Homebrew Canard Species Details

Canard, or duck-folk, are humanoids with the physical characteristics of ducks. They mostly live peaceful lives, but have fierce tempers and can be very competitive. Their tempers fade as quickly as they flare and only rarely get them into serious trouble.

Physical Description: Duck-folk are small, about 3’6, with duck-like feathered bodies, large beaked heads, over-sized eyes, and yellow or orange bird legs with finned feet. Canard are surprisingly strong and make excellent wrestlers and fighters despite their small size. Their compact, water-repellent body and finned feet make them excellent swimmers. Canard vary considerably in appearance. Plumage is normally white, but can be black, grey, speckled brown , or even bright colors like blue, green, red, orange, and purple. The head of colored drakes is sometimes of a contrasting color. Bright colored Canard can be a motley of different colors. Plumage color is linked to personality traits. White Canard are considered aggressive, black Canard sly, brown and grey ones shy, and motley ones vain. Some Canard differ from the norm, resembling fowl other than ducks. Canard have no visible sexual characteristics except for variances in plumage, but follow the sexual conventions of their neighbors regarding dress and manners. Canard of both genders leave their lower body bare to facilitate swimming.

Creating Your Character

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.

Canard Traits

As a Canard, you have the following racial traits.

Creature Type

You are a Humanoid.

Size

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

Speed

Your walking speed is 30 feet. Your Swim speed is equal to your walking speed.

Falling with syle

Canard cannot fly but they can fall with style. They do not take fall damage and for every 5 ft of vertical distance they fall, can travel 10 ft horizontally.

Peking Duck

You have proficiency in Perception and a skill of your choice.

Moreover, when you make an ability check using any skill in which you have proficiency, you can give yourself advantage on the check before rolling the d20. You can give yourself advantage in this way a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Duck quacks don't echo

You can project your voice to make it sound like it is coming from somewhere else. Pick a location within 30ft for spoken or 60ft for a shout. A creature that hears those sounds can tell that they’re not really from that location only with a successful Wisdom (Insight) check against a DC of 8 + your Deception modifier.