Homebrew Fractured Oblex Species Details

 

Oblexes are extraordinarily intelligent oozes, created by mind flayers, that fed on other creatures' memories. They are capable of using those memories to create replicas of their victims, which they used to further hunt and feed. As oblexes absorbed the memories of their victims, they could replicate credible copies of them. These impersonations, made of the same ooze as the oblex, were otherwise identical to the original victims, except for a faint smell of sulfur.

A fractured oblex is what remains after an oblex is slain when on the brink of dividing. A small fragment of the oblexes larger form that in some very rare instances, evades the notice of attackers and is able to flee. These comparatively small fragments of the larger ooze exhibit a seemingly accidental lack of the oblexes mindless hunger for memories. Instead, fractured oblexes often break off from the greater oblex with the store of a single victims memories and form. Lacking the instinctual predator drive this leads to fractured oblexes forming distinct personalities, a mixture of the inhuman ooze mind, and the memories of the humanoid it devoured, of whom they take the appearance of.

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.

Fractured Oblex Traits

As a fractured oblex player character, you have the following traits.

Creature Type

You are an Ooze.

Size

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

Speed

Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Amorphous

You can squeeze through a space as narrow as 1 inch wide, provided you are wearing and carrying nothing. You have advantage on ability checks you make to initiate or escape a grapple.

As a bonus action you can extrude a cluster of pseudopods that are up to 6 inches wide, and 10 ft. long or to reabsorb them into your body. You can use these pseudopods to manipulate an object, open/close a door or container, or pick up/set down a Medium object. The pseudopod doesn’t have sensory organs, can’t attack, activate magic items, or lift more than 100 lbs.

Darkvision

You can see in dim light within 60 feet of yourself as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

Aversion to Fire

Your gelatinous body is extremely averse to heat, If you take fire damage you have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of your next turn.

Gelatinous Resilience

You have resistance to acid and poison damage, and you have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned.

In addition, you don’t need to eat, drink, or breathe as your gelatinous body doesn’t require nutrients.

Devour Memories

The oblex targets one creature that it is grappling. The target must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or become memory drained until it finishes a short or long rest or until it benefits from the greater restoration or heal spell. Constructs, oozes, plants, and undead succeed on the save automatically. When an oblex causes a target to become memory drained, the oblex learns all the languages the target knows and proficiencies they have, except for any saving throw proficiencies for 1 hour.

While memory drained, the target must roll a d4 and subtract the number rolled from any ability check or attack roll it makes. Each time the target is memory drained beyond the first, the die size increases by one: the d4 becomes a d6, the d6 becomes a d8, and so on until the die becomes a d20, at which point the target becomes unconscious for 1 hour. The effect then ends.