Crafting Heritages and Cultures: A Point Buy Guide (A5e/5e)

From a designer of A5e, a point buy guide to crafting your own heritages and cultures so you can make the rules fit your homebrew.

Ever had a player ask if they can play a unicorn? Or a Mermaid? Or a teeny-tiny fairy? Or how about an ogre?

And then you've had to have that awkward conversation about how this "is a game where you can do anything you want (but you can't do that)". If you're tired of sounding like a Meatloaf song title than excellent news! In a succinct 46 pages this guide will take you through how to balance your own creations of heritages/races and how to give your lovingly written cultures some mechanical teeth to encourage players to lean in.

There's a point based template including an absolutely massive range that would allow you to recreate pretty much any creature in 5e or A5e, and also how to edit them so that you can get rid of the things you don't like AND still keep it balanced with the core rules. Don't like Darkvision? You can take it out and put something better in. Bored of passive abilities? Take them out and put active ones in!

Got a player that really wants to fly? We've got 3 different kinds of flight that you can have either at level 1, or graded to pop up at level 5, want wings but don't want to deal with flying? We've got that here too! But that's not the real value, if you've ever worried about "how do I balance this?" well with dozens of traits, worked examples and a handy-dandy rubric to help you keep on track, you'll be making your own stuff in no time! And that's a good thing!

Remember: Happy players make for Happy GMs and Happy GMs make for happy players.