Homebrew Ice Genasi Species Details

Ice genasi are rarities born of influences from the Elemental Planes of Air and Water. Ice genasi are perfectly suited to life within frigid climates, while possessing the power to pull from their connection to the Elemental Plane of Ice.

Their skin, typically cold to the touch, is often shades of light blue with a cracked crystalline texture. Their hair might resemble shards of ice or soft shifting snow.

Para Genasi

While genasi typically trace their ancestry to the genies of the Elemental Planes, para genasi are born of a perfect melding from two Elemental Planes. Para genasi are a rare phenomena. Outside of the basic understanding that para genasi exist through two elemental influences, there is little known surrounding their origins. There has been countless expriments done in attempts to create a para genasi, but none have managed to achieve consistent results.

A typical para genasi has a life span of 120 years.

Creating Your Character

At 1st level, you choose whether your character is a member of the human race or of a fantastical race. If you select a fantastical race, follow these additional rules during character creation.

Ability Score Increases

When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one score by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. Follow this rule regardless of the method you use to determine the scores, such as rolling or point buy. The “Quick Build” section for your character’s class offers suggestions on which scores to increase. You can follow those suggestions or ignore them, but you can’t raise any of your scores above 20.

Languages

Your character can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. The Player’s Handbook offers a list of languages to choose from. The DM is free to modify that list for a campaign.

Creature Type

Every creature in D&D, including each player character, has a special tag in the rules that identifies the type of creature they are. Most player characters are of the Humanoid type. A race tells you what your character’s creature type is.

Here’s a list of the game’s creature types in alphabetical order: Aberration, Beast, Celestial, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, Giant, Humanoid, Monstrosity, Ooze, Plant, Undead. These types don’t have rules themselves, but some rules in the game affect creatures of certain types in different ways. For example, the cure wounds spell doesn’t work on a Construct or an Undead.

Life Span

The typical life span of a player character in the D&D multiverse is about a century, assuming the character doesn’t meet a violent end on an adventure. Members of some races, such as dwarves and elves, can live for centuries. If typical members of a race can live longer than a century, that fact is mentioned in the race’s description.

Height and Weight

Player characters, regardless of race, typically fall into the same ranges of height and weight that humans have in our world. If you’d like to determine your character’s height or weight randomly, consult the Random Height and Weight table in the Player’s Handbook, and choose the row in the table that best represents the build you imagine for your character.

Ice Genasi Traits

As an ice genasi, you have the following traits.

Creature Type

You are a Humanoid.

Size

You are Medium or Small. You choose the size when you select this race.

Speed

Your walking speed is 30 feet.

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 discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

Cold Resistance

You have resistance to cold damage.

Cold to the Core

You know the ray of frost cantrip. Starting at 3rd level, you can cast the ice knife spell with this trait. Starting at 5th level, you can also cast the Snilloc’s Snowball Swarm spell with this trait, without requiring a material component. Once you cast ice knife or Snilloc’s Snowball Swarm with this trait, you can’t cast that spell with it again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast either of those spells using any spell slots you have of the appropriate level.

Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells when you cast them with this trait (choose when you select this race).