Expanding the Caliban Spectrum

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

I think Mytteri's Kittens' association with rebelliousness should be somehow translated from mere flavour to mechanics. They should live up to their name.
The lazy solution would be to say they 'lean towards chaotic alignments', but I don't like it when a race or class is inherently tied to an alignment. It makes them sound like a monolith, which is exactly what I don't want this subrace to be.
I don't want it to feel like these characters are forced to be rebels.
So instead, I want to make it easier for them to be ones if they choose to.
So I want them to be not inherently chaotic, but inherently hard to dominate. Their wisdom bonus is already helping. Maybe add a will save proficency? Do you know any other mechanics that can help with that?

[Hell_Born]

So here are my ideas for a Nova Vassan strain:

- Ability stats modifiers:
The original B&B subraces are each very min-maxed toward a specific class group. Brutes can only be fighters or barbarians, witchspawns can only be arcane spellcasters, banshees can only be bards... It's not like the D&D police is going to arrest you if you play them as a different class, but it would simply make for a weak character. They try to make Bestials good as druids by giving them the 'magical affinity' option, but is one additional cantrip 3 times a day what would make you better at the class? To me sounds like an even better reason to play them as a barbarians with a tiny bit of druidic magic.
I want Mytteri's Kittens to be more versatile. A subrace that can more or less fit as either ranger, monk, rouge, druid or even (barring social circumstances) cleric, yet still have a significant weakness in some areas.
So I came up with this:
Mytteri's Kittens have a peculiar condition (ehm ehm hypermobility) in which the connections between tissues are looser than normal, making them a tad more agile than nature should allow but also prone to injuries and exhaustion. (-2 Con, +2 Dex).
Mentally, they struggle to grasp human social norms and cues (and often dislike them even when understanding them), but have an eye for detail and an inner emotional strength (-2 Cha, +Wis).

- As for appropriate deformities, a few I could think of from the original list are: fur (obviously), multi-segmented limbs, and tail.

Just to comment, but that kind of racial pigeonholing was something that was just the way things were in older editions of D&D. 3e had it bad - remember Spellscales, the race who were literally only possibly decent as Charisma-based spellcasters because they got a Charisma bonus and their big racial feature was a modular metamagic boost to all spells they cast? - but in its defense, it was at least doing better than AD&D, where you literally were only able to take certain classes (and, RAW, only to certain levels) if you played anything that wasn't a human. We didn't start seeing more of an "accentuate the positive" approach to racial design until 4th edition.

Also, Level Adjustment was just an awful, AWFUL mechanic.

But all that aside, that looks like a pretty decent set of ability score bonuses and maluses to me.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Just to comment, but that kind of racial pigeonholing was something that was just the way things were in older editions of D&D. 3e had it bad - remember Spellscales, the race who were literally only possibly decent as Charisma-based spellcasters because they got a Charisma bonus and their big racial feature was a modular metamagic boost to all spells they cast? - but in its defense, it was at least doing better than AD&D, where you literally were only able to take certain classes (and, RAW, only to certain levels) if you played anything that wasn't a human. We didn't start seeing more of an "accentuate the positive" approach to racial design until 4th edition.

Also, Level Adjustment was just an awful, AWFUL mechanic.

But all that aside, that looks like a pretty decent set of ability score bonuses and maluses to me.

Actually I don't remember, because I wasn't born yet then. I think. I'm a 4e kid.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

I just noticed that the 'spinnerets' deformity let's you play a biologically accurate Spiderman, and now I know what my next character is going to be.