Homebrew Batfolk Species Details

Stemming from giant bats that emerged from Shadowfell, batfolk appear as humanoids with leather skin, pointy ears, and sharp teeth. Batfolk have a leathery span of skin that runs from their arms to their side, which they can use to glide short distances.

Like bats, batfolk are able to use echolocation to navigate the darkness, identify objects, and hunt prey. Due to their time spent in the mortal world, batfolk have developed eyes that aren't as sensitive to light as their predecessors. Although, many still choose to wear shaders for comfort purposes.

Your batfolk character might be nocturnal, but most batfolk have learned to resist their urge to sleep during the day to better fit in with society.

Creating Your Character

If you create a batfolk character, follow these additional rules during character creation.

Creature Type

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, including batfolk, are of the Humanoid type. Creature 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.

Life Span

The typical life span of a player character in D&D is about a century, assuming the character doesn’t meet a violent end on an adventure.

Height and Weight

Player characters, including batfolk, typically fall into the same ranges of height and weight that humans have in our world. If you’d like to determine your character’s height or weight randomly, consult the Random Height and Weight table in the Player’s Handbook, and choose the row in the table that best represents the build you imagine for your character.

Batfolk Traits

You have the following racial traits.

Ability Score Increases

When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one of those scores by 2 and increase 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.

Languages

Your character can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.

Creature Type

You are a Humanoid.

Size

You are Medium.

Speed

Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Echolocation

You can perceive your surroundings without relying on sight. You gain blindsight out to a radius of 30 feet as long as you are not deafened.

Glide

You have the ability to glide using the leathery skin that runs from your arms to your side. When you fall and aren’t incapacitated, you can subtract up to 100 feet from the fall when calculating the fall’s damage, and can move up to 2 feet horizontally for every 1 foot you descend.

Keen Hearing

You have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on hearing.