Homebrew Hamon Species Details

Legendary Technique

Description

Hamon, also known as the Ripple, is a breathing technique that allows a living body to generate energy similar to sunlight. Through controlled respiration, this energy travels through the bloodstream, then ripples outward into the body, objects, surfaces, and creatures in contact with the user.

Hamon often manifests as bright, electricity-like sparks or golden waves of energy. To ordinary creatures, it can look like light dancing across the skin. To undead creatures, it feels much worse.

A trained Hamon user can use this energy to strengthen objects, alter materials, mend wounds, harm undead, reject harmful substances from the body, manipulate surfaces, and weaponize their own breathing pattern with extreme precision.

If a Hamon feature requires a saving throw, the save DC equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier.

If a Hamon feature requires an attack roll, the attack modifier equals your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier, unless the feature states otherwise.

Passive Abilities

In the Nose, Out the Mouth

Despite all the supernatural benefits it grants, Hamon is still a breathing technique.

Hamon is usually passed down by a Hamon Master, an individual with a deep practical and theoretical understanding of the technique. Depending on the creature, mastering Hamon can take anywhere from days to years, at the DM’s discretion. In rare cases, Hamon can also appear congenitally, manifesting naturally in a creature without formal training.

Once a creature understands the basics of Hamon, it can continue improving even without the direct supervision of a master.

To use Hamon, a creature must be capable of breathing in the traditional sense, using lungs or a comparable respiratory system. If a creature has no functioning respiratory system, it cannot perform Hamon, even if it perfectly understands the theory behind it.

A Hamon user must also be able to breathe without meaningful interference. Effects such as choking, suffocation, respiratory poison, magical control of the body, paralysis, or even sufficiently disruptive bodily interference can prevent a creature from using Hamon, at the DM’s discretion.

If a creature learned or mastered Hamon earlier in life and later loses one or more of the requirements needed to advance the technique, it can continue using the Hamon abilities it already learned, at the DM’s discretion. However, it cannot progress further in Hamon until those requirements are restored.

Once adopted, Hamon becomes an innate part of the user. It is not an item, spell, feat, or weapon. It is a characteristic expression of the creature’s body and breath, and cannot be easily stripped away.

HBB Note: Situations where a user might lose access to Hamon are always at the DM’s discretion.

The Thicker the Better

Hamon travels more violently through thick or dense fluids, as their resistance gives the Ripple more substance to carry through.

When a creature or object affected by one of your Hamon features is covered in a fluid denser or more viscous than water, such as oil, honey, slime, or a comparable substance, the Hamon effect is amplified.

If the Hamon feature deals damage to that target, it deals an additional 1d10 radiant damage.

If the Hamon feature restores hit points to that target, it restores an additional 1d10 hit points.

Clairvoyance

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

After mastering Hamon extensively, your breathing sharpens your awareness enough to predict immediate threats in life-or-death situations.

When a creature you can perceive makes an attack roll against you, you can use your reaction to channel Hamon through your senses. The triggering attack roll is made with disadvantage.

If a harmful effect you can perceive forces you to make a saving throw instead of making an attack roll, you can use this reaction to gain advantage on the saving throw.

You must be able to perceive the threat to use this feature.

Active Abilities

Overdrive

As an action, you imbue one object smaller than you with Hamon. The object must be made of matter in the traditional sense, and you must be touching it when you use this feature.

While an object is imbued with Hamon, you can temporarily alter how its structure behaves, strengthen its natural properties, concentrate radiant energy into a specific point, or use the object as a vessel for your breathing technique. The exact effect is determined by the DM based on the object, the situation, and the way you channel Hamon into it.

You can fully control where your Hamon is concentrated within the object, and you can end the effect at any time, no action required.

The following use is a common application of Overdrive, but it does not represent the full extent of what the technique can accomplish.

Enhancing Impact

You can use this application of Overdrive a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

You charge an object, weapon, or part of a willing living creature’s body with Hamon, causing it to release radiant force when it strikes another creature.

The next time the charged object or body part hits a creature, the attack deals an additional 2d10 radiant damage.

If the target is an undead creature, this additional radiant damage is doubled.

Using Overdrive for Enhancing Impact expends a use of this application. Other applications of Overdrive remain subject to the DM’s discretion.

Molecular Manipulation

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

As an action, you channel Hamon into one object or surface you are touching and attempt to alter its structure on a molecular level.

The exact result is determined by the DM, but this feature can be used to create effects such as walking across water, shattering a wall to form an abrupt tunnel, reinforcing a material to deflect incoming projectiles, or temporarily changing how a surface behaves under pressure.

To use this feature successfully, make a Charisma check. The DC is determined by the DM based on the difficulty, scale, and precision of the attempted alteration.

HBB Note: Since this ability is handled in an extremely open-ended way in the source material, I took the liberty of not over-limiting a feature with this much potential. That being said, the DM may impose restrictions at their own discretion.

Traps

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

As a bonus action, you overdrive one nonliving object smaller than you with excessive amounts of Hamon, turning it into an unstable trap.

You can have only one Hamon trap active at a time. If you create a new Hamon trap while another one is active, the previous trap harmlessly loses its charge.

A Hamon trap can remain active for up to 1d4 rounds in combat, or up to 1 hour outside combat. You can detonate the trap early as a bonus action, provided you are within 60 feet of it.

When the trap detonates, the object bursts into countless radiant shrapnel. Each creature within 30 feet of the object must make a Dexterity saving throw.

On a failed save, a creature takes 2d10 radiant damage.

On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage.

Living creatures and living body parts cannot be turned into Hamon traps.

Waves Mend

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

As a bonus action, you channel Hamon into one of your extremities, causing it to flare with bright Ripple energy. When you touch a wounded creature, the Hamon travels across the damaged surface in waves, closing the wound as it moves.

Touch one living creature within your reach. The target regains 2d10 hit points.

If the target is an undead creature, it takes 2d10 radiant damage instead of regaining hit points. Radiant damage dealt by this feature leaves a permanent Ripple-burn mark on the target’s body, even if the damage is later healed. The mark can be removed only by greater restoration, wish, or another comparable effect approved by the DM.

Hamon-tension

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

When you miss with an attack roll, you can use your reaction to extend one of your extremities 5 feet farther and correct the strike with Hamon.

Add 1 + your Wisdom modifier to the missed attack roll.

If this bonus causes the attack to hit, the attack hits as normal and deals its normal damage.

Mind-Control

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

As an action, you shout a distinct verbal command at one creature within 10 feet of you and force Hamon into its nervous system. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw.

On a failed save, the target is temporarily brainwashed and must follow one clear command you gave as part of using this feature.

The command can require the target to use its own abilities, provided the command is specific enough to be understood. For example, if the target can cast wall of ice, you can command it to cast that spell in a specific location or shape, subject to the DM’s interpretation.

The target remains under your control for a number of turns equal to your Wisdom modifier, to a minimum of 1 turn.

If the target takes any damage, this effect immediately ends, and the target regains full control of its body.

The target retains all memories from before, during, and after the effect.

Selective Permeability

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

When a harmful substance enters your body through injection, a bite, a sting, or another similar method, you can use your reaction to locally reverse your blood pressure with Hamon and force the substance outward.

When you use this feature, you remove the poisoned condition from yourself.

At the DM’s discretion, this feature can also reject a comparable injected substance before it fully takes effect.

Dome of Majestic Muscles

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

As an action, you concentrate and create a 5-foot-radius dome of Hamon energy centered on yourself. The dome lasts for a number of turns equal to your Charisma modifier, to a minimum of 1 turn. It ends early if you lose concentration, as if concentrating on a spell.

While the dome is active, you and other creatures of your choice inside it gain a bonus to AC equal to your Constitution modifier, to a minimum bonus of +1.

At the start of each of your turns after the dome is created, this AC bonus increases by 1 while the dome remains active.

The dome also slows conventional physical projectiles as they enter its area. When a ranged weapon attack made with a physical projectile targets a creature inside the dome, you can use your reaction to deflect the projectile, causing the attack to miss.

This feature can affect projectiles made from conventional matter, such as arrows, bolts, bullets, stones, darts, or similar objects. It cannot affect plasma, antimatter, pure force, psychic energy, divine judgment, the power of friendship, or any other projectile that the DM determines is not a conventional physical object.

HBB Note: It is strongly advised that you deflect projectiles with your own body rather than relying on a weapon, clothing, conjuration, or another third-party object. Using something else as the point of contact may result in that object being damaged, destroyed, or depreciated at the DM’s discretion.

Hamon Traits

Hamon lets a living creature channel sunlight-like energy through controlled breathing, empowering the body, healing allies, damaging undead, and manipulating objects through waves of radiant force.