Planetouched

Planetouched


The planetouched are the orphans of the planes. Creatures born of human parents, but touched by the energies of the planes in some indelible way, they stand apart from the mere mortals they call parents. Rumor has it that many planetouched have some inhuman parentage somewhere in their bloodline — some creature of celestial glory or infernal wrath who played some small role in their ancestral heritage. Many sages would say that planetouched occur because of the planar energies that planar humans live close to, that any city in Gehenna or Bytopia will breed some planetouched simply by by spending time there, even sometimes generations later.

Put simply, why planetouched are born is a mystery, and its likely that no two planetouched have quite the same origin. They may have a story they tell themselves, but anyone who knows the facts is likely long gone. The planetouched are on their own, defined by their birthmarks, held apart from humanity, something different, something strange. They are the children of the planes — and the planes aren't exactly great caretakers.

Planetouched Traits

raceplanetouched.jpg

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 2.
Age. Planetouched age similarly to humans, though many stay looking young for much longer than other humans.
Alignment. Planetouched have no innate tendency to an alignment. That said, society usually expects them to conform to certain stereotypes (fiendish planetouched are expected to be evil; celestial planetouched are expected to be good). The degree to which a planetouched individual conforms to these stereotypes is largely up to them.
Size. Medium. Their size and build is roughly the same as a human's.
Speed. Base walking speed is 30 ft.
Darkvision. Your planar heritage manifests itself as the ability to see in dim like for 60 feet as if it were bright light, and to see in darkness like it was dim light. In darkness, you do lose the ability to distinguish color, seeing the world only in shades of gray.
Legacy of the Infinities. Choose one cantrip that you know. At 3rd level, select one 1st-level spell - you can cast it once per day. At 5th level, select one 2nd-level spell - you can also cast this spell once per day. Use Charisma as your spellcasting ability score, and you never require components to use these spells.

Tieflings

Tieflings are planetouched born into human families with the mark of something fiendish upon them. The mark is subtle, something that can even often be hidden by a clever disguise or a deep hood. Perhaps they smell a bit of brimstone, their eyes that flash with fire when they're excited, they have a thin lizard's tail, scaly skin, vestigial bat wings, small, thin horns, or anything else you can think of. Most planetouched are not aware of their direct lineage, and tieflings are no exception – whatever ancestor left this mark upon their blood is unknown. Most tieflings, being marked as something slightly wicked, are lucky if they even know their own parents – many are left for dead or given to the Bleaker orphanages, left to be raised on Sigil's streets rather than by loving parents. This makes a tiefling hard, suspicious, and constantly on the look for an advantage. The blend of humanity with the taint of the lower planes makes many folks uneasy – it's easy to see that a marilith is a wicked creature, and to know how one thinks, but tieflings are essentially human, and a constant reminder of how close at hand the evil of the lower planes is.

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1.
Fiendish Resistance. You have fire resistance.
Legacy Suggestions: Thaumaturgy (Cantrip), Inflict Wounds (1st level), Darkness (2nd level)
Languages You can speak, read, and write Common and Infernal.

Random Tiefling Traits

Roll 1d10, twice, to determine your random traits.

d10 Roll Trait
1 You have two small, narrow horns growing out of your forehead
2 Your eyes flash with reddish light when you're experiencing strong emotions
3 You have goats' legs instead of normal human legs.
4 You have a thin, serpentine tail that coils around objects with an apparent mind of its own.
5 Your ears are very long, stretching up past your head.
6 You smell of brimstone.
7 Your skin exudes a heat that ripples the air near you body.
8 You have small, vestigial bat wings.
9 You have long, stiff spines in place of most of your hair.
10 Your mouth is filled with sharp, triangular teeth.

Aasimar

Aasimar are planetouched born into human families with the mark of something celestial upon them. The mark is subtle, something that can even often be hidden by a clever disguise or a deep hood. Perhaps their eyes radiate light when they're excited, a feathery down covers their shoulders, they glow slightly in the darkness, they smell of incense, or anything else you can think of. Because planetouched are not usually directly aware of their heritage, the birth of an aasimar is considered a blessing for the family. As such, they often become favored children, and are given every chance to succeed in life by those around them. They remind people of the good that lurks in even the most roguish heart, and so they are often admired as a little higher than humanity.

Ability Score Increase . Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Divine Resistance . You have lightning resistance.
Legacy Suggestions : Light (Cantrip), Guiding Bolt (1st level), Aid (2nd level)
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Celestial.

Random Aasimar Traits

Roll 1d10, twice, to determine your random traits.

d10 Roll Trait
1 When light shines on you at a certain angle, you produce a small, rainbow corona.
2 Your skin is pearlescent
3 You have small, vestigial wings with white feathers.
4 You smell of incense.
5 Your eyes flash gold when you concentrate intensely.
6 Your voice contains a slight reverberation.
7 People listen when you talk, though they don't know why.
8 Your feet are covered in downy, soft feathers.
9 A candle-like radiance is shed by your skin in darkness.
10 Your hair is like soft, short fur.

Genasi

Genasi are planetouched born into human families with the mark of something elemental upon them. The mark is subtle, something that can even often be hidden by a clever disguise or a deep hood. Perhaps their hair smoulders, they are particularly light on their feet, their fingers are webbed, their skin is rocky, or anything else you can think of. Elemental heritage, however ambiguous, tends to give genasi a strong sense of confidence and power, anchoring them strongly in what they are practicaly capable of. Genasi tend to be creatures of action and practicality, without many of the moral questions that bother other planetouched, and they rise to positions of respect and admiration for that drive. Their planar nature doesn't reveal much disturbing or complimentary about other humans, simply a knowledge of power and ambition.

Genasi share much in common, but their elemental qualities might be subtly different depending on which of the four elements their ancestor favored.

Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 1.
Elemental Resistance. See Below
Legacy Suggestions: See Below
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Primordial.

Origin Resistance Cantrip 1st Level 2nd Level
Air Lightning Shocking Grasp Feather Fall Gust of Wind
Earth Acid Blade Ward Thunderwave Spike Growth
Fire Fire Fire Bolt Burning Hands Heat Metal
Water Cold Ray of Frost Create or Destroy Water Blur
Wood Poison Thorn Whip Entangle Barkskin
Smoke Fire Poison Spray Fog Cloud Flaming Sphere
Magma Fire Blade Ward Burning Hands Flame Blade
Ooze Acid Acid Splash Grease Melf's Acid Arrow
Cloud Cold Shocking Grasp Fog Cloud Levitate
Ice Cold Ray of Frost Armor of Agathys Shatter
Ash Fire Chill Touch Faerie Fire Darkness
Plague Poison Poison Spray Ray of Sickness Protection from Poison
Void Cold Chill Touch False Life Invisibility
Sand Acid Blade Ward Father Fall Blur
Sun Fire Light Guiding Bolt Heat Metal

Random Genasi Traits

Roll 1d10, twice, to determine your random traits.

d10 Roll Trait
1 Geometric lines of colored light run over your body.
2 You are surrounded by a bit of your element (a cloud of dust, damp air, heat, or constantly blowing wind)
3 Your hair is replaced by bits of your element (crystals, flames, vapor, or droplets of water)
4 Your eyes glow with a bright color when you are agitated.
5 Your skin exudes a bit of your element constantly (making you dirty, billowing your clothes, soaking fabrics, and kindling dry threads)
6 When you speak passionately, bits of your element fly from your mouth
7 Bits of your element become stronger when you are near (flames burn brightly, water surges, wind churns, and earth cracks)
8 Your voice sounds like it is coming through your element (clattering stone, muted water, whistling wind, and crackling fire)
9 Your skin is a bright color (green, brown, red, or blue)
10 You have features of the animals of your elemental plane (scales, gills, feather, or fur)

Other Planetouched

While tieflings, aasimar, and genasi make up the bulk of the planetouched population, they are far from the only changes that might occur due to exposure to planar energies. The Planes of Law, the Planes of Chaos, the Feywild, the Shadowfell, even the Astral and Etheral planes or the reaches of the distant worlds might all impact those who live and travel there or near there. These planetouched are rarer, a little more unusual, but still understood in the same basic terms: as part human and part something else.

Zenythri

Zenithri are those beings bearing the mark of the symmetrical, organized perfection of the lawful planes. The mark is subtle, something that can even often be hidden by a clever disguise or a deep hood. Perhaps they have an eerie symmetry, a metallic mechanism emerging from their joints, a slight blue or purple tint to their skin or hair, or anything else you can think of. Contemplative and distant, zenythri are often considered admirable, but off-putting and cold. Families with zenythri often struggle to understand their children, who can be arcane, obsessive, and unemotional. The planar nature of the zenythri tends to make people sit back in fascination at the order the multiverse is capable of.

Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Fey Resistance. You have lightning resistance.
Legacy Suggestions: True Strike (Cantrip); Command (1st-level); Calm Emotions (2nd-level)
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Celestial.

Random Zenythri Traits

Roll 1d10, twice, to determine your random traits.

d10 Roll Trait
1 Your flesh is blue, purple, or cyan.
2 Your hair always falls in perfect symmetry alongside your face.
3 Your body has an eerie, harmonius symmetry to it.
4 You speak languages strictly well, without any accent, contraction, or jargon.
5 You have a mechanical bit seemingly growing out of your body — a pump, a gear, a copper wire, or a metallic tube.
6 Your skin has a metallic sheen to it.
7 You are always counting things, in the back of your mind.
8 You speak rarely, but in simple, one-word sentences.
9 You form habits easily, but it is nearly impossible for you to break them voluntarily.
10 When you are agitated, your ears begin to smoulder slightly.

Feytouched

The feytouched are a group of planetouched with the mark of the feywild among them. The mark is subtle, something that can even often be hidden by a clever disguise or a deep hood. Perhaps their body is wispy and beautiful, or particularly ugly and brutish, perhaps they resemble half-elves or some sort of troll, perhaps their hair or eyes are of a vibrant color, their eyebrows are feathered, they speak often in rhyme, or anything else you can think of. Feytouched are otherworldly and uncanny, but whether this is seen as a blessing or a curse depends on if the child is born with the beauty of magic or brutality of nature in them — some become beloved and charming, while others must hide their shame and avoid human contact lest others mock and shun them. They are all unusually compelling and graceful, regardless of their beauty.

Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 1.
Fey Resistance. You have resistance against the Charmed condition
Legacy Suggestions: Vicious Mockery (Cantrip); Charm Person (1st-level); Invisibility (2nd-level)
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Sylvan.

Random Feytouched Traits

Roll 1d10, twice, to determine your random traits.

d10 Roll Trait
1 Roll 1d4. On a 1-2, you are a beautiful, willowy, elfish creature. On a 3-4, you are an ugly, calloused, warty, troll-like creature.
2 You have proportional (though vestigial) wings of some insect sprouting from your shoulders, such as a moth's wings, or dragonfly wings.
3 Your hair is a vibrant shade of blue, pink, yellow, or violet.
4 Your eyes are a jewel-like tone of green, blue, gold, or violet.
5 You pepper your talk with unintentional rhymes, not even aware you're doing it much of the time.
6 Your hair moves and twists almost of its own accord.
7 Your footsteps are accompanied by the sound of small, tinkling bells.
8 When you get emotional, your voice turns from speaking to singing.
9 A slight mist accompanies you wherever you go.
10 The tips of your fingers and the ends of your hair and the tips of your ears turn a little ethereal when you are emotional.

Farspawn

The farspawn are planetouched that bear the mark of something alien and aberrant upon their souls and their bodies. Rumors of slaadi, mind flayer, beholder or…more distant…ancestry dog the family history of these people. Farspawn also seem to arise from those who spend a lot of time on the Astral plane. The mark is subtle, something that can even often be hidden by a clever disguise or a deep hood. Perhaps their eyes never focus, or their voice sounds metallic, or their skin shifts colors when they're agitated, or anything else you can think of. Farspawn are quite terrifying to most mortals on just a visceral level — looking at one or speaking with one just feels wrong and unpleasant, but oddly compelling and hypnotic. It is like one is not in control of their own mind when interacting with a farspawn. Their planar nature betrays the lack of understanding — or even the lack of the possibility of understanding — all that we are surrounded by.

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Aberrant Resistance. You have psychic resistance.
Legacy Suggestions: Prestidigitation (Cantrip); Comprehend Languages (1st-level); Crown of Madness (2nd-level)
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Deep Speech.

Random Farspawn Traits

Roll 1d10, twice, to determine your random traits.

d10 Roll Trait
1 You have a small, twitching tentacle sprouting from somewhere on your body that moves with a mind of its own.
2 Your eyes never quite seem to focus on anything, always staring into the distance.
3 Your skin flashes in various bright colors such as blue, red, white, and black when you get emotional.
4 You have an extra eye somewhere on your body that peers around with a mind of its own.
5 Your voice is whispery and distant, with a strange, metallic, monotone quality.
6 Your skin is dark, and speckled with silvery flecks.
7 When you touch a person with your bare skin, you leave an odd-looking, wriggling welt that fades in a few hours.
8 Your speech is punctuated by involuntary croaks.
9 Around you, books seem to re-arrange their words so that they are difficult to read.
10 When under starlight, you glow faintly with a bluish faerie fire.

Shadowtouched

The shadowtouched are eerie creatures of darkness and death that include humans marked by the energies of the shadowfell. Perhaps the unfortunate child has some family history marred by exposure to the undead, or even to the more ghostly energies of the ethereal plane. The mark is subtle, something that can even often be hidden by a clever disguise or a deep hood. Perhaps their flesh is pitch black, or their eyes seem to absorb all light, or their skin is stretched skeletal over their bones, or anything else you can think of. Rumors persist that no shadowtouched is born without their mother dying in childbirth, and the creatures are not so common that this rumor has been refuted tellingly. The shadowtouched are treated as social pariahs as their planar nature seems to remind the mortals around them of their own impending mortality.

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Aberrant Resistance. You have necrotic resistance.
Legacy Suggestions: Chill Touch (Cantrip); False Life (1st-level); Ray of Enfeblement (2nd-level)
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Primordial.

Random Shadowtouched Traits

Roll 1d10, twice, to determine your random traits.

d10 Roll Trait
1 Your flesh is jet black, bruised violet, ashy gray, or sickly ochre.
2 Shadows and blotches seem to dance across your skin when you get agitated.
3 Your eyes are deep black pools that seem to absorb all light.
4 When you are emotional, lights in the area seem to dim.
5 Your voice is ragged, like a cough, or wispy, like a distant wind.
6 The smell of freshly-turned earth accompanies you wherever you go.
7 Where your feet touch, plant life seems to wither and grow wilted for a few moments.
8 You are disturbingly skinny and drawn.
9 Clothes you wear seem to be old and faded, even if they are fresh and new.
10 You sweat blood.

Unusual Planetouched

Because of the vague nature of the origins of the planetouched and the staggering diversity of difference that can happen, some of the marks of planar ancestry are very indeterminate. These unknown marks are still subtle. They may be mistaken for the marks of one of the three major groups of planetouched, but are just as easily hidden. Perhaps their eyes are silvery and reflective (which may indicate some being from the Astral Plane or the Plane of Mirrors), their features shift and blend over time (such as residents of the Ethereal Plane), they blend some traits of other planetouched (such as beings with a mixed ancestry) or have some trait even more unusual and inexplicable. This unusual heritage may be unique in the world, part of a secret family history, or even completely inexplicable to anyone. Even tieflings, aasimar, and genasi may have a manifestation that doesn't fit into what people expect of them and wind up in this category.

Ability Score Increase. Roll 1d6 on the Planetouched Table. The rolled ability score increases by 1.
Planar Resistance. Roll 1d6 on the Planetouched Table. You have resistance against the rolled damage type.
Legacies: At 1st level, roll 1d6 on the Planetouched Table for a Legacy Cantrip. At 3rd level, roll 1d6 on the Planetouched Table for a Level 3 legacy. At 5th level, roll 1d6 on the Planetouched Table for a Level 5 Legacy. These become the spells you can access as part of your Legacy of Infinities racial trait.
Languages: Roll 1d6 on the Planetouched Table. You can speak, read, and write Common and the language you rolled.

d6 roll 1 2 3 4 5 6
Ability Score Increase Strength Dexterity Constitution Intelligence Wisdom $\dagger$
Planar Resistance Thunder Necrotic Poison Radiant Psychic $\ddagger$
Legacy Cantrip Light Thaumaturgy Dancing Lights Mage Hand Guidance Resistance
Level 3 Legacy Detect Magic Healing Word Bless Identify Sleep Charm Person
Level 5 Legacy Aid Augury Hold Person Spider Climb Suggestion Misty Step
Bonus Language Undercommon Deep Speech Draconic Sylvan Primordial Celestial

$\dagger$ Your Charisma score increases by 1 instead of by 2. Roll again to determine the ability score that increases by 2, re-rolling results of 6.
$\ddagger$ Roll 1d6 again. On a roll of 1-2, you have resistance to piercing damage. On a roll of 3-4, you have resistance to slashing damage. On a roll of 5-6, you have resistance to bludgeoning damage.

Random Unusual Planetouched Traits

Roll 1d10, twice, to determine your random traits.

d10 Roll Trait
1 You appear many years younger or older than your actual age.
2 You have a single, small, spiralling, unicorn-like horn emerging from your forehead.
3 Your skin is metallic and silvery, or grey and indistinct.
4 Your feet are birdlike talons.
5 Your face is slightly mutable, making your speech slurred.
6 Your eyes shimmer with a rainbow when you are feeling mischievous.
7 When you laugh, it sounds like there are multiple cruel voices laughing with you.
8 You have an eerie, blank symmetry to your body.
9 Sometimes your voice goes backwards for a moment.
10 Your hands and feet are webbed.

Nonhuman Planetouched

While humans are the overwhelming majority of planetouched creatures, there are some creatures who have a more unusual ancestry. Tieflings may come from drow, halfling, half-orc, or dwarven stock, while aasimar elves, half-elves, and gnomes occasionally come up. Halfllings might become shadowtouched, or dragonborn might be genasi-like in their elemental prowess. Often, these beings are created intentionally, with lineages that trace back to specific, notable events, like with the asmodean tieflings of Bael Turath. As such, they are much less the orphans of the planes, and more the scions of them, entire communities and tight families built around gaining the power of the planes.

For the most part, there's no significant mechanical difference between a planetouched of nonhuman ancestry and a planetouched of human ancestry. A half-orc aasimar has all the qualities of a normal aasimar, but their body might resemble a half-orc more than a human (ie, they might have green skin or small fangs). A tiefling drow is, in most respects, a tiefling with the appearance of a drow. The exception to that tendency is when the planetouched come from especially small races, such as halflings and gnomes. Creatures of this nature have the following traits that diverge from other planetouched:

Size. Your size has more in common with the little people who form your ancestry. Your size is Small.
Immortal Strength. You do not have disadvantage on attack rolls with heavy weapons because of your size.