Is my Shroomlib homebrew race balanced?

Question

For this race I used Detect Balance to try and figure out how balanced it is (I got around 25-26), and before I try to playtest it, I would appreciate some feedback.

Ability Score Increase: You gain a +2 to Constitution

Age: Shroomlibs reach adulthood at age 3, and can sometimes live up to 60 years.

Alignment: Shroomlibs often stay neutral aligned, but due to how much is unknown about them, they can really be anything.

Size: Shroomlibs are between 1-2 ft tall at the start, your size is tiny, until you reach 4th level, at which point you grow 2 ft, then your size becomes small.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 25 feet

Decay Consumption: Once per long rest, when you are hit with Necrotic damage, you can choose to negate the damage. If you do this, you heal 1d8 hp.

Decay Resistance: You have resistance to poison and necrotic damage.

Mushroom body: You have advantage on saving throws against diseases.

Naturally Stealthy: You can attempt to hide even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you.

Persuasive: Your people’s lack of history makes you trustworthy and humble. You have proficiency in the Persuasion skill.

Speech of Nature: You can communicate with plants easily.

Spore Excretion: When a hostile creature starts its turn within 5 feet of you, it takes 1d4 poison damage.

Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.

Answer 1

It feels a bit too strong

It has lots of features and some of them are really powerful.

Spore Excretion is VERY powerful, especially early on, it’s an always-on, free source of damage, with no limits regarding even the number if creatures affected, in theory you could use this to deal damage to 8 different creatures per turn if you play on a square grid. It doesn’t scale with level so will become less and less significant but especially in Tier 1 and even 2 1d4 damage is A LOT. I’d suggest either restricting this in some way or making this the signature feature of your race and nerfing all the other features.

Decay Consumption is limited to once per long rest but is also strong, there’s no limit to the damage it can negate so you’d probably want to use it when you take a big hit, the healing is just a cherry on top. Very few official races have features that allow any sort of healing so this is going to stand out. Necrotic is not a very common damage type though so maybe it will be alright.

You also have two resistances, one of which is a very common damage type. Aasimar gets two as well but to less common damage types and doesn’t get as many additional features as you have.

Then on top of that your race starts as Tiny, no official race is any other size than Medium or Small, you will have to think about the implications of this as it’s not something that the designers planned for. It could turn out to be a big advantage, especially for a class like Rogue.

Answer 2

This needs playtesting

Tiny size

The main issue is not one of game balance: it is that you made the creature size Tiny for tier one. There is no other playable race that has a Tiny size, while it would have made sense for many of them like the Fairy, and that means there is probably a good reason for this.

There is also no Large race, not even something like Centaurs, Firbolg or Minotaurs, who as monsters are Large. The rules are written with small or medium playable character in mind, and you will have to see how well they work for a Tiny creature.

It also is unclear if being Tiny is a downside or not, so it would be interesting to see how you value it. I would start at neutral.

Flavor and clarity

• You are lacking creature type. I assume it is Plant, consdering this is a mushroom race.

• Fungi and Plant creatures are not normally resistant to necrotic damage. For example, Blight, which is exlicitly harmful to plants, deals necrotic. So this is not a great fit, flavor wise. Psychic or similar might be better.

• The Speech of Nature could use some explanation how it works (what is possible, what kind of perception abilities and memory do the plants have, what can they communicate. You could for example reference the Speak with Plants spell, if that is how it works).

Balance

If I sum up the "normal" abilities, I get to 23 already (ASI +8, Speed -2, I count Decay Consumpion as a Ribbon +1, Necrotic Medium Resistance +3, Poison Common Resistance +4, Naturally Stealthy +4, Persuastion Proficiency in Skill +2, Disease Advantage on rare roll +1, Speak with Plants (instead Animals) +2).

Spore Excretion. Unconditional damage to multiple opponents at the same time that costs you no actions or attacks and works every round looks to be on very powerful. For comparison, a breath weapon that you can use only once per encounter dealing 2d6 (7) and costing your action and they get a save, is worth already 6 points. Spore Excetion will deal 3d4 (7) over a typical 3-turn encounter, with no action cost and no saves. And no limits on how often you can use it. It should be at least 8 points, and will put you over the top.

I'm always a bit cautious of two things: 1. buying more powerful abilities by including negative ones like slower speed. 2. A long list of abilities (often resulting from that).

You have a lot of special ablities. The normal races tend to have around 4, you have 7 total. It feels a bit overloaded. I think this race would benefit from getting rid of at least one of the extra abilities, and I would tone down Spore Excretion to be once per rest, and requiring at least a bonus action.