Grippli: Playable Amphibians (Revised Edition) (5e)

This racial book clocks in at 8 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 4 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

The grippli for 5e, heh? Now I’m all for that! I’m a big fan of the small, friendly, froggy, folk, so how is the race represented here? Well, we actually employ the same level of depth for the race’s fluff and playing them that we have seen in the PHB – thus, the grippli are introduced as colorful, hard-working and fun-loving individuals, including notes on how they perceive halflings, gnomes and humans. Notes on their culture and nomenclature complement the grippli race provided here.

From a rules-perspective, Grippli increase their Dexterity by 2, have a 30 ft. speed (and a 20 ft. swimming speed, which is, in a nitpick, called swim speed -which is only used in statblocks, not in ability rules), base proficiency in Perception checks as well as proficiency in Survival. They can also long jump double their Strength score feet from standing still and better high jumps as well and may breathe freely on land and under water.

We also get 3 subraces: Bog Born increase Cha by 1, gain darkvision and may use their prehensile tongues as a bonus action to manipulate objects of up to 25 ft. away, but not magic or attack with the tongue.

Lake strider gripplis increase Wisdom by 1, have a swimming speed of 30 ft., know instinctively where North is and gain advantage on Dex-checks and saves to maintain footing in adverse conditions. Okay…does this include abilities and attacks that render you prone? I assume it does, but I’m still not 100% sure.

The third of the subraces would be the patternback, who increases Constitution by 1, gains climbing speed 30 feet and 3/day curare sweat now, in the revison, actually has an awesome, cool and powerful, but balanced mechanic – kudos for improving that one significantly!!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting, on a formal level, is very good; on a rules-level, the pdf has a minor deviation in the rules-wording or two, but nothing serious. Layout adheres to a printer-friendly, minimalistic two-column b/w-standard and the pdf sports numerous gorgeous full-color artworks of grippli, though ardent fans of 3pp-material may recognize them from other publications. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.

Ken Pawlik’s revised grippli are smooth and streamlined, with all the nasty bits taken care of – you may have noted the lack of complaints and there is a reason for that: The revision makes for an awesome, inexpensive deal and what we get race-wise, is pretty much neatly balanced with the core races. Barring any complaints of a serious manner and considering the low price and how much I like the curare sweat’s new mechanic, I will settle on a final verdict of 5 stars just short of my seal of approval.

You can get this cool race here on OBS!

Endzeitgeist out.

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