Homebrew Redcap Species Details

Blood, blood, trickle down, soak the red into my crown!

A redcap is a homicidal fey creature born of blood lust. Redcaps, although small, have formidable strength, which they use to hunt and kill without hesitation or regret.

Blood Lust Personified. In the Feywild, or where that plane touches the world at a fey crossing, if a sentient creature acts on an intense desire for bloodshed, one or more redcaps might appear where the blood of a slain person soaks the ground. At first, new redcaps look like tiny bloodstained mushrooms just pushing their caps out of the soil. When moonlight shines on one of these caps, a creature that looks like a wizened and undersized gnome with a hunched back and a sinewy frame springs from the earth. The creature has a pointed leather cap, pants of similar material, heavy iron boots, and a heavy bladed weapon. From the moment it awakens, a redcap desires only murder and carnage, and it sets out to satisfy these cravings.

Redcaps lack subtlety. They live for direct confrontation and the mayhem of mortal combat. Even if a redcap wanted to be stealthy, its iron boots force it to take ponderous, thunderous steps. When a redcap is near to potential prey, though, it can close the distance quickly and get in a vicious swing of its weapon before the target can react.

Steeped in Slaughter. To sustain its unnatural existence, a redcap has to soak its hat in the fresh blood of its victims. When a redcap is born, its hat is coated with wet blood, and it knows that if the blood isn’t replenished at least once every three days, the redcap vanishes as if it had never been. A redcap’s desire to slay is rooted in its will to survive.

Bloodthirsty Mercenaries. Redcaps don’t usually operate in groups, but in some circumstances they might be found in the employ of hags and dark mages that know methods to call redcaps out of the Feywild and put them to work as grisly servants.

Also, some redcaps can sense the being whose murderous acts led to their birth. A redcap might use this innate connection to find its creator and make that creature its first victim. Others seek out their maker to enjoy proximity to a kindred spirit. An individual responsible for the creation of multiple redcaps at the same site could attract the entire group to serve as cohorts, emulating that creature’s murderous handiwork.

In any case, if a redcap works with another being, the redcap demands to be paid in victims. A patron who tries to stifle a redcap’s natural and necessary urge for blood risks becoming the redcap’s next target.

Redcap Traits

Your redcap character has the following racial traits.

Ability Score Increase

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

Age

Redcaps are spawned from bloodshed and continue to live as long as their killing spree continues.

Alignment

Redcaps are typically chaotic evil, as they are bloodlust personified. A few redcaps might tend toward lawful or neutral evil, but only rarely.

Size

Redcaps are between 3 and 4 feet tall and weigh between 60 and 100 pounds. Your size is Small.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 25 feet.

Darkvision

You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Fey Ancestry

You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.

Iron Boots

While moving, the redcap has disadvantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks.

Aggressive

As a bonus action, you can move up to your speed toward an enemy of your choice that you can see or hear. You must end this move closer to the enemy than you started.

Outsize Strength

You count as one size larger when grappling or determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift. Also, wielding a heavy weapon doesn’t impose disadvantage on its attack rolls.

Languages

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