Part 2: Races ☰
A character’s race simply refers to their form, their physical shape, their body, but also tells of their parentage and what blood flows through their veins. Rather than give a list of races with pre-defined and set-in-stone features, what is instead given here is a list of modular features that can be used to create and modify races at yours or your GM’s discretion. In addition to the modular features, some universally-applied features and three different types of aesthetics for your character have been given.
To create a race for a character or group of people, simply take the general features, add any 4 modular features, and decide on your character's or group's aesthetics. Provided in the following chapters are several example races of each archetype; additional example races are given in the Races chapter in the Aethra section of the Pre-Made Content. A feature cannot be taken more than once, excepting the Ability Score Improvement feature, which can be taken no more than twice.
For the sake of narrative consistency, it is recommended that a group’s GM create the races for their world (if they are making their own), and then work with their players to help them create or select theirs based on what the GM has already made. The GM and player will then both have a greater understanding of the player’s character’s place in the world and where – and who – they come from.
This is all meant to inspire creativity and fun, and to be as unrestrictive as possible when creating your ideal character/race! It is not just acceptable but actively encouraged that you experiment and cross-breed features of varying archetypes to see what interesting and unique characters you can make!
In addition to the features they get below, all characters also have a handful of more generalized features. These features are as follows:
Life Expectancy. How long they can expect to live.
Size. See "Size" below.
Languages. Each character can speak Common and the language of their Race, or a language of their choice if their Race does not have one.
Natural Armor. Unless specified otherwise by a feature, all Sentients have a Natural Armor score of 1.
Dodge Penalty, R-DEF, and Speed. All of these are determined by your Size.
Mechanically, Size has important implications on gameplay, and affects your character in a multitude of ways. Technically, most characters can be any Size; however, certain races may be more genetically inclined to a specific Size, such as Darklings, which are always Small, or Corvium, which can be Small or Medium but tend towards Medium. That being said, if your character is a mix of different races and/or archetypes and doesn’t really belong to any race that your GM has defined, then your Size is largely up to you to decide.
If your character is 130cm or shorter, they are Small; 131 – 180cm is the range for Medium; and 181cm or taller makes them Big. Characters cannot be shorter than 1 meter nor bigger than 210cm. Each example race given in the following chapters will give their possible Sizes.
Ability Score Improvement. Improve one of your ability scores by .5, up to 5. This is the only feature that can be taken twice.
Adaptability. Your people have adapted to survive in a given environment, granting you resistance to one damage type that is not fatigue, physical, or true. If you select poison, you do not gain resistance to poison damage but you do gain advantage on saves against poisons and diseases.
Animal Reflexes. Your animalistic instinct for danger improves your Reflex score by 1.
Animal Senses. Your Perception proficiency increases by 1, and can be increased to 6; additionally, select either seeing or hearing & smelling: your selection grants you advantage on related Perception checks.
Beast Speech. You can communicate very simple and rudimentary ideas to animals that belong to the same genus as you, e.g. canine-like Sentients can roughly communicate with canines, bird-like Sentients can roughly communicate with birds, etc.
Breath Weapon. Select one damage type that is not fatigue, physical, or true; once between night's rests, you can take 3 seconds (independent of your DEX) to expel a damaging burst of energy of that damage type out of your mouth. This burst can take the form of either a 5-meter cone or a 10-meter line, deals 1d8 + your CON base damage, and scales with your chosen Weapons Proficiency.
Camouflage. Over the course of a minute, you can alter the color of your skin, fur, scales, etc. to match your immediate environment, granting you advantage on Stealth checks while in that environment.
Claws and/or Fangs. Your Unarmed attacks deal 1d4 physical base damage.
Darkvision. You perceive dim light as bright light and darkness as dim light.
Dumb Luck. Once between night’s rests, you can choose to grant yourself advantage on any attack, check, or save.
Extra Skills. You gain 2 more SP.
Fins and Gills. Your Swim proficiency increases by 1, and can be increased to 6; additionally, you can breathe in water.
Infrared Vision. You can perceive the heat that objects give off via infrared sight. When you do, your eye color changes to red.
Mimicry. You can flawlessly reproduce any sound you have ever heard.
Monstrous Fortitude. Your Fortitude score increases by 1.
Multi-Lingual. You learn one language of your choice.
Quadridextrous. You have 4 arms instead of 2.
Quadrupedal. Your crawling speed is equal to your walking speed (you do not have 4 legs).
Scales. Your body is covered in a layer of scales that increases your Natural Armor score to 2 instead of 1.
Strong-Willed. Your Willpower score increases by 1.
Tail. You have a prehensile tail that is long, strong, and flexible enough to essentially function as a 3rd arm.
Tenacity. Once between day’s rests, when you are brought down to 0 Health but not killed outright, you instead regain 1 Health at the start of your next turn.
Thick Skin. Due to your naturally thick and resilient skin, your Natural Armor score is 2.
Tunneler. You have a tunneling speed that is half your STR score in meters/sec.
Venomous. Your blood and saliva are a weak poison that deal 1d6 base poison damage, scale with your chosen weapon profiency (with the damage bonus being your CON) and leave the victim sickened for 1 minute if they take >4 final damage from them, or only 30 seconds if they take <4 final damage.
Wings. You have a pair of wings that grant you a flying speed; this flying speed is determined by your Size and STR score in the same manner your walking speed is determined by your Size and AGI score. However, flying is exhausting, and after doing it for 3 seconds, you will take 1 fatigue damage per second until you land.
A character’s aesthetics simply describe how they look, and have little-to-no mechanical bearing. There are 3 types of aesthetics: Bestial, Humanoid, and Monstrous.
Bestial. Predominantly Bestial characters and races tend to look like anthropomorphic versions of a given animal archetype, such as cat-people, dog-people, bird-people, etc. Their skin is typically covered in fur, feathers, scales, or some other appropriate covering, and they may have an elongated snout or beak in lieu of a nose and mouth, or animal-like ears instead of humanoid ones.
Humanoid. Humanoids tend to have vaguely similar appearances, with similar variations in skin, hair, and eye color. The largest variation to appearance between various Humanoid races, as far as non-Humanoids are concerned, is how stout or lithe they are.
Monstrous. Monstrous races and characters are some of the most varied in terms of appearance, with some covered in strangely-textured skin, some in vibrant and threatening scales, and some in thick, bristling fur. Their eyes and hair (if they have any) can be any multitude of colors, styles, and the like. They may also have horns, spines, or other strange bony/bone-like growths.
Some Races are so different and unique in their very nature so as to be set apart from the other Races. That is not to say that they are inherently better, just distinct enough to warrant their own exclusive features and aesthetics. Those Races can be read about here (assuming you do not create your own with your GM's approval).