The New Spelljammer Hadozee Race Is Hilariously Unbalanced

Talking RAW here; I'm certain the designers didn't intend this. I'll suggest fixes to the race at the end of this post.

The Hadozee are so incredibly fast and exploitable that a deviation from RAW is absolutely essential. At the moment they have a base walking speed of 150ft.

The Hadozee glide ability says any time they move downwards in the air (doesn't have to be a "fall"), they can glide 5ft at no movement cost. A 10 strength hadozee can perform a standing, vertical jump of 1ft into the air (standing high jump distance = 3+Strength/2). They then glide 5ft forward. This whole manoeuvre costs 1ft of movement.

With 30ft movement available from level 1, they can “jump-glide” 150ft per turn at no cost, and at no risk of falling damage. This is obviously overpowered for any level 1 character, let alone a race with some other serious benefits.

Fixes:

I recommend that DMs limit the hadozee glide ability to once per turn. This means the “jump-glide loop” can’t be repeated endlessly for every level 1 hadozee getting a base movement speed greater than the Quickling.

Alternatively, limit the hadozee glide to a falling height of 10ft or above!

Gliding from a distance of 10ft or more in the air will still give fall damage to the player unless they use their reaction to negate it, which they can only do once per turn anyway.

Thus, any attempts to “jump-glide loop” will result in massive, cumulative fall damage.

How did this happen?

I’m surprised that the Hadozee reached print as is. I can’t imagine anyone playtesting the race not finding this exploit immediately, especially when the whole thing can be averted with a single sentence restricting the glide to once per turn.

My theory is that originally the glide used your reaction, but late in development they added in the fall damage reduction ability, and so took away the reaction to glide so it would be useable.

Even so, I think the race is really cool, and restricting the glide to once per turn doesn’t take away from the flavour and intent of the ability. It does need some restriction though, because as they stand, the Hadozee is unbalanced, abeit hilarious.