could still carry a good amount of things. As carrying capacity is still like 15 pounds or something so I might change it so you can't carry stuff while in bug form
As for casting spells I did look around and from what I have seen. You couldn't cast most spells as you cannot speak, you only have telepathy. The spell requires the sound as verbal components say "The words themselves aren’t the source of the spell’s power; rather, the particular combination of sounds, with specific pitch and resonance, sets the threads of magic in motion." So unless you are like a sorcerer who can cast subtle spells or cast a spell that doesn't require verbal components I would rule that you can't.
I was worried about the leech feature, yeah I did think about doing it when you attacked someone you gain health, much like the dhampir bite. But I wanted to do it like an actual leech so I gave them an attack plus that and try and make it more unique. I suppose it can be turned into like a touch attack or something. That would open it up to be used outside of grappling.
For the HP thing, I did forget about the necromancy wizards when I made that. In my gut I wanna say the racial thing overrides that for balance? I honestly have no answer for that one. Also yeah it does seem weird but at the same time I find it weird that a little parasite might have almost 200hp. Plus the idea is that as a parasite you need to find a body and try and stay in one as much as you can. So I tried to make your base form really perilous to be in.
Yeah I thought about trying to keep some of the racial features when I was first making this race. I was even gonna have them keep some of them, like tortle's shells or the wings from the Arakocra as they are just default and actually part of their body. I was a little worried about making the race to broken/op. I can however look into a nerfed attributes table cause that's not a bad idea, might have that as an option at the bottom or something for both subraces.
quick question, wild shape in bug form, would timer still apply?
if ur afraid of the leech feature being too powerful if not in grapple, perhaps you could give them a grappling feature as part of the tentacle feature like you may grapple as a bonus action or instead of attacking. or you could limit it to a number of times per short or long rest. tbh I don't think it levels up well enough with it being still 1d4 at level 20.
I see that worrying about the power of this race is a big concern for you, in my opinion make the race how you want and then if its too powerful nerf it later. its easy to scale down the damage dice or take away fly speed. also it'd be weird if you took over the body of an adult dragon and it just became a normal guy, which raises the question, what happens with creatures of larger size. I'd suggest giving the go-ahead but making things at disadvantage or something like exhaustion levels for each size larger.
ummm that is a good question. I suppose it wouldn't apply as you are transforming into something that can live without a host. I would say that the timer is simply just paused and resumes once it falls off.
I thought about that and yeah you are right I don't think it does apply very well at later levels. So yeah maybe giving a grapple as a bonus action would work out. I might also add a scaling to it to help keep it valid.
I tried to do that, I tried to make a race that I think would be fun to play. It's really only after it is done that I am more worried lol. But as of right now you can't take over creatures that are large size or bigger. I did that to prevent being to busted cause if things didn't really have a size limit. You could technically take over like an ancient red dragon or even the tarrasque. Granted I can see that happening in the story though if you had enough or something. I see it as them just being too big to control.