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[Skies] Ancestry - Cloudling
🕑 Added 2023-02-20 15:02:00 +0000 UTCA skybound people, cloudlings trace their origins to the vast primal magic of the open sky. Whichever the case, the cloudling loses its original ancestry and becomes something entirely different.
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I had not yet created an ancestry capable of limitless flight (the only other flying ancestry is the myrachid, aka million bugs), so I figured an open sky theme would be the perfect time to do so. Thematically, I wanted to build upon sky magic - whether from dragons or giants or gods. Throughout the process, I was balancing the mechanics against a modified version of the Greater Detect Balance sheet.
Let's take a look at the traits, from most to least impactful.
- Cloudborn Drift (Flight). The cloudling can be most directly compared to the aarakocra, another flying race. Since flight is powerful at low levels, a flying character is typically balanced by only a couple other minor traits. However, the cloudling's flight is more akin to levitation and provides only 20 feet of fly speed (as opposed to matching walk speed). This somewhat limits flight as a means of escape or high speed combat mobility (particularly for monks), but is still useful!
- Unshackled. Reduces or possibly negates the impact of speed reduction. Note that this does not come into effect against restrained, incapacitated, or grapples (since those reduce your speed to 0), or difficult terrain (since that imposes a movement cost but does not affect your speed; the cloudling can just fly anyway). In practice, this is trait helps against a small number of spell effects, such as ray of frost, slow, or spirit guardians, some kind of environmental effect, or a monster attack/debuff. It wouldn't normally come up a lot.
- Skybound. Pick your flavor of proficiency. Arcana is fitting here for those descended from elemental origins (since Arcana can be used to identify planes of existence).
- Lightweight. A minor trait. It allows a Medium cloudling to mount a Medium mount without the drawbacks of being Small (aka heavy weapons) and allows Tiny allies to carry the cloudling. This is rare though, since mount and flight builds aren't compatible and Tiny characters are very rare. The GM can decide whether this reduced weight affects other things as well, beyond what's defined.
In return, Tiny enemies can grapple or shove the cloudling. Luckily you'll rarely see a Tiny enemy intent on grappling (and their strength is probably poor anyway). - Freedom of Air. Squeezing almost never happens in a game, but good for you if it happens.
Overall, the cloudling is pretty fun to play - the flight is pretty nice and Unshackled effectively ensures you can't be slowed. Lightweight is pretty flavorful too and it'd be fun to explore its uses.
![[Skies] Ancestry - Cloudling](https://img10.patrefans.com/storage/11/gr/at/563145-019e84be-95f6-7ce0-949d-9dccbe6e87f9.png)
