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I have created a draft No. 4 of a Slimefolk race that I have created. I will say this is my first homebrew. (The full homebrew also includes a number of racial feats, which I may ask about separately.)

What the race is supposed to do is to be a Slime humanoid race which can do most standard slime things, with variability between options.

My primary concern is for now the balance of all of the traits, which I'll list. For clarification, traits flagged for deletion are traits I'm debating on erasing.


The race's traits appear below:

Base Race

Ability Score Increase

Your Dexterity and Constitution score each increase by 1.

Age

Slimes take [insert a large-ish number here] years to mature fully, after which they stop aging.

Size

Slimes are about the same size as regular humans, though their height and proportions tend to vary based on how they've shaped their bodies. Your size is Medium.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common.

Ooze Nature

Your creature type is both humanoid and ooze.

You also don't need to sleep, and don't suffer exhaustion from lack of rest. Once per day, you can cast the alter self spell.

Waterborn

Due to your species primarily being underground dwellers, you are more vulnerable to inclement weather and severe climates, as described in Chapter 5 (page 110) of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Corrosive Form (flagged for deletion)

Due to your naturally mildly acidic body, you have resistance to acid damage.

Ooze Body

You have the ability to shapeshift into an oozing, amorphous form as an action.

Your size stays the same while changed, although you drop all equipment you are carrying or wearing by doing so. While you are in this ooze form, you cannot be restrained, and you can move through spaces as narrow as 1 inch wide without squeezing.

Detect Balance Score, excluding traits flagged for deletion: 17


Subraces

Feral Slime subrace

Ability Score Increase

Your Strength score increases by 1.

Powerful Build (flagged for deletion)

You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.

Simple State (flagged for deletion)

Due to your body naturally absorbing light plant life and small rocks, you are not affected by non-magical difficult terrain.

Grabber

Being a creature of gelatinous slime, you are naturally sticky. You have advantage on Strength (Athletics) checks made to grapple a target.

Detect Balance Score, excluding traits flagged for deletion: 26 total


Solid Slime subrace

Ability Score Increase

Your Charisma score increases by 1.

Imaginative Mind

When you cast alter self from your Ooze Nature trait, you can also make yourself into the Small size category for the spell's duration, as well as giving yourself a different basic shape.

Additionally, you gain proficiency with disguise kits, and while using it, you have an advantage on checks made to hide your identity.

Shock-Proof Layer (flagged for deletion)

Due to the layer of slime covering your body, you have resistance to lightning damage.

Detect Balance Score, excluding traits flagged for deletion: 25 total


Royal Jelly subrace

Ability Score Increase

Your Charisma score increases by 2, and your Constitution score is reduced by 1.

Royal Magic

You know the friends cantrip.

When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the charm person spell once per long rest, and can also target an ooze when you cast the spell using this trait.

When you reach 5th level, you can also cast the unseen servant spell at will; however, you can only have 1 instance of the spell active at a time using this trait.

Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Variant Rule

instead of being able to cast unseen servant at will, you might instead choose to be able to cast conjure animals once per long rest, with the change that you summon oozes instead of beasts.

Royal's Resistance

As with any proper royal, you have some means of defense against the foul enchantment school of magic. You have advantage on saves against being charmed.

Detect Balance Score, excluding traits flagged for deletion: 29-30 total?


Slime Monstrosity subrace

Ability Score Increase

Your Constitution score increases by 1.

True Monster

Your creature type is both monstrosity and ooze, instead of humanoid and ooze.

Menacing

You have proficiency in the Intimidation skill.

Slashing Slimy Bits

You are able to form your hand into a slashing appendage, which is a natural weapon that you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d4 + your attack modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike, and you use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack.

Additionally, if you later gain the Acidicity feat, you add 1d4 acid damage to this attack.

Detect Balance Score, excluding traits flagged for deletion: 23-24 total?


Mental Slime subrace

Ability Score Increase

Your Intelligence score increases by 1.

Meek Psionic Blast

You can target one creature within 30 feet of you as an action, which must then make an Intelligence saving throw with a DC equal to 8 + your proficiency modifier + your Intelligence modifier. On a failed save, the creature takes 1d8 psychic damage.

This damage increases by 1d8 when you reach 5th level (2d8), 11th level (3d8) and 17th level (4d8).

Like an Open Book

At 3rd level, you can cast detect thoughts once per long rest, using Intelligence as your spellcasting modifier.

Brain Food

You can eat the memories of other people, either by enveloping them, or during a spell or another effect that allows one to read the target's mind, such as detect thoughts. When grappling a creature, or using a some spell or effect to read their mind, you can use an action to attempt to begin to eat their memories, forcing the target to roll an Intelligence, Charisma, or Wisdom saving throw, depending on how they attempt to resist you; the DC is equal to 8 + your proficiency modifier + your Intelligence modifier.

After you successfully manage to do this three times in a row, you manage to eat away at the target's memories of the past 48 hours. For 24 hours, or until they take a long rest, it rolls a d4 and subtracts the number rolled from all its attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws, as their mind is recollecting itself from the mental assault. During that time, you can also perfectly recall information about the memory you ate.

Alternatively, a willing creature can share its memories, making it automatically fail the saving throws against this ability. A willing creature doesn't suffer the usual drawbacks when willingly letting you into its mind, and there is no limit to how old the memory can be, as long as the target remembers the memory itself to some degree.

You can use this ability twice before needing to take a long rest.

Detect Balance Score, excluding traits flagged for deletion: 23-24 total?


Is this homebrew Slimefolk balanced as a playable race?

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    \$\begingroup\$ How does having two creature types affect spells such as Hold Person? Are you affected because you are humanoid or are you immune due to being part-ooze? \$\endgroup\$
    – daze413
    Commented Aug 16, 2019 at 11:07
  • \$\begingroup\$ afaik, hold person does work, as you are still a humanoid. \$\endgroup\$
    – Enderking
    Commented Aug 16, 2019 at 11:53
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    \$\begingroup\$ @daze413 My experience is if you exist as two different types, whichever type fits the spell requirement would work. twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/951264333249495040?lang=en Jeremy Crawford basically says in that twitter link that hold person works on only humanoids but hold monster would work on all monsters except undead. Therefore if you are a aberration and humanoid type, then hold person would work and hold monster would work. However, if you are just an aberration then hold person would not work on you. \$\endgroup\$
    – Arrowkill
    Commented Aug 19, 2019 at 20:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ This reminds me of the leader of the Simic combined, the Primespeaker. She is in symbiosis with an ooze, therefor can rest different parts of her brain when she feels like it. But, because it would be very imbalanced otherwise, I recommend that you can't sneak around resting the "cognitive heavy" part of your brain for at least 4 hours a day. \$\endgroup\$
    – clockw0rk
    Commented Jan 4, 2020 at 7:48

2 Answers 2

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You also don't need to sleep, and don't suffer exhaustion from lack of rest.

I believe this could be abused.

Suppose a Slimefolk Sorcerer/Warlock uses Flexible Casting to convert Warlock Spell Slots to Sorcerer Points then to Spell Slots. The Slimefolk can then short rest to gain more Warlock Spell Slots via Pact Magic, repeating this cycle.

Normally this can be contained because eventually a player either becomes exhausted or is forced to take a long rest. All other races sleep once a day to avoid exhaustion, except Elves who mediate for 4 hours and gain the effects of 8 hours of sleep.

A Slimefolk could stay up for days, weeks, months, years, accumulating god knows how many Spell Slots.

This may not seem like a big deal because you won't let your Slimefolk do this, but what are you going to do when the party wants to take a long rest? The Slimefolk will inevitably opt to take 8x short rests. Once the rest of the party has finished their long rest the a Slimefolk with Sorcerer 2/Warlock 1 would have 11 level 1 Spell Slots.

I suggest the Slimefolk needs an equivalent mechanic to the Elf's Trance, forcing them to take a Long Rest once per day. Here is my suggestion:

Ooze Nature

Your creature type is both humanoid and ooze.

You also don't need to sleep, and don't suffer exhaustion from lack of rest. However maintaining a form for a long period can cause exhaustion, so for 4 hours per day you must return to being an immobile puddle of goo. After, you gain the same benefit as a human does from 8 hours of sleep and when you finish resting you can choose a permanent form as if you were the target of the Alter Self spell.

The wording could use some work, but I'm sure you see the intent.

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    \$\begingroup\$ to be fair, the trait is loosely modeled after the warforged trait, which actually gives a scrap ton of other minor benefits. \$\endgroup\$
    – Enderking
    Commented Nov 4, 2019 at 23:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Enderking The difference is that Warforged still has Sentry's Rest and Warforged still suffers exhaustion just ignores the effects. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 5, 2019 at 5:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ This bulk of this answer depends on the idea that the players decide when a short or long rest occurs successfully, instead of the DM. \$\endgroup\$
    – T.J.L.
    Commented Nov 11, 2019 at 18:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ @T.J.L.No, it doesn't. Only that players can attempt to take a short/long rest. If your DM prevents your party from ever taking a long rest then you will have a lot more balance issues than your slime warlock/sorc having a ton of spell slots. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 3:24
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    \$\begingroup\$ It's worth mentioning that because Eberron is released and Warforged were updated, they can now become exhausted because of lack of rest the same as other races. If the designers of the game thought to remove the trait, it's probably for a good reason. \$\endgroup\$
    – RallozarX
    Commented Dec 25, 2019 at 5:24
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In general, the race looks balanced, but the alter self spell is overpowered. If you changed it to alter self but only for cosmetics, that might be balanced. A magic weapon with a plus one damage bonus at first level is a little strong. All in all, it looks like a good race though. Hope I could help, and sorry about the spelling.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Welcome to RPG.SE! Take the tour if you haven't already, and check out the help center for more guidance. Can you elaborate on your assessment and support it by citing evidence/experience? \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Nov 3, 2019 at 8:02

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