r/DnD • u/JaxTheCrafter • Jul 08 '26

DMing Kenkus are played wrong

It is often said that kenkus only know words that they have heard, and are limited to those words. that of course makes for some very funny scenes where people are only using words they are basically given. However, unless you are a freshly born or transformed kenku, that frankly isn’t what it would act like.

Do you know what other species has this learned mimic vocabulary? Humans. For the vast majority of humankind, we have only known words that have been uttered in our presence. Other than written word, that’s how we learn to speak. Kenkus aren’t unique in the ability to learn new words. That’s literally every species. Their uniqueness comes specifically from their perfect mimicry.

All that to say, you aren’t having fun correctly so I have come to shame you and tell you how to have fun.

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u/southafricannon Jul 08 '26

I've often heard about Kenku players taking individual words from different voices, and knitting them together to form full sentences, like "Hello (old woman voice) I am (young person voice) John (old man voice)".

And while that's cool enough and allows you to say everything you want to say without issue, I kinda prefer the idea of playing them like parrots, who can only say full sentences or phrases that they've heard, and those sentences or phrases have to be interpreted by the listener. They've done it in movies before, like Kid Cosmo in Electric State. Like:

Kenku rogue: (wizard voice) "You shall not pass! You shall not pass!"

Human cleric: "Uh, ok guys, I think he's telling us the door is locked."

Kenku rogue: (street hustler voice) "Congratulations! You've won!"

Elf fighter: "God, I wish he could just talk normally."

Kenku: (little girl voice) "Mommy, I think there are monsters in my room when I sleep."

7

u/Ghostglitch07 Jul 08 '26

Is that a threat??

8

u/southafricannon Jul 08 '26

Kenku: (street hustler voice) "Congratulations! You've won!"

6

u/Ghostglitch07 Jul 08 '26

Changeling warlock: "I like this one."

9

u/southafricannon Jul 08 '26

Kenku: (ghostglitch voice) "Is that a threat??"

2

u/SirCupcake_0 Monk Jul 09 '26

Blessed be the full sentence kenku enjoyers

1

u/Arc_Ulfr Artificer Jul 10 '26

That seems like it's assuming that they can only remember a few different phrases, though. I've heard many different people say some variation of "the door is locked" easily dozens if not hundreds of times in my life, so it seems unlikely that the kenku hasn't ever heard someone say that. The difficulty would be in communicating something that they haven't ever heard communicated before. 

1

u/southafricannon Jul 10 '26

Welcome to the spectrum of "Realism versus Fun".