Leshen: Bewitched Wood

[DatsVatSheSaid]

Homebrew Race: Leshen

At the heart of the forests lies a secret. In a place born of darkness and primeval nature, resides a mighty and terrifying guardian. Hardened to mortal steel, it is believed the leshen are nature's way of protecting the forest and the animals that live within it from the threat mortals started to pose upon their ravaging expansion deeper into the lands.

Leshen dwell in dense, primeval woods. Fiercely territorial creatures, they hunt with stealth and cunning as their only companions. They use their inborn magic to control the plants and animals within their territory – and so, when stalking them, half the battle is merely getting near enough to strike. Leshens old enough to earn the appellation "ancient" wield advanced skills and tactics that make them particularly dangerous.

Physical Characteristics:
Average Height: 2.1m-2.9m
Average Weight: 240-650kg
Languages: Trade, Elven, Spirit-Tongue
Common Personality Traits: Aloof, Wrathful, Timeless, Stubborn, Forceful, Prejudiced, Territorial
Common Physical Traits: Tall, Colorful Leaves, Twisted Branches, Gnarled Facial Expressions, Lumbering
Example Names:Durthu, Drycha, Colfenor, Treebeard, Adanhu, Coeddil

Racial Statistics:
Racial Characteristics: +1 to Constitution or Willpower
Skill Bonus: +1 to Animal Ken and Arcana
Power-Wytchwood Body: Your body is empowered by primal nature magic, offering an incredible amount of protection both physical and magical. You gain a bonus to Aura equal to your Level + 1 and may substitute half your Aura for Armor against damage that is reduced by Armor. You are also a Tree and made of wood for any spells or effects that require one if you are willing.
Size: 5

Racial Feats:

Root-Walker[Leshen]: You possess deep reaching roots that strive to dig deep. Whenever an enemy would force you to move or knock you prone, you may ignore that effect.

Primal Reservoir[Leshen}: You are a font of Primal Magic empowering magic nearby but making it wild and uncontrollable. Focus Power tests made within 60m of you gain a static bonus equal to your Willpower, and any explosions on Focus Power tests in this area must be kept.

Wyld Shepherd[Leshen]: You command the beasts of the wood and foster wild beasts from your wood. You gain the Animal Companion feat, additionally you consider each class you take to offer the Improved Animal Companion feat as an additional optional feat once per class.

Protector of Wilds[Leshen]: Allies treat you as cover with AP equal to your Resilience. Any damage dealt to this cover is dealt to you as normal.

Briar of Woe[Leshen]: You gain a Natural Weapon with the Following Profile: 1k2 R, Brawling, Snare. Creatures take damage from this Natural Weapon while in a grapple with you or when they Hit you with a Melee Weapon attack. Your Natural Weapons gain the Toxic property.

Amberheart Ancient[Leshen,Paragon]: Your vitality and primal might empower you. You gain +2 Size and Armor Plating 2. Whenever you successfully cast a spell either you or a friendly target within 10m regains 1 hitpoint.

[ScrapyardDragon]

Yay, a tree-person option that isn't gender locked, neato. The race itself leans hard into defense, which is fine. For the racial bonuses I think that Con is the objectively superior choice due to the racial power (more on that later) but that isn't a flaw in and of itself, and the skills are standard stuff, animal ken is whatever but everyone wants arcana for saves. Its the power thats the first source of worry, and I know it can be said for a lot of homebrew races, but I think the racial power is a bit overloaded (and not in the kind of way that some racial powers are overloaded by necessity due to drastic morphological differences from the standard organic humanoid anatomy). The most petty of my list of grievances is the healing substitution effect. Why? Dryads are also plantforms and still use medicae, and its not like these things are some inorganic construct to require crafts. I said before that everyone wants arcana for the metagame'y reason of passing magic saves so in that perspective its a straight upgrade that feels like its there just for its own sake. As I said it was the most petty one, usually people just resource for hp so it hardly matters in practice. The bigger issue I have is the aura. Specifically the whole "it adds onto armor" bit. That is EXTREMELY powerful for a stray racial that can be fit into nearly any build that isn't already race-locked. Its basically the damage reduction from the daemonic trait and other similar effects since its an aura boost that also boosts AP, and goes even further with aura stacking strategies (reminder that armouring aura is a first level spell), and since it comes from your constitution, that also means everything from warform to warstrider to primal power and any other Con booster drives this to absurd levels. And this is on a RACIAL power, not an exalt power, not a 5th level feat, not even a racial feat which would at least cost you some exp, this is an absurd effect that you can get literally at character creation for free. Most 'overloaded' racial powers are a lot of various specific things that usually don't matter all that much but this is the kind of thing I'd sooner expect to see as a late game exalt ability because ye gods man. Counting as a tree is something that may come up once a year across all the DtD campaigns on the planet but it'd be wrong to not have it there I guess.

Rant over about the racial power, on to the feats.
Root walker is a renamed squat stability. Its good but if core does it then its hard to really complain.
Primal reservoir feeds into armouring aura and primal power shenanigans but enemies can use it too so....Look in practice though it feels like a better version of archmage tradition (spellbloom) which is a 5th level feat. mandatory explosion keeping is...one of those things that depending on table may have already been mandatory its hard for me to speak on that since afaik the rules are super vague on that.
Wyld shepard is basically a static bonus to everything up to your fellowship since thats all anyone uses animal companion for since minions (especially a singular minion) are garbage in this game and basically anyone can oneshot it.
Protector of the wilds is neat, even if everything else is nerfed, keep that one.
Briar of woe is...I dunno man since it has the free damage to grappled targets effect AND tearing I really think the damage should be dropped to 1k1.
Force of nature is...well on one hand its paragon only (outside of evoluder/Eormencyn shenanigans) so you can't combine it with other exalt based boosters but at the same time using magic for more con/aura is still on the table and by the gods man you already created the ultimate "stack con" race why do they also get to add it to their melee damage how does that even work?

tldr; I like the fluff, glad you can be a tree-man now but ye gods that is the most overpowered racial power I've ever seen. I'd be strong even if it was JUST the aura but since it becomes armor too its just too strong imo man.

[DatsVatSheSaid]

So I'll agree that I'm overusing Con here, so it's now Willpower on the Racial Power. And I would much rather put a stronger effect on the Racial Power than a feat simply to keep it to the race and prevent half-breed style feats from grabbing it.

[ScrapyardDragon]

Then have it say that only the aura from the racial power can transfer. It both blocks armouring aura shenanigans and prevents half-breeds from pilfering it.

[Amanojyaku]

Using CON wasn't the problem. WIL's already a god stat.

[DatsVatSheSaid]

The bonus is now Level + 1.

[username]

Level + 1 is actually a bit better overall since it ends up being 6 instead of 5 for most, but I love things that scale. Plus it ensures you aren't so front loaded. The biggest issue was the stacking Aura onto Armor, which got insane quickly since Aura always stacks with itself. Was child's play to have an armor over 30 at level 2 that way, but with the change it will take serious investment and homebrew to see anything like that. Though I'm worried about the end-game potential I still like it a lot, although of course I am biased there.

Of course, the biggest issue is that since they are explicitly made of wood, Tree Song will allow them to be twisted into all manner of unsurvivable shapes, permanently, with no save if the touch lands. Rephrasing them to being wood-like similar to a dryad may help shield them from that. Or just making it at their discretion.

Changing the paragon asset was good, since the previous version where you added constitution to strength for damage was quite crazy. Could start at +5k0 damage and primal power was +2k0 damage a raise, some real madness. I would say the current one might be even more insane though. It's on tier with the Promethean's War-strider but available at level 1 and always on. Lacks the +3 physical stats and +1k1 weapon damage, but the limited impact on your static defense and always being online and being available immediately more than makes up for it. At level 1 it is 9 resilience, 10 at 3 and 11 at 5 without even looking at things like sturdy or power armor. That is quite crazy. The armor plating doesn't synergize very well with the change to the racial power either. Perhaps something instead like:

Amberheart Ancient[Leshen,Paragon]: Your vitality and primal might empower you. You gain +2 Size and Armor Plating 2. Your Aura gained from Wytchwood Body is doubled and you may spend a Hero Point to treat your full Aura as your Armor for one round.

Still quite potent, granting +1 resilience from the size (7, that's huge!) and some extra armor that stacks with other armor. But by granting some extra aura it helps Paragon stack up with the other Aura granting exalts, and lets you use your increased Paragon Hero Points to get some potentially crazy armor once per round.

Last concern: How does Briar of Woe work? The way I'm seeing it, you're getting a free automatic hit with your natural weapon when someone melees you. But that is quite unbalanced isn't it? That means it is dealing at least 2k2 damage but could go up to 7k3 or more. Since it is a brawling weapon it will nearly always fatigue as well, especially with tearing and then the toxic just layers free damage on top of that further.

[DatsVatSheSaid]

Made some changes based on feedback.