Homebrew Silkborne Species Details

Silkbornes are small yet sturdy insectoid Humanoids whose chitinous bodies produce supernatural silk. They use this silk to create tools, alter weapons, repair their exoskeletons, and bind damaged limbs back into place.

Each Silkborne possesses a uniquely formed exoskeleton and at least one hardened appendage suited for sudden, high-velocity attacks.

Silkborne Traits

Your Silkborne character has the following traits.

Ability Score Increase

Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.

Creature Type

You are a Humanoid.

Size

You are Small.

Speed

Your walking speed is 30 feet.

While you have at least one free hand, you can move up, down, and across vertical surfaces and upside down along ceilings at half your walking speed without making an ability check.

Chitin Armor

Your hardened exoskeleton provides natural protection.

While you are not wearing armor, your base Armor Class equals 12 + your Dexterity modifier. You can use a shield and still gain this benefit.

Exoskeletal Form

When you create your Silkborne character, determine the form and appearance of its exoskeleton.

You must also choose one intact, hardened chitinous appendage capable of performing your Impale trait. This appendage might be a horn, stinger, claw, beak, reinforced limb, elbow spike, or another suitable part of your exoskeleton.

Choose whether the appendage deals Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing damage. The chosen damage type is used whenever you attack with Impale.

You cannot use Impale while the chosen appendage is missing, broken, or otherwise incapable of striking a creature.

Silk and Fire

Silk produced through your traits is especially vulnerable to fire.

When a silk creation, modification, or coating is exposed to Fire damage or sustained extreme heat, the DM determines whether it ignites, weakens, hardens prematurely, or is destroyed based on the intensity and duration of the exposure.

This vulnerability applies to your silk, not to your body unless a feature or effect states otherwise.

By a Thread

You can produce and weave silk into temporary objects or use it to modify existing equipment.

You can use this trait once, regaining its use when you finish a Long Rest.

When you use this trait, choose one of the following options.

Silk Modification

Over the course of 1 minute, you weave silk around one object within your reach, modifying its construction or extending its functionality.

The modification must remain physically connected to your body by at least one strand of silk. While this connection remains intact, you can keep the silk soft and responsive.

No portion of soft, body-connected silk produced through this option can extend farther than 15 feet from you.

You can extend, retract, tighten, release, or launch the connected silk without taking an additional action. If the manipulation accompanies an attack or another action, it occurs as part of that action.

Manipulating the silk cannot make an attack by itself, activate the attached object, or replace an action normally required to use that object. It cannot impose a condition on a creature unless the DM approves the specific use.

You can modify any object whose construction reasonably permits the intended alteration. However, this trait does not grant proficiency with the modified object or allow you to ignore its properties, size restrictions, prerequisites, or any other rules governing its use.

A modification can therefore be successfully created while still providing no practical benefit to you if you cannot effectively wield or operate the modified object.

A modified weapon can have its reach extended to a maximum of 15 feet. This is the weapon’s total reach, not an additional 15 feet.

For example, you can weave an extensible silk handle around a longsword, allowing you to launch and retract the weapon while making attacks against creatures within 15 feet of you.

The DM determines what other functions a modification can reasonably provide based on the object’s original construction and the nature of the silk.

If the connection between you and the modification is severed, the silk rapidly begins to harden and can no longer be manipulated. The hardened modification otherwise remains until the trait’s duration ends.

Silk Creation

Over the course of 1 minute, you weave one Small, nonliving object from silk. The object hardens shortly after its creation and remains for up to 24 hours.

The object cannot contain moving parts and cannot be a piece of wearable armor. Its construction must be rigid once hardened.

You can create objects such as a simple tool, container, wedge, rigid pole, improvised weapon, or another suitable rigid object.

Creating an object does not automatically grant you proficiency with it.

Weaving Check

When you attempt to create or modify an object, make an Intelligence check against a DC determined by the DM.

The DC reflects the object’s complexity, your familiarity with its construction, and how precisely you must imagine its dimensions.

A simple object or modification should have a relatively low DC. An intricate object whose correct shape is difficult to know, such as a key intended to fit a particular lock, should have a considerably higher DC.

On a failed check, the creation or modification is unusable, and the use of this trait is expended.

Silk Durability

Objects and modifications created through this trait are exceptionally durable under ordinary conditions.

The DM determines whether a particular impact, environmental hazard, attack, or sustained strain is sufficient to damage or destroy the silk.

A silk creation or modification disappears after 24 hours unless it is destroyed earlier.

Bind

You can release a dense spray of silk that wraps around your body and seeps into the damaged sections of your exoskeleton.

As a Bonus Action, you regain Hit Points equal to 2d4 + your Constitution modifier.

You can use this trait once, regaining its use when you finish a Long Rest.

Limb Reattachment

When you use Bind, you can also reattach one of your severed limbs or hardened appendages.

The severed body part must be intact and within 10 feet of you when you activate the trait. Silk pulls the body part into place and holds it securely while your body reconnects it.

The reattached body part becomes fully functional immediately after Bind resolves.

A body part that has been destroyed or rendered unsuitable for reattachment cannot be restored through this trait.

Silk Coating

If you have no missing Hit Points when you use Bind, you gain Temporary Hit Points equal to the amount you would otherwise have regained.

If Bind would restore more Hit Points than you are missing, you gain the excess as Temporary Hit Points.

Temporary Hit Points gained through this trait last for 1 hour.

While you have any of these Temporary Hit Points remaining, you have Resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage from attacks.

The silk coating ends when none of the Temporary Hit Points granted by this trait remain.

Optional Trait: It’s a Matter of Cocoon or Death

With the DM’s permission, a Silkborne character can possess this optional trait.

Your body is capable of exhausting its entire silk-producing system to create one final cocoon when all ordinary chances of survival have been exhausted.

When you would die as a result of failing your third Death Saving Throw while at 0 Hit Points, you can activate this trait. You do not die. Instead, you immediately become stable and surround yourself with a sealed cocoon of densely layered, hardened silk.

While inside the cocoon, you remain Unconscious, have a Speed of 0, and cannot take actions, Bonus Actions, or Reactions. You do not make Death Saving Throws, and damage dealt to the cocoon does not cause you to suffer failed Death Saving Throws.

The cocoon is an object of your size that occupies your space and encloses you completely, granting you Total Cover against effects originating outside it. It weighs an amount equal to your body and everything you are carrying.

Unlike your ordinary silk, the cocoon is exceptionally resistant. It is immune to all damage, including Fire damage, and cannot be weakened or destroyed by extreme heat or ordinary environmental hazards. An effect capable of explicitly disintegrating matter, destroying otherwise indestructible objects, or suppressing supernatural traits can affect the cocoon at the DM’s discretion.

After 1 minute, the cocoon breaks apart. Provided your body still exists and no effect prevents you from regaining Hit Points, you regain 1 Hit Point and cease being Unconscious unless another effect is keeping you Unconscious.

If you cannot regain Hit Points when the cocoon breaks, you die.

You can use this trait only once during your lifetime. Returning to life, being reincarnated, changing form, or beginning another existence with the same character does not restore its use.

After using this trait, your body can no longer naturally produce or manipulate silk. You indefinitely lose access to By a Thread, Bind, and any other species trait or ability that requires you to produce silk.

This loss cannot be reversed by finishing a rest, receiving healing, being returned to life, or changing form. You regain your silk-based abilities only if and when the DM determines that an appropriate narrative, biological, magical, or supernatural method has restored your silk-producing system.

Silk creations and modifications produced before this loss remain for their normal durations, but you can no longer manipulate any connected silk.

Impale

You can convert the momentum of your movement into a sudden strike with your chosen chitinous appendage.

As a Bonus Action, make a melee attack against one creature within 5 feet of you. You are proficient with this attack and use your Dexterity modifier for its attack and damage rolls.

On a hit, the target takes 1d4 + your Dexterity modifier damage of the type chosen through your Exoskeletal Form trait.

The attack deals an additional 1d4 damage for every 5 feet you moved continuously in a single straight line immediately before making the attack.

Forced movement, including being pushed, launched, thrown, or falling involuntarily, contributes to this damage if it carries you along a straight path. Teleportation and movement gained while another creature carries you do not.

If you stop moving or change direction before making the attack, the accumulated distance resets to 0 and begins counting again from the point at which you resume moving in a straight line.

The maximum number of additional d4s you can gain equals your character level + 1, up to a maximum of six additional dice. You therefore reach Impale’s full 30-foot potential at 5th level.

You can use this trait a number of times equal to your Dexterity modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common and Buggish.

Buggish sounds exactly like one would reasonably expect.

Silkborne Traits

A silk-producing insectoid that modifies equipment, creates hardened tools, repairs its body, converts momentum into devastating impales, and can sacrifice its silk forever to escape death.