Homebrew Gargoyle Species Details

Perched high atop great buildings or tucked into the corner of studies and treasuries, gargoyles are creatures brought to life by wizards and other magical practitioners. Like golems, they are usually made of magically animated or transformed stone, often given grotesque, dragonic or fiendish traits and tasked with safekeeping of fortresses, dungeons, or any other place their creators may designate. A gargoyle values its purpose above all things.

When a keep is destroyed or taken by time, a gargoyle can find itself displaced and without purpose, with little to no choice but to wander. Some gargoyles seek the favors of new masters, and others take up the adventuring life to explore their newfound freedom. Gargoyles tend to enjoy solitary lives given their original purpose, but gargoyles that develop companionship with other creatures have the potential to become fearsome protectors of their comrades. To a gargoyle, the protection of their allies becomes their newfound purpose, which it will staunchly defend to its bitter end.

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.

Gargoyle Traits

As a gargoyle, you have the following racial traits.

Creature Type

You are an Elemental.

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 as shades of gray.

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.

Claws

You have claws that you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with them, the strike deals 1d6 + your Strength modifier slashing damage, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.

Living Statue

As a being of animated stone, you gain the following benefits:

• You have a durable, stony hide. When you aren’t wearing armor, your base AC is 13 + your Dexterity modifier. You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC. A shield’s benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor.
• While you remain motionless, you have advantage on Charisma (Deception) and Dexterity (Stealth) checks to pass yourself off as an inanimate statue.
• You have resistance to poison damage and immunity to disease, and you have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned.

Guardian Instinct

When a creature you can see within 60 feet of you deals damage to an ally, you can give yourself advantage on the first attack roll you make against the attacking creature before the end of your next turn. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.