Anuran (5e Race)

Anuran

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A mighty feline beast sat in front of Aarvya, unaware of the group of anurans slowly surrounding it. She crept further through the underbrush, spear in her hand. She stopped, as did the others. She placed her shot and as she threw, she signaled for the others to do the same. Her spear, which was nothing more than a sharpened twig, hit the cat’s eye before dozens more struck into the cat’s fur. The beast wailed and spun around in an attempt to find it’s attacker. Aarvya’s tongue flew out, finding a new spear from the hide on her back, and pulling it out. She threw again. Minutes after, the creature fell over, dead.
--Aaravya, the Catslayer

Physical Description

Standing on two legs with a vaguely humanoid shape is where any semblance of humans ends with this race. Their long and strong legs help them jump incredibly far, but their short four-toed hands are not very useful for wielding and crafting weapons or tools. They have a short neck, no hair, and two large eyes.

They generally range between 13-15 inches tall and weigh around 2-3 pounds. It was found that due to their lack of poisonous abilities as well as a severe lack of foliage to hide in, swamp anurans have developed a lithe posture and larger webbed hands that allow them to glide across the water swiftly.

Colour-wise these creatures largely differ between subraces - Where jungle anurans are often brightly striped or spotted to show off their poisonous qualities, forest anurans have instead evolved to blend in with their environment; a feat they often amplify by covering their bodies in moss, twigs, and leaves. Swamp anurans are mostly found in muted mud-brown to grey colors.

Society

Water plays a large part in an anuran's life. Their homes, which are quite simple constructions made for just one or two anurans, are situated in or near fresh water - be it in ponds, lakes, swamps or near rivers. Anuran villages are small, with the number of adult individuals often ranging between 20 and 30. Their settlements are largely exclusive to the race as their size and unique living conditions make it difficult, if not impossible, for other races to inhabit the place.

Most anuran tribes have no individual who is in charge, although they are guided by a small council of the oldest anurans, whose wisdom the village relies on in times of need.

In order to provide food for the community, hunting parties consisting of a large portion of the village are set up and led by an experienced individual. While often these hunts only turn up a few creatures of similar or smaller size to the anurans themselves, sometimes one hunt can score large enough prey to feed the whole community for days. Taking down big prey singlehandedly or leading the hunting party can greatly increase the social standing of the individual.

Jungle anurans, in particular, are often found adorning themselves or their houses with trophies of their hunts. One of these anuran's favorite trophies are enormous(at least to them) fangs or claws from their greatest predator, the cat.

Since the communities aren't large and there is little communication between tribes, inventions among anurans are often contained. As such, most anurans simply use crude tools such as spears instead. Anurans usually see little appeal in adventuring, so an anuran found traveling the world will often be out of necessity.

Anuran Names

Anuran have one name given at birth, and another more descriptive nicknames added at a point where it fits, which may be based on an accomplishment, a personality trait, or a habit. These descriptive names are in anuran but can be translated to common, and can change many times in one life.

Male: Akaal, Broggart, Colap, Fuoxa, Geppet, Manka, Nux, Pzin, Quaax, Quolol, Roki, Tanij, Tutta, Xelon, Zaga, Zaro

Female: Aarvya, Avni, Bonan, Coaxa, Dioka, Ganaxe, Hana, Keela, Leko, Mecca, Neen, Oceni, Quole, Streel, Tel, Tofpe, Verixe, Yepei

Descriptive: Adventurer, Brain, Brilliant, Catslayer, Dreamer, Elegant, Generous, Hummer, Intuitive, Leaper, Learner, Large, Smallmage, Powerkeep, Preyseeker, Strong, Toolbuilder

Anuran Traits

Design Note: The anuran was originally designed to be Tiny. However, since Tiny characters can be difficult to properly balance. A separate, Small sized race of Anurans was created. Most traits are the same or similar to the Tiny sized one and the traits, as well as the random weight/size table, starting with Tiny and progressing to Small, have been separated. If you choose to use Anurans in your world, choose one of these two types and stick with it.

Their small stature and amphibian nature grants these small frog people many advantages.
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.
Age. Anurans are born in the water with no legs or arms and unable to walk on land for around two years while they slowly become Anuran. From there, it takes three more years to fully mature. They can live until about the age of thirty.
Alignment. Anurans live in their own societies, so they may tend towards chaotic if they’re new to adventuring.
Size. Anurans are much significantly smaller than most other races, ranging from around 1'1 to 1'9 feet tall and weighing 3 to 6 pounds. Your size is Tiny.
Speed. Your base walking, swimming and climbing speed is 15 feet.
Amphibian. You can breathe in water and air. Your swim speed is equal to your walking speed.
Amphibian Agility. You are proficient in Acrobatics and can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check. You also have a climbing speed equal to your walking speed.
Outstanding Leap. You may use Dexterity in place of any Strength check or Dexterity (Acrobatics) for any Strength (Athletics) in regards to Jumping. In addition, the distance you can travel by jumping is doubled.
Sticky Tongue. You can interact, grab, catch or use Tiny or smaller objects with incredible precision using your tongue. In addition, the distance you can do this for can extend up to 5 feet, and is fast enough that it is invisible to most eyes.
Tiny. In addition to the restrictions you are put under by the Tiny Player Characters (5e Variant Rule) you are affected by the following additional effects: Creatures have disadvantage on checks made to detect you while you are in your sub-races terrain; You need to share the space of the tile you are in with a creature to hit it with a melee attack; Unless a creature moves out of the space you and that creature occupy they don't provoke attacks of opportunity.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Aquan. The Aquan language can be cast over surprisingly long distances and goes generally unnoticed by anyone who does not understand it. Anurans can speak well, but they generally don’t see the use of writing or recording their history.
Subrace. The three main types of subrace are forest, swamp, and jungle. Each of these has some fairly large differences and live in a unique habitat.

Forest

Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Forest Camouflage. At the beginning of combat you can make a Stealth check to hide, naturally blending in with your surroundings as long as they are natural. You make this check after a surprise round if any and cannot use this trait if you are a creatures sole focus.
Tree Climber. You have a climbing speed equal to twice your walking speed.

Swamp

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Swamp Water. You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned and have resistance to poison damage.
Webbed Feet. When you spread your arms and legs out you can sit on the water's surface and glide across it. When you move this way your speed is your walking speed plus your swimming speed. You benefit from this trait while within swamp or swamp-like terrain.

Jungle

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.
Glider. Used to the high treetops of the jungle canopy your subrace has adapted to falling better than your other anuran. When you fall you can glide down and take no damage from falling. While gliding you fall at a rate of up to 10 feet per round and can move up to 15 feet in any direction but upwards.
Natural Poison. You can secrete a poisonous slime from your mouth. As an action, you can lash out at a target within range of you Sticky Tongue dealing 1 bludgeoning damage and 1d6 poison damage. Alternatively, you can coat a weapon in this poison, which lasts 1 minute before losing its poison damage. Doing this causes the weapon to deal 1d6 poison damage on its next successful attack. You can coat one weapon before you must take a short rest to regain use of this feature. Using your Natural Poison this way causes your Sticky Tongue trait to deal 1 bludgeoning damage instead of its normal damage.

Random Height and Weight

Base Height	Height Modifier*	Base Weight	Weight Modifier**
1′ 1''	+2d4 inches	2 lb.	× (1d4) lb.
*Height = base height + height modifier **Weight = base weight + (height modifier × weight modifier)

Anuran Variant

Anuran Traits

Your Anuran character has many abilities as a result of their amphibian nature and their small stature.
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.
Age. Anurans are born in the water with no legs or arms and unable to walk on land for around two years while they slowly become Anuran. From there, it takes five more years to fully mature. They can live until the age of forty.
Alignment. Anurans live in their own societies, so they may tend towards chaotic if they’re new to adventuring.
Size. Anurans are smaller than most other races, ranging from around 2-2.5 feet and 18-26 pounds. Your size is Small.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet. You have a swimming speed of 25 feet.
Amphibian. You can breathe in water and air. Your swim speed is equal to your walking speed.
Froglike Agility. You are proficient in Acrobatics.
Outstanding Leap. You may use Dexterity in place of any Strength check or Dexterity (Acrobatics) for any Strength (Athletics) in regards to Jumping. In addition, your standing jump is as far as your long jump.
Sticky Tongue. You can interact, grab, catch or use Small or smaller objects with incredible precision using your tongue. In addition, the distance you can do this for can extend up to 10 feet, and you may make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check to see if your tongue is noticed.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Aquan. The aquan language can be cast over surprisingly long distances. Anurans can speak well, but they generally don’t see the use of writing or recording their history.
Subrace. The three main types of subrace are forest, swamp, and jungle. Each of these has some fairly large differences, and live in unique habitats.

Forest

Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Natural Camouflage. You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide in natural terrain that at least lightly obscures you, blending in with your surroundings so long as they are natural.

Swamp

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Bog Water. You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned and have resistance to poison damage.

Jungle

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.
Frog Poison. You can force any creature that makes direct contact with you to make a saving throw or take 1d8 poison damage. The DC for this saving throw is equal to 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. Touching, grappling, shoving and even unarmed strikes may be considered direct contact, however, you can only force a creature to make this save once per turn and on a successful save they take no damage.

Random Height and Weight

Base Height	Height Modifier*	Base Weight	Weight Modifier**
2′ 1''	+2d8 inches	10 lb.	× (1d3) lb.
*Height = base height + height modifier **Weight = base weight + (height modifier × weight modifier)

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