Tabaxi
by Prince Phantom
This race is picked for two reasons and two reasons only. Either you want to be a cat girl, or your build centers around movement speed. Half of you are here for the first reason, and the other half claim to be here for the second reason but are definitely lying. Either way, I’ll humor you by going over the mechanics.
Tabaxi Features
Speed: 30ft walking and a climbing speed equal to our walking speed: Climbing speeds on player characters are pretty rare, so let’s go over exactly how they work. Without a climbing speed, each foot of movement costs 2ft, meaning a character without a climbing speed and a 30ft movement speed could climb 15ft in one round. A character with a climbing speed suffers no such penalty, but any character who attempts to climb a sufficiently difficult surface (a sheer cliff with minimal handholds for example) still needs to make an Athletics check, the DC of which is set by the DM. That means that to take the most advantage of this climbing speed, you’ll want to get proficiency in Athletics. I do believe that investing in this is worth it, especially if your DM loves to use more vertical battle maps with plenty of places to climb up and stay away from enemy attacks. Think of it as a balanced version of flying.
Cat’s Claws: This is a d6 unarmed strike that basically only helps early tier Monks. We can’t even use these while our hands are full unlike some natural weapons, so they don’t even have that niche utility.
Cat’s Talent: This is proficiency in the two best skills in the game, and both play very well into the type of build that most Tabaxi players are interested in.
Darkvision: Did you know that normal cats in 5e don’t have darkvision? The heck is up with that?!
Feline Agility: This is the headline feature for this race. Basically, you can double your speed for an entire turn once, and then recharge this ability by not moving at all on a turn. This essentially means that you will have at least one use of this at the start of every combat, allowing you to almost always have perfect positioning at the start of every fight. This is a genuinely amazing ability, and also has the fun niche of being part of how you build the fastest character in the game, as no other race is offering a movement burst anywhere close to this.
There are a lot of builds that would love the mechanics offered by the Tabaxi. Casters and ranged characters will love the ability to get to a safe position at the start of combat. Melee builds will appreciate being able to consistently engage on round one and have an easier time switching targets. All around I think this is a very under appreciated race that works for a lot of different build concepts, and I highly recommend taking a look at it for your next character.
Final Rating: 4/5
Tabaxi (Legacy)
The only difference between this and the revised version is that our claws deal a d4 instead of a d6 of damage, making this strictly worse than the revised version.
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