I'm trying to homebrew the goliath and orc because Powerful Build is really lackluster in its current iteration. I would like to make these large und muscly races feel more powerful than a gnome of similar strength without giving ASIs to them. (Basically adopting WotC's new approach.) I am not sure if it would be too imbalanced and how to assign points to the various racial features to compare them to other baseline races. (I am aware of Detect Balance but a bit clueless there.)
What I would like to do is give both orcs and goliaths Advantage on all Strength Checks and Strength Saving Throws based on their Powerful Build feature. Do you think that this would be balanced when measured with something like Detect Balance? These are basically the One D&D UA race traits with my additions.
It would be really helpful if you could answer this with your One D&D experience in mind but a general answer on the overall and rough power level of these traits would be okay as well.
These would be the homebrew races (basically UA plus my stuff):
GOLIATH TRAITS
Creature Type: Humanoid
Size: Medium (about 7–8 feet tall)
Speed: 35 feet
Life Span: 80 years on average
Giant Ancestry. You are descended from Giants. Choose one of the following benefits—a supernatural boon from your ancestry; you can use the
chosen benefit a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and
you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest:
Cloud’s Jaunt (Cloud Giant). As a Bonus Action, you magically Teleport up to
30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.
Fire’s Burn (Fire Giant). When you hit a target with an Attack Roll and deal damage to it, you
can also deal 1d10 Fire Damage to that target.
Frost’s Chill (Frost Giant). When you hit a target with an Attack Roll and deal damage to
it, you can also deal 1d6 Cold Damage to that target and reduce its
Speed by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.
Hill’s Tumble (Hill Giant). When you hit a Large or smaller creature with an Attack
Roll and deal damage to it, you can knock that target Prone.
Stone’s Endurance (Stone Giant). When you take damage, you can use your
Reaction to roll a d12. Add your Constitution modifier to the number
rolled and reduce the damage by that total.
Storm’s Thunder (Storm Giant). When you take damage from a creature within 60 feet of you,
you can use your Reaction to deal 1d8 Thunder Damage to that creature.
Large Form. Starting at 5th level, you gain the ability to
supernaturally grow. As a Bonus Action, you change your Size to Large,
provided you’re in a big enough space. This transformation lasts for
10 minutes or until you end it as a Bonus Action. During that
duration, you have Advantage on Strength Checks, and your Speed
increases by 10 feet. Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again
until you finish a Long Rest.
Powerful Build. You have Advantage on Strength Checks and Saving Throws.
You also count as one Size larger when determining your carrying
capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
ORC TRAITS
Creature Type: Humanoid
Size: Medium (about 6–7 feet tall)
Speed: 30 feet
Life Span: 80 years on average
Adrenaline Rush. You can take the Dash Action as
a Bonus Action. When you do so, you gain a number of Temporary Hit
Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus. You can use this trait a
number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all
expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.
Darkvision. You have
Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.
Powerful Build. You have Advantage on Strength Checks and Saving Throws. You count as one Size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Relentless Endurance. When you are reduced to
0 Hit Points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 Hit Point
instead. Once you use this trait, you can’t do so again until you
finish a Long Rest.
Best Answer
This would not be in line with current typical point values
Conclusion first: both the UA goliath and orc are already strong compared to many other current races. Your improvment would push them up further. The resulting race would not be balanced compared to current races, at least not if you use Detect Balance as your yardstick. It might be OK for the future races, which seem to be a bit more powerful, but as those are still in flux, no-one can say.
Unfortunately, it does not make sense to try and benchmark something for balance against the playtest material itself, because the playtest clearly states on page one of each of its PDFs under Power Level:
But it can make sense to benchmark your current proposed race against the other current races. For this comparison we keep in mind that the playtest moves the ability score increase from Race to Background, so for power comparisons, we need to treat the new Race as if it also had a normal ability score increase.
Your modification
Advantage on all Strength checks can be advantage on a situational (worth 2) or common (worth 4) roll. In UA, grappling is just an unarmed strike currently, so you cannot make it a common roll or very common roll by building a grappler. But Athletics is common enough to be at least situational. Maybe put it in the middle at 3 points.
Advantage on all Stength saves can be advantage on a rare (worth 1) or situational (worth 2) roll. Given that the current UA version of powerful build already gives you advantage on grapple saves, probably the most common source of Strength saves (as it is not one of the common spell save types like Wisdom, Constitution or Dexterity), I'd put this at rare, 1 point.
That means your modification is probably an improvement of 4 points.
Now, lets look at the difference between the current race roster from Mordenkainen presents: Monsters of the Multiverse and the Unearthed Arcana playtest races (which we'll assume as balanced) -- that will tell us if the new versions of the race are generally more powerful than the current ones. Then lets look at your modifications to those.
Goliath
The classical goliath scores 27 points, right at the sweet spot (12 ASI plus 2 for Skill Proficiency, 2 for powerful build, 3 cold resistance, 7 stone's endurance, 1 acclimatized).
Speed: The new extra five feet of speed are worth 2 points.
Powerful Build vs Litte Giant: this is replacing a skill proficiency, worth 2 points, with advantage on a situational roll, worth 2 points, neutral in effect.
Large Form seems slightly weaker than Mountain born worth 4 points. If you had Large Form all the time, it would be clearly stronger, as the high speed alone is worth more than 5 points, and advantage on a situational roll is another 2, so it would be 8 or so points. But you only get it once a day, not ongoing. At typically 3-4 encounters per day, only one of which you can use it in, that should make it 2-3 points for Large Form, 1-2 points weaker.
Giant Ancestry is strictly better than Stone's Endurance. It gives you the option of the former, but also 5 other options. Even if they all would be equal, it still would be better as it gives you choice. Is it more powerful? It is if any of the other options is better. I think especially the Hill Giant option is nasty and the Cloud Giant ability to uncounterable misty step 3/day is also better and easily benchmarked: equivalent to 3 level 2 spells/day, easily measured at 9 points, 2 more than the 7 of Stone's endurance.
So overall, the new Goliath is probably 3 points or so stronger than the current one, and with a total of 30, at the top echolon of the power range compared to contemporary classes, and already out of the recommended range for Detect Balance. Adding another 4 points from your improvements on top of that will only make this worse.
Orc
The only difference is the added advantage on grapple saves in the new powerful build.
Adrenaline Rush is not a default option. Aggressive, allowing you to bonus action dash towards the enemy is worth 3 points. Given that proficiency bonus times is roughly often enough to cover your daily encounters (you on avarage have 3-4, so may fall short a bit in tier one), and you can also use it to get away, that part is probably worth 3 points. In addition you also temp hp out of it, reducing the damage you take, from 4 in the lowest to 36 in the highest levels. In the range where most play happens, at proficiency bonus 3 or 4 somewhere between 9 and 16 points. Compared to Stone's Endurance or a use of cure wounds (worth 3 points as a first level spell), this part is probably also worth around 6-8 points, for a total of 10 with speed-up.
The orc is not pre-scored in Detect Balance, it calculates now as
31 points, again, top tier. The situational advantage on the grapple save will add another 2 in the new version, already even more out of the recommended range. Again, if you add another four points on top of that, at 37 points you are well out of the recommended range of 24-27. Even if you value adrenaline rush a lot lower, you will be in the mid-30s.