You were lost due to some event as a child, and those years lost to normal society still hold tight onto the person you became as an adult. Maybe you were spirited away by some fey creature, kidnapped by fiends, taken to be a slave by outer planer bandits, locked in a hag's hut, or just stumbled your way into servitude under a dragon. Whatever event caused you to leave your normal everyday life, it changed you forever, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. But the physical mark and memory of the time you were away is still fresh even after all of these years.
(Lost One's are children that have been away from their homes for a least a year, and during that year where subject to conditions and experiences that no normal child (or adult) would ever go through. These Children grow up to carry these memories of their time in other planes or with the company of powerful creatures, and must come to terms with the effects of their absence and their (often sudden) reintroduction back into society.)
(You get the option of language, skill, and tools with this background, think over your lost event and what traits you would have picked up and chose accordingly.)
- Skill Proficiencies: Choose two from among Arcana, Deception, Religion, Persuasion, or Survival
- Tool Proficiencies: Depending on your event, you may have been forced or gladly picked up a trade. Choose one proficiency.
- Languages: Depending on the type of event and the period of time in which you where lost you may have had enough ambition to learn language or you may have been forced out necessity to learn a language other then your own.
- Equipment: A monster hunter’s pack (see the sidebar), a set of common clothes, and one trinket of special significance from the land/place you spent your lost time in. (Choose one or roll on the Lost Trinkets table after this background).
Prior to becoming an adventurer, your path in life was defined by the year(s) you spent away from home in a place(s) that didn't make much sense. But that experience whether good or bad guides you through your daily life. And one day maybe your knowledge of things unnatural and ancient will have a bigger part to play in history then your eventful childhood. Choose a Lost Path that defines you, or roll one on the Lost Path table.
| d11 | Lost Path |
|---|---|
| 1 | You were spirited away by a fey creature. Maybe to be a pet, maybe to be a bride, maybe to be a friend, every fey is unusual and unique, but all of them have agendas. |
| 2 | You where traded to a creature of evil as payment. And grew up under the care and often times servitude of Fiends, Hags, Vampire Lords, Alpha were-creatures, Liches, Yuan-ti, or other powerful monsters. |
| 3 | A powerful wizard was in need of help, and offered you a job as his assistant. (How much 'offering' was actually involved can be up to you and your DM) |
| 4 | Playing to close to a plane rift as a child you slipped through and found yourself in one of the elemental planes and in the care of its native people(s). There you quickly learned to adapt or die. |
| 5 | Passing adventures took a shine to your spirit (and/or knowledge) and you found yourself caught up in the tales of heroes, witnessing death and combat first hand along soon to be legends. |
| 6 | A monster raid left your people in servitude to a great and terrible foe, and either through luck or fate you were this horrible monster's favorite attendant/pet. |
| 7 | Wandering planer traveling gypsies picked you up as a child and let you ride with them until you where old enough to fend for yourself. Giving you plenty of time to see worlds beyond your wildest imagination. |
| 8 | An angel either saw the good or bad you where going to do one day and tried to influence history by meeting you as a child. (You entered a trance state where your soul was in a celestial plane, but your body was on the material, alive but comatose) |
| 9 | You where magically charmed into keeping a creature of questionable sanity company until the magical compulsion eventually was broken. (This creature could be anything from a Beholder, to a Mind Flyer, to a group of cultists) |
| 10 | You stumbled into the lair of something very powerful and old, and instead of killing you the creature decided(or was persuaded) to let you stay and keep them company. (EX: Sphinxs, Dragons, Gaints, etc...) |
| 11 | Either taken for ransom or to be used as a sacrifice or slave, you found yourself a member of the Underdark, the notorious Drow your new keepers. |
Your experiences with powers and realms beyond the normal have left their mark upon not only your memories but also your soul and presence. Any creature with sentience and free will can tell that your not quite normal. Your aura gives you an otherworldly presence, despite looking and appearing like any other normal humanoid. Most creatures, unless otherworldly themselves, will treat you with suspicion and distrust, sometimes even out right hostility. If the creature is otherworldly you have +2 when speaking with them and advantage if they from a similar group/plane as the creature(s) who partly raised you.
Your time away has also given you odd habits that have been hard to break, pick one Lost Time Habit for every year you where gone.(Found on the Lost Time Habit Table below)
|
Lost Benefits Table |
|
|
Fiend |
Use of Hellish rebuke once a day. (Advantage on checks to spot Fiend magic, track Fiends, commutate with Fiends, or understand Fiend reasoning or logic.) |
|
Hag/Wizard |
Gain prophecy with Alchemy tools (though you probably don’t use the way your supposed too..), (Advantage on spell identifying checks, for hag a (+3)bonus on checking for old magic, for wizard a (+3)bonus on checking for new magic) |
|
Angel |
Ability to call upon your angel to bless you, giving you the benefits of a bless spell once per day. (Advantage on any check dealing with Celestials, and checks dealing with the god your angel is tied too.) |
|
Fey |
Use of a Speak with Monster spell (functions same as Speak with Animals, just made for Monstrosities). (Advantage on checks to navigate the Feywild, understand motives of Fey creatures, see through Fey disguise, and break Fey charm.) |
|
Adventure(s) |
One minor magical item, and the chance for people to recognize you and be friendly towards you. (Advantage recalling heroic tales, and speaking with lord and ladies of kingdoms your adventuring party dealt with.) |
|
Drow |
Lowlight Vision if not already given as a race ability, and proficiency in simple weapons (Advantage on most things related to the Underdark and Drow.) |
|
Were-Creature |
Lowlight Vision if not already given as a race ability, and access to the Nature skill if not already given. (Advantage on tracking through whatever terrain the were-creatures you used to live with inhabited, kinship with animals(you have advantage on interactions with animals)) |
|
Undead/Vampire |
Access to knowledge/history long forgotten. (Advantage on checks to identify undead, read scrolls of necromancy, and resist necromantic spell effects.) |
|
Lost Time Habit Table (For every year lost take one trait) |
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1-5 |
You always address people using their full name (maybe even using miss, madam, sir, lord, lady, as well) |
|
6-10 |
You always eat with your hands, even if given tableware. And you can't eat 'normal' food anymore, it has to be something retaliated to your Lost Path backstory. (EX: you were raised by a fey, would only eat things the forest could give you.) |
|
11-15 |
You invoke gods that aren’t native to your world and are unknown to most of its inhabitants. |
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16-20 |
You perform traditional greetings and goodbyes from the culture you were lost to. |
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21-25 |
You sometimes refer to places, directions, objects, ect… to what your otherworldly companions called them. |
|
26-30 |
You refer to your otherworld companion(s) as if they were still with you and sometimes act as if they are. (Weather they actually are there or maybe they can see you or maybe they can commutate with you somehow, is all up to the DM and you.) |
|
31-35 |
You refuse to perform certain actions based on superstition from your time away. (If raised with Fiends you might be resistant to enter a temple, if raised with a Hag might be weirded out by a magic school, if raised with a Fey big cites or factories might really disgust you, etc.…) |
|
36-40 |
Every chance you get, you like to mention the name of the being who raised/took/cared for you during your lost years. |
|
41-45 |
You don’t really know the history of your world very well, so sometimes you get it confused with the other world’s history or the ancient history the hag, lich, vampire, dragon, or other powerful creature rattled off to you. (Basically you know a lot of history that’s not recent, or from the material plane.) |
|
46-50 |
You have very unusual rituals for the dead, which your sort of trained or maybe actually faith bound to perform, these normally really freak people out. (If raised by some undead creature you may temporally reanimate, if a dragon you may burn them, if a fey you may use magic to send them back to nature, if a Devil you may mutter a few words to your devil(s) or the big man down under and draw a small summoning circle using their blood.) |
|
51-65 |
You show affection in strange ways, small gifts and avoidance probably the most likely events. But ones more specialized to your background are also good. |
|
66-70 |
You like to get important events/things down in writing. And you refuse to do something if it isn’t written up first. (Devil Trait) |
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71-75 |
You pray every night before bed, maybe not because you’re religious but because you’re trying to reach your guardian upstairs. (Variant: Night Terrors- You barely sleep after your dreams of a false prefect world, and the knowledge that you wasted (a) year(s) of your life asleep, now every time you sleep your afraid you’ll never wake.) (Angel Trait) |
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76-80 |
You find anything eatable after your life in the company of your part time mother and her interesting baking. (Hag Trait) |
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81-85 |
The sun bothers you, and you much prefer to be active during the night. (Were-creature, Vampire, Undead, or any similar creature Trait) |
|
86-90 |
You never reveal what you’re really feeling or what your true intentions are. (Fey Trait) |
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91-95 |
You like to be the leader, and definitely the center of attention, after all you know the most/are the strongest/are the most charismatic. (Wizard, Adventures, Dragon, Sphinx, and Giant Trait) |
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96-100 |
You’re haunted by minor day terrors. After living so long with actual crazed creatures might have caused your own head to get a little screwy. (Beholder Trait, Cultists Trait) |
Suggested Characteristics
You have learned to live with the unusual past that raised you. Taken from your comfortable life and raised partly in a world that is not your own, you posses intimate knowledge of secrets that no other mortal knows(or should know), and it has left a mark on your very soul.
| d10 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | I don’t run from evil. I understand evil. |
| 2 | When I get mad or stressed I switch to the language of my lost path, finding comfort in the tongue. |
| 3 | I enjoy watching (death, nature, magic, fire, ect... (something that applies to the environment or creature you where lost to)) it helps clam me down and remind me of simpler(maybe better) times. |
| 4 | I live for the thrill of the hunt. |
| 5 | I don’t talk about the time I was away from home. It's my secret what happened and I don't want to share the one thing that makes me special. |
| 6 | I expect danger and violence around every corner. |
| 7 | I still carry the mark of a slave and think of myself as such. |
| 8 | I put no trust in divine beings. |
| 9 | I have seen greatness, even been left the ashes it's left, and I want to be Great. |
| 10 | I'm overly optimistic, and always smiling! Its hard to remember the pain when your happy.... |
| d8 | Ideal |
|---|---|
| 1 | I try to be the hero, because i'm tired of being the outsider. (Good) |
| 2 | I’ll hunt the creatures that took me or die trying. (Any) |
| 3 | I kill monsters to make the world a safer place, and to help the goals of my otherworldly friend(s). (Good) |
| 4 | I have a dark calling that puts me above the law. (Chaotic) |
| 5 | I like to know my enemy’s capabilities and weaknesses before rushing into battle. (Lawful) |
| 6 | I’m a monster that destroys other monsters, and everything else. (Evil) |
| 7 | I've been forced into a world of chaos, laws don't make sense to me anymore (Chaotic) |
| 8 | I've seen horrors beyond imagination and destruction of entire cities. I've learned the hard way to only care about myself. (Neutral) |
| d8 | Bond |
|---|---|
| 1 | I keep my thoughts and discoveries in a journal. My journal is my legacy. |
| 2 | Only one person waited for me one the other side of my Lost Path, that person means everything to me. |
| 3 | My past consumes me, my present forsakes me, but my future is mine to change. |
| 4 | I've been lost for so long I want to feel connected again. I want to know i'm not alone and that someone actually cares. |
| 5 | I love the creature(s) that raised me when I was lost from home and would do anything to keep them safe. |
| 6 | This world has abandoned me, I want to go back to the land I visited all those years ago, that is my home now. |
| 7 | I helped stop another from getting swayed away into the madness, they are what I live for now, their happiness is my world now. |
| 8 | I met another Lost One on the other side and though I managed to find my way back they did not... Now I do everything that I can to find them and bring them back home. |
| d6 | Flaw |
|---|---|
| 1 | I have certain rituals that I must follow every day. I can never break them. |
| 2 | I was raised to hate a specific group/race of people by my otherworldly guardian, that prejudice still lingers in my mind. |
| 3 | I do everything my lost 'parent/guardian' asks of me |
| 4 | I am a purveyor of doom and gloom who lives in a world without hope. |
| 5 | I'm afraid of anything related to the creatures that took me(or the plane that they are from) |
| 6 | I drift through life like a silent ghost I've learned the hard way to become, never expressing myself or outwardly showing emotion. |
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