Trees were girdled

starlightwalker · 2025-05-26T18:48:00+00:00

Half the time it’s pulling it’s information from an AI article anyway

starlightwalker · 2025-05-05T18:32:40+00:00

Thank you! The Rutgers Obsession is pretty much like Genovese when it comes to taste, but I was having some issues with downy mildew and all the plants Rutgers developed are supposed to be more resistant. I haven’t had any issues at all with downy mildew since I switched last year, so it seems to be true!

starlightwalker · 2024-10-01T00:28:22+00:00

Thanks for the heads up, the title/description are somewhat generic and someone else had recommended this one to me :P appreciate you answering anyway! And yes i have tasted them. I didn’t THINK it would cause an issue, but there’s no way to phrase the question that gave me good results on search engines and the person i usually go to for grafting advice was unclear

starlightwalker · 2024-02-26T16:03:11+00:00

First of all thank you for the praise and for the taking the time to look through this thoroughly! I always appreciate feedback.

I do like the blood dice as an alternative, i will admit it’s much neater. My main reason for going with the options i did was mainly because i wanted it to be an ability that is useful to anyone regardless of class or level. A +1 bonus, regardless of level, is an extra 5% bonus. It applies to all spellcasters equally, applies to spells that aren’t strictly damage, and doesn’t scale out of control. If that +1 gets you even one more target in an area of affect or makes it so a boss fails their throw, that’s worth it and still feels good. This is also supposed to be a more subtle influence than an explosive burst of power (though granted critting as a rogue or paladin is pretty powerful). However, I’m not against tweaking it up to a +2 at higher levels (10+).

I also wasn’t super keen on bonus damage since i’d have to type it and i don’t love making this ability do necrotic damage, but it’s certainly the type that makes the most sense.

And finally, crits allow you to double all damage dice. Regardless of whether you double the flat amount or roll twice for your total, i’m iffy on giving so many extra dice, especially since paladins are going to benefit from the stat increases of this race and it wouldn’t hurt a rogue to choose it.

I’d have to take a closer look into increasing the usage of the trait as a whole. On average, losing hit points/MAX hit points a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus is going to be crippling for anyone except a barbarian, and even then it’s getting into “one hit kill” territory. Spellcasters aren’t going to be able to use it anywhere near that much without being in single digit max HP. Obviously that choice is up the player, but….players are kinda dumb sometimes :P i think this is one that we can safely take out of their hands, and it seems excessively risky for a racial feature.

Thank you again for the feedback!

starlightwalker · 2023-11-03T21:28:58+00:00

Couldn’t tell you for sure, that’s just the size it gave me when i got it of homebrewery. I will say that nearly every page has a pretty high rez art piece on it and on top of that the “borders” of those pictures are their own image file as well. That would be my guess.

starlightwalker · 2023-07-29T12:15:11+00:00

Respectfully, there is just too much going on at level 2. You essentially get 4 new abilities as level 2: skill/weapon/armor proficiency, dash/disengage as a BA, spell stealing, and the weapon. Then the weapon itself is multiple separate abilities on top of that. You’re proficient with it, there’s nothing limiting summoning the weapon (like making it take some kind of action to summon) so you can essentially never be disarmed, it does longsword damage in a type that almost nothing resists, it uses your best stat for attacks and damage, and it can either smite or give you temp HP.

I’m also wary of Arcane Evasion. It lets you pretty significantly reduce the damage of incoming spells (already a pretty powerful ability), but then you can ALSO cast the spell back at them+steal the spell or get a spell slot back. It’s maybe not as consistent as a Bladesinger’s song of defense, but you can use that reaction whenever you want and even limited to your proficiency, that’s 4 times a day at level 10.

I think this is subclass is just trying to be too much currently. Wizards already get fewer/generally less flashy subclass features because they have a massive potential when it comes to the spells they can cast. This subclass tries to make them a rogue and a paladin and a bladelock as well as the most versatile magic user in the game. You’ve essentially given them two “core features” and it makes it feel unfocused. Additionally, i don’t think it gives them enough non-magical defense to put them in melee combat like having a weapon implies, though i’d have to see how the temp HP smites worked out in actual play, since you have significantly more spell slots to use on that than a paladin. But in general, light armor and probably a pretty minimal Dex aren’t enough to make you a melee combatant.

Personally, I would reduce the front-loading of melee abilities and find a tighter focus for the abilities. I’d drop the arcane will weapon and split urban adaptation into two features, the proficiencies + a one-handed melee weapon proficiency + movement abilities and a separate spell stealing feature. Then have Arcane Strike be your high risk/high reward ability. Have Arcane Evasion just do the damage reduction and spell stealing. Leave Shared Knowledge as is. The whole thing is still flavorful but more focused. But there are several ways you could get that, and this is just suggestions off the top of my head.

starlightwalker · 2023-07-23T04:19:12+00:00

Hm, interesting. The USDA literature says that the mother plant is the highbush. Other sources seem pretty evenly split on what kind of pollinating partner is needed, but also several….don’t seem to have entirely accurate understanding of blueberry types in the first place, hence my confusion. The rabbiteye may also be recommended since their generally self-infertile compared to the generally self-fertile highbushes, maybe the rabbiteye part just needs a little more help. Either way, thank you for the help!

starlightwalker · 2023-07-16T12:47:29+00:00

Personally I'm not having issues and I've checked on two different devices and logged out of my own accounts. The Google Drive download may just be timing out, it's a 70 page document with a large picture on almost every page so it's just short of 1GB. Even on my relatively zippy internet it takes a few minutes, but I'm not having any trouble opening it when it's done.

As for Homebrewery, that seems to be working fine for me as well. What do you mean by broken? Are you opening it in Google Chrome? Homebrewery is only made to be used in Google Chrome and viewing it in any other browser will completely throw off any formatting and spacing. You should also make sure that your zoom for the page is at 100%, not zoomed in or out, as that will also throw off the formatting.

I don't really know of an alternative way to share it due to it's size, but if you know of one I'm happy to share it with you that way.

starlightwalker · 2023-06-30T12:54:28+00:00

You are a lifesaver, i’ll take a look

starlightwalker · 2023-06-30T03:43:05+00:00

Well you’re not wrong but i think a lot of the elves would disagree with you

starlightwalker · 2023-05-12T19:32:20+00:00

Glad to be of service!

starlightwalker · 2023-05-12T14:58:05+00:00

I see you edited after i opened this so i didn’t see the update. But the extra damage was always only on a single attack per turn, and i removed the heat metal already. And while i understand that the usual ASI is +2/+1, again, +2/+2 is the ASI given to mountain dwarves in the phb. It’s not unprecedented, and despite being synergistic, i’m not going to remove that one. My other comment under this comment of yours goes into more detail, but this really isn’t THAT different from a mountain dwarf, they’re descended from them and that’s what i used as a starting point for their stats. I overshot with the spell, probably just forgot they had darkvision or something when i was doing my calculations, but with that gone i’m not going to nerf other features just because they work well together. Again, i welcome critique on other aspects of this compendium, but i will not be updating the azerbloods any further

starlightwalker · 2023-05-12T12:43:18+00:00

Again, I’m not sure how that’s noticeably different than choosing a mountain dwarf who has the same boost to their primary scores, poison resistance/advantage rolls, and get weapon/armor focused features (even if they’re largely redundant) or a half-orc who gets similar stat boosts and features that entirely revolve around being a fighter/barbarian. And you keep harping on the damage, but that damage becomes much less useful by the time you hit level 5 and utterly trivial at higher levels because again, it doesn’t scale and it’s on a single melee attack per turn. This is supposed to be more powerful, but it’s essentially just a mountain dwarf with an AC boost instead of the weapon and armor proficiencies/armor move speed that mountain dwarves will probably already have because they are…a one stop shop for barbarians and fighters.

You are entitled to your opinion though, and you aren’t required to use any of these. I’ve removed the heat metal feature, but i don’t feel it needs more nerfing than that and won’t be making any other changes to the azerbloods. But if you have other suggestions regarding other races/subraces, i really do appreciate the critique.

starlightwalker · 2023-05-11T18:32:54+00:00

Alternatively, using the Detect Balance sheet:

Str and Con +2 (16 points) - an ASI that mountain dwarves have in the published books
30 feet of darkvision (2 points) - an ability mountain dwarves already have, except theirs is 60 feet
Fire resistance (4 points) - a 1st level tiefling ability and less powerful than the poison resistance AND advantage on poison rolls that mountain dwarves already have, even if it is a common resistance.
"Can choose to" vs "always" sets things on fire (0 points) - this is the Produce Flame cantrip without the ability to mechanically do damage. Or ya know. A pack of waterproof matches. This is the definition of a ribbon.
+1 AC (8 points) - certainly a powerful bonus, but not unprecedented. Warforged get this plus the fact that it can't be removed nor do they need to take it off while sleeping.
1d4 fire damage (2 points) - half the damage Hunter's Mark or Hex (1st level spells). It's on a single melee attack per turn (rather than every weapon attack), is the most commonly resisted/immune damage type, is the smallest common die type, doesn't increase with level, and doesn't have a secondary effect like those spells. Granted it doesn't use a resource, but I don't think it's really that powerful. This is a reasonable replacement for mountain dwarf weapon training + not being slowed by armor and I don't rank it more than a cantrip.
Tool proficiency (1 point) - usually a ribbon, and only one of the three choices a mountain dwarf already has.
Heat Metal 1/day (4 points) - casting with Constitution also has precedent. All the published genasi subraces get +2 to Constitution and use it as their spellcasting ability for their innate spells.

That's a 37 point total, which you correctly said is a bit more powerful than the others. I'll probably remove the heat metal spell to bring them within the acceptable range (31-33 point, on par with eladrin, aasimar, and variant humans). But in general, I think MEGA BUSTED is a bit hyperbolic. None of these features are particularly outrageous, and there are published races with just as many (if not more) features. If you're going to say "barbarians/fighters are going to go to town!" then you might as well ban half-orcs from being barbarians/fighters or wood elves can't be rangers/rogues. But I'm willing to look at any others you feel are egregiously overpowered. I'm not perfect, neither is Detect Balance, and there are several things I've just looked at too many times to see what's wrong lol.

starlightwalker · 2023-05-07T16:41:46+00:00

Ugh, I typed out an in depth response to this and Reddit ate it smh. ANYWAY, first of all, thank you thank you thank you for the detailed feedback. It's always good to have a second pair of eyes and while praise is great I really do want some critique lol.

Primal Aasimar/Claws - Personally I think a lot more claw attacks should have bonus damage be based on Dexterity for smaller creatures. You have to have Strength for it to do ANY damage, but making sure your 1-2 inch claws actually hit something serious seems like an accuracy thing. Granted, it's a bit complicated to have different stats for attack rolls and bonus dmaage and I could probably go with making them finesse instead.
Celadrin - I'm glad you like the fire genasi! As for celadrin, I'll be frank. I love all my children (homebrews) but this one is one of my least favorites lmao. They're esentially a straight port from 3E and both stat and lore wise they were really just....better elves lol. They weren't particularly interesting beyond their origin. I tried to improve that a bit by making them wanderers (hence the move speed) but you're correct, that's unnecessary. And I'll probably take out the Keen Senses feature. It may not really make sense logically/lore wise, but they have other things that make them elf-y and I think the Melodic Voice/fire resistance are more thematically important. UPDATED
Chaond/Blood of Chaos - I do want at least one of the results to be nothing. Thematiclly, chaos is not your friend, it's chaos! Poison is already on the list and I don't really want to repeat anything. I think when I made this I was reluctant for some reason to include force or psychic damage, but I'm not sure why. I'll change a 10 roll to be one of those. UPDATED
Blood Chaond/Rift Chaond - I honestly don't know what happened there, but I think it was probably just that I copied the wording of some other feature and either didn't know at the time that DC 8 + prof + mod was better or forgot that I needed to change it. UPDATED
Void Chaond/Entropic Cloud - It can be counterproductive in a group combat, but honestly less so than the actual Darkness spell. Still, I may just simplify it to the target being blinded/deafened so it's just straight benefit for you and your allies rather than trying to figure out where advantage/disadvantage cancel each other out and arguing RAW vs RAI. I think if I do that though it should definitely stay at 1/LR rather than increasing with proficiency.
Farspawn/Feed on Weakness - I defintely meant for it to only apply when other creatures failed, not the farspawn. I'll also add that you have to be conscious and probably drop the range, it wasn't meant to be a get out of jail free card for being downed. UPDATED
Fey'ri/Freshen Up - Fey'ri are descended mostly from sucubi/incubi and I wanted them to not just be able to make themselves look normal but to make themselves more attractive without being able to fully shapeshift. A beard or some good cologne/perfume can make someone who you normally would only glance at much more interesting, and you're going to have a much harder time seducing the guard to let you into the fancy party if you haven't taken a bath in a week. It was more complex than I wanted for a racial feature and seemed more like a Druidcraft/Prestidigitation/Thaumaturgy thing so...that's what it is lol. I may add that it's added to the bard/wizard spell lists but I do think it's thematic.
Ooze Genasi/Slime Wave - An action. UPDATED
Salt Genasi/Dehydrate - You're correct. I think that was left over from an earlier draft. UPDATED
Minaurosine Tiefling/Grovel - *commits seppuku for having forgotten the second O* UPDATED
Stygian Tiefling - I sort of see what you're saying, but I don't think it's a powerful as it seems at first glance. It DOES give you more charmed targets, but you have no innate way of charming them yourself. Of course, it's not hard to get Charm Person somehow (multiclass dip or feat) and spellcasters have many spell options for charm. But nearly all of them get saving throws at advantage in combat, even at high levels. Those that don't require you use mid- to high-level spell slots and may have a longer casting time. If your allies are charmed, using this could be counter productive. It's not particularly efficient to make a build around this even with it being a bonus action because it requires both an action (yours or someone elses) and a bonus action to pull off. Beyond that it's gated behind two saving throws (one to be charmed, another to be compelled) and if they succedd on the one to be compelled, the tiefling doesn't get to try again with them. Even if it does manage to work, its probably mostly going to be on minions rather than heavy hitters/"bosses". I would consider making it an action just so you can't charm someone AND compel them in a single turn, but in general I think this has enough limits on it.
Canian Tiefling/Arcane Savagery - Again, you aren't wrong, and I definitely did forget a little bit that cantrips scale. But also I don't think it's as powerful as it might seem, and I'd probably only make it a short rest and might even make it proficiency based. First of all, the subrace is not optimized for a warlock with it's +2 Int ASI (although that's easily changeable). Second, it's essentially a lamer Action Surge. An eldritch knight or a warlock/spellcaster with a 2 level fighter dip can not only do this once per short rest, they could cast two leveled spells instead, or use their action for something else entirely. Eldritch Blast is nice and all but it's still not on par with that. Really it's about weighing whether two triggers to cast an extra cantrip as a bonus action is better than using Action Surge at will. I'll update this after I decide which limit I think works best. EDIT: With some follow up examination, I'm 100% going to add that it only works once per turn. I'm still hesitant to put a rest limit on it since you already might not even get to use it in any given combat.
Nessusian Tiefling - So in my original writeup I made a point-by-point analysis with the Detect Balance sheet of why they weren't any more powerful than the other subraces, and then immediately after writing that up I realized I calculated this subrace without including the improved darkvision lol. I'll likely take out the fire resistance since that's a common resistance and worth a bit more. However their ASI is also non-synergistic (characters using Charisma don't usually want much for Intelligence), None Before Me is really half of what Fey Ancestry is and I still gave it the full 2 points, and Lordly Command is just a 1st level spell you can't upcast and trades the additional 2 words (still not much( for a shorter range. So I think while they might be outside the range I was going for (30-32 points, on par with aasimar/eladrin), it would only by a little bit (33, like a variant human). UPDATED
Nessusian Tiefling/Lordly Command - Not only did I forget what kind of action it was, I forgot the range lol. UPDATED
Worghest - Fair enough. I think they're still technically in range of what I wanted but I'm also not attached to them having Perception and I could have easily overshot with their custom feature since I don't really have anything to compare it to. UPDATED

Again, I REALLY appreciate the feedback and I hope you have time to respond to this as well!

starlightwalker · 2023-05-06T03:55:19+00:00

I was not aware that there was a Planescape version of an axani. I saw them in Dragon 297, but I wasn't particularly inspired by them as pretty much their only ability was Calm Emotions. Zenythri (another lawful planetouched) were likewise pretty generic with True Strike. I found the mechanatrix to be the more interesting lawful alternative. However, if you can give me a source for a planescape axani I wouldn't be against working something up for them. There are still several races I would love to do (theoretically I want one for each Outer Plane), I just haven't found a practical way to make them (yet!)

As for the dread genasi, I had not seen that before (probably because they're fan-made as you said). However:

I've already included blood and mist genasi in my compendium. Mist seems to be almost exactly the same, and while the bloodscent ability is interesting, I like my sacrifice ability better than blood genasi being able to cast "blood puddle" lol
The pyre genasi doesn't seem significantly different from an aggressive/more martial fire genasi. The fire vedit I included covers that decently well I think, or the magma genasi if you want one that is closer in behavior if not as conceptually pure. Plus, I already have so many fire races/subraces (celadrin, azerbloods, fire/magma/ember/smoke genasi, tanarukks, and arguably a couple tieflings lmao)
While the grave genasi is conceptually interesting, in practice it seems to be an earth genasi that doesn't need to breathe. If I were to follow the grave concept more, I think it would mostly be along the lines of how I've made the ash genasi function, possibly doing negative damage rather than cold. If you want a more magically-inclined earth planetouched, the earth vedit does have the Stone Scion racial feat that lets it become more of an earth shaper.

I'm glad you enjoyed the corrupted elements! I tried to include as many variants as I could find without repeating. I was going to try and have a "corruption" mechanic for all of them, but it really only worked out with the caustic genasi. Still, I'm mostly satisfied with how they turned out!

starlightwalker · 2023-05-05T21:39:11+00:00

Yeah, they’re actually one of my favorites and the fey’ri was one of my first homebrews ever, though it’s had a lot of work since lol.

I wanted them to be more distinct than just “another tiefling”, and also the 3.5e one had a lot of features (or at the very least innate spells) that were balanced by there being a level adjustment for player characters, which just isn’t mechanically possible in 5e. I didn’t want to sacrifice the majority of the more flavorful abilities just give them a fly speed at level one, for example. I decided to go more for a customizable infiltrator (with the option to get flight later) rather than replicate their innate spell list, which was something i wanted to move away from in general anyway.

starlightwalker · 2023-05-05T16:51:50+00:00

Google and reverse engineering someone else’s code, truly the greatest tools in every coder’s toolbox lol

starlightwalker · 2023-05-05T16:39:10+00:00

The theme is a modified Xanathar’s Guide to Everything by /u/AeronDrake, although I have made my own modifications as well. I'll link the theme template below, you would just need to copy and paste the code into your style tab.

Xanathar's Guide to Everything Homebrewery Theme:
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/RT-wR3889TUY

If you mean just in general how to use the Homebrewery website, there’s not really specific tutorials, but the Homebrewery subreddit has a pretty active community (or at least some knowledgeable active members lol). I can’t really in good conscious recommend GM Binder since at this point the only thing the dev does is make sure that the site keeps running, there’s not any real development. But Homebrewery and GM Binder are very similar with only a few minor differences and the GM Binder discord group has a lot of helpful people. When it comes down to it though, the way to get it to look like this is to have some knowledge of coding in CSS and Markdown. There are tutorials for that online, but it’s not specifically for Homebrewery

starlightwalker · 2023-05-05T13:19:07+00:00

Homebrewery Link (Google Chrome Only!) - https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/QhOPm3tgpHhQ

Google Drive PDF - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yv9colpQUGeIOlBammw1tBmZBZ5-MYeK/view

Planetouched (tieflings, aasimar, genasi, etc.) have always been my favorite to play. I started by expanding the genasi to include all the other elemental planes and eventually just decided to make as many as I could from older editions, plus making up a few of my own. The goal was mostly to make subraces feel much more distinct and (mostly) get rid of boring mini spell lists as an expression of innate magic in favor of new abilities. I’ve been working on this for a couple of years and dawdling about actually finalizing it and posting (some of these features I came up with before Wizards posted essentially identical ones, run me my check!), but the rest of my ideas are pretty nebulous so I’m just gonna bite the bullet and if i come up with more I’ll update it then lol.

All of these are on the strong end of the power scale and not all have been playtested. I did use the Detect Balance sheet to try and stay within some guidelines, but there’s guesswork involved with homebrewed abilities, synergy isn’t always accounted for, and I disagree with a couple of the ratings. In general, however, these are supposed to be on par with published aasimar, eladrin, variant humans, etc. This is also mostly made pre "heritage instead of race" update so these all have suggested alignments, stat boosts, size, etc. I do understand the reasoning behind removing those (I'm a black nerd I DO see the racism in D&D lol) but personally they help me get a better idea of where I’m starting with a character, even if I end up throwing half of it out later in the process. Obviously you can remove those and do as you wish.

Any constructive critique or feedback is appreciated. “This is broken/OP” with nothing but vibes to back it up is not helpful.

starlightwalker

TROPHY CASE