Homebrew Ettin (two players) Species Details

Dual Personality. The twin heads of an ettin are two individuals trapped in the same brutish body. Each head has its own mind, personality, and name, and possesses unique preferences and quirks. Bound from birth, both minds only rarely experience privacy or solitude. This familiarity breeds contempt, and an ettin bullies and argues with itself constantly, its two heads each taking constant offence at the other’s slights.

When other creatures refer to an ettin, they combine its double names to form a single compound name that applies to the creature as a whole. If an ettin has one head named Hargle and another named Vargle, other creatures call the ettin Harglevargle.

Solitary Lives. As much as an ettin argues with itself, it is even less tolerant of other ettins, since a conversation between two ettins almost always amounts to a shouting match between a crowd of four belligerent heads. Most ettins are solitary creatures as a result, tolerating one another only to reproduce.

An ettin’s twin heads are always the same gender, with a body to match. Females are the dominant gender among ettins, and they initiate the ettins’ mating rituals. After finding a suitable den, a female ettin hunts and conquers a male, which cares for and feeds her during her six-month pregnancy. Once the child is born, the male ettin is released from servitude. When the child is old enough to hunt for itself, the mother sends it away and abandons the den.

Two Heads are Better than One. When focused on a mutually beneficial purpose or united by a common threat, an ettin can resolve its personality differences and dedicate itself fully to a task. An ettin fights with a weapon in each hand, making twin attacks directed by its respective heads. When an ettin sleeps, one of its heads remains ever alert, gaining its only moments of privacy and keeping two eyes open for any creature that disturbs its precious solitude.

Orcish Ties. In ancient dialects of Common, the word “ettin” translates as “ugly giant.” Legends tell of orcs that once stumbled upon a temple to Demogorgon, the magic of which transformed them into giant mockeries of the twin-headed Prince of Demons. Driven to near madness, these creatures scattered into the wilderness to become the first ettins.

Whatever the truth of the ettins’ origin, orcs treat them as distant cousins, and orc tribes often entice ettins to serve as guards, scouts, and marauders. An ettin isn’t particularly loyal to its orc handlers, but the orcs can win it over with the promise of food and loot.

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.

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.

Ettin (two players) Traits

As an ettin, you have the following species traits.

Creature Type

You are a Humanoid.

Size

You are Large.

Speed

Your speed is 40 feet.

Natural Armor

You have tough skin. When you aren’t wearing armor, your base AC is 13 + your Dexterity modifier. You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC. A shield’s benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor.

Darkvision

You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern colour in darkness, only shades of grey.

Two Halves of One Whole

Two players each play one half of the ettin. Each player creates a character as normal, with unique class and background. You both control one head and arm, as well as half of the movement. Due to your size, each hand can use a two-handed melee weapon or perform other actions that usually require two hands.

When rolling for or assigning ability scores, each player gets a unique Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma score. For Strength, Dexterity and Constitution scores, the players take the average of their scores for each.

Each player has their own health. When one half is damaged or healed, the damage or health is split equally (rounded down) between the two halves. If one half is reduced to zero hit points, the other half remains conscious with their half of their movement and use of their arm and head.

Two Heads are Better than One

As long as both halves are willing and able, your Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma saving throws, and your Wisdom (Perception) Checks are made at advantage, with each half rolling once.

Uncoordinated Effort

Both halves roll Strength and Dexterity d20 tests at disadvantage, with each half rolling once. You can choose to focus your efforts and roll with advantage a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Wakeful

When one of the heads is asleep, its other head is awake.