[RPG] Is this homebrew Half-Phoenix race balanced

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Some weeks ago, my DM told us that we she was working on a new campaign. She also told us homebrew races and classes were allowed. I was thinking of making a new race and something that seemed interesting to me was a race that could revive after death.

I then got the idea to make a half phoenix. I wasn’t really thinking about the D&D 5e phoenix elemental when making this, more so the mythical phoenix in general. To make sure it was balanced I based the stats on that of a dragonborn. But the real problem with balancing was the revive mechanic: an ability that gives you the ability to revive seems a little broken if there are no bad sides to it.

My solution was to simply have this race have half the max HP of the normal races. That way in a fight you have effectively the same HP as a normal character. So, what I am really asking is if having half the HP is a good balancer for this mechanic. Is it underpowered, overpowered or fine?


Here are the rest of the stats for my homebrew race:

Half-Phoenix

Ability Score Increase: Cha + 2 and Dex +1

Age: Adult at 25 and lives to 300 years old.

Alignment: Phoenixes are mostly chaotic. They love their freedom and
find rules annoying. But they do try to act good when possible.

Size: Medium, average size of 2 meters and average weight of 70 kilograms.

Speed: 35

Hollow Bones: Every time after you calculate your max HP, divide it by
half rounded up: this is your new max HP.

Light: Your body is very light. If you fall from a height not higher
than 10 meters, tou fall as if you had feather fall.

Phoenix Rebirth: Once per long rest, if your hit points drop below 1,
your body turns into a burning egg that can't be damaged. At the
beginning of your turn, you transform back into your normal body with
full health.

When this happens, you unleash a blast of fire with a 10-foot radius,
centered on yourself. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your
Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. A creature takes 2d6
damage on a failed save, and half as much damage on a successful one.
This damage increases to 3d6 at 6th level, 4d6 at 11th level, and 5d6
at 16th level. Upon returning to your body, make a DC 12 Wisdom
check. If you fail this check, you don't remember anything that has
happened since your last long rest.

Fire Resistance: You have resistance to fire damage.

Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and Celestial.

Best Answer

There are real difficulties here.

  • First, this is a classic example of the "huge advantage, huge drawback" school of character design, and that is pretty much always a bad idea. Admittedly, this is not as bad as most, since "you have half your HP is something that it's pretty much fundamentally impossible to trivialize, but it's still an issue overall.

  • Second, the bit about not remembering anything since the latest Long Rest is problematic, as by its nature it causes the player to have OOC knowledge that the character does not have and that would be immediately applicable. Trying to make that one work at all is going to be a headache, and trying to adjudicate it is going to be more of one.

  • This character is super-fragile. They lose half their HP, and their magical recovery (once per long rest only) kicks in not when they would otherwise die, but the first time they hit 0 HP. There's a lot of ways to recover from 0 HP (including having a healer in the party that gives you a microheal) and the phoenix egg thing invalidates or ignores all of them. This is the kind of feature that might be cool on a monster (especially a boss monster) but doesn't really fit a PC in the same way.

  • The fact that it does a lot of damage in a reasonably large radius at an uncontrollable time makes it worse, not better. It basically turns the character into a bomb to be used against their allies. At first level, this could almost trivially trigger a TPK. Battle starts. Your character is a sorcerer with 14 con, and has 4 HP. First action is a goblin with a shortbow, who shoots at you, hits, and rolls enough damage to down you. Next action is you. You stand back up, and every member of your party takes 2d6 fire damage, save for half. If you're giving up half your HP for the privilege, it should at least be "the first time you would die", rather than "the first time you hit 0 HP. Alternately, letting the player have control over whether or not it kicks in would help. It still seems like a bad idea (see the aforementioned general issue with huge advantage/huge drawback) but it would at least be not as bad.

  • Hollow Bones, in addition to being problematic, is poorly written. One valid interpretation of the text you have there is that you lose half your permanent HP every time you level up.

To sum up, the basic ides of the character - trading max HP for a self-rez - is not a good idea. It's exactly the sort of thing that near-inevitably winds up either broken-overpowered, unplayable-underpowered, or both. In this case, it's leaning pretty heavily towards the latter. Also, having a character who spawns party-unfriendly AOE attacks in an uncontrollable way is generally a bad idea.

If you really want the self-resurrection mechanic, I would suggest that you take a Celestial Warlock, who gets a version that doesn't have nearly the same issues at level 14, and do something else with the race. 1/day self-resurrect is a bit too much to fit into a race template.

If you really want a self-resurrect effect on your race, you'd do well to take a look at the Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance. They have an effect that, once per long rest, when reduced to 0 HP, they stop at 1. So, for your case, if you replace the "recover to full HP" part of Phoenix Rebirth with a "recover to 1 HP", and remove the Hollow Bones, you have something that actually starts to look like it could be balanced. I'd further suggest that the fiery explosion needs to be party-friendly or gone. I'm not sure quite how to balance it if it is party-friendly, but it's nearly unplayable if not. Kudos to @J. A. Streich for remembering that little half-orc feature.

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