Homebrew Wood Woad Species Details
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 Traits
As a wood woad, your character has the following traits.Ability Score Increase
Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
Age
From the moment of its conception, a wood woad is almost ageless and does not grow. They can continue to live for thousands of years if it is not destroyed by violence or misfortune. Indeed, the true limitation of a wood woad’s lifespan is not yet understood.
Alignment
Usually, a wood woad is mindlessly devoted to its cause, giving it an alignment of lawful neutrality. However, for a wood woad to heed the call for adventure, at least a primitive sense of individual personality has to first develop, making any alignment possible.
Size
Typically, taller than humans, a wood woad may come in a variety of shapes, with individual height and weight varying greatly depending on the particulars of the ritual that created it. Some are slender, stretching to eight or nine feet tall, while others are broader set or squat. They usually weigh between 250 – 400 pounds. Your size is medium.
Speed
While cumbersome in appearance, you are surprisingly spry, and your gate is long. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Type
Your creature type is plant, rather than humanoid.
Darkvision
You are used to the darkness of dense forests, and have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. 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.
Plant Camouflage
You have advantage on Dexterity Stealth checks made in any terrain with ample obscuring plant life.
Regeneration
At the beginning of your turn, if you are in contact with natural, fertile ground, and if you have not taken fire damage in the last round, you may expend one of your hit dice and recover an amount of hit points equal to the amount rolled. If you are reduced to 0 hit points, when you succeed on a death saving throw, you may choose to expend one unspent hit die and recover an amount of hit points equal to the amount rolled and regain consciousness.
Wooden Defence
You have bark instead of skin, wood in place of muscle, and the organic, tree-like dimensions and rigidity of your body make you ill-suited to wearing armor. Such a tough material is hard to damage however, and you have a base AC of 15 + your Dexterity modifier to a maximum of +2. You gain no benefit from wearing armor, but may still benefit from using a shield as normal.
Woad Magic
You know the shillelagh cantrip, and may cast it as a free action on your turn using Constitution as your spellcasting modifier. Once you reach 5th level, you can cast a modified version of the spell tree stride once with this trait. When you do so, the destination tree you choose must be within 60 feet of the original tree, and both trees need to be large or bigger but do not need to be of the same type.
Warrior of Wood
You are vulnerable to fire damage, and resistant to bludgeoning and piercing damage from non-magical sources.
Languages
Though rarely prone to conversation and mostly incapable of writing, you speak and read Sylvan and one other language.
Comments