Homebrew Cursed Undead Species Details

Dead and Reborn

Typically having no lands to call their own, undead with an awakened sense of self are usually perpetual foreigners, wanders in a land and often a time not their own. Compounding matters, most mortal cultures carry within them an instinctual fear of death and the dead, and many associate necromancy specifically with dark tidings. This forms a wall of ( often well-­earned) prejudice and hatred that sentient undead find themselves up against, and many undead choose to hide their necrotic natures behind clothes, masks, and pungent perfumes when journeying into civilization.
Depending on composition, humanoid undead typically range a wide gamut from 20 to 300 pounds, and may possess empty eyes, a colored flame-like magical animus in their sockets, or harrowed, surprisingly mortal eyes burning with an inner fire. Hair (if they have it at all) is usually lank, dark, and wrought with grime and grave­-dirt that no amount of cleaning will fully remove.

Service and Freedom

Undeath is effectively immortality, a strong reason why many mortal spellcasters of a certain moral bent consider it a viable alternative to ac­tually dying. Still, it is not immortality without a price - senses and emotions dull, food and drink no longer have taste, and often an undead state comes alongside a subservience of will and un­thinking toil beneath a master who likely does not have the world's best intentions at heart.
Some undead are born into freedom, while others earn it or have it thrust upon them. Re­gardless, all undead that have freedom greatly cherish it, as the reminders of what could easily happen were they not fortunate enough to pos­sess free will abound throughout history. Many consider it their sacred duty to free other mind­less undead, or simply to dispatch them wher­ever they may be found. The reasoning is straightforward enough: a final rest awarded to all mortals is greatly preferential to eternal slav­ery to the likes of a short-sighted, megalomania­cal wizard. 

Fallen Home, Forgotten Past

For many awakened undead, the past is a distant homeland to which they may never return, hold­ing names and faces now partially-forgotten, and loves and lives as dead as they are. The anguish of this loss is enough to drive many mad, but others use this rage and pain as a source of power and drive, carrying them further on the road to whatever dark destiny awaits.
Frequently, entire countries, customs, and cultures an undead may be familiar with no longer exist, and the sentient dead behaves or speaks in an antiquated fashion because of this. It may be even more difficult than usual for such undead to relate to more modern
mortals, and typically these undead leverage what companions they may have to bridge this epoch-long communication gap. 

Undead Names

Many undead that awaken into sentience prefer to keep the names they held in their mortal lives. For others, however, their mortal names are for­gotten or have lost meaning. These undead often adopt nicknames given to them by their former masters or present companions, and hold them to be as true as any other creature's birth name.
Examples of names given in this fashion may be seen, below:

Names: Rattlebones, Spore, Rotface, Raven, Bane, Carver, Drudge, Rook, Mort, Pale, Minion, Crumble, Shade

Undead Traits

Creature Type: Undead
Size: Medium (about 4–7 feet tall)
Speed: 30 feet

Cursed Undead Traits

As a Undead, you have these special traits.

Bone Shield

Once per short rest use one of your bones to block an attack reducing the damage by 1d10 at the risk of breaking it.

Make a DC8 Constituation save or break a bone.
If your bones break and you are unable wield a two-handed weapon until your next long rest or until finding a new bone.

Menacing appearance

Your fallen of flesh and gorey appearance makes you uneasy to look at.
To all living creatures you appear to be an untrustworthy and terrifying individual.

You are Proficient in Intimidation
Your Persuasion and Animal Handling modifier decreases by 2

 

Bone to Pick

Whenever both of your hands are free (not including equipped shields), you may choose to use a free hand and a bonus action to remove one of your hands or arms. If you remove an arm, it counts as a weapon with the finesse property that deals 1d6 bludgeoning damage, and you have proficiency with your arm while you wield it. If you remove a hand, it counts as thieves' tools or a similar set of simple tools while you hold it. In either case, removed hands and arms may be re-attached by using another bonus action. 

Past Life

Choose another living race besides this one. Before your death, you were a member of this race and appear as an undead version of it. Your size, height, and movement speed are the same as a typical member of that race. You do not retain special movement speeds from this race (such as swimming or flying), and, though you may choose to have formerly been a member of a subrace of a particular race, you derive no benefits from doing so.

Due to your long lived life you are Half Proficient in History

Speed

Your Speed is 30 feet.

Your swiming speed is 10 feet, you can't swim and will drop to the ocean floor.

Dead Immortality.

You do not age. Given time, the necromantic energies that sustain you will heal most wounds you take at approximately the same rate as a mortal, and your hit dice function as normal.

Undead

Raised from the dead as a being of undeath, you count as an undead creature for all spells and abilities that affect the undead. You are immune to disease, resistant to poison & bleeding. You do not need to eat or breathe but you can ingest food and drink if you wish.

You are vulnerable to radiant damage due to your undead state.

Instead of sleeping, you enter an inactive state for 4 hours each day. You do not dream in this state; you are fully aware of your surround­ings and notice approaching enemies and other events as normal.