Homebrew Bender (Class) Species Details

Benders are creatures chosen to inherit a connection to the four fundamental elements: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water.

This connection begins when an ancient and incomprehensible creature known as a Lion Turtle enters the creature’s dreams and permanently alters the flow of energy throughout its body.

A Bender must spend years refining their body, perception, and will. Through this training, they learn to manipulate the elements freely rather than relying on a predetermined list of elemental attacks.

Class Features

As a Bender, you gain the following class features.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d8 per Bender level

Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constitution modifier

Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8, or 5, + your Constitution modifier per Bender level after 1st

Proficiencies

Armor: Light armor

Weapons: Simple weapons

Tools: None

Saving Throws: Dexterity, Wisdom

Skills: Choose two from Acrobatics, Athletics, History, Insight, Nature, Perception, Religion, and Survival

Optional Starting Equipment

At 1st level, you can choose to begin with the following equipment, in addition to any equipment granted by your background:

• Leather armor

• A quarterstaff or one simple weapon of your choice

• An explorer’s pack

Alternatively, you can forgo this equipment and begin with 5d4 × 10 GP to purchase your own equipment.

Bending Save DC

Whenever a Bender feature causes another creature to make a saving throw, it uses your Bending save DC unless the feature states otherwise.

Bending save DC: 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Bending Attack Modifier

When a Bender feature requires you to make an attack roll, you use the following modifier:

Bending attack modifier: your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

The Bender

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	Weight of My Heritage
1st	+2	Boon of the Lion Turtle, Element of Affinity	—
2nd	+2	One Soul, Many Vessels	—
3rd	+2	Bending Forms	—
4th	+2	Ability Score Improvement	—
5th	+3	Weight of My Heritage	1
6th	+3	Ability Score Improvement	1
7th	+3	Bending Form Features	1
8th	+3	Ability Score Improvement	1
9th	+4	Elemental Mastery	2
10th	+4	Bending the Limits	2
11th	+4	Extra Attack	2
12th	+4	Ability Score Improvement	2
13th	+5	Ancestral Counsel Improvement, Bending Form Features	2
14th	+5	Ability Score Improvement	3
15th	+5	Bending Form Features	3
16th	+5	Ability Score Improvement	3
17th	+6	Supreme Bender	3
18th	+6	Bending Form Features	3
19th	+6	Ancestral Counsel Improvement, Extra Attack (3)	4
20th	+6	World in Flesh	4

Bending Gestures

Bending requires precise physical movements that direct the flow of energy through your body.

Unless a feature states otherwise, you must perform the appropriate bending gestures whenever you use a Bender feature. You must have at least one free hand, or a comparable appendage, and must be physically capable of performing the required movements.

If your body is bound, paralyzed, or otherwise prevented from completing the required gestures, you cannot activate the feature.

Bending gestures are not spell components and cannot be replaced by a spellcasting focus.

Freeform Bending

Element of Affinity, Elemental Mastery, and Supreme Bender allow you to manipulate an element without selecting from a predetermined list of attacks or spells.

When you use one of these features, describe the element you intend to manipulate, the shape or movement you want to create, the area or target you intend to affect, and the intended damage, terrain alteration, or secondary effect.

The DM determines whether the manipulation is physically possible, which saving throw is appropriate, the damage type it produces, and how the surrounding terrain reacts.

A harmful effect normally requires a Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution saving throw against your Bending save DC. The saving throw is determined by whether the target must resist being moved, avoid the element, or physically endure its effects.

A creature can take damage only once from each damaging phase of a single manipulation, even if multiple parts of that phase pass through its space.

Elemental Sources

Air, Fire, and Water Benders can generate their respective elements when using Element of Affinity, Elemental Mastery, or Supreme Bender.

The quantity generated must remain within the area and limitations of the feature being used. The generated element must be used as part of the manipulation that created it and cannot exceed the amount reasonably required to produce that effect.

Water generated through a Bender feature disappears when that feature’s effect ends, even if the water has been frozen or otherwise altered.

An Earth Bender cannot generate earth from nothing. To manipulate earth, stone, sand, or another eligible mineral substance, the Bender must maintain a continuous physical connection to the source being bent.

This connection can pass through contiguous earth, stone, sand, or another substance the Bender can currently manipulate. Open air, an extradimensional boundary, or a barrier made entirely from a substance the Bender cannot bend breaks the connection.

An Earth Bender is not otherwise limited by a generated quantity. The Bender can manipulate any amount of eligible existing material that fits within the area and other limitations of the feature being used.

Specialized derivatives of an element, such as lightning or metal, cannot be bent unless a Bending Form feature specifically grants access to them.

Simple Bending

Element of Affinity and Elemental Mastery can create only one simple manipulation at a time.

They cannot simultaneously produce multiple distinct elemental properties or create intricate structures.

For example, you could freeze the surface of a lake or raise spikes of ice from it, but you could not accomplish both as part of the same use.

Secondary Effects

When Elemental Mastery or Supreme Bender directly damages a creature, the manipulation can also produce secondary effects that logically follow from the form of bending used.

Examples include pushing or pulling a creature, knocking it Prone, creating Difficult Terrain, obscuring an area, igniting or extinguishing objects, providing cover, or briefly restricting a creature’s movement.

Elemental Mastery can normally produce no more than one significant secondary effect as part of the same use.

Supreme Bender can produce up to two related secondary effects as part of the same use.

Unless the DM determines otherwise, a successful saving throw against the manipulation causes a creature to take half damage and avoid any secondary effect.

A secondary effect that pushes or pulls a creature normally moves it no more than 10 feet.

An effect that would move a creature farther than 10 feet, provide Total Cover, impose a condition more severe than Prone, or repeatedly damage a creature after the initial manipulation normally requires the Bender to forgo the feature’s direct damage.

Unless the altered terrain or material physically sustains the effect, a secondary effect lasts until the end of the affected creature’s next turn.

If the DM allows a secondary effect to last longer, the affected creature repeats the original saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a successful save.

The DM determines whether a proposed effect is proportionate to the feature being used. A manipulation cannot reproduce the complete effects of a spell, class feature, or Bending Form feature unless the DM specifically allows it.

Objects and Structures

Freeform bending can damage objects and structures.

When a manipulation targets an object, building, vehicle, fortification, or section of terrain, the DM determines whether it can be affected and the extent of the resulting damage, destruction, breach, displacement, or structural instability.

The DM can consider the material, size, construction, current condition, and damage type of the manipulation when determining the result.

Complex Bending

Supreme Bender removes the restrictions of Simple Bending.

It allows you to combine elemental properties, create multiple related effects, and construct intricate structures as described in that feature.

HBB Note: Element of Affinity, Elemental Mastery, and Supreme Bender deliberately replace the need for separate features representing every ordinary flame wave, stone projectile, gust of wind, water whip, or similar technique. Bending Form features should represent specialized techniques that cannot be reproduced through ordinary elemental manipulation.

Level 1: Boon of the Lion Turtle

Prerequisite: You must be capable of sleeping or entering a sleep-like trance.

Regardless of your species, age, or alignment, your life is permanently altered when an unknown yet imposing creature known as a Lion Turtle enters your dreams.

The Lion Turtle places one enormous claw against your forehead. Whether you accept the contact or resist it, the essence of your being changes within a fraction of a second.

During this moment, you witness an impossibly long succession of Benders who mastered Air, Earth, Fire, and Water according to their own values.

The experience places you at the beginning of the same path, though mastering all four elements requires relentless training and the development of a tenacious and unbreakable will.

Ancestral Counsel

Whenever you finish a Long Rest, one of your predecessors visits you during your dreams or trance.

The predecessor shares a fragment of their life and wisdom before disappearing. When you awaken, choose one ability from the Ancestral Counsel table or roll 1d6 to determine it randomly.

Until you finish your next Long Rest, you gain a +1 bonus to ability checks using the chosen ability while initiative is not active.

d6	Ability	Ancestral Lesson
1	Strength	Endurance, discipline, and decisive action
2	Dexterity	Balance, timing, and controlled movement
3	Constitution	Patience, survival, and bodily resilience
4	Intelligence	Study, planning, and technical understanding
5	Wisdom	Perception, restraint, and spiritual awareness
6	Charisma	Leadership, conviction, and emotional influence

The bonus increases to +2 when you reach 13th level and +3 when you reach 19th level.

Level 1: Element of Affinity

The Lion Turtle’s touch creates an immediate affinity between you and one of the four major elements.

Choose Air, Earth, Fire, or Water. This choice becomes your Element of Affinity.

As an action, you can create or manipulate your Element of Affinity within 30 feet of yourself.

The manipulation can affect no more than 1 cubic foot of the element and lasts until the end of your next turn.

You can move the element, reshape it, or temporarily alter its physical state. For example, you could bend a short slab from a rocky surface or freeze the water inside a teapot.

An Air, Fire, or Water Bender can generate up to 1 cubic foot of the chosen element as part of this manipulation.

An Earth Bender must manipulate an existing source according to the Elemental Sources rules.

When the effect ends, the element returns to its previous state whenever physically possible. Raised stone crumbles back into place, frozen water melts, generated water disappears, generated fire goes out, and displaced air disperses.

Element of Affinity cannot directly deal damage, impose a condition, or alter the internal biological balance of a creature.

You can use this feature without expending a limited resource.

This feature is subject to the Simple Bending rules.

Level 2: One Soul, Many Vessels

Your repeated conversations with your predecessors fundamentally alter the way you perceive living energy.

You gain a faint awareness of the energy flowing through living creatures, allowing you to either restore that flow or disrupt it.

This feature cannot affect Constructs, Undead, Fiends, Devils, or creatures whose life force is sustained by an underworld, Lower Plane, or chthonic deity, as determined by the DM.

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.

As a Bonus Action, touch one eligible creature and choose one of the following effects.

Restore the Flow

You restore and reinforce the creature’s natural flow of energy.

A willing creature’s Speed increases by 5 feet until it finishes a Long Rest.

Before the creature finishes that Long Rest, it can choose to gain advantage on one saving throw it makes. Once it uses this advantage, that part of the effect ends.

Block the Flow

You press against the creature’s energy points and obstruct the natural movement of energy through its body.

An unwilling creature must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your Bending save DC or be affected.

On a failed save, roll 1d4. The following effects last until the end of the target’s turn that many turns later:

• Its Speed is reduced by 5 feet.

• The next saving throw it makes before the effect ends is made with disadvantage.

A creature can be affected by only one use of One Soul, Many Vessels at a time. A new use replaces the previous one.

Level 3: Bending Forms

Your affinity develops into a formal discipline of elemental bending.

Choose one of the following Bending Forms:

• Air

• Earth

• Fire

• Water

Your first Bending Form must correspond to the Element of Affinity you selected at 1st level.

A Bending Form grants features associated with its element. As you gain levels in this class, you learn additional forms and gain deeper features from those you learned earlier.

Bending Form Progression

Bender Level	First Form	Second Form	Third Form	Fourth Form
3rd	3rd-level feature	—	—	—
7th	7th-level feature	3rd-level feature	—	—
13th	13th-level feature	7th-level feature	3rd-level feature	—
15th	15th-level feature	13th-level feature	7th-level feature	3rd-level feature
18th	18th-level feature	13th-level feature	7th-level feature	3rd-level feature
20th	All features	All features	All features	All features

At 7th level, choose your second Bending Form.

At 13th level, choose your third Bending Form.

At 15th level, you gain the remaining Bending Form.

Once chosen, your Bending Forms cannot normally be replaced.

Level 4: Ability Score Improvement

You gain the Ability Score Improvement feat or another feat of your choice for which you qualify.

You gain this feature again at levels 6, 8, 12, 14, and 16.

Level 5: Weight of My Heritage

You learn to momentarily connect with the combined knowledge and power of your entire ancestral bloodline.

When you use Elemental Mastery, Supreme Bender, or a feature granted by one of your Bending Forms, you can expend one use of Weight of My Heritage to invoke that feature’s Heritage effect.

The Heritage effect of a feature describes how ancestral power alters or amplifies it. This amplification can increase its area, intensity, duration, movement, or alter the technique in another unprecedented way.

A feature that does not include a Heritage effect cannot be empowered through Weight of My Heritage.

You can expend no more than one use of Weight of My Heritage during the same turn.

You regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Bender Level	Uses
5th	1
9th	2
14th	3
19th	4

Level 6: Ability Score Improvement

You gain the Ability Score Improvement feat or another feat of your choice for which you qualify.

Level 7: Bending Form Features

You gain the 7th-level feature of your first Bending Form.

You also choose your second Bending Form and gain its 3rd-level feature.

Level 8: Ability Score Improvement

You gain the Ability Score Improvement feat or another feat of your choice for which you qualify.

Level 9: Elemental Mastery

Your training develops your elemental affinity into true mastery.

You can use this feature with your Element of Affinity or with an element corresponding to one of your Bending Forms.

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.

As an action, choose a point you can see within 60 feet of yourself and create or manipulate an eligible element within an area no larger than a 20-foot cube.

An Air, Fire, or Water Bender can generate enough of the chosen element to perform one simple manipulation throughout the chosen area.

An Earth Bender must manipulate an existing source according to the Elemental Sources rules.

You can shape the element into any simple form or movement you can reasonably conceptualize, provided the entire manipulation remains within the chosen area.

Direct Damage

If the manipulation directly damages one or more creatures, each affected creature must make a saving throw determined by the nature of the effect.

On a failed save, a creature takes 6d6 + your Wisdom modifier damage. On a successful save, it takes half as much damage.

The damage type is determined by the element and the form of the attack, subject to the DM’s approval.

Examples include:

• Fire damage from flames

• Cold damage from ice

• Bludgeoning damage from stone or water

• Slashing damage from sharpened water or ice

• Thunder damage from compressed air

Elemental Terrain

Material created or moved through this feature remains after the bending ends if the element would naturally remain in that state.

Stone walls, displaced earth, ice formed from existing water, and similar matter become ordinary terrain and can be damaged, moved, melted, climbed, or otherwise interacted with normally.

Water generated through this feature disappears when the feature’s effect ends, even if it has been frozen or otherwise altered.

Air, unsupported flames, and other naturally temporary phenomena disperse once their movement or immediate effect finishes.

If the resulting terrain would reasonably impede movement, the DM can designate it as Difficult Terrain.

The DM determines the effects of ignition, collapsing terrain, unstable structures, or elemental reactions produced by the manipulation.

For example, you could create a wheel of fire and roll it through a 20-foot line. It could deal fire damage to creatures in its path and leave behind a trail of ordinary flame that continues burning according to the surrounding terrain.

This feature is subject to the Simple Bending and Secondary Effects rules.

Level 10: Bending the Limits

Your meticulous training increases your understanding of your own energy and allows you to replenish an exhausted technique.

As a Bonus Action, choose one feature granted by one of your Bending Forms that has a limited number of uses.

You regain all expended uses of the chosen feature.

Once you use Bending the Limits, you cannot use it again until you finish a Long Rest.

At 20th level, you can choose World in Flesh instead of a Bending Form feature.

Level 11: Extra Attack

You can attack twice whenever you take the Attack action.

Level 12: Ability Score Improvement

You gain the Ability Score Improvement feat or another feat of your choice for which you qualify.

Level 13: Ancestral Counsel Improvement

The bonus granted by Ancestral Counsel increases to +2.

Level 13: Bending Form Features

You gain the 13th-level feature of your first Bending Form and the 7th-level feature of your second Bending Form.

You also choose your third Bending Form and gain its 3rd-level feature.

Level 14: Ability Score Improvement

You gain the Ability Score Improvement feat or another feat of your choice for which you qualify.

Level 15: Bending Form Features

You gain the 15th-level feature of your first Bending Form, the 13th-level feature of your second Bending Form, and the 7th-level feature of your third Bending Form.

You also gain the remaining Bending Form and its 3rd-level feature.

Level 16: Ability Score Improvement

You gain the Ability Score Improvement feat or another feat of your choice for which you qualify.

Level 17: Supreme Bender

You gain complete freedom over the shapes, structures, and combinations produced through elemental bending.

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, choose a point you can see within 60 feet of yourself and create or manipulate an eligible element within an area no larger than a 30-foot cube.

An Air, Fire, or Water Bender can generate enough of the chosen element to perform a complex manipulation throughout the chosen area.

An Earth Bender must manipulate an existing source according to the Elemental Sources rules.

You can combine multiple physical properties of the same element as part of the same use.

For example, you could freeze a platform, cover it with sharpened icicles, and shape its surface so that creatures slide toward those icicles.

Supreme Damage

A use of Supreme Bender can contain up to two distinct damaging phases.

Each affected creature must make a separate saving throw for each damaging phase that reaches it. The saving throw is determined by the nature of that phase.

On a failed save, a creature takes 9d6 + your Wisdom modifier damage from that phase. On a successful save, it takes half as much damage.

Each phase can deal a different damage type if the form of the manipulation supports it.

For example, a wall of stone could first strike a creature for bludgeoning damage before erupting into sharpened fragments that deal piercing damage.

A creature can take damage only once from each damaging phase of the same use, regardless of how many parts of that phase affect it.

Complex Structures

Supreme Bender can create intricate surfaces, structures, passages, mechanisms, and terrain.

If you attempt to construct something whose function depends on precise engineering, such as a maze, lock, water-powered mechanism, or articulated metal device, make an Intelligence check against a DC determined by the DM.

On a successful check, you successfully conceptualize and create the intended structure.

On a failed check, the structure forms in an incomplete or nonfunctional state, as determined by the DM. The use of Supreme Bender is still expended.

Any persistent material created through this feature is nonmagical after it forms and can be damaged or interacted with according to its ordinary material properties.

Water generated through this feature disappears when the feature’s effect ends, even if it has been frozen or otherwise incorporated into a structure.

This feature is subject to the Secondary Effects rules, but it is not subject to the Simple Bending rules.

Elemental Propulsion

You can generate and direct enough elemental force to propel yourself through the air.

As a Bonus Action, you gain a flying speed of 30 feet. This flight lasts until you land, become Incapacitated, or end it without using an action.

You must continuously dedicate your arms, legs, or comparable extremities to balancing and directing the elemental force.

At the start of each of your turns, you rededicate your extremities to maintaining flight and reset your accumulated descent to 0 feet.

Whenever you make an attack, draw or manipulate an item, or perform bending gestures while flying in this way, you become unstable until the start of your next turn.

Each such act increases the distance you descend at the end of your current turn by 5 feet.

An attack made with a two-handed weapon increases this descent by 10 feet instead.

While unstable, you cannot ascend, but you can otherwise move using your flying speed normally.

At the end of your turn, you descend by the total accumulated distance. This descent does not expend movement.

If you reach the ground during this descent, you land safely.

This flight has no limited number of uses.

Level 18: Bending Form Features

You gain the 18th-level feature of your first Bending Form.

Your second Bending Form remains limited to its 13th-level feature, your third remains limited to its 7th-level feature, and your fourth remains limited to its 3rd-level feature until you reach 20th level.

Level 19: Ancestral Counsel Improvement

The bonus granted by Ancestral Counsel increases to +3.

Level 19: Extra Attack (3)

You can attack four times whenever you take the Attack action.

Level 20: World in Flesh

You become the living convergence of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water.

The feature limitations placed on your secondary Bending Forms are removed. You immediately gain every feature from all four of your Bending Forms.

You can use World in Flesh once. You regain its expended use when you finish a Long Rest.

As an action, you enter a state of total elemental convergence.

You must maintain Concentration on this feature as if concentrating on a spell. The state lasts for up to 2 minutes.

For the duration, you gain a flying speed of 30 feet and can hover.

Fourfold Bending

Once on each of your turns, you can use one action to activate up to four features granted by your Bending Forms as part of that same action.

You can select no more than one feature from each Bending Form.

A selected feature can normally require an action, Bonus Action, or Reaction. When used through Fourfold Bending, it is activated as part of the same action regardless of its normal action type.

A Reaction feature selected through Fourfold Bending does not require its normal trigger.

Each selected feature must have a valid target and satisfy all its other normal requirements.

You expend all uses, Heritage uses, and other resources normally required by each selected feature.

Resolve the selected features one at a time in an order you choose.

World in Flesh ends early if your Concentration ends, you become Incapacitated, or you dismiss it without using an action.

Multiclassing

Ability Score Minimum

To multiclass into or out of the Bender class, you must have a Wisdom score of 13 or higher.

Proficiencies Gained

If Bender is not your initial class, you gain proficiency with light armor and simple weapons.

Bending Forms

If you multiclass into Bender, your first Bending Form must still correspond to the Element of Affinity you selected through this class.

Bender (Class) Traits

Benders are martial elementalists who freely shape Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, inherit specialized Bending Forms, and eventually wield all four through ancestral mastery.