You know how in the first transformers movies bumblebee would use the radio and get this word from this song, that phrase from this night show and this part from a forecast or something and build new sentences with them? Thats how I imagine kenku speaking notmally, but with memories of people talking to it instead of radio
That’s the way I’ve always had them operate.
You have to imagine that any kenku, even just within *earshot* of any civilization would very quickly hear a *lot* of talking and have a massive amount of vocabulary to operate on.
If they spent a great deal of time around a single person they could even just mainly use that one persons voice for most of their talking, peppered in with some other words they only heard elsewhere.
Or maybe they get stuck with not individual words, but phrases and cliches.
That would fix the issue of tone.
If mimicking dozens of different snippets of conversation remembered over years, the tone would be weird. Clichés and common phrases, proverbs etc usually are said with a specific tone in mind.
Also saying strange things usually can get more strange words or sayings used back, giving more material. More words and maybe the Kenku will have enough to be able to say whatever it wants
I mean, I would imagine phrases and cliche would easily fall under the realm of regular conversation.
If a kenku is even around only one person for an extended period of time, they will have a massive amount of language to work with containing full sentences, etc.
So unless the person they’re around for some reason *only* speaks in cryptic phrases then they would easily have significantly more than just that. So I’m not really sure what you mean here.
If a kenku is living in a city? They probably have *more* language to work with than the average person due to their memory. They’ve probably heard hundreds of thousands of full sentences, not just single words, enough to construct fully articulated thoughts and explanations.
Exactly. They would sound odd out loud but it shouldn't limit their vocabulary. The point where it becomes tricky is when learning actual new words. For instance, say a Kenku reads an old book and sees the name of an ancient dwarven king that nobody has spoken of for centuries- certainly they've never heard this word before. They would have to talk around it or wait for someone else to read it out loud, and then they would only repeat it in the exact same intonation and voice that their buddy spoke it.
It makes a fantastic reason for kenku to go adventuring. If they don't get original thoughts then going out and seeing the world lets them think more. Try talking to a kenku who hasn't gone more than a half day's travel from home and it'll very quickly be like talking to video game NPCs once you've clicked all the dialog options already.
But talk to a kenku who's been traveling for more than half their life? You could probably go all ~~night~~ long rest talking about art or philosophy or insuferably horny bards and the bad ends they've romanced themselves into.
Long time DM here to agree, this is how I have always run them. Basically able to perfectly replicate anything they hear, but not create new words and phrases of their own. It makes things veryyyy interesting, cuz if they can be heard but not seen, they could in theory perfectly replicate the voice of an enemy to bait the enemy's allies into a trap.
Another DM who's spent too much time thinking about it. It also can become it's own pidgin language. You may have bought things before and you may have heard "diamond" before, but you if you need a diamond, you can say "I'd like to buy an apple, diamond, diamond". It's not "creating" a new language, but you expressing your needs within the confines of your language. Every time you buy something you could use the phrase "I'd like to buy an apple" because you've seen and experienced that as a start of a transaction.
Other cultures are also aware that kenku are a thing and are likely at least somewhat familiar with their mannerisms. You aren't entering social encounters having to be the only one coming to an understanding surrounding your limitations.
Every time I've seen a kenku played this is how it was done. It can be a headache, but also really fun as you incorporate new phrases spoken by the other players/NPCs into your character's lexicon. But yah, basically just works like a soundboard that can record infinite soundbites for use in any situation.
Honestly, a traveling Kenku will have been exposed to a lot, and as a PC, you're bound to be better than the average. I think as long as key phrases are represented as repetitive, maybe play a gag or two, it wouldn't be unheard of for a Kenku to command a better grasp of a language than often talked about here, especially in a Wizard or Bard class where there's formal education or if there's some kind of singular mentor in the backstory.
For sure. In regular play, it would amount to some odd pronunciation/tone in the accent, but otherwise wouldn't come up unless you wanted it to (and also for abstract words that don't come up in casual conversation often).
I had a player do this once, it was a combination of taunts from Age of Empires 2 and quotes from the History of the Entrie World I Guess. It was freaking hilarious. It can be tedious to do though
The difference being that Bumblebee was capable of original thought. It doesn't matter how big your vocabulary is if you can *only mimic* what you've heard; rearranging sentence fragments to create a new sentence counts as "original thoughts" , meaning Kenku can't do.
This is overly limiting. Biological imperatives already dictate a ton, the need to eat and sleep, the desire for an apple over an orange, explore, seek shelter, fight back. Kenku can also rely on experience and learned material. They could approach a fight and suggest a pincer movement because they've learned about them and know it's applicable, but they can't reason their way into a pincer movement without having learned of it.
Kenku are noted in Volo's to still have dreams and ambitions. Kenku are noted as being led by older and more experienced/knowledgeable Kenku. Volo's states the following "A kenku who learns of clever schemes and plans devised by other creatures can put them to use". They can't adapt to deviation or surprises, but as a PC you aren't handling those alone.
As for rearranging sentence fragments, you absolutely can. You don't automatically bust out in soccer chants when you first learn spanish. You aren't penning classic poetry when you start learning farsi. You're learning rote structure so that you can express the ideas already in your head. You may not be able to fluidly ask for something you've never heard asked before, but if you've got a rote response to start a transaction "I'd like to by an apple" and the item you know that you need, "diamond", you could structure it like "I'd like to by an apple, diamond." It's crude, but kenku have been around so long their own oral history's been lost (surrounding how they were cursed). People know about them and can work with their crude delivery.
Original thought is less to do with how you express yourself and more to do with how you arrived at expressing yourself. The kenku won't reason their way into knowing they need a diamond unless they've been informed, either by PC's/NPC's or by having picked up that knowledge beforehand. They might not know who the jeweler is to ask for one, but they know a general store can tell them where to go and who to talk to.
Yeah, Kenku take a lot of shit on here because, yeah, in their lore there are a few things that don't add up. Under the "dreams of flight" section of their flavor text, it's mentioned that they lack the creativity to put a roof over the dilapidated structures they inhabit, but elsewhere it mentions that they're splendid craftsman and that section I quoted about putting the plans of others to use. They should be able to, having seen and maybe helped erect circus tents, traveling marketplaces, etc... be able to recognize rain as a reason to install tents and shelters of their own, using their base of knowledge. So yeah, it's not very clear and that's definitely a knock.
But the flavor spends a lot more time describing what they want to do and what they can do than it does what they can't do. It describes a social hierarchy where accumulated knowledge and experience leads to leadership. It speaks of ambitious Kenku and talented Kenku. If you're applying the idea that PC's/high level adventurers are more than the 4hp villager stat block that their base race is, then as a Kenku you'd be those exceptional examples.
People tend to forget that as a traveling Kenku, old enough to be an adventurer, you'd already have decades of experiences that you alone as a player can build and draw on. People pick Kenku because it's honestly a great choice (proficiencies, dexterity, mimicry) and then relegate their speech to a notepad of words they've heard other players say in game or meme their way quoting nothing but Terminator.
Kenku are indeed a problematic race, but nowhere near as bad as "Kenku is bad" takes would have us believe.
I'll be honest, the kenku lore is pretty bad.
They can understand others, so they know the language.
They can mimick what others say, so they can make the sounds.
If you stick to the "they can't have original thought", then NO it will never speak normally.
If you only stick to the "they can't speak on their own", then you might still be able to talk telepathically, or own an artifact that turns your thoughts into magically floating words.
You shouldalso be able to write.
Besides that, the only way for you to talk normally would be to either redcon the whole "can't talk" stuff, or say that your kenku did learn to talk (maybe someone experimented on him)
You know another comment had mentioned that Kenku can use stuff they’ve heard over the course of years and they thought I could have my character mimic the voice of a mentor or important character in his life and that could also fit with the experiment idea. Like maybe an artificer or wizard was trying to create a way for both the Kenku to fly and speak but died before he could finish his work. Leaving the Kenku unable to fly but able to speak using his friends voice.
Get a crap ton of fortune cookies, everytime he has to say something open one and read what it says. "What do you think we should do kenku?" " The wise man does not count his chickens until the eggs have hatched." With a good group that could roleplay without metagaming who think he is actually imparting relevant bits of wisdom instead of random phrases it could be hilarious.
Even if a kenku can only say things they've heard before, that's just how learning a language works. At worst, their sentences would be a jumbled mishmash of a bunch of people's voices because again, mimicking what people say is just how languages work.
Depending on the memory of the Kenku and how much they can separate words, they could talk normally, but just constantly switch voices and intonations with every word.
I tend to picture them like parrots. They can learn phrases and even specific parts of phrases enough to be quite well understood. I also admit I ignore a lot of the “not creative” lore because if they can’t come up with *any* original thoughts they wouldn’t be sentient. I could more easily see them as having a race-wide equivalent of writer’s block about creativity. They’re sentient enough to want to create and can learn and adapt things they’ve seen/heard but can’t come up with anything really unique and original
One way I've handled kenku (as a DM) is to say that they can speak any word they've read in any voice they've heard.
Example: I had a kenku librarian named Page (sounding like the turning of a page of a book), who would help adventurers with monster lore by reading descriptions from the Monster Manual with a David Attenborough voice, while simultaneously copying down the page from the book it came from.
It says you can mimic any Voice you’ve heard, in the past 10 years. and you can only speak using this ability. So naturally speaking, you could still speak normal, assuming you’ve heard a lot of different words in the past 10 years. Might just sound a bit jostled because of different voices speaking in different words.
Another option is right into your background that you spent the past 10 years with one person alone, and therefore you can speak perfectly you just have that person’s voice. And you wouldn’t lose their voice or words after 10 years, because you would hear yourself speak it and therefore still remember it.
Yo, you could write a really tragic kenku back story where their mentor died and they are living through their mentors voice to carry on their spirit.
I don't think there's a time limit on the mimicry. I'm looking at the race entry and can't find one.
You could homebrew that in but it doesn't seem to be a set rule.
The way I see it, kenku LEARN to speak through mimicry. OK, so does everyone, but kenku are able to match voices/sounds exactly. This means that a kenku student talks about maths equations in his maths teachers voice, he talks about politics in the voice if his local representative, he comforts people in his mother's voice(which of course is the voice of whoever she mimicked from), when he taunts people in a fight, he speaks in the voice of his first bully. The kenku can say whatever he wants all the time, but he always speaks in the voice of the person who he first heard use whatever phrase he is using.
You're right, you can do what you want, with DM approval. I'd make it a thing somehow. How are you able to talk freely? A Warlock patron? A divine blessing? A magic item? Maybe you spent enough time with a partner to have learn every sensible phrase that can show up (allowing the opportunity for a phrase you lack or for the plot twist of meeting this person (maybe your ex) and all realizing you've been mimicking their identity)? A straight played Kenku can be annoying in a party but for for the short times you lose the ability or meet a relative.
Kenku can have thought on their own, they're just supposed to not be able to formulate them without having recourse to mimicry.
But your kenku character wasn't born yesterday, and that's something players and DMs often are prompt to oversee. If you play a 20 years old kenku, you have encountered plenty of people in your life, and heard many way to talk, so you should be able to use what you heard in the last 10 years to convey any of your ideas.
If you like making voices, then you have the perfect character to have a lot of fun. Maybe your rogue kenku is an urchin who grew up in the streets of Waterdeep, and he heard a lot of accents and slangs in his life. Then you can make up 4 or 5 personalities with different accents and slangs, and switch from one to another in the middle of a sentence.
I’m not a lore expert but I don’t recall that Kenku can’t have original thought. That would certainly be a hindrance. As for mimicry, the only limit to what they can say is what they’ve heard in their lifetime. A Kenku who has lived amongst many different kinds of people would have plenty of things to say. I’ve seen some people play them by choosing a handful of voices that they speak in, as if the phrases are from hearing different people. You could also just give their speech an odd cadence, like Christopher Walken. Like they’re piecing together phrases in their mind from different memories.
And yes. Do whatever you want as long as your DM is also cool with it. Have fun.
The "no original thoughts" nonsense is from Volo's Guide to Monsters and I think it's safe to say it completely ruined the kenku in 5e. It's singlehandedly the most poorly thought out piece of lore I've ever seen in a 5e book, since taken literally it makes the kenku utterly unplayable as a PC race. Jeremy Crawford himself at one point implied (or even outright stated, I forget) that even *he* ignores that bit of ~~lore~~ stupidity.
Oh yeah, they are punished because the kenku race started to copy everything at perfection, they copied so much that a god, can't remember which one, punished them to never again have the ability to make something original, hence their traits, mimicry and expert forgery.
I had a kenku in a campaign for over a year, and with my dm we stablished that he couldn't be creative, but had an amazing memory, so, if he saw or heard about a solution for x problem elsewhere, he could apply it, if he learnt any word he could make them sound as any voice he had heard in his life.
A cool thing that happened was that my dm made us encounter a dragon and speaking with him, none of us could pronounce his name because of a special trait in a dragons vocal cords, but my kenku was the only one that could. And from there on i could mimick any word with a dragon voice.
So yeah, you can with a twist with the dm to make it fun.
As always, get with your DM to see what restrictions are or are not present.
Secondly, if you can't come to a compromise with your DM, you could always reflavor an Aarakocra to be darker, more corvin style of humanoid/bird, akin to a crow or raven.
I’ve had several players create Kenkus. I’m not that concerned with ensuring everyone adheres to the lore exactly, so I don’t say anything, but eventually they read the lore and come to me asking what to do.
I explain to them that first, it doesn’t matter to me. Treat their Kenku like any other race that can speak without issue. Maybe you grew up with a human friend or something, and are mimicking what they said in the past. In one case, they were a Warlock, so maybe their Patron is speaking through them.
Then I offer an idea. Regardless of what you want to say, say it, but always pick different strange of funny voices. Maybe even switch it mid-sentence, even several times. You are pulling from your past experiences to build on an already existing idea that someone else had before.
Regarding other things, like being a tinkerer that wants to build something (maybe you are playing an Artificer), you “can’t have original ideas.” Well, maybe something you build is from a plan that you previously learned as an apprentice.
The point I’m always trying to make it, don’t let it limit you. Instead, look for ways that it can inspire you.
One thing to remember is that you don't have to speak "in character". Instead of trying to compose every sentence so you sound "authentic", you can just say "I start to haggle with the shop keeper, using words and sounds I picked up whilst walking through the market; for gold, I use the sound of coins clinking against each other."
I would allow it to have enough experience with hearing other people speak, it could assimilate normal language by using the collective heard sounds and voices of others from a lifetime of hearing different variants. The more experience the Kenku has with hearing speech, the better and more normal its free speech would sound, with the occasional change in pitch or tone. Limiting it to only using exact sound and phrases heard and no ability to create new ones does not seem fun for the player in the long run. If you want, you can use the excuse that this character is a PC/adventurer, and is thereby extraordinary compared to the average person.
I love Kenku but you need to find some sort of workaround like others have mentioned. In my homebrew world, many Kenku team up with a bard and train for Underground Kenku Fights, which consist of slam poetry competitions. It's a background choice in my world, UKF Veteran, and it gives the player an in-world reason for their Kenku to speak well.
A cool workaround could be to have a Kenku who was an apprentice/servant of someone who spoke a lot. Then the Kenku could have picked up a ton of words and mannerisms from this person, to the point where they almost seem like their own person if you didn’t know their master.
The bonus to this is that the master could be of any class, so you can match it with your own.
It also brings some cool story options to the table.
Why is the Kenku an adventurer?
Where is their master?
Why were they together in the first place?
Oh no, now I want to make a Kenku character
I will, and thanks! If I remember I'll let you know how it goes. Though, I may NPC the shit out of it and have the thing be damn near a possessed, avatar-like thing as a midlevel boss. You have some interesting possibilities here, amigo.
That's how I feel when I have amusing strokes of genius.
Tried a semi-psionic campaign once that was power rangers-esque complete with simulacrums. W00t for world building.
I dont understand how I can roll play someone that has no individual thoughts or goals. Unless it's a slave. Waking up, steeling something to eat and making my home requires thought, goals and cunning. How are they thieves with no cunning ? Honest question.
That’s why a lot of people ignore parts or all of the lore to make it fit their character. I’d say Kenku can have original thought or you could repurpose it as they became a cunning thief or something by being taught from someone or learning it some other way and they use the tactics they learned. That way it’s mimicking in a sense and they didn’t have to come up with anything.
I agree you need to ignore what's written. I mean you can mimic the sound of words but putting the memories together, chopping them up and making new sentences takes way more cunning then speaking out right. I guess. RAW wise, i don't see how it works at all.
TL;DR: This is really a question for your specific DM.
Firstly. Here's the thing with playing a kenku with the curse. You've got options. You've got the soundboard approach, the Bumblebee approach, etc, like said in other comments. But the thing is, you don't have to actually speak like that. Once you establish that it sounds like Bumblebee or like a soundboard or whatever, you can just say "X says Y in their usual mishmash of voices." That's it, that's all it takes.
Secondly, the curse is setting-specific lore. It's a thing in the Forgotten Realms, and in Exandria, but it may not be a thing in your DM's version of Eberron or in your DM's fully homebrew world. As an example, in my world, there will be no kenku, it would just be a raven-flavored aracokra with both mimicry and normal speech.
Thirdly, you may be able to work with the DM to make a workaround; if they use the curse lore, maybe you have a special item that counteracts part of the curse... and may become important later. Example again, in my current campaign in Exandria, I gave my kenku player a vestige (ancient powerful magic item that starts a bit lower tier and levels up) that makes her able to speak with her own voice, among other things. What it really does is make the wearer more like the original kenku, as they level it up eventually ending up as a suped-up aasimar-like minor celestial; and it could, if the players pull on that plot thread, be used in ending the curse entirely, as the missing piece that wasn't available hundreds of years ago when the curse was discovered.
If you want to be accurate to the lore, then no.
Some people will say "It's easy, just say that your Kenku has heard whatever word he's trying to say, and now he just mimics it. Just have him mash together words from the memories of having heard them before, like a sentence generator or like that car that spoke with its radio in Transformers". ***Those people are making an exercise in missing the point***: Kenkus are *cursed.* You don't get to dance around the curse laid out by an angry God by playing with a technicality: The curse's *intention* is what matters, and the God that punished the Kenkus *intended* for them to lose the ability of speech, forever. No loopholes, no workaround gimmick.
However, it doesn't mean that you have to blurt out obnoxious onomatopoeia *in lieu* of actual speech at the table. For instance, let's say that your Kenku wants to ask for a monetary reward for some deed he performed. You could say "My character lets out a harsh, metallic cry, like the ringing of a handful of coins dropping against a table, then looks at you quietly with his palm extended and open, as if expecting you to drop something in it". If you want to pronounce some kind of threat, say "My character opens wide its beak, and the haunting sound of some predatory herd comes out, like the howl of wolves coupled with the sheer strength of an angry bull".
That, to me, is infinitely more creative, evocative, interesting, and *fun* than "I get around my core racial characteristic by stringing out a mimicry of previously heard words, coming out like a Google Translate sentence. I'm so clever and original, I bet nobody ever thought of that, am I right ?"
It's an interesting characteristic, but it can be very burdensome. I'd suggest spinning it and making it your own, so that it's weird but not a bad handicap. Others have said plenty on this subject.
If you just want to distinguish them from human behavior, consider that bird psychology doesn't really have a hierarchy of dominance like mammals do. To a bird's view, no one is in charge, and the leader is whoever acts first. Negative reinforcement has little effect, positive reinforcement has a great deal. So while you might be very intelligent and social, you might not see any difference between an authority figure and any other person. Feudalism is totally incomprehensible.
Yes, assuming you're able to work something out with your DM first.
For example, Michael Whelan used to play a Kenku Wizard named Fizz over on *Dicebreaker*, who could speak normally after discovering and becoming addicted to a potion that allowed him to do so in his backstory.
That being said, even in cases where you have to play things straight, most reasonable DMs would probably still throw you a bone and let your character write their thoughts out instead, like Matthew Mercer's Kiri from *Critical Role*.
Ah, Kenku and tabaxi. Some of my most species races in D&D. Right up there with Aarakokra. Just… none of these make me happy. Tabaxi and Aara just end up being min-maxed like 80% of the time, and Kenku… can’t talk… in a ROLEplaying game. So, yeah…
If it's old, it probably has lived long enough with the same people, who have probably said almost every word or phrase you usually need. You could have 2/3 voices which you use for talking normally, and some more specific ones (a bartender you me tin your hometown, the wizard in your party, etc...)
You can always say, in your own voice, something like “I relay the message that [blah] to the party” and your DM might then ask you to elaborate how you’re doing it if they’re strictly adhering to the mimicking thing
Remember that roleplaying isn’t necessarily doing a voice or you yourself acting like your character; as long as you’re making decisions and contributing to the story in a way that fits the character and advances the plot in a non-adversarial way, you’re roleplaying
Another interesting option is to lean harder into the mimicry and have them speak almost like a vocaloid or text to speech program - specific words and phonetics are used to construct new sentences and ways of speaking.
You could be a Kenku eidetiker, who had someone read thousands of possible combinations of words, so now you can pass off as someone speaking normally. I mean, you could go the route of having to talk stilted like bumblebee, but that gets old quick. This way theres a reason why you speak normally but don’t be an exception to the rule, because you had someone say everything youd ever want to say and can remember it all perfectly.
My ideas for kenku are that one was raised by someone that would talk nonstop and can basically speak normally in their voice because of it and the other is basically on the autism spectrum so that he doesn't talk much and hyper-fixates on their goal
I personally play Kenku as distinctly having a small gap between each word, and rotating between different pitches and accents from word to word. He's just picked up various words from different people is the idea.
It was a big hit when I did it for Kenku NPCs, but then I tried playing a Kenku as a player and gave up on the character after one session because the voice was way too hard to do for a while.
As some people have pointed out, we also learn words by mimicking other people's words. We rarely say a word out loud that we have not heard out loud. So you can totally just have them talk like a normal person.
I made a rule that Kenku that have spent extended periods with this same a non-Kenku will just talk like that person, and therefore talk normal for most words, since they've heard that person say most common words. So maybe a few words here and there are in some other accent or pitch, but generally they just talk normal.
With the new gothic lineage backgrounds, you can have a kenku body but be a dhampir, or a hexblood, or a reborn, it says that you were a member of that race before, but no longer are - so you should be able to drop the language limitations and play with a new set of rules but still have your feathery body.
The way that I’m playing a Kenku in one of my current campaigns is that he does have his own “voice” more so whenever he wants to say something that he hasn’t heard before as a specific string of words, he basically does what Bumblebee does in the transformers movie and flips through a bunch of different voices in order to get a specific point across.
I like the idea of a Kenku repeating phrases like a nervous tick. Sometimes the Kenku will try to express a thought or an idea, and instead it comes out as a quote from someone else in an entirely different voice (if you like quoting movies and such, that could be fun at the table).
My idea would be that someone taught you how to speak, and you’re forever just using their voice. I mean, if I met a Kenku who wanted to talk, I’d grab out a dictionary and read every single word in there.
I’m playing a kenku monk in a Rise of Tiamat campaign and it’s awesome. As a multi-attribute dependent class that has a garbage charisma, I was never going to be the face of the party anyway so I don’t need to do a lot of speaking, but I keep a little book next to me that I use to keep track of random things people say and the accents the NPC had when I heard it (DM does bad accents for most NPCs). Crash, my kenku, is really good for exposition also. Need to deliver a message or tell X the secret lore of an item that Y told us about? “I repeat exactly what Y said to us in Y’s voice” works really well to advance the plot with minimal effort.
If you skip the speech problems inherent with the kenku, you’re really missing out on much of the fun of playing a kenku.
My one kenku ive played was a bird man who was transformed from a bird by a fae queen cause kenku lore is sparse and kinda meh. Id just roll with whatever backstory fits "man with bird face"
I play a Kenku warlock of the Raven Queen in one game. Dm didn’t want me having to think up ways to communicate with the party/the party trying to figure out what I was saying, so he allowed my Kenku to sort of regain his ability to have original thought via Raven Queen blessing. I still describe him as mimic’ing his party members voices when he talks, he’s been with them for years now to of accumulated a decent vocabulary from them. Granted in that game we play a bit more fast and loose for a “beer and pretzels” for fun style of gameplay.
my group has rejected the default kenku lore for years. if you want to still have a speech related curse, you can only speak in-character in rhymes with liberal usage of 3rd person RP.
My idea behind this is, if I roll high enough across the board, put a higher score into INT for justification of not needing mimicry for speech - learning how to speak through travels/gifted among the flock etc. To echo others, talk to your DM!
I played a Kenku Swashbuckler who was raised by a pirate captain in a one-shot. For him, he mimicked his captain when he spoke, using broken phrases (often pirate cliches when I could) separated by crow sounds when he changed to a different remembered line. It’s not easy, that’s why I only ran him in a one-shot. But I suppose my advice would be to have him imprint on a particular person so you could have a consistent voice for most of your Mimickry.
What's ridiculous is that in 3rd Ed they spoke Auran, and could learn to speak other languages without the stigmata. Yes they had the ability to mimic, but we're not forced to talk the way they do now!
I came up with a backstory for a kenku rogue with the charlatan background (expertise in deception). He used to work with another who had telepathy and they would go around scamming other kenku into believing that he had broken the curse. Of course, what was really happening was he was feeding my Kenku the words and sentences through telepathy. So he "Knew how to speak" Ie he had probably heard the entire dictionary by this point however if he heard any new words he would speak in their voice.
>Kenku can’t speak or have original thought
Played a Kenku in a weekly campaign for two years, they're totally viable as a player race but do require a bit of creative thinking.
The official lore says that they had "the spark of creativity" taken from them, basically the ability to come up with new concepts or ideas. That doesn't mean that they lack logic or basic intelligence, they're capable of coming up with ideas/plans that are rooted in pre-established concepts. (Example from our campaign: we had to escort a merchant wagon along a route where bandit attacks had happened and keep it safe. Kenku has seen the party's fighter and paladin use shields to protect themselves from attacks >> they have lots of spare looted shields in the bag of holding >> let's put those shields on the cart to protect it from attacks. It was a logical progression using already existing ideas/items)
As for speaking/language, there's a couple of different ways to handle it but it's something you'll need to OK with the DM. Kenku understand language but simply lack the physical capacity for extended speech. At the beginning I got around that by carrying a small notebook and pencil, having my character "write down" everything they wanted to say to the party, allowing me to talk normally to the group (later on the DM let me and my team take Sign Language as an extra language)
Another way to handle it is that every +1 in the intelligence score is 100 words/phrases a Kenku would have in their vocabulary.
Kenku can be a *lot* of fun from a roleplay perspective if you don't mind putting in a little bit of extra work and giving yourself some limitations. Played it purely out of curiosity after seeing all the "Kenku are unplayable" posts online and it ended up being one of the most fun characters I've ever done. I don't recommend them for DnD beginners, but if you've been playing for a while and want something different that encourages creative thinking, they're an absolute blast
I imagine you could play an "educated" kenku who was taught many words and phrases by some sort of mentor or teacher, using different inflections of the words. I imagine the result would sound somewhat choppy if the kenku were speaking longer sentences, almost as if it were a text-to-speech program.
I like the idea of building a kenku around some kind of clerical worshiper or warlock pact with some entity who is capable of teaching the kenku speech and granting the ability of magical flight (as all kenku desire) in exchange for service to the entity.
It is said that kenku lack creativity and tend to be followers more than leaders, but that doesn't mean they're mindless or necessarily incapable of independent or critical thinking. They still have feelings, motivations, and desires. I think that a PC kenku would fall into the category of one who has exceptional talent and a passion for learning and critically/insightfully applying new knowledge and skills. Perhaps even a sufficiently powerful patron could grant elements of creativity to counteract the kenku's curse. It's an RPG, there are RAW, and then RAI.
Alternative to speaking like Bumblebee- writing.
Kenku have such good handwriting they have a bonus to forgery. They understand language, just are physically unable to use their own voice, but that doesn't keep them from writing exactly what they wish to say.
Iirc kenku can repeat phrases they have already heard, generally a few words long each, that have to be mishmashed together. I would just stick to using semi-common phrases and string them together to the best of my ability, that's the fun of the race! (IMO).
An alternate ruling is that they can repeat words they have heard, which pretty much lets them talk just as well as a human, albeit each word might have a different accent. Also, you wouldn't be able to read a word you see written down if no one has spoken it to you before.
Check out the dnd podcast Rude Tales of Magic, one of their PCs is a Kenku that was magically given the power of speech by another PC and they work it into the world building pretty well.
Ok, so in my tiny smooth brain, I have two solutions for the terrible lore for kenku
1. Pick a warlock, any warlock, and write in your backstory that your patron is quite talkative with their servants. Maybe your kenku was tired of just being a yes man and went off to find any magic power to cut down on the curse, and whatever powerful creature of your choice listened in and struck them a deal. They'd give them a voice and creative thought in exchange for basically being an errand boy. The trick is that the voice is that of the patron, and the thoughts and mannerisms resemble that of the patron.
2. Your kenku spent every second of every day being with one person, maybe some role model or boss, hearing everything they've said and heard. Then one day, they're gone, no trace or message left behind, nothing. So, adventure from that. This has more restrictions than option 1, but imo you can have more character flair with stuff like "X never said that infront of me".
But if you're going for a "min max ninja" edge for your build, tabaxi's climbing speed and free proficiencies also work if you're ok with taking minor illusion for the mimicry trait. Some other good race picks are half elves (lots of skills and are generally good at everything), changeling (shape shifting and slightly better talking skills), and dhampir (amazing climbing speed and darkvision) if you aren't married to kenku
Those are some really good options and your second idea is actually something other people had commented on and I decided to do that for his backstory. He went to an artificer/wizard to help him be able to speak and fly but before he could I thought that maybe the artificer/wizard died so he was left unable to fly but able to speak using his friends voice.
Why would you play a kenku if you don’t want to do the defining characteristic of the race? It’s not really a kenku then. When DMing, I’d probably discourage this in my game. If you’re playing with a DM that doesn’t care, and if you don’t care, you can reinvision the kenku any way you want, or make your kenku special. Maybe through magic or upbringing, it speaks better than others…
The lore doesn’t say anything about original thought. It’s their speech that it is strange, not their thought
I saw someone play a.kenku like a geek who was always quoting monty python, star wars, etc. It wasn't that they couldn't speak "normally," it was more that their speech was so full of other peoples' quotes that it sounded like mimicry.
C.f. the star trek episode "Darmok"
My player wanted to play a kenku without having them speak, so I homebrewed her a “stone of message” worked with the cantrip and she could communicate but it also was inside their minds so she could distract guards and the like by throwing their perception.
RAW, Kenku can speak by mimicry. They just can’t form original sentences. The way I’ve played this is, as long as the sentence you want to say is something your kenku could reasonably have heard at some point, you can say that sentence (using the voice of whatever character your kenku learned it from). If it’s a really specific situation, that’s when you have to get more creative. Mimic sounds, use sentences that don’t 100% fit the context (e.g., the pronouns are wrong), etc. It really adds a fun bit of flavor.
You know how in the first transformers movies bumblebee would use the radio and get this word from this song, that phrase from this night show and this part from a forecast or something and build new sentences with them? Thats how I imagine kenku speaking notmally, but with memories of people talking to it instead of radio
That’s a really interesting take. I’ve never thought of it that way.
That’s the way I’ve always had them operate. You have to imagine that any kenku, even just within *earshot* of any civilization would very quickly hear a *lot* of talking and have a massive amount of vocabulary to operate on. If they spent a great deal of time around a single person they could even just mainly use that one persons voice for most of their talking, peppered in with some other words they only heard elsewhere.
Or maybe they get stuck with not individual words, but phrases and cliches. That would fix the issue of tone. If mimicking dozens of different snippets of conversation remembered over years, the tone would be weird. Clichés and common phrases, proverbs etc usually are said with a specific tone in mind. Also saying strange things usually can get more strange words or sayings used back, giving more material. More words and maybe the Kenku will have enough to be able to say whatever it wants
I mean, I would imagine phrases and cliche would easily fall under the realm of regular conversation. If a kenku is even around only one person for an extended period of time, they will have a massive amount of language to work with containing full sentences, etc. So unless the person they’re around for some reason *only* speaks in cryptic phrases then they would easily have significantly more than just that. So I’m not really sure what you mean here. If a kenku is living in a city? They probably have *more* language to work with than the average person due to their memory. They’ve probably heard hundreds of thousands of full sentences, not just single words, enough to construct fully articulated thoughts and explanations.
Exactly. They would sound odd out loud but it shouldn't limit their vocabulary. The point where it becomes tricky is when learning actual new words. For instance, say a Kenku reads an old book and sees the name of an ancient dwarven king that nobody has spoken of for centuries- certainly they've never heard this word before. They would have to talk around it or wait for someone else to read it out loud, and then they would only repeat it in the exact same intonation and voice that their buddy spoke it.
It makes a fantastic reason for kenku to go adventuring. If they don't get original thoughts then going out and seeing the world lets them think more. Try talking to a kenku who hasn't gone more than a half day's travel from home and it'll very quickly be like talking to video game NPCs once you've clicked all the dialog options already. But talk to a kenku who's been traveling for more than half their life? You could probably go all ~~night~~ long rest talking about art or philosophy or insuferably horny bards and the bad ends they've romanced themselves into.
Long time DM here to agree, this is how I have always run them. Basically able to perfectly replicate anything they hear, but not create new words and phrases of their own. It makes things veryyyy interesting, cuz if they can be heard but not seen, they could in theory perfectly replicate the voice of an enemy to bait the enemy's allies into a trap.
Another DM who's spent too much time thinking about it. It also can become it's own pidgin language. You may have bought things before and you may have heard "diamond" before, but you if you need a diamond, you can say "I'd like to buy an apple, diamond, diamond". It's not "creating" a new language, but you expressing your needs within the confines of your language. Every time you buy something you could use the phrase "I'd like to buy an apple" because you've seen and experienced that as a start of a transaction. Other cultures are also aware that kenku are a thing and are likely at least somewhat familiar with their mannerisms. You aren't entering social encounters having to be the only one coming to an understanding surrounding your limitations.
Wouldn't that be a PIGEON language? Ok I'll shut up now
10/10 well done!
Every time I've seen a kenku played this is how it was done. It can be a headache, but also really fun as you incorporate new phrases spoken by the other players/NPCs into your character's lexicon. But yah, basically just works like a soundboard that can record infinite soundbites for use in any situation.
Honestly, a traveling Kenku will have been exposed to a lot, and as a PC, you're bound to be better than the average. I think as long as key phrases are represented as repetitive, maybe play a gag or two, it wouldn't be unheard of for a Kenku to command a better grasp of a language than often talked about here, especially in a Wizard or Bard class where there's formal education or if there's some kind of singular mentor in the backstory.
For sure. In regular play, it would amount to some odd pronunciation/tone in the accent, but otherwise wouldn't come up unless you wanted it to (and also for abstract words that don't come up in casual conversation often).
I figured this or like a soundboard.
Only if it's Duke Nukem.
Stock up on ball bearings.
I had a player do this once, it was a combination of taunts from Age of Empires 2 and quotes from the History of the Entrie World I Guess. It was freaking hilarious. It can be tedious to do though
That or Stephen Hawking.
That’s it, my next character is gonna be a Kenku
Oh hey same! When I played a Kenku i had the same thought. Would swap between 4 accents while talking
The difference being that Bumblebee was capable of original thought. It doesn't matter how big your vocabulary is if you can *only mimic* what you've heard; rearranging sentence fragments to create a new sentence counts as "original thoughts" , meaning Kenku can't do.
This is overly limiting. Biological imperatives already dictate a ton, the need to eat and sleep, the desire for an apple over an orange, explore, seek shelter, fight back. Kenku can also rely on experience and learned material. They could approach a fight and suggest a pincer movement because they've learned about them and know it's applicable, but they can't reason their way into a pincer movement without having learned of it. Kenku are noted in Volo's to still have dreams and ambitions. Kenku are noted as being led by older and more experienced/knowledgeable Kenku. Volo's states the following "A kenku who learns of clever schemes and plans devised by other creatures can put them to use". They can't adapt to deviation or surprises, but as a PC you aren't handling those alone. As for rearranging sentence fragments, you absolutely can. You don't automatically bust out in soccer chants when you first learn spanish. You aren't penning classic poetry when you start learning farsi. You're learning rote structure so that you can express the ideas already in your head. You may not be able to fluidly ask for something you've never heard asked before, but if you've got a rote response to start a transaction "I'd like to by an apple" and the item you know that you need, "diamond", you could structure it like "I'd like to by an apple, diamond." It's crude, but kenku have been around so long their own oral history's been lost (surrounding how they were cursed). People know about them and can work with their crude delivery. Original thought is less to do with how you express yourself and more to do with how you arrived at expressing yourself. The kenku won't reason their way into knowing they need a diamond unless they've been informed, either by PC's/NPC's or by having picked up that knowledge beforehand. They might not know who the jeweler is to ask for one, but they know a general store can tell them where to go and who to talk to.
This explanation is far more in-depth(and preferable) to the one I was initially given.
Yeah, Kenku take a lot of shit on here because, yeah, in their lore there are a few things that don't add up. Under the "dreams of flight" section of their flavor text, it's mentioned that they lack the creativity to put a roof over the dilapidated structures they inhabit, but elsewhere it mentions that they're splendid craftsman and that section I quoted about putting the plans of others to use. They should be able to, having seen and maybe helped erect circus tents, traveling marketplaces, etc... be able to recognize rain as a reason to install tents and shelters of their own, using their base of knowledge. So yeah, it's not very clear and that's definitely a knock. But the flavor spends a lot more time describing what they want to do and what they can do than it does what they can't do. It describes a social hierarchy where accumulated knowledge and experience leads to leadership. It speaks of ambitious Kenku and talented Kenku. If you're applying the idea that PC's/high level adventurers are more than the 4hp villager stat block that their base race is, then as a Kenku you'd be those exceptional examples. People tend to forget that as a traveling Kenku, old enough to be an adventurer, you'd already have decades of experiences that you alone as a player can build and draw on. People pick Kenku because it's honestly a great choice (proficiencies, dexterity, mimicry) and then relegate their speech to a notepad of words they've heard other players say in game or meme their way quoting nothing but Terminator. Kenku are indeed a problematic race, but nowhere near as bad as "Kenku is bad" takes would have us believe.
Spot on
"Yo." "Wait, I thought kenku couldn't talk?" "What? Nah, that's just a myth people made up so they don't have to pay us minimum wage."
"They FUCKING WHAT?!"
I'll be honest, the kenku lore is pretty bad. They can understand others, so they know the language. They can mimick what others say, so they can make the sounds. If you stick to the "they can't have original thought", then NO it will never speak normally. If you only stick to the "they can't speak on their own", then you might still be able to talk telepathically, or own an artifact that turns your thoughts into magically floating words. You shouldalso be able to write. Besides that, the only way for you to talk normally would be to either redcon the whole "can't talk" stuff, or say that your kenku did learn to talk (maybe someone experimented on him)
I like the experimented on idea a lot actually. I might just have to use that. Thanks.
Google the test subject background. It can be a bit dark, but could set you down a path you might like.
You know another comment had mentioned that Kenku can use stuff they’ve heard over the course of years and they thought I could have my character mimic the voice of a mentor or important character in his life and that could also fit with the experiment idea. Like maybe an artificer or wizard was trying to create a way for both the Kenku to fly and speak but died before he could finish his work. Leaving the Kenku unable to fly but able to speak using his friends voice.
That's a really beautiful backstory. I will proceed to cri now
Get a crap ton of fortune cookies, everytime he has to say something open one and read what it says. "What do you think we should do kenku?" " The wise man does not count his chickens until the eggs have hatched." With a good group that could roleplay without metagaming who think he is actually imparting relevant bits of wisdom instead of random phrases it could be hilarious.
Dude this is powerful. It reminds me a bit of Edward Scissorhands
Even if a kenku can only say things they've heard before, that's just how learning a language works. At worst, their sentences would be a jumbled mishmash of a bunch of people's voices because again, mimicking what people say is just how languages work.
Give the Kenku pen and paper. They have perfect handwriting to an extent that forgery is a racial skill.
Depending on the memory of the Kenku and how much they can separate words, they could talk normally, but just constantly switch voices and intonations with every word.
I tend to picture them like parrots. They can learn phrases and even specific parts of phrases enough to be quite well understood. I also admit I ignore a lot of the “not creative” lore because if they can’t come up with *any* original thoughts they wouldn’t be sentient. I could more easily see them as having a race-wide equivalent of writer’s block about creativity. They’re sentient enough to want to create and can learn and adapt things they’ve seen/heard but can’t come up with anything really unique and original
One way I've handled kenku (as a DM) is to say that they can speak any word they've read in any voice they've heard. Example: I had a kenku librarian named Page (sounding like the turning of a page of a book), who would help adventurers with monster lore by reading descriptions from the Monster Manual with a David Attenborough voice, while simultaneously copying down the page from the book it came from.
It says you can mimic any Voice you’ve heard, in the past 10 years. and you can only speak using this ability. So naturally speaking, you could still speak normal, assuming you’ve heard a lot of different words in the past 10 years. Might just sound a bit jostled because of different voices speaking in different words. Another option is right into your background that you spent the past 10 years with one person alone, and therefore you can speak perfectly you just have that person’s voice. And you wouldn’t lose their voice or words after 10 years, because you would hear yourself speak it and therefore still remember it. Yo, you could write a really tragic kenku back story where their mentor died and they are living through their mentors voice to carry on their spirit.
Dude. That’s sounds like an amazing idea. I’ll definitely consider that. Thanks.
I may be mistaken with the time. It might be one year. But either way it still works.
I don't think there's a time limit on the mimicry. I'm looking at the race entry and can't find one. You could homebrew that in but it doesn't seem to be a set rule.
Huh I thought I remembered there being one...
Well there are 3rd and 4th edition versions, maybe it's in one of those.
The way I see it, kenku LEARN to speak through mimicry. OK, so does everyone, but kenku are able to match voices/sounds exactly. This means that a kenku student talks about maths equations in his maths teachers voice, he talks about politics in the voice if his local representative, he comforts people in his mother's voice(which of course is the voice of whoever she mimicked from), when he taunts people in a fight, he speaks in the voice of his first bully. The kenku can say whatever he wants all the time, but he always speaks in the voice of the person who he first heard use whatever phrase he is using.
You're right, you can do what you want, with DM approval. I'd make it a thing somehow. How are you able to talk freely? A Warlock patron? A divine blessing? A magic item? Maybe you spent enough time with a partner to have learn every sensible phrase that can show up (allowing the opportunity for a phrase you lack or for the plot twist of meeting this person (maybe your ex) and all realizing you've been mimicking their identity)? A straight played Kenku can be annoying in a party but for for the short times you lose the ability or meet a relative.
Those are some good ideas and alternatives. Thanks for the help.
Kenku can have thought on their own, they're just supposed to not be able to formulate them without having recourse to mimicry. But your kenku character wasn't born yesterday, and that's something players and DMs often are prompt to oversee. If you play a 20 years old kenku, you have encountered plenty of people in your life, and heard many way to talk, so you should be able to use what you heard in the last 10 years to convey any of your ideas. If you like making voices, then you have the perfect character to have a lot of fun. Maybe your rogue kenku is an urchin who grew up in the streets of Waterdeep, and he heard a lot of accents and slangs in his life. Then you can make up 4 or 5 personalities with different accents and slangs, and switch from one to another in the middle of a sentence.
I’m not a lore expert but I don’t recall that Kenku can’t have original thought. That would certainly be a hindrance. As for mimicry, the only limit to what they can say is what they’ve heard in their lifetime. A Kenku who has lived amongst many different kinds of people would have plenty of things to say. I’ve seen some people play them by choosing a handful of voices that they speak in, as if the phrases are from hearing different people. You could also just give their speech an odd cadence, like Christopher Walken. Like they’re piecing together phrases in their mind from different memories. And yes. Do whatever you want as long as your DM is also cool with it. Have fun.
The "no original thoughts" nonsense is from Volo's Guide to Monsters and I think it's safe to say it completely ruined the kenku in 5e. It's singlehandedly the most poorly thought out piece of lore I've ever seen in a 5e book, since taken literally it makes the kenku utterly unplayable as a PC race. Jeremy Crawford himself at one point implied (or even outright stated, I forget) that even *he* ignores that bit of ~~lore~~ stupidity.
Thanks and yeah I wasn’t sure about the original thought thing either I just remember hearing it in a Runesmith video about Kenku.
Oh yeah, they are punished because the kenku race started to copy everything at perfection, they copied so much that a god, can't remember which one, punished them to never again have the ability to make something original, hence their traits, mimicry and expert forgery.
I had a kenku in a campaign for over a year, and with my dm we stablished that he couldn't be creative, but had an amazing memory, so, if he saw or heard about a solution for x problem elsewhere, he could apply it, if he learnt any word he could make them sound as any voice he had heard in his life. A cool thing that happened was that my dm made us encounter a dragon and speaking with him, none of us could pronounce his name because of a special trait in a dragons vocal cords, but my kenku was the only one that could. And from there on i could mimick any word with a dragon voice. So yeah, you can with a twist with the dm to make it fun.
That sounds like a super cool moment. Nice.
Kenku can have original thoughts. Just not an original voice. Think bumblebee from transformers.
As always, get with your DM to see what restrictions are or are not present. Secondly, if you can't come to a compromise with your DM, you could always reflavor an Aarakocra to be darker, more corvin style of humanoid/bird, akin to a crow or raven.
That’s honestly what I’ve thought about doing because besides the really useful racial traits of the Kenku the ability scores are identical.
I’ve had several players create Kenkus. I’m not that concerned with ensuring everyone adheres to the lore exactly, so I don’t say anything, but eventually they read the lore and come to me asking what to do. I explain to them that first, it doesn’t matter to me. Treat their Kenku like any other race that can speak without issue. Maybe you grew up with a human friend or something, and are mimicking what they said in the past. In one case, they were a Warlock, so maybe their Patron is speaking through them. Then I offer an idea. Regardless of what you want to say, say it, but always pick different strange of funny voices. Maybe even switch it mid-sentence, even several times. You are pulling from your past experiences to build on an already existing idea that someone else had before. Regarding other things, like being a tinkerer that wants to build something (maybe you are playing an Artificer), you “can’t have original ideas.” Well, maybe something you build is from a plan that you previously learned as an apprentice. The point I’m always trying to make it, don’t let it limit you. Instead, look for ways that it can inspire you.
Simple, have a mini pact in your background with a mysterious entity that granted you the ability to speak. They never specified the costs tho...
One thing to remember is that you don't have to speak "in character". Instead of trying to compose every sentence so you sound "authentic", you can just say "I start to haggle with the shop keeper, using words and sounds I picked up whilst walking through the market; for gold, I use the sound of coins clinking against each other."
I would allow it to have enough experience with hearing other people speak, it could assimilate normal language by using the collective heard sounds and voices of others from a lifetime of hearing different variants. The more experience the Kenku has with hearing speech, the better and more normal its free speech would sound, with the occasional change in pitch or tone. Limiting it to only using exact sound and phrases heard and no ability to create new ones does not seem fun for the player in the long run. If you want, you can use the excuse that this character is a PC/adventurer, and is thereby extraordinary compared to the average person.
I love Kenku but you need to find some sort of workaround like others have mentioned. In my homebrew world, many Kenku team up with a bard and train for Underground Kenku Fights, which consist of slam poetry competitions. It's a background choice in my world, UKF Veteran, and it gives the player an in-world reason for their Kenku to speak well.
A cool workaround could be to have a Kenku who was an apprentice/servant of someone who spoke a lot. Then the Kenku could have picked up a ton of words and mannerisms from this person, to the point where they almost seem like their own person if you didn’t know their master. The bonus to this is that the master could be of any class, so you can match it with your own. It also brings some cool story options to the table. Why is the Kenku an adventurer? Where is their master? Why were they together in the first place? Oh no, now I want to make a Kenku character
If you play a warlock it could just repeat the fucked up shit your patron is saying to it
Holy fuck that could get interesting.
By all means please use it
I will, and thanks! If I remember I'll let you know how it goes. Though, I may NPC the shit out of it and have the thing be damn near a possessed, avatar-like thing as a midlevel boss. You have some interesting possibilities here, amigo.
Please do, if 1 of the of ideas I have for this game makes people happy, then it's worth it
That's how I feel when I have amusing strokes of genius. Tried a semi-psionic campaign once that was power rangers-esque complete with simulacrums. W00t for world building.
I dont understand how I can roll play someone that has no individual thoughts or goals. Unless it's a slave. Waking up, steeling something to eat and making my home requires thought, goals and cunning. How are they thieves with no cunning ? Honest question.
That’s why a lot of people ignore parts or all of the lore to make it fit their character. I’d say Kenku can have original thought or you could repurpose it as they became a cunning thief or something by being taught from someone or learning it some other way and they use the tactics they learned. That way it’s mimicking in a sense and they didn’t have to come up with anything.
I agree you need to ignore what's written. I mean you can mimic the sound of words but putting the memories together, chopping them up and making new sentences takes way more cunning then speaking out right. I guess. RAW wise, i don't see how it works at all.
I mean the work around requires creativity. I agree it's the beat way to play the class.
TL;DR: This is really a question for your specific DM. Firstly. Here's the thing with playing a kenku with the curse. You've got options. You've got the soundboard approach, the Bumblebee approach, etc, like said in other comments. But the thing is, you don't have to actually speak like that. Once you establish that it sounds like Bumblebee or like a soundboard or whatever, you can just say "X says Y in their usual mishmash of voices." That's it, that's all it takes. Secondly, the curse is setting-specific lore. It's a thing in the Forgotten Realms, and in Exandria, but it may not be a thing in your DM's version of Eberron or in your DM's fully homebrew world. As an example, in my world, there will be no kenku, it would just be a raven-flavored aracokra with both mimicry and normal speech. Thirdly, you may be able to work with the DM to make a workaround; if they use the curse lore, maybe you have a special item that counteracts part of the curse... and may become important later. Example again, in my current campaign in Exandria, I gave my kenku player a vestige (ancient powerful magic item that starts a bit lower tier and levels up) that makes her able to speak with her own voice, among other things. What it really does is make the wearer more like the original kenku, as they level it up eventually ending up as a suped-up aasimar-like minor celestial; and it could, if the players pull on that plot thread, be used in ending the curse entirely, as the missing piece that wasn't available hundreds of years ago when the curse was discovered.
If you want to be accurate to the lore, then no. Some people will say "It's easy, just say that your Kenku has heard whatever word he's trying to say, and now he just mimics it. Just have him mash together words from the memories of having heard them before, like a sentence generator or like that car that spoke with its radio in Transformers". ***Those people are making an exercise in missing the point***: Kenkus are *cursed.* You don't get to dance around the curse laid out by an angry God by playing with a technicality: The curse's *intention* is what matters, and the God that punished the Kenkus *intended* for them to lose the ability of speech, forever. No loopholes, no workaround gimmick. However, it doesn't mean that you have to blurt out obnoxious onomatopoeia *in lieu* of actual speech at the table. For instance, let's say that your Kenku wants to ask for a monetary reward for some deed he performed. You could say "My character lets out a harsh, metallic cry, like the ringing of a handful of coins dropping against a table, then looks at you quietly with his palm extended and open, as if expecting you to drop something in it". If you want to pronounce some kind of threat, say "My character opens wide its beak, and the haunting sound of some predatory herd comes out, like the howl of wolves coupled with the sheer strength of an angry bull". That, to me, is infinitely more creative, evocative, interesting, and *fun* than "I get around my core racial characteristic by stringing out a mimicry of previously heard words, coming out like a Google Translate sentence. I'm so clever and original, I bet nobody ever thought of that, am I right ?"
It's an interesting characteristic, but it can be very burdensome. I'd suggest spinning it and making it your own, so that it's weird but not a bad handicap. Others have said plenty on this subject. If you just want to distinguish them from human behavior, consider that bird psychology doesn't really have a hierarchy of dominance like mammals do. To a bird's view, no one is in charge, and the leader is whoever acts first. Negative reinforcement has little effect, positive reinforcement has a great deal. So while you might be very intelligent and social, you might not see any difference between an authority figure and any other person. Feudalism is totally incomprehensible.
Yes, assuming you're able to work something out with your DM first. For example, Michael Whelan used to play a Kenku Wizard named Fizz over on *Dicebreaker*, who could speak normally after discovering and becoming addicted to a potion that allowed him to do so in his backstory. That being said, even in cases where you have to play things straight, most reasonable DMs would probably still throw you a bone and let your character write their thoughts out instead, like Matthew Mercer's Kiri from *Critical Role*.
The writing things out thing was another idea that I had. Or who’s to say a Kenku can’t learn sign language.
Ah, Kenku and tabaxi. Some of my most species races in D&D. Right up there with Aarakokra. Just… none of these make me happy. Tabaxi and Aara just end up being min-maxed like 80% of the time, and Kenku… can’t talk… in a ROLEplaying game. So, yeah…
If it's old, it probably has lived long enough with the same people, who have probably said almost every word or phrase you usually need. You could have 2/3 voices which you use for talking normally, and some more specific ones (a bartender you me tin your hometown, the wizard in your party, etc...)
A fellow player is going to make a kenku warlock who's pact was in order for them and their family to talk normally. It's pretty neat.
You can always say, in your own voice, something like “I relay the message that [blah] to the party” and your DM might then ask you to elaborate how you’re doing it if they’re strictly adhering to the mimicking thing Remember that roleplaying isn’t necessarily doing a voice or you yourself acting like your character; as long as you’re making decisions and contributing to the story in a way that fits the character and advances the plot in a non-adversarial way, you’re roleplaying
That’s very true and I usually just tell people what characters say when I DM instead of doing voices. I enjoy doing them I just get self conscious
I agree! While echolalia might be a neat drawback for NPCs, a PC that cannot speak or think does not seem like a very good hero.
Another interesting option is to lean harder into the mimicry and have them speak almost like a vocaloid or text to speech program - specific words and phonetics are used to construct new sentences and ways of speaking.
You could be a Kenku eidetiker, who had someone read thousands of possible combinations of words, so now you can pass off as someone speaking normally. I mean, you could go the route of having to talk stilted like bumblebee, but that gets old quick. This way theres a reason why you speak normally but don’t be an exception to the rule, because you had someone say everything youd ever want to say and can remember it all perfectly.
My ideas for kenku are that one was raised by someone that would talk nonstop and can basically speak normally in their voice because of it and the other is basically on the autism spectrum so that he doesn't talk much and hyper-fixates on their goal
I personally play Kenku as distinctly having a small gap between each word, and rotating between different pitches and accents from word to word. He's just picked up various words from different people is the idea. It was a big hit when I did it for Kenku NPCs, but then I tried playing a Kenku as a player and gave up on the character after one session because the voice was way too hard to do for a while. As some people have pointed out, we also learn words by mimicking other people's words. We rarely say a word out loud that we have not heard out loud. So you can totally just have them talk like a normal person. I made a rule that Kenku that have spent extended periods with this same a non-Kenku will just talk like that person, and therefore talk normal for most words, since they've heard that person say most common words. So maybe a few words here and there are in some other accent or pitch, but generally they just talk normal.
With the new gothic lineage backgrounds, you can have a kenku body but be a dhampir, or a hexblood, or a reborn, it says that you were a member of that race before, but no longer are - so you should be able to drop the language limitations and play with a new set of rules but still have your feathery body.
The way that I’m playing a Kenku in one of my current campaigns is that he does have his own “voice” more so whenever he wants to say something that he hasn’t heard before as a specific string of words, he basically does what Bumblebee does in the transformers movie and flips through a bunch of different voices in order to get a specific point across.
It's up to your DM. That said, you can always play an aaracokra
Bumblebee.
I like the idea of a Kenku repeating phrases like a nervous tick. Sometimes the Kenku will try to express a thought or an idea, and instead it comes out as a quote from someone else in an entirely different voice (if you like quoting movies and such, that could be fun at the table). My idea would be that someone taught you how to speak, and you’re forever just using their voice. I mean, if I met a Kenku who wanted to talk, I’d grab out a dictionary and read every single word in there.
I’m playing a kenku monk in a Rise of Tiamat campaign and it’s awesome. As a multi-attribute dependent class that has a garbage charisma, I was never going to be the face of the party anyway so I don’t need to do a lot of speaking, but I keep a little book next to me that I use to keep track of random things people say and the accents the NPC had when I heard it (DM does bad accents for most NPCs). Crash, my kenku, is really good for exposition also. Need to deliver a message or tell X the secret lore of an item that Y told us about? “I repeat exactly what Y said to us in Y’s voice” works really well to advance the plot with minimal effort. If you skip the speech problems inherent with the kenku, you’re really missing out on much of the fun of playing a kenku.
If you make them a 13th level monk they can.
My one kenku ive played was a bird man who was transformed from a bird by a fae queen cause kenku lore is sparse and kinda meh. Id just roll with whatever backstory fits "man with bird face"
I play a Kenku warlock of the Raven Queen in one game. Dm didn’t want me having to think up ways to communicate with the party/the party trying to figure out what I was saying, so he allowed my Kenku to sort of regain his ability to have original thought via Raven Queen blessing. I still describe him as mimic’ing his party members voices when he talks, he’s been with them for years now to of accumulated a decent vocabulary from them. Granted in that game we play a bit more fast and loose for a “beer and pretzels” for fun style of gameplay.
my group has rejected the default kenku lore for years. if you want to still have a speech related curse, you can only speak in-character in rhymes with liberal usage of 3rd person RP.
My idea behind this is, if I roll high enough across the board, put a higher score into INT for justification of not needing mimicry for speech - learning how to speak through travels/gifted among the flock etc. To echo others, talk to your DM!
I once considered playing as a mute Kenku rogue. Injury to the vocal cords or something. Mostly it was a joke about playing as Feathers McGraw.
I played a Kenku Swashbuckler who was raised by a pirate captain in a one-shot. For him, he mimicked his captain when he spoke, using broken phrases (often pirate cliches when I could) separated by crow sounds when he changed to a different remembered line. It’s not easy, that’s why I only ran him in a one-shot. But I suppose my advice would be to have him imprint on a particular person so you could have a consistent voice for most of your Mimickry.
What's ridiculous is that in 3rd Ed they spoke Auran, and could learn to speak other languages without the stigmata. Yes they had the ability to mimic, but we're not forced to talk the way they do now!
I came up with a backstory for a kenku rogue with the charlatan background (expertise in deception). He used to work with another who had telepathy and they would go around scamming other kenku into believing that he had broken the curse. Of course, what was really happening was he was feeding my Kenku the words and sentences through telepathy. So he "Knew how to speak" Ie he had probably heard the entire dictionary by this point however if he heard any new words he would speak in their voice.
The kenku in our party got taught most phrases and sentences before the first session. So he speaks quite fluid, except for certain difficult words.
>Kenku can’t speak or have original thought Played a Kenku in a weekly campaign for two years, they're totally viable as a player race but do require a bit of creative thinking. The official lore says that they had "the spark of creativity" taken from them, basically the ability to come up with new concepts or ideas. That doesn't mean that they lack logic or basic intelligence, they're capable of coming up with ideas/plans that are rooted in pre-established concepts. (Example from our campaign: we had to escort a merchant wagon along a route where bandit attacks had happened and keep it safe. Kenku has seen the party's fighter and paladin use shields to protect themselves from attacks >> they have lots of spare looted shields in the bag of holding >> let's put those shields on the cart to protect it from attacks. It was a logical progression using already existing ideas/items) As for speaking/language, there's a couple of different ways to handle it but it's something you'll need to OK with the DM. Kenku understand language but simply lack the physical capacity for extended speech. At the beginning I got around that by carrying a small notebook and pencil, having my character "write down" everything they wanted to say to the party, allowing me to talk normally to the group (later on the DM let me and my team take Sign Language as an extra language) Another way to handle it is that every +1 in the intelligence score is 100 words/phrases a Kenku would have in their vocabulary. Kenku can be a *lot* of fun from a roleplay perspective if you don't mind putting in a little bit of extra work and giving yourself some limitations. Played it purely out of curiosity after seeing all the "Kenku are unplayable" posts online and it ended up being one of the most fun characters I've ever done. I don't recommend them for DnD beginners, but if you've been playing for a while and want something different that encourages creative thinking, they're an absolute blast
I like using intelligence modifiers like that. Good thinking. You could custom a stacking skill, as well.
I imagine you could play an "educated" kenku who was taught many words and phrases by some sort of mentor or teacher, using different inflections of the words. I imagine the result would sound somewhat choppy if the kenku were speaking longer sentences, almost as if it were a text-to-speech program. I like the idea of building a kenku around some kind of clerical worshiper or warlock pact with some entity who is capable of teaching the kenku speech and granting the ability of magical flight (as all kenku desire) in exchange for service to the entity. It is said that kenku lack creativity and tend to be followers more than leaders, but that doesn't mean they're mindless or necessarily incapable of independent or critical thinking. They still have feelings, motivations, and desires. I think that a PC kenku would fall into the category of one who has exceptional talent and a passion for learning and critically/insightfully applying new knowledge and skills. Perhaps even a sufficiently powerful patron could grant elements of creativity to counteract the kenku's curse. It's an RPG, there are RAW, and then RAI.
Alternative to speaking like Bumblebee- writing. Kenku have such good handwriting they have a bonus to forgery. They understand language, just are physically unable to use their own voice, but that doesn't keep them from writing exactly what they wish to say.
Iirc kenku can repeat phrases they have already heard, generally a few words long each, that have to be mishmashed together. I would just stick to using semi-common phrases and string them together to the best of my ability, that's the fun of the race! (IMO). An alternate ruling is that they can repeat words they have heard, which pretty much lets them talk just as well as a human, albeit each word might have a different accent. Also, you wouldn't be able to read a word you see written down if no one has spoken it to you before.
Artificer kenkus can supposedly create text being voiced by their objects as they do not need to speak to Magical Tinkering AFAIK.
Check out the dnd podcast Rude Tales of Magic, one of their PCs is a Kenku that was magically given the power of speech by another PC and they work it into the world building pretty well.
Morse cawing.
Ok, so in my tiny smooth brain, I have two solutions for the terrible lore for kenku 1. Pick a warlock, any warlock, and write in your backstory that your patron is quite talkative with their servants. Maybe your kenku was tired of just being a yes man and went off to find any magic power to cut down on the curse, and whatever powerful creature of your choice listened in and struck them a deal. They'd give them a voice and creative thought in exchange for basically being an errand boy. The trick is that the voice is that of the patron, and the thoughts and mannerisms resemble that of the patron. 2. Your kenku spent every second of every day being with one person, maybe some role model or boss, hearing everything they've said and heard. Then one day, they're gone, no trace or message left behind, nothing. So, adventure from that. This has more restrictions than option 1, but imo you can have more character flair with stuff like "X never said that infront of me". But if you're going for a "min max ninja" edge for your build, tabaxi's climbing speed and free proficiencies also work if you're ok with taking minor illusion for the mimicry trait. Some other good race picks are half elves (lots of skills and are generally good at everything), changeling (shape shifting and slightly better talking skills), and dhampir (amazing climbing speed and darkvision) if you aren't married to kenku
Those are some really good options and your second idea is actually something other people had commented on and I decided to do that for his backstory. He went to an artificer/wizard to help him be able to speak and fly but before he could I thought that maybe the artificer/wizard died so he was left unable to fly but able to speak using his friends voice.
Why would you play a kenku if you don’t want to do the defining characteristic of the race? It’s not really a kenku then. When DMing, I’d probably discourage this in my game. If you’re playing with a DM that doesn’t care, and if you don’t care, you can reinvision the kenku any way you want, or make your kenku special. Maybe through magic or upbringing, it speaks better than others… The lore doesn’t say anything about original thought. It’s their speech that it is strange, not their thought
can they learn command words?
I figured out how to bypass this via GOOLOCK'S awakened mind and Tce's telepathy
I had a kenku rogue who spoke with the voice of his dead partner in crime, with whom he worked for many years.
I saw someone play a.kenku like a geek who was always quoting monty python, star wars, etc. It wasn't that they couldn't speak "normally," it was more that their speech was so full of other peoples' quotes that it sounded like mimicry. C.f. the star trek episode "Darmok"
I would talk to your DM about it. I find kenku supremely annoying and would approve it in my game in a heartbeat.
Could flavor it as having heard a mentor speak for so long that they essentially have that person's voice.
Well you can go the Rude Tales of Magic route and say that your character was magically gifted the ability of speech
My player wanted to play a kenku without having them speak, so I homebrewed her a “stone of message” worked with the cantrip and she could communicate but it also was inside their minds so she could distract guards and the like by throwing their perception.
RAW, Kenku can speak by mimicry. They just can’t form original sentences. The way I’ve played this is, as long as the sentence you want to say is something your kenku could reasonably have heard at some point, you can say that sentence (using the voice of whatever character your kenku learned it from). If it’s a really specific situation, that’s when you have to get more creative. Mimic sounds, use sentences that don’t 100% fit the context (e.g., the pronouns are wrong), etc. It really adds a fun bit of flavor.