Hex Crawl 23 #244: Faery Jerboa Character Race/Class Levels 1-5

Three hexes southwest, eight northwest of Alakran.

 

A player in the Game of Bronze wished, for reasons of humility, to run a character that was both underpowered and incapable of speaking to all but one other regular character. The result was the faery jerboa -- a character class certainly weaker than the rest, but which can be up-cannoned by starting at level 3. Escaped from the faery plane by mysterious means, the character, Oelita, gave up the chance to lead the whole party back through a rift. Surely some other tract of desolate land will begin to feature the details of the deserts of Faerie, which were developed in some detail for a player choice that never happened.

Original art by Lui!

FAERIE JERBOA

Race/Class Features

You are a Tiny-sized creature, with STR - 6, DEX +3, CHA +3.

Your leaping Speed is 30 feet.

You speak only Jerboa but understand Common and can learn to understand other lamnguages. You level up immediately on gaining the requisite xp, with no need for training.

As a faerie jerboa, you gain the following features.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d4 at level 2, 1d6 at level 3+

Hit Points at 1st Level: 1
Hit Points at Higher Levels: Level hit die + your Constitution modifier per faerie jerboa level after 1st

Proficiencies

Armor: None
Weapons: Simple weapons, tiny-sized (1 hp damage maximum)
Tools: Choose one: thieves' tools

Saving Throws: Dexterity, Charisma
Skills: Stealth plus any three of: Acrobatics, Arcana, Insight, Nature, Perception, Survival

Equipment

You start with the following tiny-size equipment:

• (a) any simple weapon made of thorns and twigs
  
• (a) a explorer’s pack or (b) a scholar’s pack

Tiny: You are a large jerboa about the size of a hamster. May not carry equipment with a total weight greater than 1 lb. May move through any larger opponents, and move and hide into any place a hamster could fit.

Flitting Defense: You have Reaction: If you can see a non-area attack against you, you may make a DEX save with DC equal to the attack's final hit roll to avoid the attack's effects.

Keen Smell/Hearing: You have Advantage on Perception checks involving these senses.

Limited Flight: Once per minute you can fly with speed of 20' for one turn.

Limited Cantrip: You may cast one Sorcerer cantrip from your list. You regain this ability after a long or short rest.

Sustained Flight: Twice per minute you can fly with speed of 25' for one turn.

Premonition:  You have Reaction: Before an area effect would damage you, you may leap 30' (possibly leaving the area and taking no damage).

Faerie Spellcasting: You are a spellcaster with your Faerie Jerboa level minus three. Charisma is your spellcasting stat and you use the Sorcerer spell list. You regain all spells each short or long rest but may only cast each spell once from the list before a rest.

Unlimited Cantrip: Choose one of your cantrips. You may cast it each turn.

Full Flight: You may fly with a speed of 30'.

Hex Crawl 23 # 62: Fifth Edition's Role Dilution

Five hexes north of Alakran.

Are there tumbleweeds? There are if you want them to be, in this pan-continental desert biome. And here they are tumbling across this blank stretch of dry plain, tumbling right past the soapbox from which I continue my ranting about running 5th edition D&D in the Alakran campaign.

Today it's role dilution. 5th ed. characters inherit from 4th a greater spreading of capacities across character classes. 2/3 of the core classes can cast spells, and those who can't often have spell-like action systems like the monk or the Battlemaster fighter. Fighters can self-heal. Feats have also raised complaints of role blurring. 

But actually, even though I am an advocate of well-defined roles to match various player styles, the spreading out of power is not as annoying as the role dilution that comes from the much-remarked flat d20 skill rolls. Characters who are supposed to be bad at skills are still not that bad that they can't give it a shot. 5e skills also don't distinguish between things that can be attempted without training (like climbing), that need training (like lockpicking), and that are just brute applications of force (like opening doors).

Concretely, let's take a "weak" character with below-average ability and no special proficiency in the skill, who gets a -1 to their skill roll. And another "strong" one who gets a +5, either because they have an excellent ability and proficiency, or a superhuman ability with no proficiency. These two attempt some task with DC 13, side by side. If your naive guess is that the "weak" one should never succeed if the "strong" one fails, that's not what 5th edition D&D says.

Looking at the grid, the strong one doesn't even succeed over the weak one's failure in half of the scenarios, and the weak one succeeds over the strong one 12 % of the time - enough of a chance to try. 

The problem is that a "great" skilled character only has a bit less than twice the chance of success of a "bad" skilled character. This means that characters can try all kinds of things they're not really suited to, especially if there is no downside to failure. Sure, you can mess around with the math and the DCs and the system, but then why not just play another RPG that has these things better worked out?