D&D 5E: Clanlands of the Hartshorn - Main Page

RACES/SUBRACES

Clan [Tribal/Barbaric Humans]

Appearance and Society: Clan are primarily swarthy of skin with dark hair and eyes, but any range within the human norm is possible with northern Clan folk being stouter and darker and southern Clan folk being taller with lighter and more varied hair and eyes and lighter complexions in general.

The Clan are a loosely tribal group with clusters of families united under a strong Shaman and Warlord (usually a sister/brother team) that identifies with a specific totem animal (player can choose any natural animal native to non-tropical forested mountainous regions to represent their totem). Every few years the tribes come together in a huge gathering known as a Clanclave to hash out disputes and rank relative status with challenges of skill and combat.

Each Clan's personal language is a slightly different dialect. High Clan is used during Clanclave or when visiting far tribes. Usually close tribes can understand on another. High Clan is not taught to non humans.

Dwarven Trade Tongue is the common tongue of the realm.

Dwarven Coin is the common currency. Barter between tribes is preferred.

Ability Score Increase: Your ability scores each increase by 1 OR Increase Str or Con by 2 and any one other Ability Score by 1.

Age: Clan reach adulthood in their late teens and live less than a century.

Alignment: Clan tend toward no particular alignment. The best and the worst are found among them.

Size: Clan vary widely in height and build, from barely 5 feet to well over 6 feet tall. Regardless of your position in that range, your size is Medium.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Lesser Darkvision: Though they don't live as deep in the forest as other races, the Clan are somewhat accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 30 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.

Menacing: The clan have a known reputation for hardness. You gain proficiency in the Intimidation skill.

Relentless Endurance: When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Savage Attacks: When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice one additional time and add it to the extra damage of the critical hit.

Languages: High Clan, Clan, Dwarven Trade Tongue [common]

Note: Not Using Human Variant Option or Feats

Dwarf

These abilities and traits apply to all dwarves regardless of subrace.

Appearance and Society: See Individual Subraces.

Ability Score Increase: Your Constitution score increases by 2.

Age: Dwarves mature at the same rate as humans, but they’re considered young until they reach the age of 50. On average, they live about 150 years.

Alignment: Most dwarves are lawful, believing firmly in the benefits of a well-ordered society. They tend toward good as well, with a strong sense of fair play and a belief that everyone deserves to share in the benefits of a just order.

Size: Dwarves stand between 4 and 5 feet tall and average about 150 pounds. Your size is Medium.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 25 feet. Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor.

Darkvision: Accustomed to life underground, you 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.

Dwarven Resilience: You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.

Dwarven Combat Training: You have proficiency with the battleaxe and handaxe and light and heavy crossbows.

Tool Proficiency: You gain proficiency with the artisan’s tools of your choice: Woodcarver’s tools, Leather workers tools, Carpenter’s tools, Smith’s tools, Brewer’s supplies, or Mason’s tools.

Stonecunning: Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to the origin of stonework or tunnelwork, you are considered proficient in the History skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

Languages: You speak High Dwarven, Dwarven Trade Tongue [common], and Elemental.

- Subrace :: Cliff Dwarf

Appearance and Society: Cliff Dwarves are stout and strong with intricately woven beards and may have skin and beards and eyes of any color. While Hill and Mountain dwarves are typically a balanced sort of stocky, Cliff dwarves tend to wear their strength predominantly in their shoulders and forearms. Using handholds and ladders of cut stone, Cliff dwarf settlements have many openings across the face of their strongholds with the interior being cut into many levels. Of all dwarves, Cliff dwarves are most accustomed to a constantly changing 3 dimensional environment.

Cliff dwarves share their abode with intelligent ravens known as Blood Ravens with whom they share an odd, almost symbiotic relationship.

Cliff Dwarf society is slightly more rigid and centralized than Clan societies by shares many similar traits, particularly that of falling under the leadership of the most capable warlord.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Strength

Dwarven Toughness: Your hit point maximum increases by 1, and it increases by 1 every time you gain a level.

Blood Raven: Cliff Dwarves live in a symbiotic relationship with the vicious and intelligent blood ravens of the Hartshorn and are able summon one to them as a free action. The raven will then either carry a short message to the Dwarf's cliffside home, or it can be used as a distraction against one living creature to give the dwarf advantage on one roll against that creature. Only one raven may be summoned at a time and the dwarf must complete a short rest before using this ability again.

- Subrace :: Forest Dwarf

Appearance and Society: Stocky and bearded, Forest Dwarves tend to be leaner than other sorts of Dwarf, and rarely braid their hair or beards, and often keep both shorter than their cousins.

Forest Dwarves live in forest caves and stone and wood reinforced burrows and even hollowed out great trees.

Like Cliff Dwarves, Forest Dwarves are somewhat tribal but also centralized under an Arch Druid who acts as Warlord. Forest Dwarves are guerrilla fighters and most likely of any Dwarf community to tend towards neutral or chaotic alignment.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom

Wild Warden: Used to fighting in and among trees and boulders and other structures and actively using bits of the surrounding terrain for defense, Forest Dwarves add their Wisdom modifier to Armor Class. This is in addition to any dexterity bonus and the armor's value itself.

Elf

These abilities and traits apply to all elves regardless of subrace.

Appearance and Society: See Individual Subraces.

Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity score increases by 2.

Age: Although elves reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience. An elf typically claims adulthood and an adult name around the age of 100 and can live to be 250 years old.

Alignment: Elves love freedom, variety, and self- expression, so they lean strongly toward the gentler aspects of chaos. They value and protect others’ freedom as well as their own, and they are more often good than not.

Size: Elves range from under 5 to over 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision: Accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you 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.

Keen Senses: You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

Fey Ancestry: You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.

Trance: Elves don’t need to sleep. Instead, they meditate deeply, remaining semiconscious, for 4 hours a day. (The Common word for such meditation is “trance.”) While meditating, you can dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive through years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep.

Languages: Elf, High Fey OR Shadow Fey [by subrace], Dwarven Trade Tongue [common]

- Subrace :: Forest Elf

Appearance and Society: Forest Elves are tall and lean, though a more solid lean than one might typically associate with an elf. Most are well over 6 feet tall. They most often have green eyes and blond or red hair, but any combination is possible, though their skin is almost always fair.

Forest Elves share a very communal society, making their homes in the tops of the sturdiest trees of the Hartshorn. Their leaders are usually druids, and their leadership structure consists of a varied a Circle of Elders as opposed to a single or paired ruler dynamic.

Ability Score Increase: Wisdom + 1

Elf Weapon Training: You have proficiency with the Long Sword, Short Sword, Longbow, and Shortbow

Fleet of Foot: Your base speed increases to 35.

Mask of the Wild: You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.

Fey Step: You can cast the Misty Step spell once as a free action. You regain the ability to do so when you finish a short or long rest.

- Subrace :: Shadow Elf

Appearance and Society: Shadow elves tend to be slighter of both frame and stature than Forest Elves, with skin and hair that shifts from pale to dark with the surrounding shadows, though an individual Shadow Elf can change either at will as a free action to any shade of black, grey, or white.

Where Forest Elves make their homes in the treetops and wide forests, Shadow Elves make their homes in the chasms, ravines and bramble covered washes of the Hartshorn, using druid magic to reshape their surroundings for concealment and protection.

Shadow Elves live in small confederate bands with no overreaching leader, each band led by the most powerful among them.

Ability Score Increase: + 1 Charisma

Sliding Eye: If a Shadow Elf is even partially touched by shadow, they make all Stealth checks at an advantage, and Perception checks to spot them are made at a disadvantage by any creature without the Keyword Shadow as part of its description. Passive Perception of non shadow creatures is unable to spot them at all in this state.

Shadow Magic: You know the Dancing Lights Cantrip. At 3rd level you can cast the spell, Arms of Hadar once per day and once again per day every third level beyond that [6, 9, 12, etc]. At 5th level you can cast Mirror Image and Darkness each once a day. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Wildlings

These abilities and traits apply to all wildlings regardless of subrace.

Appearance and Society: Wildlings are small, slight beings the size of Clan or Elf children, with small features in slightly overlarge heads. Instead of hair, they have hard quills that hang down their head and backs that rise up when they are threatened and which they can reflexively shoot at nearby creatures when wounded.

Wildlings of both subraces live in mingled communities in burrows and tree houses in the open parts of the forests. Their government, such as it is, relies mostly on a circle of elder matriarchs and a single patriarch who has the sole responsibility of adjudicating ties in matters of dispute.

Wildlings do not have their own language, typically adopting the Elven tongue among themselves, or Dwarven Trade among non elven foreigners. Wildlings use the barter system almost exclusively.

Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity score increases by 2.

Age: A wildling reaches adulthood at the age of 10 and generally lives into the middle of his or her eighth decade.

Alignment: Most wildlings are chaotic good. As a rule, they are good-hearted and kind, and have no tolerance for oppression. They are also very close knit, leaning heavily on the support of their community in the manner of a pack or a pride.

Size: Wildlings average about 3 feet tall and weigh about 40 pounds. Your size is Small.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 25 feet.

Darkvision: Accustomed to twilit forests, burrowing in the soft earth, and the clear night sky, you 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.

Lucky: When you roll a 1 on the d20 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll.

Brave: You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.

Wildling Nimbleness: You can move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than yours.

Quills [reaction]: Once per day, when a wildling takes damage in a melee attack, they can shoot barbed quills from their heads for 2d4 damage at a single creature within melee range.

Languages: Dwarven Trade Tongue [common], Elf, Clan. Note: Wildlings have no language of their own and speak Elf among themselves.

- Subrace :: Whiperer

Ability Score Increase: + 1 Intelligence

Speak with Small Beasts: Through sounds and gestures, you can communicate simple ideas with Small or smaller beasts.

Natural Illusionist:You know the Minor Illusion cantrip and can cast it as a bonus action. Intelligence is your spell casting ability for it.

Wild Cunning:You have advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws against magic.

- Subrace :: Scamperer

Ability Score Increase: +1 Constitution

Climb and Burrow: Your speed does not lessen when climbing or burrowing in the earth.

Poison resistance: You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.

Naturally Stealthy: You can attempt to hide even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you.

Class Options

The following Classes are available to play.

• Barbarian
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk [Outlander Only]
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue [Note: the Bard feature Jack of All Trades will be added to the list of Rogue features]
• Sorcerer
• Warlock

Not Eligible are Bard, Cleric, and Wizard

Classes with a Strikethrough have already been selected and approved for a specific player and cannot be taken.

Class/Race Restrictions

For the purpose of both niche protection and as a means of representing the typical breakdown, culturally, of class and race and how each is likely representative of what one would find in the region, there will be some restriction within the available options as to how many folk can play a given class or race.

Class Restrictions

• Barbarian - No Restrictions
• Druid - Prefer no more than 2 players playing Druid
• Fighter - No Restrictions
• Monk - Already Taken, No more than one player playing a Monk [must be an Outlander]
• Paladin - No more than one player playing a Paladin [caveat: there are only two paladins in the entire gameworld. The PC and [if he is below L10] his Master or [L10+] his apprentice].
• Ranger - Prefer no more than 2 players playing a Ranger
• Rogue - Prefer no more than 1 non-Wildling Rogue
• Sorcerer - No more than one player playing a Sorcerer
• Warlock - Already Taken, No more than one player playing a Warlock

Race Restrictions

The only Race Restriction is for the Shadow Elf. Because of this race's standoffish nature and lack of solid ties to other races in the setting, the adventuring party should not have more than one in their number.

Premise

The Hartshorn is a vast forested mountain range far from civilized lands. Cut stone, the most common ward against possession by the spirits of the Wrath is not as common a feature as it is in the cities of farflung civilization. Likewise, the ocean, the other great ward against the Wrath is nowhere near. In the hartshorn, the people rely on bedrock and their own native wit.

The Hartshorn was not always a wild and forsaken place. Artifacts of a forgotten age can be found in and under the earth, and ancient Golems and Caryatid roam [or wait] masterless.

The entire setting should be considered low magic as far as what is available to the common man. Cantrips and potions are not common, Wizards and Clerics and even magical Bards all but unknown in these wilds. Warlocks and Sorcerers are very rare. Druids abound and thrive - though most do not take on an adventurer's mantle, being more regionally inclined to protect specific areas of the Hartshorn within their sworn Circle.

The bulk of our adventures in the Hartshorn will be Wilderness type adventures, though there are villages and towns and even a small city where the mountains finally come down to the edge of the desert scores of hundredleagues away.

Orcs and Goblins are virtually unknown in the Hartshorn, being denizens of the mountains across the desert, but black skinned goblin like creatures called Inklings with razor teeth and claws and an insatiable hunger can be found in swarms and packs in the darker reaches of the hartshorn, as can the Kenku, the raven folk, practitioners of dark magics with an avid hate of the Clan and their allied races.

Dragons do not fly the Hartshorn, being primarily desert and sea creatures in this setting, but other great forgotten beasts have been known to wriggle their way up from vast abysses of stone and dark.

The Wrath, spirits trapped in the Dry Lands and desperate for the relief of taking a host body in the world, will be the biggest threat anywhere intelligent races gather. The Wrath cannot escape into animal bodies for more than a moment, but they are able to take possession of human and demihuman souls. They cannot cross stone or salt or iron in spirit form and crossing them while in possession of a body causes them harm [2d6/r].

Metal armor will dissuade a Wrath from attempting possession and standing on stone prevents them altogether. PCs have Advantage when saving v possession [Wis] and may attempt a new save each round. The PC loses 1 point of Wisdom per round until they successfully save. If the possession ends, lost wisdom is restored after a short or long rest. Characters brought to 0 Wisdom are taken over completely.

Forcing the possessed PC onto raw stone or iron or a sufficient source of salt can force the Wrath to flee or take damage.

A note on Terminology

The spelling of the term Wrath is intentional and meant to convey these spirits' unreasoning rage, as opposed to the traditional Wraith of D&D. Note, Wraiths exist in the setting, though more in the far desert than the Hartshorn, and do not share the vulnerability of the Wrath to stone and salt and iron.

The Advantage of Stone and Salt and Iron

Wrath in spirit form cannot cross any of these, and in that form can be trapped or kept out by a ring of any of the above. Wrath possessing a Host body take damage each round they are forced to stand on/cross these substances. They take all actions at a disadvantage while in this state. Characters acting directly against a Wrath under these conditions do so with Advantage.

The Wrath are invisible in spirit form, but Iron (or steel) grows cold in their presence (when they move within 30') and many folk wear a band of iron on their wrist at the very least. Any character who has Spell Slots as part of their character description can see the Wrath as misty figures of putrid pulsing green.

The Wrath are destroyed instantly in the presence of the sun and so will typically only be encountered at night or in the pre-dawn or post dusk twilight.