Homebrew Elf (Cintera) (5.5) Species Details
Elves have pointed ears and smooth, hairless faces. They reach maturity at around one hundred years and live for some seven and a half centuries. They do not sleep, but slip instead into a waking trance, aware of their surroundings while they wander through old memories and meditations.
Elves are among the oldest peoples of Cintera and the dominant folk of East-Tameriel. They were once a single people, but across the millennia they fractured into four — the noble high elves, the solitary wood elves, the shadow-bound drow, and the brutal Shea — each claiming a different reach of the land, and each carrying a different strain of the old magic. That magic has thinned with the ages, and in most it now surfaces only as the faint gifts of one's lineage. Other peoples regard the elves as proud, fanatical, and dangerous — yet wise and formidable beyond question, and few would deny them a wary respect.
Dark Elves
Among the other peoples of Cintera the drow are feared, for they have turned wholly to darkness; among elves they are simply one of the four. They keep to their own, dwelling in caverns and sunless cities deep beneath the world, their greatest surface hold being Tel'Noir, in the lightless ravine east of Tha Quarlani. Theirs is a matriarchal faith of priestesses and matriarchs sworn to Necronnia and the sacred spider — a people of cold elegance and venomous courtesy, where every smile may hide a sting, and loyalty to one's house counts among the highest virtues.
High Elves
The high elves are a proud, tradition-bound people who set honour, beauty, and the purity of their bloodlines above all else, holding themselves to be the guardians of civilisation and its highest ideal. Pearl-skinned and silver-haired, they move with studied grace and rarely show feeling in public, for dignity and control are the virtues they prize most. They rule the crownland of Za'aFaira as a hereditary aristocracy from the city of Alusfaen Myth — outwardly gracious, inwardly bound by a strict and unforgiving order that leaves little place for any who cannot adorn their society.
Wood Elves
The wood elves are the most solitary of their kind, many living wholly alone among the Elder Trees and the vast forests of Nar Vandor. Clad in moss-green, bark-brown, and deep amber, with ornaments of wood and bone, they melt so easily into the trees that they can be hard to tell from the forest itself. They hold the living world inviolable and revere both the gods of light and nature itself, and to a wood elf no crime is greater than harm done to the wild.
Shea Elves
The Shea were not shaped slowly by the land, as other elves were, but remade in a single night by their own will. A mutated offshoot of the high elves, they rose against high elven rule some five centuries ago and struck a bargain with an ancient power — surrendering the thumbs of themselves and all their descendants in exchange for magic greater than any other elven people commands. The pact is written on their bodies: four fingers to each hand, and hair the colour of flame, for which they are also called red elves. Among the Shea, strength is its own right and power is never given, only seized — yet they hold it a sacred duty to make the strong stronger, and a grave sin to keep another from rising.
Elf Traits
Creature Type: Humanoid
Size: Medium (about 5–6 feet tall)
Speed: 30 feet
Elven Lineage
You are part of a lineage that grants you supernatural abilities. Choose a lineage from the Elven Lineages table. You gain the level 1 benefit of that lineage.
When you reach character levels 3 and 5, you learn a higher-level spell, as shown on the table. You always have that spell prepared. You can cast it once without a spell slot, and you regain the ability to cast it in that way when you finish a Long Rest. You can also cast the spell using any spell slots you have of the appropriate level.
Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for the spells you cast with this trait (choose the ability when you select the lineage).
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Elven Lineages |
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Lineage |
Level 1 |
Level 3 |
Level 5 |
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Drow |
You get Darkvision up to 120 feet. You also know the Dancing Lights cantrip. |
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High Elf |
You know the Prestidigitation cantrip. Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can replace that cantrip with a different cantrip from the Wizard spell list. |
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Wood Elf |
Your Speed increases to 35 feet. You also know the Druidcraft cantrip. |
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Shea Elf |
You have disadvantage with weapons and tools that would benefit from having a thumb, and with sleight of hand checks. You gain the Powerful Magic action, which lets you increase the spell attack modifier or DC of a leveled spell by 2 once per day. You also know the Prestidigitation cantrip. |
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Fey Ancestry
You have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Charmed condition.
Keen Senses
You have proficiency in the Insight, Perception, or Survival skill.
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.
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