Your DM assigns a goal to you—typically, one related to your character’s death. The goal must be a specific task you can complete, such as slaying an enemy or liberating an area and its people. Until you fulfill that goal, you gain the following benefits:

• If you are below half your hit point maximum at the start of your turn, you regain 1 hit point.
• If you die, you return to life 24 hours after death. If your body is destroyed, you reform within 1 mile of the place of your death at a spot determined by the DM. If your equipment was also destroyed, you do not regain it.
• You know the distance and direction between you and any creature involved in your goal, such as a person you seek vengeance against or someone you pledged to defend. This awareness fails if the creature is on another plane of existence.

When your goal is complete, you finally find rest. You die and cannot be restored to life.

When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one of those scores by 2 and a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. Follow this rule regardless of the method you use to determine the scores, such as rolling or point buy.

The “Quick Build” section for your character’s class offers suggestions on which scores to increase. You’re free to follow those suggestions or to ignore them. Whichever scores you decide to increase, none of the scores can be raised above 20.

Your character can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. The Player’s Handbook offers a list of widespread languages to choose from. The DM is free to add or remove languages from that list for a particular campaign.

You are a Humanoid.

Every creature in D&D, including every player character, has a special tag in the rules that identifies the type of creature they are. Most player characters are of the Humanoid type. A race option presented here tells you what your character’s creature type is.

Here’s a list of the game’s creature types in alphabetical order: Aberration, Beast, Celestial, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, Giant, Humanoid, Monstrosity, Ooze, Plant, Undead. These types don’t have rules themselves, but some rules in the game affect creatures of certain types in different ways. For example, the text of the cure wounds spell specifies that the spell doesn’t work on a creature that has the Construct type.

Design Note

The “Creating Your Character” section provides special character-creation rules for the race options in this article. The races that use these rules can coexist seamlessly with races that use other rules. For example, the race options in the Player’s Handbook have built-in ability score increases, while the races in this article don’t. Race options from both sources can adventure together.

If you’d like a race that doesn’t appear in this article, such as an elf or a dwarf, to have similar ability score flexibility, the book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything provides a rule, called Customizing Your Origin, that gives you that flexibility. That book also gives you the option of building your own race, rather than choosing an existing one. That option is called the Custom Lineage. No matter which option you choose for your character—a race in this article, a Player’s Handbook race, a race modified by the Customizing Your Origin rule, or a Custom Lineage—you can adventure with characters who are built with a different option.

This sidebar builds on the design note in our previous Unearthed Arcana, “Gothic Lineages.”

You are Medium.

Your walking speed is 30 feet.

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 discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

You can use this trait to take the Help action as a bonus action, and you can do so a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Starting at 3rd level, choose one of the options below each time you take the Help action, whether as a bonus action or an action:

Hospitality. You and the target of your Help action each gain a number of temporary hit points equal to 1d6 plus your proficiency bonus.

Passage. You and the target of your Help action each increase your walking speeds by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.

Spite. Until the start of your next turn, the first time you or the target of your Help action hits a creature with an attack roll, that creature has disadvantage on the next attack roll that it makes within the next minute.

If you miss with an attack roll or fail an ability check or a saving throw, you can draw on your bonds of reciprocity to gain a bonus to the roll equal to the number of allies you can see within 30 feet of you (maximum bonus of +5). You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses you finish a long rest.