Homebrew Bonsai Treant Species Details

Warning: This has not been playtested yet, any advice is welcome. This race was inspired by the Bonsai Treants from Stibbles Codex of Companions, go check it out it's an awesome book.

Cultivated in monastic temples and exotic nurseries, these garden guardians are only a fraction of a normal treant’s size. The difficult and lengthy process of creating bonsai treants is a testament to the patience and dedication of those who create them. Despite their diminutive nature, bonsai treants are just as bold and caring as the forest-dwelling titans.

Bonsai treants are content with the bodies they’ve been given and are capable of empathizing with the patience of their masters. They choose to wander temples and gardens, fostering life new and old throughout the halls. If an intruder threatens their home, they do their best to thwart the invasion or alert their masters.

Rarely, these companions can be gifted or sold by their creators. New friends will be quick to discover the creatures’ gentle yet zealous passion for life. If an ally disagrees with this perspective, or shows cruel intentions toward others, bonsai treants have been known to simply escape to nearby forests.

Creating Your Character

When you create your D&D character, you decide whether your character is a member of the human race or one of the game’s fantastical races. If you create a character using a race option presented here, follow these additional rules during character creation.

Ability Score Increases

When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one of those scores 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’re free to follow those suggestions or to ignore them. Whichever scores you decide to increase, none of the scores can be raised 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 widespread languages to choose from. The DM is free to add or remove languages from that list for a particular campaign.

Creature Type

Every creature in D&D, including every 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 option presented here 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 text of the cure wounds spell specifies that the spell doesn’t work on a creature that has the Construct type. (The autognome is a noteworthy exception because of its Healing Machine trait.)

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—a fact noted in the description of the race in question.

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.

Bonsai Treant Traits

As a Bonsai Treant player character, you have the following traits.

Creature Type

You are a Plant.

Size

You are Small.

Speed

Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Awaken Shrub

Your connection to nature allows you to temporarily animate shrubs around you. You can cast the awaken spell as an action with this trait, without requiring a material component, targeting only shrubs. A shrub awakened in this way reverts to a normal shrub when you take a long rest. Additionally, a shrub awakened in this way shares your proficiency bonus, has a number of additional hit points equal to 3 times your level and its attacks count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage. All shrubs you awaken follow your verbal commands (no action required) and share your initiative but take their turns immediately after yours. You cast the spell with this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.

False Appearance

You are indistinguishable from a small tree or shrub while you remain motionless.

Tough Bark

While you aren’t wearing armor, your carapace gives you a base Armor Class of 13 + your Dexterity modifier.