Homebrew Ghost Elf Species Details

experiments for Thulikazt's pleasure. Ghost elven historians call this time "the Tempering."
Countless centuries passed and Thulikazt grew lax, allowing his slaves (whom he believed completely broken) to take up arms and join his forces in the Blood War. The ghost elves learned the arts of war and conquest from fiendish generals and hellish sorcerers. They became Thulikazt's elite bodyguard, drawing admiration and envy from other fiends. This would prove the archduke's ultimate undoing.
The ghost elves secretly contacted their master's enemies and offered to serve those lesser fiends in return for aid in destroying their hated master. Greedy for the service of Thulikazt's elite troops, the baatezu lords formed an alliance to lay siege to his citadel. The ghost elves used the battle as a dis- traction, killing Thulikazt and opening a gate to the Material Plane in the confusion. When the fortress finally fell, the fiendish generals found only Thulikazt's mutilated corpse and a note of thanks. The ghost elves had won their freedom.
Fearing fiendish retribution, the ghost elves searched for somewhere to hide. It was then that they noticed a startling change in themselves: By severing their connection to the earth, Thulikazt had accidentally gifted the ghost elves with a strange connection to the Ethereal Plane, granting the most powerful ghost elves the ability to slip between the material world and the Ethereal Plane. Upon coming to grips with their newfound powers, the ghost elves set about creating a portal to the Ethereal Plane, and one stone at a time, they transferred materials to the Ethereal Plane to build their new homes.
Today ghost elves live on the Ethereal Plane. Their cities are usually built deep in woodlands and all are at least partially underground. Due to their long captivity and the dangers their settlements attract, their society has a strong martial bent. A thousand years have not cooled the anger of the devils humiliated by "elven treachery," and even today they seek out and destroy ghost elves whenever they can. For their part, the ghost elves launch preemptive strikes against their enemies whenever possible, relying on their hidden cities for defense.

Ghost Elf Traits

As a Ghost Elf, you have these special traits.

Creature Type

You are a humanoid

Ability Score Increases

When determining your character’s ability scores, increase Dexterity and Intelligence by +2, and Constitution by -2.. None of these increases can raise a score above 20.

Low-Light Vision

You have Low-Light Vision with a range of 60 feet.

Fey Ancestry

You have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Charmed condition.

Trance

You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a Long Rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you retain consciousness.

Ethereal Power

A ghost elf can invoke her connection to the Ethereal Plane once per day in one of several ways depending on her level. A ghost elf can choose to use the ability available to her at her current level or the ability available at any lower level, but once a ghost elf uses an ethereal power she cannot use another one until the following day. Caster level is equal to the ghost elf's character level.

Level	Ethereal Power
1st	Slip Binding: The ghost elf gains a +5 bonus to Dexterity checks made to escape being bound for 1 minute per level. At 5th level, this bonus increases to +10, and at 9th level, it increases to +15.
4th	See Invisibility: As the see Invisibility spell
6th	Blink: As the blink spell.
14th	Ethereal Jaunt: As the ethereal jaunt spell.
18th	(WIP rework of Ethereal Shift)

 

Glowing Personality

A ghost elf glows with the brightness of a candle in the dark (5-foot radius of light). She can suppress this aura at will as a free action but must make a DC 10 Concentration check as a free action each round to maintain the suppression.

Weapon Proficiency

Ghost elves receive the Martial Weapon Proficiency feats for the short sword and scimitar as bonus feats, weapons suited to the fighting styles of fiendish gladiatorial arenas. They do not share their cousins' proficiency with bows: Such weapons are useless in the obscuring mists of the Ethereal Plane. Ghost elven children's games feature practice weapons, ensuring familiarity with the real thing in adulthood.

Keen Senses

Ghost elves have a keen sense of their surroundings, and as such gain advantage on Investigation and Perception checks to search their surroundings.