Homebrew Cirriped Species Details

Spawning from the ancient depths, cirripeds are mutations born of slain Leviathans. Most cirripeds tend to keep to themselves, living at the ocean bottoms and only leaving their enclaves in order to hunt, gather supplies from shipwrecks, or scavenge necessary materials from the Leviathan corpse. Other cirripeds love the motion and bustle of port towns, and set up communities of trade and barter underneath. Some will trade shells or undersea treasures, while others will sell their services as protectors who attach to ships and fend off trouble from underwater.

Cirripeds exhibit the same range of coloration and patterns found among barnacles, and many cirripeds enjoy adorning their shells in distinctive ways.

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.

Cirriped Traits

As a cirriped, you have the following racial 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.

Barnacled Knuckles

You have barnacled knuckles that you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with them, the strike deals an additional 1d4 slashing damage.

Amphibious

You can breathe normally in both air and water.

Natural Carapace

Your barnacles provide you a base AC of 17 (your Dexterity modifier doesn’t affect this number). You can’t wear light, medium, or heavy armor, but if you are using a shield, you can apply the shield’s bonus as normal.

In addition, you may grow additional carapace to absorb the impact of a blow. As a reaction, you may sacrifice up to 10 hit points in order to an an amount to your AC equal to half of your sacrificed hit points.

Darkvision

Accustomed to the oceans depths, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. 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 can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.