Homebrew Ch'askai Species Details

An insectoid people who originated in Wild Space, ch'askai are interstellar wanderers without a permanent home. Long ago, the ch'askai held a vast but peaceful empire, built upon the lost technology of the Luminar, before they lost their worlds to war with the Army of Nox. Today, the survivors search for a new home, wary of their enemies.

Ch'askai resemble large, humanoid moths, and for this reason are sometimes called mothkin. Their slender arms end past their knees, with three fingers per hand, and beneath their shoulders is a second pair of arms slightly smaller than the first. Ch'askai are typically about 7 feet tall, not counting their antennae, and they have long, narrow legs that end in two sharp claws. Many ch'askai have a mantle of soft fluff surrounding their neck, with long, cloak-like wings extending down their back. Their heads are stout and triangular, with large eyes bearing no pupils, and their carapaces vary significantly in style and color, though often include brown, white, or green.

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.

Ch'askai Traits

As a ch'askai, you have the following racial traits.

Creature Type

You are a Mostrosity.

Size

Your size is Medium.

Speed

Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Flight

Because of your wings, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. You can’t use this flying speed if you’re wearing medium or heavy armor.

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.

Secondary Arms

You have two slightly smaller secondary arms below your primary pair of arms. The secondary arms function like your primary arms, with the following exceptions:

• You can use a secondary arm to wield a weapon that has the light property, but you can't use a secondary arm to wield other kinds of weapons.
• You can't wield a shield with a secondary arm.

Ch'askai Telepathy

You have the magical ability to communicate mentally with any number of willing creatures you can see within 120 feet of you. A contacted creature doesn't need to share a language with you, but it must be able to understand at least one language. Your telepathic link to a creature is broken if you and the creature move more than 120 feet apart, if either of you is incapacitated, or if either of you mentally breaks the contact (no action required).

Legacy of Light

You know the dancing lights cantrip.