I am Rping a Kenku. Some people act like the lack of the spark of creativity means they can’t think for themselves or adapt. I believe it is more craftsmanship and art. My DM agrees, but what do you think? That’s how we imagined it when we worked on the race – no artistic spark, no creating wholly new ideas, so to speak
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) March 13, 2018
In short, instead of playing a Hero with agency, you get to play a Minion NPC who can only do what they’re told and follow other people’s plans.
It boggles my mind that they thought this was a good idea. It destroys players agency, it doesn’t make a shred of logical sense given the intelligence and cleverness of crows and ravens, and it has absolutely no reason to exist because it contributes absolutely nothing to either gameplay or storytelling.
An utterly senseless and counterproductive change to a race that was already underutilized and unfortunately pigeon-holed by limited lore and two dimensional racial attributes.
Just because you can’t create a new idea, doesn’t mean you can’t use one your character encountered someone else using before they became an adventurer. My kenku monk spent a lot of tome in a library, so he can recall the ideas the heroes of history and folklore had that he read while he was there.