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Recently, this question of mine was closed as too broad:

Avatars of Nature

I can understand the impulse given the amount of information I provided, however I intentionally tried to mirror this question as it was not closed:

Is this homebrew Dryad Sapling race (including its subraces) balanced compared to the official published races? (version 2)

Once closed, I tried to solicit for corrections but have received no clarification, so I am asking here. What about my question makes it fall under too broad rules while the other one does not?

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    \$\begingroup\$ I'll note that the first post you link was deleted as "abandoned" by an automated process. Would you like it undeleted (so that other users with <10K rep can see what you're referencing) or are you happy with it as is? \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    May 10, 2019 at 17:07
  • \$\begingroup\$ yes please undelete it. If only to access for discussion. \$\endgroup\$ May 10, 2019 at 17:12

1 Answer 1

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The first thing I'll say is that your post is for 3.5 edition, whereas the other post is for 5th edition. Now, we don't have a policy, formal or informal, that says "homebrew posts are under tighter scrutiny for 3.5e than for 5e" (or anything similar). But it is worth considering that the scope of a question can vary by edition, where questions that have relatively simple/obvious answers may not be so simple or obvious in other editions, even if the essential question is the same.

The bigger thing, at least from my vantage point, is that your question does ultimately bump up against the acceptable limits of how expansive we allow questions to get. One major limiting factor in the Dryad question was the fact that most of the different options were sub-races, not races, meaning

  • Many core elements of each sub-race were identical (as part of the root entity)
  • Most of the features provided uniquely to each Sub-race were relatively simple, constituting different Ability Score Increases, Weapon proficiencies, and Language proficiencies.

Because of this, as you can see in the answer that I provided to the question, it was possible to evaluate the broad power level of each sub-race without needing to dedicate multiple paragraphs each time I moved to talking about a different sub-race. Instead, I could look at one of them specifically and use it to broadly evaluate all of them.

It's true that there's a thematic similarity between each of the races you've described in your post, but there are a lot of very stark contrasts in capabilities and features between each of them.

Now I want to make clear, speaking from a Homebrew perspective: This is not a bad thing. You're inventing a lot of interesting mechanics (or combining preexisting mechanics) and that will make for interesting homebrew races that players might want to use.

However, because of how significantly different these races are from each other, it's not really appropriate to ask a single question trying to address all of them. A better approach would almost certainly be to split these up into individual questions and link them to each other (either through comments or by linking them in the post itself) so that readers can find the context for each race.

Worth noting is that there's no express prohibition on posting many [legitimate] questions all at once, but it's unlikely each race will get the attention it deserves if you do that (and some will probably accumulate downvotes if it seems like you're "spamming" the 3.5e feed). So my recommendation is to, over the course of a few weeks, post each race in its own post, one at a time, give it a day or two to accumulate votes/answers, then post the next one. That way, each option can get the attention it deserves and you won't be perceived as spamming the tag.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ i appreciate your input and I will certainly be incorporating them and re-asking these questions in that way. However, I am concerned about not only if these characters are balanced with the game world, but balanced among each other. Ideally, theses characters would all be of same level, but simply more applicable to certain types of characters. How best could I ask this question, as it would require knowledge of each subrace? \$\endgroup\$ May 10, 2019 at 18:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ConnorClarke That might just mean it’s not suited to how this site works. There are lots of other sites that work differently. \$\endgroup\$ May 11, 2019 at 20:33

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