I need advice on the ability of my subrace of Zantan Elves

Question

This is my second homebrew race ever and while I’ve watched a myriad of YouTube videos about it, all of them seem unhelpful in racial trait creation. I’m questioning about a certain racial trait I intend to include. The main purpose of this racial trait is meant to be Roleplaying flavor but I wanted to add a little something to it because of the Roleplaying flavor text:

Essentially my trait shall allow the elf to switch on and off a second voice. The actual ability of this racial trait is that if you're heavily/mostly obscured, or invisible you can use this voice to have Advantage on one intimidation check using your voice (while still obscured) without losing that obscurity or alerting the target to your whereabouts. This ability can be used once per short rest.

I also should note I’ve only been DM-ing for about 6 or so months and haven’t had to use the rules for obscurity, hiding, or invisibility due to my players actions and the settings of the campaign.

I feel like this situation is very specific or the ability might be a little weak. As of now nobodies using the race so I have free time to prepare it for whatever it may be used for. Any advice on this ability is appreciated.

Stablock: Zantan Elf (working title)

• Ability Score Increase: One ability score of your choice is increased by one.
• Age: You age like a normal human until you reach the age of 20. Then every 11 years you only age one.
• Alignment: living mostly in a world of their own, Zantan Elves are all over the place in terms of alignment. But most commoners tend to lean towards lawful alignments.
• Size: You are a medium-sized creature.
• Speed: 30ft
• Languages: Zantan, Sylvan, common.
• Dark vision- dim light looks like bright light within 60ft of you and darkness looks like dim light.
• Fey Ancestry: You have Advantage on saving throws against being charmed and magic can’t put you to sleep.
• Keen senses: you have proficiency in the perception skill.
• Trance: You don’t need to sleep. Only to meditate for 4 hours a day. Doing this gives you benefits equal to 8 hours of human sleep.
• Dual voice (this is the ability I worry about): You can switch on and off a second voice. This secondary voice can sound like whatever you want it to but cannot speak any languages you do not and otherwise behaves like a humanoid voice would. The voice can be heard by all around you when it’s used but doesn’t require a set of vocal cords or air to be used. If you're heavily/mostly obscured or invisible you can use this voice to have Advantage on one intimidation check using your voice (while still obscured) without losing that obscurity or alerting the target to your whereabouts. This ability can be used once per short rest.
• Faerie Terror: You know the “Thaumaturgy” cantrip. Starting at 3rd level, you can cast the spell “faerie fire” with this trait. At 5th level, you can cast the spell “Fear” with this trait. Once you cast “faerie fire” or “fear” with this trait, you can’t cast that spell again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast either of those spells using any spell slots you have of the appropriate level. Wisdom, intelligence, or Charisma is your spellcasting modifier for these spells when you cast them with this race (choose when you select this race).

Answer 1

I like the Detect Balance spreadsheet for valuing homebrew racial traits.

This spreadsheet says that most races should have traits totaling 24-26 points. It also says that "advantage on a rare roll" is worth one point. The roll you are describing sounds extremely rare, so this trait might be worth even less than one point.

You've noted that this intimidation check can be made "without alerting the target to your whereabouts" but I can't think of many circumstances in which that would be useful, so I don't think it changes the point value.

You can also use this spreadsheet to measure the balance of your homebrew race overall.

Answer 2

I agree that this ability sounds like it's limited to rather specific scenarios.

You could replace it with the ability to communicate telepathically with this second voice. Should cover the Use Case you mentioned, but is more widely applicable in general. Also, telepathy is a ton of fun ;) It's also more powerful than the ability you described, but I'll leave the balancing to you.

EDIT: A solid statement to back up this proposal requires further context imho. Depending on what other features this custom race receives, this might be overpowered, or still leave room for more.

Telepathy can be obtained through various ways, but let's take the Telepathic Feat as a reference, which you could take as Variant Human: Besides the ability to communicate telepathically, you will also get an ability score plus a 2nd level spell. From this perspective, Telepathy doesn't seem all too powerful. But still, proper balancing requires further context.

From my own experience, I have never homebrewed a custom race featuring Telepathy, but I've dealt with plenty of players having it as class features or whatnot. From what I've seen, it is primarily used to exchange plans and ideas without sharing information with bystanders. All in all, I think that it often comes in handy for the players having it, but only very rarely gives them a significant advantage. It adds a lot of flavour and greatly benefits the awareness of 'who knows what'. Creative players can often use it to produce interesting scenarios, but I have never witnessed the ability of telepathy single-handedly disable a threat. I hope, that helps.