Homebrew Emrallithald aka "The Freed" Species Details

Emrallithald are a race of mutated illithid tadpoles that have been living in a symbiotic relationship with their hosts. They were created by accident but were not self aware until freed from their mental slavery by the destruction of the Elder Brain Dragon that controlled them. The tadpoles created by the elder brain after inhabiting the body of an emerald dragon were transformed. While the elder brain dominated the dragons mind completely and transformed it, it did not notice the dragon's willpower and innate magic was strong enough to transform the offspring from then on.

The tadpoles do not consume brain matter as normal instead feeding off the psionic waves created from intense emotion, dreams, and strong memories of the host. In return the tadpole grants the host various psychic abilities and bolsters their defenses against mental intrusion as well as prolonged life. They exist in hidden isolation and have a stigma of understandable resentment toward them due to their progenitors predatory and enslaving nature.

While every member of their race is an individual and have personal thoughts and goals they do tend to share a majority of their knowledge, if possible, with the collective via a psychic link that is maintained via meditation of a council of the eldest of "The Freed". The Freed have gained the ability to change shape much like their dragon progenitor. They can shift between multiple forms depending on their strength and age. Their base form is that of their origin race. After a time they gain the ability to embrace their nature for a short time and gain the appearance of something more akin to an illithid with the exception of their skin being a deep shade of green. The oldest and strongest can adopt this form almost permanently and their skin becomes almost crystalline, resembling something closer to emerald gemstones.

You can select any other race as an origin race and change its racial stats and abilities to these.

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 Players 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. Their life span is double the life span of your origin race.

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 Players Handbook, and choose the row in the table that best represents the build you imagine for your character.

Emrallithald aka "The Freed" Traits

As a Emrallithald, you have the following racial traits.

Creature Type

You are a Humanoid.

Size

You are Medium or Small, determined by race of origin.

Speed

Your walking, burrowing, and flying speed is determined by your origin race.

Emrallithald Psionics

You gain the telekinetic feat when selecting this race.

Starting at 3rd level, you can cast the shield spell with this trait. Starting at 5th level, you can also cast the detect thoughts spell with it. Once you cast shield or detect thoughts with this trait, you can’t cast that spell with it again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast either of those spells using any spell slots you have of the appropriate level.

Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells when you cast them with this trait (choose when you select this race). None of these spells require spell components when you cast them with this trait.

Psychic Resilince

Your innate psychic defenses grant you advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed and frightened conditions on yourself.

Hive Mind

You have resistance to psychic damage and advantage to any saving throw to mental or psychic spells.

Emrallithald Embrace

You embrace your Emrallithald nature and resemble something similar to a true ilithid. Your attacks and spells are enhanced by  your psionic force and you are also immune to mental/psychic attacks and abilities. This form lasts for 1 minute and you are classified as an aberration for the duration.

While in this form your non-spell attacks do 1d8 additional psychic damage and your spells are enhanced with psionic backlash. When casting a spell with a spell slot of first level or higher you do an additional 1d6 psychic damage per level of the spell slot used and when casting a cantrip you add 1d4 psychic damage per damage die of the spell.

You can use this ability once per long rest. At level 8 you gain a second use of this ability per long rest. At level 16 you can use this ability three times per long rest.