Homebrew Wood Woad Species Details

Wood Woads are a powerful plant grown from the body and soul of a sacrificed individual. Most are used as guardians or servant to druidic or fey beings.

Born of Sacrifice

The ritual to create a wood woad is a primeval secret passed down through generations of savage societies and dark druid circles. Performing the ritual isn’t necessarily an act of evil, if the victim-to-be has entered into a bargain that requires it to be a willing sacrifice.

In the ritual a living person’s chest is pierced and the heart removed. A seed is then pushed into the heart, and it is placed in a tree. Any hollow or crook will do, but often a special cavity is carved out of the trunk. The tree is then bathed and watered with the blood of the sacrificed victim, and the body is buried among the tree’s roots. After three days, a sprout emerges from the ground at the base of the tree and swiftly grows into a humanoid form.

This new body, armored in tough bark and bearing a gnarled club and shield, is at once ready to perform its duty. The one who performed the ritual sets the wood woad to its task, and the creature follows those orders unceasingly.

Pitiless Protectors

A wood woad has a hole where its heart would be, just as does the body of its former self, buried in the earth. Those who become wood woads trade their free will and all sense of sentiment for supernatural strength and a deathless duty. They exist only to protect woodlands and the people who tend them. A wood woad’s face is void and expressionless, except for the motes of light that swim about in its eye sockets. Wood woads speak little, and when not being called upon to take action, they root themselves in the earth and silently take sustenance from it.

Uprooted by Immortality

Like a tree, a wood woad needs only sunlight, air, and nutrients from the earth to go on living. Because they are undying, some wood woads outlive their original purpose. The site a wood woad guards might lose its power or significance over time, or those whom it was assigned to guard might themselves die. If it is freed from its specific duties, a wood woad might roam to find another place of natural beauty or fey influence to watch over.

Wood woads are drawn to creatures that have close ties to nature, and that protect and respect the land, such as druids and treants. Some treants have wood woad servants by virtue of age-old pacts with druids or fey that performed the rituals, while others acquire the services of freed wood woads that find renewed purpose in the domain of a kindred guardian.

Wood Woad Names

Most wood woads are often named after the species of tree they were grown from or some variation of it. A few take on human names, often the name of a fallen friend or mentor.

Wood Woad Names: Oak, Birch, Ivy, Sycamore, Pine, Maple, Larch, Ash, Spruce, Elm, Juniper, Rowan, Willow, Kauri, Quiver, Rosewood, Jand, Pallida, Baylisiana

Wood Woad Traits

Your wood woad character has the following racial traits.

Ability Score Increase

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

Age

A typical wood woad is between 15 and 300 years old.The maximum wood woad lifespan remains a mystery; most found outside of servitude have outlived their original purpose. You are immune to magical aging effects.

Alignment

Most wood woads take comfort in order and discipline, tending toward law and neutrality. But some have absorbed the morality, or lack thereof, of the beings with which they served.

Size

Your size is Medium. To set your height and weight randomly, start with rolling a size modifier:

Size modifier = 2d6

Height = 5 feet + 10 inches + your size modifier in inches

Weight in pounds = 150 + (4 × your size modifier)

Speed

Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Verdant Strength

You were grown to have remarkable fortitude, represented by the following benefits:

• You don’t need to eat.
• You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep.
• You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed or frightened.

Saplings Rest

When you take a long rest, you must spend at least six hours in an inactive, motionless state, on natural terrain of dirt or sand. In this state, you take in the necessary nutrients and water from the land to regain your strength. 

Plant Camouflage

You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks it makes in any terrain with ample obscuring plant life.

Tree Stride

Once per long rest, you can use 10 feet of your movement to step magically into one living tree within 5 feet of yourself and emerge from a second living tree within 60 feet of it that you can see, appearing in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the second tree. Both trees must be Large or bigger.

Natural Armor

You have thick, hearty bark. When you aren’t wearing armor, your AC is 12 + your Constitution modifier. You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC. A shield’s benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor.

Languages

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