Homebrew Dryad Species Details
Dryads are roughly 5 feet tall, and have orange, green, or yellowish-green skin, covered with leaves. They don't have hair, having leaves instead, and their eyes are a more grey-tinted version of their skin color. They are almost always female, however, male Dryads do exist.
Powerful fey will sometimes bind lesser fey spirits to trees, transforming them into dryads. This is sometimes done as a punishment when the fey spirit falls in love with a mortal and that love is forbidden. However, some dryads are able to escape from their bindings, allowing them to become adventurers, though they are not able to return to their original spirit form, if they can even remember their time as one.
Dryads don't have a real society, instead living amongst groups who are near the trees, such as elves, and dislike those who would try to destroy nature, such as orcs.
Dryads are on good relations with most races that are considered 'animal-like', such as Crovics, Lizardfolk, and Vincuin. They are on very good terms with plant-based races, such as the Eadina and Vinespawn. They have a fierce dislike, or even hatred, towards those who reject nature, such as the dead coming back to life (e.g. fontbones, will-o-the-wisp) or treat nature badly.
Dryad Traits
As a Dryad, you have the following racial traits.Darkvision
Accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. 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.
Creature Type
You are a Fey.
Natural Bond
You have proficiency in the Nature skill.
Age
You age just like a tree, very slowly, which means you can live anywhere from a few hundred years to a few thousand.
Languages
You can speak, read, and write Common and Sylvan.
Size
Dryads range from under 5 to over 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium.
Speak with Beasts and Plants
Beasts and plants have an extraordinary affinity with your people. You can communicate simple ideas with beasts and plants.
Forrest step
Once per long rest, you can use 10 feet of your movement to step magically into one living tree within your reach and emerge from a second living tree within 60 feet of the first tree, appearing in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the second tree. Both trees must be large or bigger. At 10th level, you can use this twice per long rest. At 20th level, you can use this thrice per long rest.
Trance
Dryads don’t need to sleep. Instead, they meditate deeply, remaining semiconscious, for 4 hours a day. (The Common word for such meditation is “trance.”) While meditating, you can dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive through years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep.
Barkskin
You can cast Barkskin with this trait. Once you cast a spell with this trait, you can’t cast that spell with it again until you finish a short rest. Intellergence is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
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