Homebrew Beastborn Species Details
In the wilderness — far away from civilization — sometimes a beast is born with an unusual intelligence and self-awareness. It can think like a humanoid, but its parents are wild beast. Those creatures are called beastborn.
Discover of the Human Side
When beastborn leave their wild parents, they discovered the humanoid side in themselves. They no longer just follow their instincts but begin to think consciously and look at the world with curiosity, much like a human child. Also around this time they learnt to transform in a human and back. At first those transformations will be only in parts successful and the young beastborn will only stay short in its human form, but step by step the full human form will be reached. After this the beastborn will have two appearances, it switches between. One is a young beast and the other a human child. Both grow with it, until both reach adulthood.
Human Culture
Driven by their curiosity, most beastborn will discover other humanoids quite shortly after they left their parents and as soon they have learned to assume human form, they are tempted to join those out of pure curiosity. If they decide to do so, they normally are accepted by at least one community as a adoptive child and sometimes even praised as a spirit of nature, but also often shoo away as evil abomination. When a beastborn is accepted by a community in its youth, it learns the culture and language like the other children too. Beastborn with out contact to other intelligent beings until they reach adulthood often stay wild and uncivilized for the rest of their live.
A own culture of beastborn is not know, because they are that rare. Instead they adopt the traditions and habits of other cultures they have contact with, especially the first culture they live in, if they do so. This means, that some beastborn will have values like dwarfs, elves, goliath, dragonborn or other people they are influenced by.
Child of the Wild
Beastborn are strongly shaped by the wilderness and have a raw and primal character. This holds especially true for the first few years, when they do not know culture and language. But most will stay in strong connection with their heritage the hole life and always be a little wilder and less civilized than other members of the civilized world. Still their are exceptions and a few beastborn are know, that have a more noble character than most aristocrats have.
Beastborn Traits
Beastborn share a number of traits in common with each other.Beast Form
Your are born by beast parents and have the physical appearance of their kind but the mind of a human. Normally you are in your beast form, but you have also a human form.
You can be any beast with a CR 1 or less, but you can only have as many Hit dices as half your character level rounded up. If the beast has normally more Hit dices, you play it with the same kind of Hit dice, but only use as many as allowed. To calculate your beast hit points you roll the Hit dice and reroll the lowest or take the expected average. Than you add the beasts constitution modifier for each Hit dice. Your beast form can not have more hit points or Hit dice than the beast's kind has in the statistics. (In addition your DM might use this rule for better game balance: You can not choose a beast, that has a flying speed and is large size or bigger.)
When you are in your beast form you assume the beast's hit points and Hit Dice. You use the Strength, Dexterity and Constitution scores of the beast statistics and the Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores of your character sheet. Your beast form has the same alignment and personality as the human form. When in beast form you can preform the actions from the beast statistics, but not legendary actions. Also you are only able to do things, that the beast physically can.
You can use the proficiencies of the beast and of the human in both forms. If you do so, you use the proficiency bonus of the form that has this proficiency. You have all features from your class or other source in both forms and can use them, if the current form is physically capable of doing so.
If the beast has any multi actions you can not use them until 6th character level.
(Your beast form is listed as a Wild Shape, but not really is one.)
Human Form
As you left your beast parents, you discovered your humanoid side and learnt to transform in a human. At first you only stayed short in your human form and used it rarely, but as you grown older, you stayed longer in your human form and finally are able to stay in your human form as long as you wanted.
You can transform at will into your human form (represented by your character sheet). The transformation takes one action and can only be done once before you regain the use. You can always transform back into your beast form for no action. To regain your one use when you successfully finish a short or long rest in your beast form.
When you transform in your beast or human form, you assume the hit points, that the respective form had the last time you used it, but at least 1. If you drop to 0 hit points or die in your human form, you automatically revert to your beast form. Any excess damage is carried over, but can not reduce your hit points below 1. (If you drop to 0 hit points or die in your beast form, you follow the normal rules.)
Because your are only able to transform your body, any items you carry or wear, when you transform, are dropped on the ground where you stand.
Beast Rest
When ever you successfully finish a short or long rest in your beast form you gain some benefits.
Short rest: You can use the beast's Hit Dice to heal your beast form and your human Hit Dice to heal your human form. (If you rest as human, you only can heal your human form.) When you heal your beast form in this way the human form is also healed half the amount of healing. You also can use the beast Hit Dice only to heal the human form for the full amount. To every rolled Hit Dice you add the respective constitution modifier.
Long rest: Both forms regain all hit points, the beast form regains all Hit dice and the human form regains Hit Dice as normal. (If you rest as human, only the human form regains hit points and Hit dice.)
Beast Reflex
The primal instincts you inherit from your parents sometimes take over, when you are unexpectedly transformed back to your beast form and try to protected you.
Child of the Wilderness
You have advantage in the Survival skill.
Ability Score Increase
As you are guided by your wild intuition, your Wisdom score increases by 2.
Languages
You can speak, read, and write the language of the group of humanoids you first lived with. (It is possible that you do not speak common)
Age
Beastborn have lifespans longer than to humans, because in a way they have two lifespans added together, one of the beast kind they are and one comparable to humans. They are considered adult, when they can transform into their human form daily. This is normally the case in their early twenties.
Size
Beastborn in their human form are between 5 and 7 feet tall and weigh between 140 and 240 pounds. Your size in human form is Medium.
Speed
Your base walking speed in human form is 30 feet.
Comments