Rogue Modron
Classic Style Ability Score Increase: Your Constitution score increases by 2, and your Intelligence increases by 1.
Reflective of the 5e MM Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
(First question, which of these ability adjustments are a better fit for the race? In AD&D Planescape they got Con and Int bonuses. In the 5e MM, however, Modron's seem to get high Dex and Con, but they never have high Int scores and often have low Int scores. I am thinking a Dex/Con spread makes more sense than a Con/Int spread in 5th. Opinions?)
Living Construct: A rogue modron can be affected by any spell that could normally affect either a humanoid or a construct.
Mechanical Initiative (Optional): A rogue modron never rolls Initiative. Instead, it uses a passive initiative score equal to 11 + its regular initiative modifier. (I am thinking of putting this in as an optional rule, ala the original Planescape rules, in order to give rogue modron's more of a "mechanical" flavor.)
Natural Armor: When not wearing any armor, a rogue modron has an AC of 13 + its dexterity modifier.
Odd Body Shape: Rogue modrons cannot wear clothing or armor not designed for them. Clothing and armor designed for a modron costs twice the listed amount.
Vestigial Truesight: A rogue modron has advantage on all Wisdom (Perception) skill checks and saves vs. Illusions.
Vestigial Flight: As an action, you may fly a number of feet equal to your movement rate. You must end your turn on solid ground or else you fall.
(Thoughts? Is this thing balanced against the other races? Why or why not?)
I love modrons...
Balance wise, at first I was thinking it a bit wimpy compared to the norm, but after review I had to rethink this. Let us compare for instance to a Mountain Dwarf:
* Attributes: Mountain Dwarf gets 2 points each of Con/Str making an exellent fighter. Modron option 1 gets 2/1 in Con/Int, good for a wizard. Modron option 2 gets 2/1 in Dex/Con, okayish for a rogue or ranger. Win to the the dwarf if you stick to classes your stats are good for.
* Senses: MountainDwarf gets Darkvision, Modron gets Advantage to Perception. Darkvision is functionally useful to anybody, Perception is great if you are the rogue or ranger (which fits one of the stat blocks). I'd give the win the Modron since the skill can be used for active benefit even when your budies bust out the torches.
* Armor: Modrons get what amounts to a Chain Shirt when unarmored, Dwarf gets proficiency in all Medium armor. Abilities seem equivalent at start though the modron one essentially is negated once the better medium armors get involved. Wizard modrons will dig it though. 
So I'd say no winner.
* Flaw: Modrons get surcharge on armor and problem with found equipment. Dwarf gets to laugh at the poor thing and is obviously the winner in this category.
* Special Defense: Dwarf has advantage *AND* resistance to poison which is possessed by many monsters, assassins, primitive tribes, traps, or even food that has been left out to long. Modron has just advantage vs illusions, possessed by some wizards and a few monsters. Win for dwarf because the ability is likely to come up more often and is stronger as well.
* Mechanical Initiative: Always rolling 11 on initiative is sometimes good, sometimes bad, obviously (I'd have made it 10 + modifier since it would feel more like taking 10, but whatever). So no advantage to either but its a very characterful ability I liked from the old books.
* Other Stuff: Mountain Dwarf gets proficiency in 4 weapons and a tool, and guessing the history of stonework. Modron gets a (slightly) limited flight power that will probably bring up many of the same arguments about aarocacra. For mechanical use I'd give this to the modron as those proficiencies will end up being gained from other means for the dwarf anyway.
Overall: The flight will let the Modron avoid many traps and climb checks and pop up to look around, depending on environment of course, and since the Option 2 stats of Dex/Con (which I'd support personally) and perception is already making for a good rogue or ranger and that's a solid plus. Since you have to land and it is limited to movement speed it isn't fully the potential combat changer that bird-guy flight is. The better combat stats and whole "poison? what poison?" thing of the dwarf is a bigger more frequent boost compared to ignoring some illusions, but this again helps balance things with the flight. The armor is kind of a wash for both races as gearing and class abilities are going to overtake it for both in most situations. So at this point I'd feel Mountain Dwarf Fighter vs Modron Rogue would be about equal it capability and a fun pair to encounter adventuring together.
Nice. Seems like I am on the right track. I was actually going to ask, what if I remove the advantage on perception checks but add 120 foot darkvision? I was thinking that might be a better model for "vestigial true-sight" than what I have now. Would things still be balanced?
Vestigal Truesight: Well standard Truesight sees a whole range of things, so a general boost to perception seems more reflective to me then just darkvision. Honestly giving them 60' darkvision *and* the perception advantage would probably be most reflective and not really alter the balance at all (since darkvision is so situational in most parties).
Vestigal Flight: I see Vestigal Flight as amounting to Dash on steroids. Dash basically replaces your action with another block of movement. VF replaces your action with movement in the same way, except that it can go in 3 dimensions and thus can simulate automatic successes in jump and climb, evading traps, ignoring difficult terrain, moving over enemies you can't move through, etc. As I already consider Dash tactically useful in combat even with its limitation, I definitely consider "Dash in 3 Dimensions" far more useful. So that being said I consider it on par with the proficiencies and part of the poison resistance ability of the Mountain Dwarf, so everything is good.
Overland Travel With VF: I don't really think it should factor into overland travel at all since it amounts to really good jumping, and jumping doesn't have overland benefits. I'd imagine the nightmare of the poor modron trying to land in difficult (and thus random looking) terrain 30' at a time over the course of *miles*: The poor thing would have a nervous breakdown.
Ummmmm no.
The armor powers are just flat bad.
Ok leaving aside the fact that an ability for unarmored classes only is bad in and of itself, how many classes do you expect to make use of this? 5e uses AC formulas more than bonuses so abilities like the monk or barbarian AC modifications won't stack.
The armor 'penalty' is a bad call for two reasons, one agian there are several classes it doens't apply to, so it's only penalizing certain classes, and money is a bad thing to involve in race powers because of how much it varies between games.
Out of curiosity is there an Upside to living construct?
rampant wrote:
i remember modrons as talking tincans shaped like soccer balls with clockwork arms and legs the diameter of carrots. The problem with 5e is there's no way to put in flaws into starting player races, even though there should be. The flaws could easily compensate for various advantages like modrons not getting sick and having natural armor, but modrons, as far as i know, can't swim, but do they breath? probably not. Can they rust? maybe. If you roll them from the top of the hill, do they do 1d10 or 2d10 bashing damage and should you be allowed to make bowling jokes?
concepts like, no save ordie, bounded accuracy, no flaws, and never assume magic items in the mechanics - these notions are going to have to go if we want things like Modrons, and in general, if we want the 5th edition to progress. Stock rules and stock characters are supposed to be locked down to establish what is normal, not so they can force their restrictions on everything else, but so there's a common ground to make differences stand out.
Modrons are different. they have advantages normal characters wont. They have disadvantages that should be quite obvious.
The problem is that the disadvantage approach tends to be a class limiter. Penalties like slow, or reduced HD worked for everything, but stuff like attibute hits or being charged thorugh th enose for armor don't. For example I'm in a group workign through the dnd encounters or whatever they call it these days and I've gone from level 1 to 5 and still not managed to rack up enough coinage to afford regular full plate for my pally, and no I haven't been spending extravegantly, or much at all, I've been living on looted food. Doubling that price is in fact far more than a flavor penalty.
There's a very limited array of useful penalties for race design, so you can't rely on those to make more 'extreme' races viable in play. In order to have more advanced races you have to pay a price somewhere, the only places we can pay that price are feats and class levels because those are the only character resources we have besides race, which is fairly limited.
Feats are fairly obvious, racial classes probably give us the most design space, and of course racial sub-classes are an option but those only work for the specific class you build them for.
I don't think every racial feature should be equally useful to every class, I think it they should be of some use to every class, and not useless or only applicable to wide swathes of character types.
shintashi wrote:
I like that Rogue Modrons have to be Lawful Neutral. My whole concept of a Modron is that they are so LN that other races that are LN are still looked upon as chaotic because they are so extremely LN. Plus I think you can have fun roleplaying with a LN Rogue Modron that takes things way too literally or laws or rules out of context. I don't want players taking Rogue Modron for their racial abilities then playing them like any other race. The LN is a good limitiation IMHO.
If any race should have an 8 charisma it is the Rogue Modron.
arnwolf666 wrote:
rampant wrote:
And you also noted that I've already explained why I think those abilities were poorly design or illy concieved.
Cyber-Dave wrote:
rampant wrote:
It looks pretty good Dave. Here's my analysis,
Cyber-Dave wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Orethalion wrote: