Homebrew Blink Dog Species Details
By appearance, the blink dog resembles a Labrador more than any other animal. They have brown fur with yellow underbelly and short stiff tails. Sometimes they are referred as Tempus Wolves or Wink Hounds. Blink dogs have their own language, a mixture of barks, yaps, whines, and growls that can transmit complex information.
Blink dogs behave like most wild canines. They tend to live in packs of four to sixteen individuals, and are run by an alpha male and alpha female. They prefer temperate climes and feed on small animals as well as large such as deer or elk. Blink dogs do not have the same territoriality as wolves, but they have less of a need to be territorial due to their teleportation abilities. Blinking also allows them to be spread over a large territory.
In general, blink dogs try to protect the pack and keep the young pups well fed. They are opposed by nature to evil in all its forms and intelligent enough to recognize it (and decide on how to oppose it). Blink dogs will not harm humans (except those who are considered evil) and avoid hunting near human habitations. The blink dog is the natural enemy of the displacer beast.
When chasing large prey, blink dogs try to work as a group, driving the target to exhaustion. When hunting smaller game, they will utilize their blink power to surprise their prey, snatching up their intended target with a quick snap of the jaws. If fighting a large animal or an intelligent enemy, blink dogs will use their teleportation ability to blink in and out of range. They will also try and blink in behind the target, in order to take it unawares.
Blink Dog Traits
Your Blink Dog character has the following racial traits.Bite
Your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 piercing damage on a hit.
Ability Score Increase
When you determine your ability scores, increase your Dexterity by 2. Follow this rule regardless of the method you use to determine the scores, such as rolling or point buy.
Languages
You can understand, read, and write in Sylvan. You can speak, read, and write in Blink Dog, but may not speak any other languages.
Creature Type
You are a Fey.
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.”
Keen Hearing and Smell
You have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on hearing or smell.
Blink
As a bonus action, you may teleport yourself and any equipment you are carrying or wearing to an unoccupied space within 40 ft. that you can see.
After you use this ability, you can't use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
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