Homebrew Aberrant Ooze Race Details
The birth of an Aberrant Ooze is an uncommon and often inauspicious event. They begin their lives as a simple nodule of collected cells, typically forming in oozes who have managed to survive for several centuries. As this nodule grows and forms a core it begins developing a consciousness of its own, separate from that of its ooze host body. It is at this point that ooze host will recognize this core as a foreign body and discard it. Depending on their environment many of these cores will not survive this separation, those that do however will use what little ooze they were able to retain from their host to begin feeding. It will retain this small amount of ooze throughout its life cycle to be used for feeding, however all new ooze generated by the core will have lost this acidic property instead taking on a more elastic and easily shaped form. As the Aberrant Ooze feeds and gains more mass it sees a similar increase in its intelligence. When the ooze has taken on enough mass it begins manifesting a more humanoid shape, forming limbs and extremities, in order to become more similar in appearance to other sentient beings that it has observed. It is at this point that the Aberrant Ooze will typically cease its growth as all further nutrients go towards the taxing process of retaining its form.
Aberrant Ooze Traits
Your Ooze heritage manifests in a variety of traits you share with other Oozes.Ability Score Increase
Your Constitution score increases by 2 and your Strength score increases by 1.
Age
Aberrant Oozes mature quickly. They spend the first few years of their lives in an amorphous state feeding on whatever is nearby. Depending on the availability of food the Aberrant Ooze will reach full adult size within 5-10 years. It is unclear just how long the lifespans of oozes are, but the oldest known specimens are several centuries old.
Alignment
Size
Aberrant Oozes vary widely in height and build, but tend to average between 5 and 7 feet tall. Your size is Medium
Speed
Your base walking speed is 30ft.
Darkvision
You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Acid Resistance
You have resistance to acid damage.
Amorphous
You have advantage on all checks made to initiate, maintain, or escape a grapple and are immune to all forms of non-magical restraint.
Corrosive Touch
Your unarmed strikes deal acid damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
Liquid Movement
You can don or doff armor as an action. Additionally, while unarmored, you can move through spaces as small as 1-inch wide without squeezing at half of your movement speed. Any items that cannot fit through a space you pass through are left behind.
Languages
You can speak, read, and write Common and one extra language of your choice.
Previous Versions
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I am borrowing this love the idea
I’m glad that you like it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!
Should't you have blindsight instead of darkvision, considering you are an ooze? Also, how do you talk?
Both good questions. I decided against blindsight, even though it made more sense racewise, because I felt blindsight was a little too powerful for a player character to start with. As for methods of speech, I like to leave it to the players imagination. For my game I simply played it as an air sac attached to a vocal tract being maintained as part of the humanoid form, but I encourage you to imagine your own interesting modes of speech.
What kind of name should I use?
This idea is intriguing. I am not sure how to use it yet, but I love it!
cool
This is an interesting question. You should name your character whatever you’d like to name your character. However, if you’re looking for some kind of racial inspiration just think about your characters origin. Most oozes will spawn in the Underdark, so the races an aberrant ooze is likely to first meet are ones that dwell there such as Drow, Duergar, and Svirfneblin to name a few. I often choose the language of one of these races as my secondary for this reason, but you could take this a step further and adopt their culture and naming scheme as well. There are of course oozes outside of the Underdark and the first culture you encounter could be anything, so just think about your backstory and go from there.
I feel like Corrosive Touch should use CON instead of STR. Just a thought.
I think if you were going to do blindsight it would be for like 5/10 feet. I like the 60ft dark vision though.
I love this, but what about breathing? Does an ooze need air? If so, can it absorb oxygen in the water?
I decided to use STR for a variety of reasons. While I can appreciate the thought process behind using CON here, I personally feel that using CON as an attack stat without some kind of drawback can be dangerous balance-wise.
Interestingly many monsters you wouldn’t expect require oxygen going by rules as written (like skeletons, WTF?). Oozes turn out to be one of these. I assume oxygen would be obtained similar to how amoeba obtain oxygen through simple diffusion.
I feel like an ooze would dissolve in water. If not, then it would at least be more taxing to maintain its form, in which case I would imagine it undergoes the standard drowning process mechanics-wise, with the roleplay being that it is either unable to maintain its form and dissolves over time when it drowns, or falls into a unresponsive, stasis-like state in which it uses all of its energy to stay in one piece. In either case, once it runs out of death saves, it completely dissolves.
Love the imagery! I would say, however, that it’s core would remain as the repository of its soul for the purposes of resurrection.
Oh yeah. I forgot that death isn't necessarily the end in this game...
Perhaps the core would innately be solid enough to resist dissolution. I don't know how long it takes for a normal human to be unable to be resurrected, if that is even a thing, lol.
Even more tempted to try and play this race now
If you do, I hope you enjoy it. It’s been one of my favorites.
Brilliant idea, I'll be using this in my campain! Though I do have a question as I can't quite figure it out for the ooze, what would be the best class to use based on its abilities?
My favorite games with the race so far have both been as a multiclass. The first was a very stealthy Rogue/Monk, and the second was a ridiculously proficient Rogue/Barbarian grappler. I like Rogues, what can I say? Honestly the race works well with any martial class in my opinion. The only classes I feel aren’t well suited to the race are Bard and Wizard. Not for any particular mechanical reason it’s just, like, what instrument do you play as an ooze? Some kind of homebrewed hydraulophone maybe? And if you’re a Wizard you’re going to do a lot of waterproofing on your favorite tomes...
I think that class should largely be based off backstory, rather attributes. While min/maxing this race in classes like barbarian, monk, or fighter, might have its advantages, what if the gelatinous ooze found god or discovered apes before people? perhaps it felt its territory was being threatened and retaliated as a ranger or met a dryad that to it about druids and their groves. Druids with shape changing abilities look a lot different with an ooze race and the right backstory. Good luck late your imagination win and the story(class) might just jump from the proverbial page.