I've had Spelljammer on the brain.
It's crazy, but the Travelers of the Multiverse Unearthed Arcana, which was our first very clear hint that we'd be getting a 5th Edition Spelljammer release, came out all the way back in October - we're closer now to the actual release than that UA was to the announcement.
And now, I'm basically just waffling on whether I want to switch my order from the alternate cover version of the books to the standard version (I think I like the cover art better on that one - but I've often found the soft-finish books hold up better - my local store doesn't charge more for the alternative, so I've just got to make up my mind some time in the next four months).
My Sunday group has been playing a Spelljammer campaign, using lore from the older version of the setting with anticipated updates coming when the new books come out. It's been slow-going - we've only had maybe four sessions in possibly as many months - hoping this gets ramped up with some real-life issues resolved. Anyway, two of our players are playing as Astral Elves while one of us is playing a Plasmoid (with a gnome and myself as a human filling out the team).
On a conceptual level, humanoid races in fantasy and alien species in sci fi often fill the same roles. I mean, you look at the people in Star Trek (particularly the Next Generation era) and you can very clearly draw parallels between Vulcans and High Elves, Romulans and Dark Elves, Klingons and Orcs (indeed, I think Next Gen Klingons were a huge inspiration for the more nuanced, not-automatically-evil orcs we got in franchises like Warcraft,) and you've even got the Borg as a kind of sci-fi version of the undead - a cybernetic zombie plague.
I think that you could easily imagine the Giff or the Hadozee in any other D&D setting, but things like the Autognome, the Thri-kreen, and particularly the Plasmoid really feel like they're stretching out into that "anything goes" world of "cantina" sci fi.
So, I want to look at these playable races from both a flavor and mechanical perspective. We've got stuff that's already six months old, and has probably been iterated upon significantly, so I don't really want to get deep into mechanics that might change. We're going to approach these more on a kind of philosophical level.
Astral Elves:
I don't know what the ultimate plan for sub-races is going to be moving forward in 5th Edition, or perhaps more accurately 5.5/6th Edition. On one hand, given that they're coming out before the 2024 Player's Handbook, you'd need to basically reprint the Elf itself to then apply this as a sub-race, and much as we saw in Monsters of the Multiverse, they're just making these sub-races into full races of their own, though perhaps with a creature type tag. I do wonder if they're just going to make everything independent, given that the Githzerai and Githyanki were published as full races in MotM.
In the UA, you get a bonus cantrip (dancing lights, light, or sacred flame,) which is fine, and Radiant Soul, which has you actually heal for a bit on a successful death save once per day - I'm trying to remember if our cleric forgot to use that or just failed on all their death saves.
Of all the races here, though, this one feels the least exciting on a conceptual level. Elves are everywhere, and there's not a ton that makes these folks feel different than other elves, except that they can be even older. Obviously, especially if Spelljammer is developing the Astral Plane as a core part of the setting, there will be some fleshing out of that plane, but I feel like there's a lot more that's interesting about the Githyanki if I want to play a native to the Astral Plane.
Autognome:
I'm a little heartbroken that they didn't make Warforged a setting-agnostic race in Monsters of the Multiverse. What I find sort of amazing about the Autognome is the commitment (at least in UA) to something the Warforged get around - namely, that the race is a construct.
In the UA for the gothic lineages that were eventually published in Van Richten's, they played with the idea of making an undead or construct playable race, but they had to sort of jump through hoops and use unintuitive rules to allow healing spells to work on them. Here, though, they have a different way of dealing with that. Autognomes are constructs, but they can be affected by Cure Wounds, Healing Word, and Spare the Dying.
It's an interesting kludge, but I also think that, especially at higher levels of play, this isn't going to cut it. A blanket "spells that restore hit points that would normally not affect constructs nevertheless do affect you" would probably be a better solution.
On a philosophical level, though, what does it mean for a character to be a construct? Are constructs inherently, for example, soulless? Warforged in Eberron explicitly have souls just like any other humanoid race - and they are considered a humanoid race even though they're made of inorganic material (well, also sometimes wood and leather). I wonder if this will make the cut in the final version of the books.
While I might like a science-fantasy setting to more generally have a "robot" playable race, these feel very much in keeping especially with the idea of gnomes as the culture built most around mechanical tinkering.
Giff:
On a mechanical level, there's just not enough here - especially given that one of its two features (well, three given the swimming speed - which can be very important in some situations) only works for melee combatants - it does help on melee spell attacks, but much like how when the air force is using rifles, things have gone seriously wrong, when my wizard is in melee, things are not going great.
What I want to know more about is their culture. As presented in Mordenkainen's (actually both books, come to think of it) the Giff have that sort of "gentleman soldier" vibe like a 19th Century British explorer in a pith helmet. I think they're probably going to flesh out and nuance that a bit (maybe pull back on the colonialist imagery,) which we got a little hint of in the Spelljammer presentation when Chris Perkins referred to them as a people "looking for home in all the wrong places."
Fundamentally, they're hippo people, which is great. I think the association with firearms and explosives is probably going to depend on how much the setting book emphasizes those elements.
Hadozee:
So, after the Astral Elf, this is the one that inspires me the least, but I kind of feel like that means that I will find myself thinking about them a lot later down the line and decide that I must make a Hadozee character. There's nothing that's screaming sci fi over fantasy with this race, but I suppose there is some bit of the old "planetary romance" genre in their design.
The ability to both climb and glide actually sets up some very fun scenarios.
Plasmoid:
The real break-out star here, these are, I think, straight-up, the weirdest playable race in all of 5th Edition, and that weirdness really fits in with the gonzo sci-fi world that Spelljammer represents.
The Amorphous trait occupies a central place in my mind, and the difficulties of playing a character who isn't wearing or carrying anything - I think basically a Monk is the only such character who would be fully effective (our Rogue is going to go Soulknife so that they're always armed). Still, even if you want to play a heavily-armored character, there's tons here, mechanically, that you can make use of.
In our game, we're treating the plasmoid character as something of an anomaly - they're very friendly, and most of the player characters (mine especially) have an established friendship with them (my artificer constructed a sort of bowl/bucket for them to sleep in). But I'm curious to see what sort of society and civilization they might have.
Thri-Kreen:
Man, I feel like the Thri-Kreen are just beaten out for weirdest alien by the Plasmoids, and that's a shame given how cool the Thri-Kreen are.
Indeed, though they were established in more "fantasy" settings, the idea of bug-people feels like a very sci-fi trope. Mechanically, like the Plasmoid, these have a lot going for them - for one thing, you could be both a dual-wielder and use a shield, or you could be a very effective martial/melee hybrid, able to use your main hands for weapons and your secondary hands for somatic spell components.
Thri-Kreen Telepathy is also fantastic, though I'd like to see if we can get some clarification as to whether this is two-way telepathy or more like the Great Old One's Awakened Mind.
Interestingly, like the Autognome and Plasmoid, at least in the UA, the Thri-kreen is neither humanoid nor fey (the two creature types used by established playable races) and is listed as a monstrosity - which is especially weird given that they're humanoids in the Monster Manual (where Centaurs are monstrosities but the playable race is fey.) Like Oozes, aside from immunity to "X person" spells like Charm Person, Monstrosities don't really carry a ton of mechanical baggage, so I think there's plenty of room for making playable races these other creature types. (Really, undead and constructs are the ones that have the big issue re: healing spells).
I hope that we're going to see a lot of players pick these weird guys, as I think they're quite cool.
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