Shade

Racial Traits

Your shade character has a collection of traits that arise from being a shade as well as a few drawn from life.

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1, one other ability score of your choice increases by 1. Choose one ability score that is increased by your Living Origin (see below) or by one of its subraces. That ability score increases by 1.

Age. Shades appear as the age they were when they died. They potentially have no limit to their lifespan, but realistically, ancient shades grow weary and lose their hold on their memories, fading away near 750 years old.

Alignment. Shades come from all walks of life but show a tendency toward neutrality. Shades that lack contact with other people grow more selfish over time and slip toward evil.

Size. Your size is determined by your Living Origin.

Speed. Your speed is determined by your Living Origin.

Darkvision. Your existence beyond death makes you at home in the dark. 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.

Ghostly Flesh. Starting at 3rd level, you can use your action to dissolve your physical body into the ephemeral stuff of spirits. You become translucent and devoid of color, and the air around you grows cold.

Your transformation lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. During it, you have a flying speed of 30 feet with the ability to hover, and you have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks that aren’t made with silvered weapons. In addition, you have advantage on ability checks and saving throws made to escape a grapple or against being restrained, and you can move through creatures and solid objects as if they were difficult terrain. If you end your turn inside an object, you take 1d10 force damage.

Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Imperfect Undeath. You are a humanoid, but your partial transition into undeath makes you susceptible to effects that target undead. Though you can regain hit points from spells like cure wounds, you can also be affected by game effects that specifically target undead, such as a cleric’s Turn Undead feature. Game effects that raise a creature from the dead work on you as normal, but they return you to life as a shade. A true resurrection or wish spell can restore you to life as a fully living member of your original race.

Life Drain. When you damage a creature with an attack or a spell, you can choose to deal extra necrotic damage to the target equal to your level. If the creature’s race matches your Living Origin, you gain temporary hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt. Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Spectral Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison and disease, and you have resistance to necrotic damage.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language spoken by your Living Origin.

Living Origin. As living echoes of who they once were, shades maintain some of the traits they bore in life. Choose another race as your Living Origin. This is the race you were in life. Your size and speed are those of your living origin, and you know one language spoken by your Living Origin.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Midgard Heroes Handbook © 2018 Open Design LLC; Authors: Chris Harris, Dan Dillon, Greg Marks, Jon Sawatsky, Michael Ohl, Richard Green, Rich Howard, Scott Carter, Shawn Merwin, and Wolfgang Baur.

This is not the complete license attribution - see the full license for this page