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Quoth the Raven
Kenku are cursed people, stripped of their flight and their true voices and left to wander the material plane. Introduced back in 3rd edition D & D as a simple cackle monster, kenku have now been given a fighting find as a player raceway of their own. Flocks of kenku carve out territories among slums and downtrodden cities. a lot like their raven kin, the bird-folk pinch and pilfer their way through life .
They are clever thieves of both coin and acculturation, lacking a creative voice of their own but perfecting the art of the mimic and forgery. recently made tied more popular due to critical Role ’ s “ Kiri ”, the raven-folk are flocking to game tables around the world. Playing a kenku is a improbable acting opportunity, as you cobble together your speech through stolen fragments and chaotic noise. Follow us deep into the criminal underbelly as we go through everything you need to know .
Reading: Kenku 5E – Dungeons and Dragons
Kenku Culture
The actual origins of the kenku aren ’ thymine net ( largely due to conflicting lore between editions ) but while the proper nouns may have changed around the report has the lapp notes. The kenku started as proper bird-folk with wings, creative endowment, and a voice of their own. They served some sort of dark headmaster and attempted to betray them by stealing some extremely important glistening bangle. The kenku were caught and given an all-mighty deity tied punishment and were nerfed to obliviousness, then they were let unleash to wander around the material plane .
The leave of all this is a deeply wounded culture that focuses on regaining what was lost .
Each kenku instinctually misses their ability to fly and their dreams take them heavenward. Kenku flocks are drawn to high places, and since they rarely have any real resources of their own, they normally settle in destroy towers or high forget places amongst the city sprawl. Spells and magic trick items that provide flight are particularly prized, and many kenku study charming explicitly to one day take to the sky .
Kenku have no empires or fortunes, they scrape their direction by making manipulation of what talents their people have left, apery and thieving. Each kenku can repeat the things they hear absolutely but have no spokesperson of their own. They create their “ vocabulary ” out of words they ’ ve hear, and their manner of speaking is often choppy and segmented. This “ lack of voice ” applies to their aesthetic voice equally well and kenku find it about impossible to create something new, a wind still aching from their ancestral curse. Without an artistic voice kenku remain a cultural echo, constantly on the edge but never forming a real culture of their own ..
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Kenku Appearance
Unlike most 5e races, kenku are limited in their appearance. Unlike aarakocra who get a wonderfully generic description of “ like a shuttlecock ”, kenku have a solidly raven-like appearance. You have a little wiggle-room in that the crow and raven family is a bit more vary than people realize. Crows, ravens and magpies all parcel quite a sting of stereotyped black feathers, but you can play around with mottle flannel and black patterns or the apparitional opalescence of the finest raven feathers. You besides have a range of themes to play with using a simple raven. The corvids encompass the arcane mysticism of a charming ’ s familiar, the ghastly mortality of the carrion birds, and the amusing mischief of the mockingbirds .
The real jackpot of creative quad lies not in your modern kenku quality ’ randomness appearance, but in their voice. As a kenku, your voice should be derived from words and sounds you ’ ve hear in the past. well educated kenku may well speak fluidly and seamlessly, but a kenku thief off the street may well speak in fragments and sound effects. cipher expects you to be a capital voice actor but try coming up with some curious manner of speaking fragments for your new kenku, like phrases spoken with awkward or faulty inflections or even by slipping the odd reasoned impression into your manner of speaking patterns. If done well this can be an amazing bit of act, but make certain to knock it off if your colleague players seem annoyed .
Kenku Names
Kenku names are literally sound effects rather than something that can be written down. Their perfect apery means that a kenku ’ second name could be the bang of a gunfire, the aristocratic scent among fall leaves, or the squeak of a denounce. Kenku names have no involve for sex but do tend to relate to the kenku ’ s profession or character. Warriors will have names that relate to the audio of battle like a sword clang or the twang of a bowstring. Kenku within city underbellies normally use noises that can easily pass for alley animals, like rat scratches or pigeon coo. ultimately, kenku with regular professions normally take a name related to it, such as ocean spraying for a boater or the rustle of wood shavings for a carpenter
obviously, cipher but kenku can reproduce these sounds, so they provide non-kenku with a literal translation. A kenku whose name is the sound of hammering would be “ Hammerer ”, and a kenku whose name is the sound of a sword slice would be called “ Slicer ”. The stick to list contains the literal non-kenku translations for many kenku names :
Kenku Names: Barker, Chewing, Clapper, Duck Quacks, Gnasher, Lute String, Mallet Smash, Mauler, Panda Sneeze, Potion Crash, Rat Squeak, Scrubber, Splitter, Tree Creak .
Kenku Traits
Your kenku character has the play along racial traits .
Ability Score Increase : Your Dexterity mark increases by 2, and your Wisdom seduce increases by 1 .
Age: Kenku have shorter lifespans than humans. They reach maturity at about 12 years old and can live to 60 .
Alignment: Kenku are chaotic creatures, rarely making enduring commitments, and they care largely for preserving their own hides. They are by and large chaotic inert in expectation .
Size: Kenku are around 5 feet improbable and consider between 90 and 120 pounds. Your size is Medium .
Speed: Your nucleotide walking focal ratio is 30 feet .
Expert Forgery: You can duplicate other creatures ’ handwriting and craftwork. You have advantage on all checks made to produce forgeries or duplicates of existing objects .
Kenku Training : You are technical in your choice of two of the pursuit skills : Acrobatics, Deception, Stealth, and Sleight of Hand .
Mimicry : You can mimic sounds you have heard, including voices. A creature that hears the sounds you make can tell they are imitations with a successful Wisdom ( Insight ) check opposed by your Charisma ( Deception ) hindrance .
Languages: You can read and write Common and Auran, but you can speak entirely by using your Mimicry trait .
Kenku don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate have a whole distribute of abilities, but what they have does have a bunch of applications. Let ’ s go through them one at a time .
Ability Score Increase: +2 to Dexterity and +1 to Wisdom is a solid boost for most Wisdom based classes and Dexterity based martial classes. Rangers, Clerics, Druids, Monks, Rogues, and Dexterity based Fighters are all excellent choices .
Age: rarely matters in 5e but a little on the short side relatively .
Alignment: Chaotic and typically egoistic, very improbable to be truly logical or to act as the voice of argue .
Size: They ’ re on the little side of medium, but still standard-sized, nothing to note very .
Speed: Stock standard 30-foot movement, silent better than a penalty .
Expert Forgery: I feel like this was intended as a stronger ability but in practice it rarely comes up and does n’t help a much as it should. You don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate profit any special tool proficiencies here, so if you plan on copying a key or some authoritative bangle you better have the tool set and proficiency to do so. This feature gives you advantage on the counterfeit checks you attempt, but you ’ re not actually getting the ability to attempt them .
Kenku Training: Bonus skill proficiencies are a boom and you get to choose two from some of the best. Grab whichever proficiencies aren ’ t already granted by your class and background .
Mimicry: This is the iconic ability that the whole kenku identity is wrapped around. sadly, it ’ s not great, it ’ randomness good, but the developers seemed to weigh it reasonably heavily. You get to mimic sounds absolutely, note though that you don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate gain the ability to throw your part or project in any way. It ’ s obviously an ability designed for furtive rogues and general subterfuge. actually though, it normally ends up being used to confuse the odd guard and little else. Mimicry has a HUGE total of potential, from impersonating crucial NPCs to adding the convert sound effects to even minor illusions, it just depends on how creative you get with it and how creative your DM allows you to be .
Languages: Common and Auran, though you can alone talk in mimicry. Auran is a pretty rare language so it ’ s not likely to come up in most adventures .
Kenku Builds
5e D & D is amazingly elastic, and no class or background you pick for your future kenku fictional character will be “ wrong ”. however, if you ’ re concerned in optimization, the postdate build up ideas can be great starting points for your next adventurer :
Graveyard Raven
Rogues are already a thematic fit for kenku, but the newly rogue subclass “ The Revived ” fits evening better and has excellent synergy with the kenku expert forgery ability. Revived rogues gain an ability called tokens of past lives that lets them trade out a new tool or skill proficiency every long rest. Odd tool proficiencies are the missing while of the forgery perplex. Need jewelry maker ‘s instrument proficiency to make a bogus of that signet ring or smith ’ second tools to replicate that key ? Bam, good give it a retentive perch and you ’ ll know how to use whichever cock is right for the occupation, then get advantage on using it .
Swooping Crane
Their lore doesn ’ thymine make a distribute of sense for monks, but the bonus to Dexterity and Wisdom lines up absolutely. The kenku abilities will allow you to play your monk more stealthily, scouting out the opponents and possibly misleading them away from your allies. It ’ s a foreign synergy, but it works.
Twin Birds
Kenku abilities already agate line up nicely with cleric s and their furtive abilities mix nicely with the trickery domain. You ’ ll end up playing a cleric that can besides play a fortune of the rogue ’ randomness character, so it ’ s a big blame if your party lacks both and you want to supply them both. The invoke duplicity ability is besides amazing with your mimicry ability, since you can use it in concurrence with minor illusion both your “ voice ” and your copy ’ randomness “ voice ” will be identical. Have fun confusing the guards with your doppelganger boo .
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