Kenku, a type of monster, cannot speak in their own voices and can mimic any sounds they have heard, including voices. They cannot synthethize new sentences or use their Mimicry trait to alter the sound of their voice. However, they can create new sounds and communicate only by using sounds they have heard.
Kenku can be used as messengers, delivering cryptic messages and creating quests around artifacts to restore abilities or lift curses. They can also speak normal sentences with different inflections and voices for each one. However, they cannot create new sounds and can only communicate using sounds they have heard.
Kenku can cast spells with verbal components, but they cannot create new sounds. The verbal component of a spell requires a specific tonal and pitch. They can replicate full sentences, even speeches they’ve heard before. If a Kenku has witnessed a single person cast a spell, they know the incantation.
A Kenku cannot cast spells, and their ability to speak or take actions that require hands is limited to their beast form. However, they can use sounds they’ve heard from different sources to form verbal components. Most Kenku use a combination of overheard phrases and can cast verbal spells in D and D 5E.
Despite the lack of an Intelligence Ability Score, Kenku can comrade using different voices when casting spells with verbal components. They can also use overheard phrases and other sounds to create a unique experience for players.
📹 How do you play a Kenku???
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Who cursed kenku?
The Kenku are a cursed humanoid tribe from Laconia, northern Neuphany, who live near Mount Bulan. They resemble birds but cannot fly or speak traditional languages. They communicate using sounds they hear and are rarely seen outside Mount Bulan. However, those sold into slavery or disenfranchised from Laconia may seek to become common bandits, a highly effective career. Game mechanics guide players to create a Kenku character using the same template, as all Kenku in this world are created using this same template.
Can Avada Kedavra be blocked?
The Avada Kedavra, a killing curse from the Harry Potter Wizarding World, is unforgivable and cannot be blocked. It is often mentioned in books and movies, but there have been instances where it was blocked or blue. The curse’s color is green, and it is not blocked. In the Goblet of Fire, Barty Crouch Jr., disguised as Alastor Moody, explains how unforgivable curses work, stating that there are no ways to block it. Fans have various theories about why the curse is always green or blue.
Are kenku evil?
The campaign reveals that the small settlement in the High Forest known as Kenku has a favorable alignment with its deity, Gwaeron, the god of the hunt. Despite its general neutrality or evil nature, Kenku has developed an interest in hunting trolls.
What spell beat Voldemort?
Expelliarmus, or the Disarming Charm, is a spell that drives out a weapon, often a wand, and is often seen in duels. Harry, a skilled combatant, was deeply enamored with the spell and used it to defeat Lord Voldemort. Professor Snape, a former follower of Voldemort, taught Harry the spell during Professor Lockhart’s Duelling Club. Despite initially struggling with the Summoning Charm, Harry quickly developed an aptitude for Expelliarmus, which allowed him to use it in challenging situations.
Within months of learning it, Harry used it to retrieve Riddle’s diary from Malfoy and disarm Lockhart. He spent the final hours of the second year practicing Expelliarmus, becoming very good in the process. This relationship between Harry and Expelliarmus has both positive and negative aspects.
Are Kenku always black?
The Kenku are bipedal creatures with humanoid proportions similar to dwarves, with a height range of approximately four to four and a half feet. They are characterized by a sulky and slouching posture. The color of their skin ranges from light gray to nearly black charcoal, with individual variations in hue.
Why can’t kenku fly?
Kenku, a species of bird, evolved from avians but lacked wings and flight capabilities. Instead, they had arms and bird-like talons for hands and feet. They had black and beady eyes, a long dark-hued beak, and soft feathers on their head and torso. Kenku were slightly smaller than humans, standing around 5 feet and weighing only 75 pounds. They were agile and dexterous, and they wore nondescript brown robes, concealing tools and weaponry. They resembled ravens and were slightly smaller than the average human.
Are Kenku evil?
Kenku are secretive, self-seeking, and cunning creatures with neutral or unaligned views and behaviors. They are opportunistic and unscrupulous, often engaging in illegal or immoral acts. Despite their selfish nature, kenku operate well together and with allies, especially when aided or aiding an ally. They are most dangerous when aided or flanking a foe with an ally, using sneaks and assassins to backstab their victims.
Can Kenku copy spells?
Those who play the kenku game are able to utilise the Expert Forgery feat, which enables them to copy scrolls in a shorter amount of time. Nevertheless, the copying process itself requires the availability of a scroll, which necessitates the expenditure of the full allotted time. Once a single scroll has been obtained, the creation of duplicates can be accomplished in a shorter amount of time. The DM has granted permission for this, and it may be of interest to the gaming community to learn their rationale, given the prevalence of homebrew elements in their game.
Who can do non verbal spells?
The list of wizards and witches known for performing nonverbally performed spells with an incantation includes Albus Dumbledore, Antonin Dolohov, Arthur Weasley, Bartemius Crouch Junior, Bellatrix Lestrange, Bill Weasley, and Bly Carrow. Performing nonverbal spells is challenging and requires concentration and mental discipline. Harry Potter noted that students in his class appeared like they had received an overdose in U-No-Poo due to Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.
Different wand woods, such as Dogwood, Pine, Willow, and Alder, can affect the performance of nonverbal magic. Dogwood wands are noisy and refuse to perform nonverbal magic, while Pine wands are sensitive to non-verbal magic.
Can kenku talk normally?
Kenku, a type of kung fu, can mimic any sound they hear, but cannot create new sounds. They communicate using overheard phrases and sound effects. Kenku cannot invent new ideas or create new things, but can copy existing items with exceptional skill, making them excellent artisans and scribes. They can copy books and make replicas of objects, but few find this work satisfying due to their quest for freedom of flight. Kenku gather in flocks, led by the oldest and most experienced kenku, often called Master, who has the widest store of knowledge to draw on.
Can Kenku steal voices?
The kenku, a race of vagabonds and burglars, were once a powerful, unnamed god but were cursed by their former master for coveting his riches. As punishment, their wings, creativity, and voices were taken away, making them a cursed race. They can only speak through precise mimicry of voices and sounds in the environment, and cannot produce sounds of their own or extrapolate other sounds to speak independently.
They are also stripped of their creativity, leading to a life of “hopeless plagiarism”. Many kenku long for the ability to fly and perform executions by throwing their condemned from towers to mock the lost skill.
In the first and second editions of Dungeons and Dragons, kenku are typically neutrally aligned, while in the third edition, they are usually neutral evil. In the fourth edition, they are unaligned, and in the fifth edition, they tend towards chaotic neutral. They typically work in gangs, clans, or groups called “flocks” in large cities, where they gather riches through theft and robbery. They are not particularly strong, and tend to use cunning rather than force. They are described as excellent minions, scouts, and spies for stronger creatures and often appear in Dungeons and Dragons adventures.
📹 Davvy’s D&D 5e Kenku Guide
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Bird Jesus: “To punish your greed and thievery, you and your descendants shall never have anything of thier own. You will be damned to be thieves in all ways, not even your thoughts shall be original” The last original kenku thought: “aren’t punishments supposed to incite learning? How are we to learn if we can’t have original thoughts-” Bird Jesus: “JUST FOR THAT YOU’RE ALSO LOSING THE ABILITY TO FLY”
I played a Kenku bard who desperately wanted to be understood. Through sheer force of will he not only managed to force creative thoughts, he also kept a book of what different sounds and words meant, eventually managing to “speak” coherently on a regular basis. It was more or less his character arc to defeat what he considered a disability.
I never went as extreme as “Can’t have an original thought” when it came to creativity. They can think, they just can’t create anything new. Example, if they know what a spear is they could figure out how to build one with little trouble. If they don’t, a magical block keeps them from tying a sharp rock to the end of a stick. If they find a sharpened stick they know they can sharpen other sticks, but won’t be able to think of another way to get a similar effect. It’s not that they can’t think, but that their curse prevents them from being creative.
as someone who loves playing this race, remember that non-verbal communication exists, they have fingers to point at things, and can communicate most basic ideas like “follow me”, “yes”, “no” etc through gestures, I think the best way to play them is in an “actions speak louder than words” sort of way, like having them point weapons at people they dislike, stomping off into a corner when they’re mad, jumping around when they’re excited, etc.
See I’ve always regarded kenku as simply perfect mimics. Their fighting techniques. Their constructions. Even the way they walk. They can look at anything someone does and automatically mimic it perfectly exactly as they saw it. This gives them more to actually do because it makes them a walking recorder. Someone basically gives a murder confession around a kenku? The kenku can repeat that confession in that person’s voice later on with no problem. Someone uses specific hand motions to achieve a spell. The kenku can instantly mimic those motions. Yes it does mean in some situations their hyper useful and in others their potentially useless. But thats most even partially exotic races right?
I actually have a Kenku character that I’ve wanted to use named Bord Burd the Bird Bard whose entire gimmick is mimicking their human dad’s voice, who was a wizard that sung country music in his past time. Bord memorized his songs since he was little, and he wants to share his dad’s talent with the rest of the world as a traveling country musician
So they may piss a few people off. But as a DM, I had a character want to play a Kenku for a Thieves Guild campaign I was running and we basically tossed a fair bit of lore out the window. So the compromise we made was that instead of bird noises, the character was able to communicate “normally” with people they’ve known the longest. And as the campaign went on communication was less akin to a game of telephone and more straight understanding. The most comparable thing I can think of is siblings who make their own language or small tribes in isolation, eventually everyone understands each other. If the player had known someone for a few weeks, they roll a percentage dice to see if they’re understood. The longer they know someone the lower the percentage of misunderstanding is until it’s basically 0. We also tossed out the ‘original thought’ bit because one of the main points of TTRPGs is improv and that just doesn’t mesh well.
one cool thing about the “no creativity” thing is it means that instead they are supposed to learn like real life corvids learning complex sequences of tasks. they basically act like a computer, memorizing and copying actions perfectly like “if x do y” which kinda giving them the keen mind feat but for actions and be a bird version of taskmaster from marvel
The way I’d answer your questions in my game: 1. No inflections that weren’t already there 2. They sound like the original unless you succeed on your Insight check to tell that it’s an imitation, in which case you notice some slight birdiness 3. They can change the volume but can’t undo the Doppler effect 4. If the original sound was echoey, the imitation will be, but the kenku doesn’t have to repeat any echo that followed the original sound 5. Yes 6. Archmages are still debating that one 7. As long as they can remember it, which is about as long as any other race can remember things 8. It’s not a short time 9. Repetition enhances memory, just like for everyone else 10. Yes, except that most kenku don’t know a lot of other kenku 11. Kind of, but normal people can mix words and phrases together however they like and don’t have to copy other people’s voices 12. Yes
Me: this is the earliest I have ever been on this website, with only 5 likes, 3 comments, and when it was only 47 seconds old. Kenku: this is the earliest I have ever been on this website, with only 5 likes, 3 comments, and when it was only 47 seconds old. Me: stop copping me! Kenku: stop copping me!
My three favorite Kenku characters: Kenku read Tengu Kensei/Samurai who does calligraphy & ink portraits to communicate complex concepts and cuts things down with a katana like out of a samurai movie. Thief read spy with Keen Mind feat who sneaks about, listens in on conversations, then repeats them back to the party ad nauseum. Eldritch Warlock with nautical theme and is Seagull like and not crow like. Fought with a +3 sickle. Not named Steven.
I adore Kenku. The lack of Original Thought creates some incredible character development opportunities, in that the character I’m playing may be programmed to be a particular way by the first beings that raised it OR, as she learns more and more about life, she can accumulate different perspectives and add more and more moral philosophies to her mentality, making her malleable. She risks certain missions knowing that villain monologs could imprint on her psyche and always be in the back of her mind. An amalgamation of conflicting ideas and sounds, cataloged and categorized by how it makes her feel until these things bleed together and form something so confusing that it drives her mad and she becomes the Howler, screaming and shrieking into the night, driven to madness by the incompatible mentalities she’s absorbed through her years of travel! Ergo, just throw a twist on it and have fun. Plus, it’s a bird. And bird is life.
I just play my Kenku bard as having a near-perfect memory, similar to the parrot strategy And since they can replicate any noise they’ve heard, yes, he just opens his mouth and music comes out, and yes he basically just learnt common by listening to others. It’s not so much circumventing a restriction as it is making the best out of a shitty racial feature. But yeah the “no independent thought” thing has been and will remain completely ignored because that’s super boring
The last time I played a kenku was when I made an “Eileen the Crow” ranger kenku build focused on hunting aberrations. We decided to just ignore the “can’t have original thoughts” part of the lore and only used the speaking disability. the backstory I gave them was that they were essentially raised by a master hunter of the monster hunting guild from the setting after the kenku village they were born in was razed by said eldritch monsters. Therefore, most of what the kenku could say were things its master told it when it was being raised. It could recite with perfect clarity tons of facts about the monsters we were faced with, and most of its sentences were amalgamations of dull lessons or really sad recitations of its father figure’s kindness, considering the state of the setting. From that alone, I was able to convey to the other players the character’s entire backstory just through implication. Butcher the Crow is still my favorite ranger I’ve played, even though I only got to play them for like ten sessions.
I have a Kenku Hexblade Warlock setup for my next campaign. Basically the ‘cult’ (they’re not evil, but what they research and practise is forbidden) he was part of, through the eldritch arts managed to circumvent (but not break) the curse; his thoughts are vocally projected in an uncorporeal voice around his weapon, allowing him to ‘speak’. Others however don’t want this info getting out (both those enforcing the law and those who don’t want to lose their best henchmen), so he has to keep a low profile; at the very least it’s pretty easy to blend in when it’s not expected for you to be able to speak. Given that he’s been able to break free of the figurative but not literal curse, he has a seething hatred of charm/mind control spells and those who lie to and manipulate others (most rulers and the criminal underworld alike). Now he travels and works with branches of the ‘cult’ throughout the known world, working to eventually break the curse.
I actually played with the Kenku’s lack of original thoughts for my warlock’s backstory in why he serves a eldritch horror, because being connected to his patron has awaken his mind and allows him to have an imagination whether these are actually his own thoughts or ones implanted is something i’ve talked with my dm about as possible story arcs and plot hooks so only time will tell
I once played a Kenku sailor Monk in a Curse of strahd game. I didn’t fall into the cakaw tropes, but everything she said sounded like a quote in someone else’s voice. Ited to some very fun moments, especially with the sailor talk coming into play. She really hated the wereravens though and was envious of their ability to fly.
My kenku monk was named ‘clink’ (the sound his pocket watch, the last item he owned from his parents, made when it closed). Being a child outcast in a human heavy settlement upon starting the campaign he only knew how to say “fuck off bird” and “bring that back young man” Eventually he heard the words “low intellect” and oh boy did he have a new favourite insult. By the end of that character i had 2 a4 sheets plastered with words I’d heard that I’d decide to commit to memory, and whilst the party struggled to begin with, eventually one person got very good at interpreting what he was trying to say
One of my favorite character concepts I had was a Kenku. I made them for a brief jaunt into adventurers league, and I played most of the lore pretty straight (save for the creativity thing – I played it more that they had trouble with the concept of creativity but they could still clearly think for themselves and come up with plans, ideas and schemes.) They were a wizard, and I played it like they were ‘stealing’ spells. I’d describe how every spell they used was in a different persons voice (like prestidigitation and rope trick would be in the voice of what seemed to be some kind of carnival magician or huckster) and I wanted to limit myself to choosing spells to learn at levelup based on what they’d seen other people cast, so they could mimic the vocal components. Also if I copied spells out of someones spell book, the incantation would be in that persons voice. Issue is I’d just have to describe their tone, considering I didn’t want to make up some incantation, and its not like spells get called out like digimon attacks. Still though, I liked the flavor. I kept a notepad out each session and whenever the party said something that sounded like I could re-contextualize it later, I’d write it down as well as the name of who said it, which actually kept me pretty involved in the session – less chances for me to zone out since I might miss some piece of dialogue I could use later. I also had some lines from before they met up with the party since it seemed like a good way to subtly insert backstory – like if they ever cursed at something they’d usually refer to it as a ‘feathered rat’ or something similar, or if they introduced themselves it was by repeating the voice of some woman patronizingly going “We should call them ‘Robin!
There’s an interesting way to handle kenku speech: just roll for it. You as the Kenku player describes or acts out the squawking and mimicry to the party, and if it’s not clear, use either a flat DC, or the DM can set a floating DC for each interaction. If the party makes the roll you just describe what you’re trying to get across, if they fail they just don’t understand you and the game moves on. Honestly, these little bastards are one of my favourite races when they are done right, they have so much opportunity for quirky RPs, like a Kenku warlock that made a pact with a powerful being by accident by just repeating what they heard, or a wizard that doesn’t understand the spells they are casting, they just know how to perfectly mimic the invocations, or a famous kenku bard with a golden voice they stole from an unknown performer, or like you mentioned, a Kenku that’s so damn good at mimicry that nobody knows it’s a kenku, the party and everyone the kenku meets all treat them as a different race (for this one it’s way funnier if you actually make the sounds and be a bird)
In my mind, kenku can only mimic what they have heard, exactly as they heard it (they can’t change the inflection), but at whatever volume they want. They can repeat whatever they heard from other kenku, they can mimic instruments like Stitch, and they have an eidetic memory when it comes to sound. Also, that thing about not being able to have an original thought can just go right in the trash where it belongs.
Some of the most fun ive ever had was playing a kenku bard with the goal of taking back his creativity and my favorite part was the restrictions i would wite down what npcs or party members have said that i like and then repet them at a different fitting moment for example a npc saying what are you some kinda rag tag group of adventures? and then later kicking in a bar door and playing the lute the bar keep distracted by the little bird man kicking in his door says who are you? And with a cold unfeeling bird stare i proclaimed what are you some kinda rag tag group of adventurers i also tugged at the paladins cloak and pointed at his shield tell he gave it to me thus started s long trend of surfing down dunes and hills on the shield while holding the straps of the shield
Dude I love those cawing bois! I have a Kenku planned and haven’t actually managed to play him yet, but i thought about work arounds and would love to hear your opinion Dav. Longing for flying is easy enough, just imagine everytime the topic of flying via magic or items crosses the table the kenku would awkwardly pester his friends about it, how to do it(even tho he cant cast fly, he tries), how does it feel(hanging on every word as his friends describe the wind on their hair and the feeling of freedom) and, if you have a sensible DM, agree to have the curse lift at higher levels, so you actually get new intersting roleplay stuff and emotional impact from it. Talking is tricky, I don’t know how fast it can get annoying, but I had in mind my kenku had had a handful of interactions with ppl before meeting the party, which allows him to mimic certain phrases. I would write down a few phrases/words and give them personalities and backgrounds so when talking, i could go from a deep dumb man to a delicate woman to an old lady. I think it could be hard to do and would get old kinda fast, BUT i feel it kinda pushes the point of kenku not talking alot InGame, trying to do more things as he grows impatient having to comunicate with ppl. Now, the thinking part is a bit tricky. Either have your DM aknoweldge its bulshit and just ignore it(which i reccomend) or, in my case, I had him have a teacher in the past, that knowing he had this impairment, taught him how to work around his curse. He may not know how to, let’s say cheat at a card game, but he was taught that he had to use what he knew to overcome that.
Watch Lyre birds, they can make chainsaw noises, they are that good. Based on reality, I’d say A Kenku like other “talking” birds can use there mimicry to suit their needs, using it to make noises that seem closer or father than they appear by getting louder or quieter, they can even throw there voice to a degree to make it seem like the noise came in a completely other direction from where the bird really is. Birds really are smart actually, and so I’d say a Kenku would learn this the same as other birds. Better even given that they are so good at mimicking. A crow can learn about 50 sounds, while a Lyre Bird can mimic any noise it hears for long enough, just like the Kenku, and doesn’t really seem to have a limit to how many noises it can learn.
I’m going to put a bard Kenku npc in my game who’s a damn good politician. He repeats kind words and affirmations, slogans and yes we cans, and then he he also sings anything he’s heard and story tells to children. A kind kenku king speaking redemption and with any of the same so each as others because he’s grown up in a small kingdom that patiently taught him speech from a hatchling (limiting him much less because that’s just how babies work).
My first (only to date) kenku was named Rustle the Crow. I circumvented the social restrictions by having a life debt to one character and opting to repay it from the shadows. Legit rolling stealth against the rest of the party to help without introductions. In a build minmaxing stealth to absurd levels. We’re talking like +18 with advantage if I put resources into it. At least, that was the plan. I devolved into the party’s yandere.
I actually enjoy the kenku inability to create new ideas, it adds an alien nature to them and i much prefer that to just “oh it’s a human in birds clothing”. If your smart you can turn a murder of kenku into an incredible city encounter, an information relay that slowly yet surely steal your mannerisms as they hunt you down, turning your party’s carefully chosen call signals against them before finally taking down the last member of your group using the voices of their dead friends. Or you can just have a goofy birb that do HONK NOISES. Also the fun of playing a monstrous race is the weird mannerisms and personality they bring to the game, you can toss out the stuff that makes them unique but at that point why not just play a human who was cursed to be a half bird with the actor feat and call it a day.
I feel like sign language should be a standard part of how kenku’s communicate, since it’s something that naturally arises from the need/desire to communicate without the use of speech. Also because I’m autistif I like the idea of kenku’s mimicry being akin to echolalia and neologisms; it’s actually part of what draws me to playing one. I also have this image in my head of kenku’s flapping their hands when experiencing a lot of emotion/
I played a Kenku Whisper Bard (with the Actor and Keen Mind feats for good measure) named Quoth in an all-bards one-off; for the first half of the game I held myself to literally only putting together sentences from the words that I had immediately heard, in the voices that said them. I’d also use Detect Thoughts and Message to copy/paste exact thoughts from one mind to another. By the end of the game, I would just switch mid-sentence between the voices of my party members using words that seemed like their vocabulary, assuming that since our characters had known each other for a long time I had probably heard them say any word I needed. But my favorite moment of Kenku fuckery was when, in our battle with the Big Bad, his succubus henchwoman and I were both briefly in magical darkness. I used Disguise Self to take on her form, stumbled out of the darkness, and in her exact voice, convinced him the real succubus was me in disguise and successfully persuaded him to kill her (tbh I may have fudged the “exact words” thing at this point but my DM rule-of-cool’ed it). Then I stabbed him in the back with my Psychic Blades. Roll credits. I now love Kenku. Playing one for a single night kinda broke my brain, but if I played one in a campaign I’d probably keep a spreadsheet of words and phrases I had heard from particular characters so I wouldn’t have to keep them all straight in my head.
If I played a Kenku I would probably want to change it so that they can speak, just not very well. For example, if you wanted to say “That guy over there has a lot of gold and I want to steal it” you would say something like “gold.. want gold… man. gold…. take… yes”. This seems fun if done right, but also possibly annoying.
I’ve played a Kenku Bard in a text based D&D game, so I just you presidgitaion and some paper to try to get my point across. And he’s got almost like a Artificer recorder were a single phrase is saved in case he’s stranded in a town without a vocabulary. ( My Name is Clang And I can Work) He buys music books to “obtain” new music for spells because of the curse
Considering how smart Crows, Ravens and Magpies are in the real world I think the ability to mimic sound precisely has some useful roleplay potential however I see no problem in a player actually thinking and there character being able to speak an language they know. It might sound odd as each word they use sounds like the person they learned the word from, but Kenku have human like intelligence and if they can read they can learn new words in their own voice. But that’s just the w as y I’d run it.
I play a Kenku rogue in 3.5e. I really struggled at first but the DM allowed me some freedom in talking. He speaks in 2-4 word sentences using only words he’s expected to have heard over his life. The players don’t know it yet but I’ve been putting points into Perform Sing so he can perfectly mimic a couple different instruments. As for his background, he worked on a dock with several other Kenku and would communicate for them with other races, building his vocabulary. Since switching from 1 word answers to 2-4 word replies I’m much more comfortable and quick to respond in game. I really enjoy playing him. Oh! His name is puking noises but everyone just calls him Blurk.
When I think of Kenkus I always think of the story of Echo and Narcissis. Echo was cursed to well, echo only what she heard. She fell in love with Narcissis who in turn fell in love with himself. It’s most definitely a cruel punishment that has been laid onto the Kenku but can still make for interesting RP since they take what they learn with the most conviction of any race. Playing a Monk and was raised in a monastery? You’d take what you learned in your Way very seriously and live by it.
If we take the advice of ignoring the lore about not being able to think for ones self, then an idea popped into my head during this article. A kenku Bard who refuses to mimic ANY sounds they have heard – except that of their instrument of choice. They refuse because it is not their own voice, and they do not want to live their life as a parasite living off of the words of others. So he does not speak. He does not utter a single noise. He only ever opens his beak to let a song play for his friends – yes, like Lilo and Stitch, because that is an amazing fucking idea and thank you for saying it, Chappy. The ultimate end-goal of this Kenku would be finding some way to lift the curse on himself so that he may finally have a voice all to himself. I feel like that could make for a really interesting character.
As sparse as the lore is, kenku stole a special place in my heart, by virtue of their innate disability. As a DM, I’d say it’s as perfect a replication as the kenku’s charisma modifier allows, sounding more raven-like at lower charisma. It includes any audio imperfections from the initial sound. The kenku is replicating what they heard, not what is said, to the best of their ability. It’ll be forgotten over a short period, unless it is something memorable, repeated often, and/or being actively memorized. Combined with their inability to form new ideas on their own, it justifies why Kenku communities don’t slowly aggregate language naturally. Most words that they borrow will pass through like a day flu and be forgotten by most. They need to be given the idea to learn the speech for use. Kenku that do successfully learn to speak don’t just teach their own kind how. They need to be given the idea to teach their kind how to speak. To have any of this, you need an outside instigator, like an adventurer, or a mentor figure. I have a Kenku air monk (Toller), who was adopted by a wandering Aarakocra air monk (Fleek) of Akadi who initial mistook the little one for a malformed Aarakocra chick, raising and training made it her. Fleek did learn her mistake, but made teaching speech to the kenku her life experiment. Of course, given how Aarakocra have a short lifespan, Fleek died of old age while Toller was just entering adulthood. Toller repeats a lot of her master’s quotes to honor Fleek’s memory.
Alternative solution for a kenku to not being able to talk….give them a small chalkboard they can wear around their neck and some chalk. They can write easily enough. I used to simply read out what he wrote instead of speaking with his voice, which led to hilarity as sometimes he would just draw an emoji ❤🎉😂 or use crazy ‘punctuation!!!!!!!!’
My Kenku was abducted as a child by a cult, and was fed psychedelics in attempts to unlock traveling through multiverse, and so whenever he levels up, his intelligence goes up so he can process what the f*ck he saw there and can now speak quotes from a form of media with every level. I started with Vine quotes and Edgar Allen Poe Writings. Lv 2 is from Sokka of Avatar the last Airbender.
My idea for a Kenkus mimicking ability if you’re in a campaign that maybe isn’t the most strictly full immersion: a Kenku that only communicates through phrases picked up from 1930’s radio broadcasts. “High-ho Silver! Away!!” “It’s a high fly ball out to center field” “We will not bow to the whims of the Prussian Empire” “My name is Friday, and I’m a cop”
The way I understand Kenku is that because they are cursed to utterly lack any kind of creativity, it doesn’t matter if you read the dictionary to them. They can know all of the words but they can’t put them together in an original way. So even if a Kenku was raised by a non-Kenku family right from birth, they could only talk by parroting verbatim things they heard other people say, which is not how human language acquisition works. But they would certainly amass a large repertoire of things to say, which could pass for fluent conversational speech in many (but not necessarily all) situations. Since they are described as mimics, they’re essentially living soundboards. If a Kenku picks up “Thank you very much” from someone with a deep voice and let’s call it a heavy Russian accent, then every time they say “Thank you very much”, they say it in a deep voice and a heavy Russian accent. If that same Kenku picks up “Hey, what’s your name?” from someone with a high-pitched voice and let’s call it a subtle Chinese accent, then every time they say “Hey, what’s your name?” they say it in a high-pitched voice and a subtle Chinese accent. I’m under the impression that once something is in their repertoire, it’s there forever. (Although if they only ever have the opportunity to say something once, it would be understandable if they forgot it in a few years.) What does bother me about RAW is that apparently they can write normally? Which makes no sense to me because that’s putting words together in an original way.
Played a short-run Kenku (thank god, I would have killed the character myself if it was long-run), and gave myself the limitation that I could only repeat something if I remembered it myself, no writing anything down. I basically only said BOSS and BREAKFAST for the majority of the campaign because I have small brain. Oh right, and his name was Name.
Kenku sound fun. ignoring the Can’t Original Thought (despite the wis stat?!) and “subservient eeeebiiiiiiiiilll race” bs Then again, I kinda speak birb so could prolly do the RP aspect of Kenku reasonably well xD -also? Let ‘em sing even if words are limited and it’s just vocalizations…like Birbs Do Anyway. Wind Instruments are Out, as beaks don’t direct air or form a seal like lips do. OR, the wind instruments look very very odd and are probably only playable by other Kenku since they’d slip the body over their beak and toss out the mouthpiece altogether. Stringed and percussion instruments are probably the most popular, though, since they have Bird Arms (which altho they can’t fly they DO have the same dexterity as more traditionally humanoid races.) Oh. And an Artificer Kenku could just build their own hanglider or Kite. It’s not exactly “full flight” but it’ll do and what a way to laugh back at a petty birb deity
So I currently am playing a Kenku and he’s honestly my favorite character I’ve created so far! Instead of having to only speaking in mimicry bc hard. He speaks in mimicry of accents and vocal tones. Usually were in big cities so hearing people speak there’s enough that he could pick up on basic language. but he immediately adopts the local accents of a location or the vocal tone of anyone that stands out to the party. (Bosses) he also has a Log of specific mimicry phrases but it’s mostly exciting phrases that have caught his attention. For combat he’s a BM fighter that learned everything he knows by following/stalking a knight as a very young kenku. He would practice what he had observed at night away from people. He followed this knight bc he had very shiny armor (he is obsessed with “shinies”), so when said knight died, he kindly stole his gear and officially became “Plop” the Adventurer. Sorry for the novel but he is by far my most relatable character I’ve played so far and I think that’s wild considering what he is lol! But he’s a blast to rp, and allowed to be very inventive in combat!!
My newest Character idea, inspired by this article and Disneys Robin Hood 😉 Alan van Daylein – 11 year old Changeling Bard (Urchin) Always poses as a Kenku because the guy who cared for him for the last 3 years was a Kenku. They were traveling Bards. He called him “Papa” – he’s to young to fully control his Shapechanging Ability, when he sleeps or get’s knocked out he reverts back to a 11 year old Changeling but he knows that so he sleeps alone. As Kenku he looks mid 20s.
I have personally found that rule about them not having a shred of a personality (YET SOMEHOW HAVE BONUS ON WISDOM) utter garbage. So, my DM said personally that he’s getting rid of that so I can properly play DnD as a kenku. But, I’m going further. I’m on a mission to gather as much info as possible about the so-called curse that has been laid down on that whole race and try to lift it, giving kenkus back the ability of flight and so they can finally flock together and form a country of their own, their culture and a place to call home.
I like the idea of not talking because it is a really cool idea for a character, and without the ability to fly gives them all great motivation and also doesn’t make them broken. But the idea of no original thoughts is so stupid and dumb that I think the guy who made it used kobolds and goblins as henchmen for their villains and the players just told them to think originally so they used their job at wizards of the coast to go like “NoW My ViLlAiN’s HeNcHMeN CaN’t Be CoRrUpTeD” sort of ruining a perfectly good race. Personally I would just completely ignore that part of kenku lore because it’s bullcrap. The kenku I play in DND just doesn’t have any morality instead
Restrictions on RP only breed creativity. As a Kenku player, I totally disagree with the assertion that all the Kenku’s weird lore is a bad thing. I even further restricted myself by speaking EXACTLY like a mimic-bird would, and only saying the complete sentences that I’d heard. If you’re a player who finds themselves often in absurd situations, try a Kenku. Write down any potentially useful sentence, store it for later, and realize that the only way for you to avoid a fight is to softly whisper, “May the wizards keep you stupid.” The original thought thing might seem a tad too limiting, but all it requires is a decent memory and a hell of a lot of creativity. The simplest solution is; “I’ve seen people kill, so I can kill.” But it goes beyond that. “I’ve seen shamans wearing skins can commune with the gods, so all I need to do to commune with the gods is to cover myself in skins.” It’s fun, it’s hilarious, and if your party gets sick of your antics, you can just tone down the RP restrictions a bit.
I rule that Kenkus can speak the same way anyone else can, but that their speech is flavored as being broken up with a different people’s voices. Maybe that is sometimes a quilted sentence, made form multiple voices, but that’s more often the case only for new information that needs to be discussed. The reality of the curse is that they do not have a true voice of their own. They are only mimics, and will forever be beholden to the voices of those around them. It’s not about lack of communicative ability. It is a curse of never having one’s own identity. That’s depressing as fuck, man.
I have a Kenku Great Old One Warlock that can talk with it’s own voice. How so? Eldritch nonsense! It just happens to have a really creepy voice. I mean, if you were cursed to not have your own voice and some stanger in your dreams said “psst, I’ve got some words for you.” would you not take it? I’m sure there will be no long term consequences from this…. I did actually ask the DM if he wanted me to make it its own Invocation as a balance thing but he said “Nah, it’s good”. So now I can speak directly into people’s minds and copy other voices though my “raven and totally not an imp” familiar. A lot of fun shinanagians are sure to ensue.
One idea I had for a kenku character was a detective (inquisitive rogue) named giggle squeak who got started as a ‘Watson’ to a ‘Sherlock’ before going off on their own. So he would often repeat phrases like ‘I deduce’ or ‘elementary my dear’ and act generally sophisticated. Unless he caught someone lying in which he would do the Pepe ‘REEEEEEEE!’
I think one of the best way to play a kenku is to have a large vocabulary of words available at the start. It allows you to communicate with your party members but you can still learn words for things like magic items, spells, places, etc! I also like switching my voice every other sentence if my throat holds up. Piecemeal words one after another is really rough, but every other sentence is pretty manageable.
A few thoughts. In no real order because I forgot what order you said them in. -A Kenku can totally have an original idea. It just has to first steal the idea of having original ideas off of someone else first. Easy. -That was a fantastic name for a Kenku. I love it. -It mentions in Volo’s (which I may or may not have spent too much time reading) that a Kenkus memory for noises heard is such that they can “precisely reproduce any sound”. This leads me to believe that they have a really, really, really….good memory. At least for anything they see and/or hear. So. Basically everything. And yes, I was paying attention when you went down that rabbit hole the first time. -It also mentions that they can, by lore, communicate in phrases that they often overhear. So common, often used things like “follow me”, “come here”, “it’s full of kobolds!” and “f**k off you bloody w***er” are likely already in their vocabulary. Whatever their background was likely sees them start their adventure with a bunch of ready to go phrases that saw a lot of use.
My rulings: @2:56 The voice clips a Kenku uses are sort of like recordings. They can be chopped up to produce new sentences, tho that’s admittedly harder to do than straight repetition. @2:59 They sound like whoever said the words in the first place. If an ogre says “hi”, and the kenku mimics that, they sound like the ogre for that word. @3:05 They can vary the volume somewhat @3:06 The echo depends on the external situations, tho a kenku might wind up trying to repeat the echo if that’s how they have the sound memorized. @3:12 Kenku can teach each other, tho subtle differences will lead to a slight “copy of a copy” degradation of the recording over longer periods of time. Somebody dedicated enough could teach a whole village, and have their words (and voice) passed down through generations. @3:15 probably @3:18 Pretty much indefinitely, unless they wind up with memory problems. @3:29 Potentially, but remember that there are a lot of factors that could potentially work against this, too. @3:35 Almost, they do wind up sounding like the other people around them. @3:45 I’m going to say yes, for rule of funny.
My kenku paid bored interns in silver to recite the dictionary for me whenever we had our first downtime. So if I didn’t remember a person saying it, I just sounded like a bored teenage girl and spoke with no inflection. My name was Kiki for short. Because my full name was the sound of cicadas screaming, or KIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKI, and nobody wanted to use that XD
This was a fab article Davvy! Unrelated but I was just thinking today that in an upcoming Davvy Chats article, I’d be interested in your thoughts on role playing trauma/handling PC death. We’ve just had a PC death in my party and it will naturally affect everyone but I don’t want that to overtake the fun of our sessions
The first draft of my comment was over a thousand words long and I’m trying to break that habit, so I’ll just say this: A kenku bard who opens his mouth and plays music like Stitch with the record player is too delightful an image for me to disallow as a DM. I have a kenku bard NPC in my campaign world named Barron Spatula who rules over a garbage dump and learned music from a battered old phonograph. I rarely talks as he prefers to express himself with scratchy old tunes.
I ignore the “no original thought” rule for my players. It’s turbo stupid. As for words learning, I like to rule it as like “you understand words, but you have an extremely hard time producing them. It’s like in Spanish class when you are trying to say something but you can’t remember the word for it so you start gesticulating wildly and then someone says the word and you suddenly get it back.” I rule that most Kenku have enough of a word repertoire that they can “get through a regular day using very broken common”, but that any new thing or complex phrase is beyond them and they have to get creative.
If you go by the older and (IMO) more fascinating version of their history, the kenku were originally like traditional Japanese tengu. But they became cursed with a terrible affliction and collectively begged anyone who would listen to cure them. And a massive, unnaturally white crow with gore decorating its feathers answered, destroying the eggs of giant eagles and rocs within a certain radius and curing their curse. In exchange, the crow demanded they spread his name, Pazuzu, throughout the world. The only failed to meet their bargain and Pazuzu afflicted then with something far worse than their previous affliction. All future kenku were born without wings and instead had humanoid arms, and their language was taken from them. From that day forward, the kenku could only ever mimic sounds they heard. But they can do so with unnerving accuracy. Now the kenku collectively hope to one day regain flight and speech, but It’s doubtful that they will ever change from their thieving ways upon achieving this
Seems like the Kenku curse is supposed to be their god going: “If you’re going to steal from me, then I will make sure you can never be anything more than a thief in anything you do, and I’ll take away your flight for good measure.” Also, if they can’t have original thoughts, how do they want anything? Wouldn’t wanting something be an original thought? Or is it enough that older Kenku wanted flight and so newer Kenku also want flight and thus inflict that on future Kenku? Would a Kenku raised by non-Kenku have the general wants of that group? Like, a Kenku raised by surface Elves would want access to Elf heaven and freedom from the cycle of reincarnation? A Kenku raised by Warforged wanting a purpose outside of war/wanting there to be another war to fight so they have something to do?
I play a kenku currently, A smol borb illusionist who was taught magic by a crazed wizard as an experiment to see what happens when a bird without creativity has the most creative magic. I absolutely love playing them, cause I get to be the secret smart person in the party. Everyone assumes the small bird that refuses to bathe and collects shiny rocks is just an innocent child but actually they have 20 int and are really inventive, so to speak. Their brain works more like a flowchart of experiences they’ve had, and the abilities they can do. For example, they saw the barbarian jump off of a tower and slam into a guy. They knew about gravity. That make heavy thing fall. They learned that heavy thing fall on person, it hurt. So they cast summon greater demon and dropped a Balgura 60 feet down ontop of the same person. Also their name is “I’m a Banana”, because they heard a bird say it and they liked it.
There’s nothing to stop a kenku from doing everything they can to work around the limitations on their speech and thought patterns! I equate it to being aneurotypical and having a communication disability. I’m running a kenku NPC currently, a bard who is aware of the difficulties he faces as a kenku, limited in how he can solve problems and communicate. So he travels constantly, talking to everyone he cam, eavesdropping on everyone he can, and just generally exposing himself to as many unique situations as possible, so he can improve his figurative toolbox.
I’m very talkative in real life, so my college group and year thought it would be a fun idea for me to play a Kenku during our long-running campaign for the irony. Honestly, it was very fun if you stick with it. We all played it very diligently for just over a year before we finished it. In game our characters established it would be easiest to communicate with me via asking questions including set answers and I could mimic back the one I agreed with; I was very much a follower, but Kenku are kind of cursed to that. When meeting new NCPs I would fill in the gaps by pointing (like if we were in a store and I was looking at the items on the shelf), miming and writing words down on paper. He was a enjoyable bird-man to play, a Way of the Long Death Monk who learned the practice out of jealousy; he was tired of just taking material things and wanted to take life itself. He was lawful evil becuase he would only do so to hostiles or people who he considered not worthy of the life they had been gifted. Him using Hour of Reaping was my favourite ability because we all pictured it as him mimicking the screams and cries of all the people he’d watched die to frighten others.
I played a Kenku named Scratch, from session 1 I made weird sounds (general mimicking of things to mean words, like money sounds to mean money/reward) but every session I slowly used less sounds and more words as a reference to like Chewbacca. They slowly “learned” my speech pattern for thematic effect
Their are ways to turn a Kenku into a horror show since I did actually make a Kenku character in a campaign who was basically reworked Fiddlesticks from LoL by asking my dm if my Kenku could have gigantism and be 7ft tall and A damaged throat so every time he talked was like a last dying breath, along with having patches of feathers missing from his body with burlap cloth on different parts of his body with a metal arm and leg that acted as my characters weapons in place of knives since he was a rouge/druid hybrid. And all he thought about was food so his name was “Hungry”. This way no one could use the dad joke against me if I am litteraly Hungry. Although he was not a psychotic killer that ate people (only sometimes) but was soft to emotion and had a fondness for children as in his past he would pretend to be a scarecrow in fields and when bandits raided at night he would attack them in the fields and often saved kidnapped women or children. He didn’t remember anything about his past aside from waking up one day but he really didn’t care. He was impulse driven and hungry and that’s all he knows. Throughout the campaign the party tried over and over to get him to stop acting like an animal and eventually he did after he meet a little girl named Sarah. Sarah thought how he acted was funny but impolite and eventually after playing with him for a long time taught him how to act, somewhat normal and they became fast friends as he would often scare off bullies and strangers that threatened her.
My fiancée and I are in a D&D campaign where I’m playing as a mind flayer goolock with a golden face thing like Withers in BG3 that helps with psionics. She’s a kenku bard that’s just constantly has to resist the urge to try and steal his face gold or peck at his tentacles. The mind flayer wears a plague mask when out in public, so he doesn’t immediately get shot. When they bumped into each other, she immediately latched onto him because she thought he was a big crow in very shiny robes.
With Kenku, I think the important thing to remember is that Volo isn’t necessarily a reliable source of information. In lore, he is known for exaggerating a lot. While Kenku still probably can’t speak or fly, the lack of independent thought could have been an exaggeration or misunderstanding by Volo. Since the book is supposed to be based on Volo’s actual, in-world guide, it can be seen as a flawed source that can be modified.
As far as kenku mimicking instruments goes, there’s a module out there where the players have to team up with an all-kenku acapella group. There’s some box text talking about how, when they perform, they mimic singers and instruments alike (naturally, it’s all cover songs). That entire section of the mod is filled with music references, since they only speak in song lyrics.
How I handled it was that with the Kenku in our party, he writes down whatever the players say and uses them to speak. Plus he writes down what his character wants to say that the handicap prevents him from saying. It has produced some rather hilarious bits when he speaks in a language he doesn’t understand and uses noises too, like a jackhammer noise(came from a Gnome working and yes, I go for the Dragonlance interpretation of them). The only time he is able to speak normally is through sending stones, which don’t require one to talk through. It has produced a lot of hilarity at the table. That and my bard Boom-Pow. I just hope one day I can make my Kenku Druid Lemmy with his Awakened Boulder Smashy.
I think one of the most clever ways to get around the Kenku speaking problem I’ve seen was from my party in a campaign I was in a few months ago. We were a small campaign of a Warforged Cleric, a Gnome Bard, Aasimar Wizard and Kenku Artificer, and the Artificer with his infusions decided to construct a cloak of many fashions. Whenever he wanted to speak or convey an idea, he’d change his cloak to showcase either a sound effect or an idea like how a comic book would. It really helped refresh the simple structure of “I caw so you guys know I mean to follow me”, especially when he used that same cloak of many fashions to create a dramatic menacing effect before mimicing the Warforged in saying “We’re finished here”, right after destroying a douche’s house who constantly insulted the Warforged Cleric.
I’m pretty liberal with the use of the Kenku’s mimicry. If a Kenku wants to speak in someone’s voice, they can do it for a few sentences, but not the entire time. If the kenku wants to just copy people’s speech, it’s complicated. As far as I’m concerned, it lasts for as long as you as a human being can remember it, or if you keep it in your notebook. If you have the keen mind feat, then you can remember any phrase you’ve heard within the last month. I would say Keen Mind is probably a solid feat for kenku because you’ll likely hear a wide array of vocabulary over the course of a month, giving you a decent array of vocabulary to work with. One of the biggest things I enjoy about DnD is that it’s not restrictive on it’s race/class combos, ignore the part of the lore where it says Kenku’s can’t come up with their own original thoughts, unless you enjoy playing warlock, priests, and fighter classes for the rest of your life.
Can confirm– the best way to play a Kenku long-term is to ignore the lore. I just finished up a campaign as one. The yearning for flight never really came up and I also ignored the “no independent thought” thing right out, but I tried to stick to the mimicry-only gimmick and promptly hit a role-playing wall. I had much more fun at the table after our quick quest to break the speech curse.
Yeah that thing about Kenku not being able to come up with any original thought is just obnoxiously restrictive, I’d definitely disregard it in campaigns too or at least tweak it. I’d understand a trait like maybe they have a tendency to get distracted by certain things, and obsess over them but zero original thought just sounds like no fun at all. I get they’re trying to invoke how Covids work in real life but come on man, its an anthromorphic species.. Also, I love that most of the pictures are very pretty IRL birdo closeups.
The vast majority of people live their lives without ever having an original thought. That being said…you glossed over their ability to create forgeries which is a REAL rabbit-hole. (Do they need tool proficiency, for instance?) it says they can all do this and they just have to see the final result, not even how it was made…which brings a whole new slew of questions about the potential contradictions with the inability to have creative ideas. Do they just know what it takes to get the same final product or do they know the exact means of production? Do they need access to all of the same tools? It’s so vaguely worded for such a potentially powerful skill.
I’m gonna be rolling a Kenku Illusion Wizard in a game coming up, figured illusions should give a bit of other communication options. Literally preparing to type out lines said by other players to refer to and try to “speak”… Granted, ignoring the lack of ability to make new ideas or think but def preparing to noticeably change personalities to mimic any characters I spend too much time with. May be annoying, may be great, gotta wait and see lol.
I would say that since all PCs have a backstory, the PC Kenku as spent so much time around others that they are exactly like Bumblebee in the sense that every phrase they say is retrieved from a database of prior words they heard. and that they are able to think for themselves up to a idea as big as a common villager could muster (as if base 10 INT), anything beyond that (an invention, plan, problemsolving, etc) needs to be pilfered.
When I played a Kenku I only mimic repeated really to make a point. We worked with the understanding I had a basic knowledge of language living in a city previously. My Kenku tended to end up mimic repeating important tidbits of info for the rest of the party. I however got power word kill thrown at me by a dwarven king for “”liberating” a cursed halberd from the armory (I wasn’t the only one in the party to take something! and the other party members sold me out!)
Its simple, every Kenku community has its “language” made up of copied words from other races/creatures. When they speak some words are deep and gravely like from a male orc and others are light and airy like a elves and everything in between. You can tell what flock a Kenku is from by what “voice” it uses for particular words.
I’ve started playing dnd for the first time ever a few months ago and have stated as a kenku Rouge sub class theif. Still playing my first and only character and I’ve been a very sneaky long range murder bird. I get by the speech and idea restrictions by having been exposed to lots of talk and puzzles. The mimic and forgery has come in handy with infiltration scouting and such. Lots of fun. In one campaign I decided to have my kenku become a wereraven. It gives them wings and flight and less vulnerable to most damages. I played it as my kenku was insearch for a way to reverse or cure the flightless curse, heard about the wereravens, and became infected with lycanathapy but prefers to keep it on the down low with his party.
Quick note on the Kenku losing their creativity. I see this as a way to mitigate them only being able to repeat other’s sounds not combine bits and pieces of sentences and words together to make their own sentences (also known as a frankenbite). You can extend this definition to envelope why kenku cannot mimic sounds in other peoples voices, pitch, intensity, etc. Like it was said kenku’s mimicry is hard to deal with practically and roll play wise but using this part of the curse flexibly gets rid of a few debates. I will also say that one of my favorite Kenku characters that I played was a warlock named Dop. I made a deal with a fey in hopes to remove the kenku curse in trade I caused nightmares for children. The DM let me frankenbite sentences together but not change the original voices. With time I picked up the Invocation: Mask of Many Faces, so I could start to disguise myself as others and become a doppelganger. It’s really funny when you eliminate a bandit captain on the side and then suddenly have an army.
I like the idea of a Kenku bard who has a wide variety of songs they can mimic (using minor illusion and air guitar/insert relevant instrument to sell the performance) With their arc being about how they love music and want to eventually write a song of their own. With the curse about original thoughts manifesting as a MEAN case of writers block holding them back.
I play a Kenku in my current campaign, and he was raised in an elven monastery. He picked up the speech patterns of another elf, like a modern AI can with our voices (I found this was more realistic than only saying specific heard things), and magic from a whimsical god (Corellon) helped him with his creativity a little, but his ideas are still kinda bad.
When I play kenkus I have backgrounds that give me extra languages (abyssal, sylvan, giant, etc) and I just say that they were raised by a speaker of that race that told them every word they could so they just speak that language proficiently, and that the common and auren(?) languages that come with the race are subject to the mimicry curse so all Kenku understand common+auren (even if they’re not taught it) but curses b curses so yee
Personally I’d solve the mimicry issue by having Kenku able to speak, but they don’t have their “own” voice or language. They can piece together words and phrases they’ve heard before into more or less intelligible sentences, but considering they’ve gotten all the parts of those sentences from people with different inflections, tones of voice, dialects, races and sexes, it can sound pretty damn weird even if what they’re saying makes perfect sense.
someone in my campaign desperately wants to play a kenku, I don’t want to ruin their fun but I am kinda concerned because they tend to be a pretty quiet and especially passive player overall already that I have to specifically address and toss into situations for them to interact with the game and I feel like the verbal and creative limitations are not going to help… :/ Also, they are not good with language stuff in general, so I am not sure if the vocabulary they want to build will be good enough to fit enough situations… I don’t feel like helping them with the vocabulary though since I already have to prepare the entire adventure and I myself don’t have experiences with Kenkus myself either, so that would mean a loooooot of time and energy just for one player’s character Anyone any thoughts on that?
I always thought it would be fun to RP a kenku wizard. Being that they are commonly seen as no good he’d be rejected by the local schools of magic but, through sneaking around and stealing books and eavesdropping he learns magic any way. All of his spell are said in different voices because he had to wait for a wizard to cast the spell so he could get the verbal components in his head to mimic.
I have played a kenku wizard, She was my favourite character to play. She could not have independant thought as you have listed and couldnt mimic. So she learned spells from others and through total happenstance. ( I think she woke up from a sleep one time and sneezed and a shield went up around her). I also ended up just describing the noises she makes or making other simple bird noises (she clucked like a chicken and pointed at things from time to time). In the end our barbarian used a wish spell to break part of the curse on her, and now im playing a humblewood race 🙂
I always figured that the Kenku not only could only make sounds they’ve heard, but if they learn languages that way unless that language all comes from a single source they would speak with a bunch of difference voices in one sentence. I mean your baby Kenku learning common from a human mother and father is all endearing and shit, until you realize that Kenku learned common and speaks most of it predominantly in a male & females voice regardless of their own sex or inclination. I always thought that was a interesting if perturbing detail.
I am currently playing a kenku – mine is a cleptomaniac dwarf bird – and it has been a blast. Personally, I interpreted that mine had heard a lot of shit throughout his life, so I don’t limit myself to what I literally just heard, and it is much better that way for me. Basically, I end up speaking like a parrot with a very large repertoire of phrases I stitch together.
Kenku were created at a time when you were very restricted in player character creation. You could not create characters that were monsters you could not create characters basically weren’t any shade of elf human or dwarf. So when the kenku were created their lore did not really take into count the fact that people might someday want to actually play as this sub-race. You see that a lot in modern D&D. A lot of the Neuer player races have to be extraordinarily nerfed in order to make them not extremely o p. I mean for the longest time the Aaracocra just having the ability to fly by default was Shear insanity. You would constantly be getting into arguments about well they can’t wear any kind of armor because that’d be too heavy or they can’t carry weapons above this way because that’ll be too heavy. Some DM did not want them to be monks because their bones were Hollow and they figured the first time that they punched someone their hand would break. This kind of pedantic thinking would go on and on and on just because none of these things were ever thought of as characters you could play at so they were given whatever kind of crazy backstory just made sense.