Homebrew Chameleonoid Species Details

Overview

          The chameleonoid are a group of camouflaging upright bipedal or quadrupedal (depending on crawling or standing, etc.), their culture is nomadic, but they seem to have settled in various places, though they prefer to stay out of the cities. People don’t know how they first came, but some believe that people with truesight can see shapeshifters stuck in the form of this lizard-like creature. This suggests that they originated from shapeshifters, but soon lost the ability to shift. People with truesight also recall that soon after they could only see the original form of the shifter only in adolescence, which is 18 human years.

Settlements

          The Chameleonoid mainly settle in places like plains, though you can sometimes find them with half changed scales, their eyes looking at you, or just through the cracks of their scales and unclosed eyes. The only main way that Chameleonoids can speak is either by writing, or in Lizardfolk language. Draconic may also be spoken, but is not preferred, as it too has a few consonants and vowels unpronounceable to the lizard tongue. You can find Lizardfolk merchants in Draconia, the city of Dragons, but will find that when they are referred to as having Draconic blood, some will find it insulting, others will find it as just pure ignorance. You may even find yourself cast out of a shop, without getting your money back and merchandise, all because of one slip of the tongue. That being said, they sometimes have good things to offer.

Endangered

          The Chameleonoid have many things to offer… including what’s in their scales. What’s in their scales is something that grants many things transparency as it has transparency in it, so merging it with your blood will give your body the ability to go invisible, only for a temporary amount of time though. Some people have gone as far as to extend this into a genetic thing, by mutating their own blood to accommodate this chemical, though it requires a sacrifice of that creature’s own blood, so they have to kill a person for it. Soon after this was found out, many places including some widespread cities have banned the use of the substance, considered an illegal substance because of the necessary sacrifice, and it’s side effects, such as vomiting, hemorrhaging, and nausea. The substance is mainly used for the use of invisibility cloaks, which are very uncommon now.

Culture

          There are many different cultures of the Chameleonoid, but most come from a nomadic background, most are named human names mixed with either lizardfolk or draconic names.

Chameleonoid Traits

It’s hard to make generalizations about humans, but your human character has these traits.

Scaly Camouflage

Camouflage can certainly be a handy skill, wether your trying to conceal a body part, or hide something behind your own skin. This can certainly bring your stealth levels up, but has it’s downsides, like only having a certain amount of colors per scale, and not turning fully invisible, so when someone looks at you, they will see some blur in their vision, but if their sleepy, or in a desert, they’ll think they’re just tired… and that’s what you want them to think.

Ability Score Increase

Your ability scores each increase by 1.

Age

Humans reach adulthood in their late teens and live less than a century.

Size

Humans vary widely in height and build, from barely 5 feet to well over 6 feet tall. Regardless of your position in that range, your size is Medium.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common and one extra language of your choice. Humans typically learn the languages of other peoples they deal with, including obscure dialects. They are fond of sprinkling their speech with words borrowed from other tongues: Orc curses, Elvish musical expressions, Dwarvish military phrases, and so on.