Karsite (5e Race)

Design Note: Karsites are specifically designed to counter enemy spellcasters. They may feel overpowered when fighting full casters, and underpowered when fighting non-magical creatures.

Karsite

Physical Description

Lucio Parrillo

Karsites descend from and resemble humans with two distinguishing marks of their ancestry, both of which develop around the time when the Karsite hits puberty. The first is a single, icy-blue, usually resulting in a distinct heterochromia. The second is a patch of pure white hair growing from their scalp. When two Karsites breed together, the resulting child is always another Karsite and usually has straight, dark hair, a prominent widow’s peak, and disproportionality small olfactory and oral cavities.

History

On the last day of the Netheril Empire, their mage lord Karsus attempted to become a god and in doing so, broke magic. Before all that went down, literally in the case of their most flying cities, Karsus was a prolific sire of children among his many followers and slaves. After the Fall of Netheril, his bloodline spread across the remnants of the empire and beyond. Over the generations, it would randomly assert itself on his descendants, granting them resistance to magic and a mystic connection to the still semi-alive Karsus, now a petrified but bleeding boulder, but costing them the ability to practice most forms of magic themselves. Some Karsites go their entire lives without ever learning of their heritage or powers.

Over the centuries, many magocratic societies such Rashemen and Thay have encountered Karsites both within and without their borders. Given the danger they pose and antagonism they feel towards spellcasters, they are usually quickly identified and eliminated.

Society

When they discover their lineage, many Karsites feel an urge to seek out their distant kin. Some Karsites devote their entire lives to wandering the world seeking more of their kind, especially young ones, and spiriting them away towards the people they feel are their true peers. Throughout many large human civilizations and communities on Faerun, there are small Karsite enclaves where the descendants of Netheril plot their return to power. Most of these communities take an idealized view of Karsus and worship him as a god. They also inherit his vengeance against the Weave and seek to reduce the influence and numbers of arcane spellcasters in the world so that they might take what many see as their rightful place as a ruling caste of a new Netheril Empire of Humanity. As such, Karsites are often involved in plots focused on the destruction of arcane influences, resources, knowledge, mages, or inherently magical races. That said, they will usually avoid killing or harming non-magical humans when they can. Their new empire will need many slaves after all.

While they are incapable of harnessing arcane or divine magic, some Karsites can use other forms of magic such as pact magic, ki, psionics, or hemocraft. Due to a strange mutation in your genetics, you are not affected by such restrictions. Most Karsites that focus on combat become fighters or rogues.

Karsite Names

Karsite use human names from the many cultures and nations they come from. Some Karsites within well-established Karsite communities will be named after great Netheril arcanists.

Male: Aumvor, Iriolarthas, Ioulaum, Larloch, Telamont

Female: Arilain, Polaris, Saharel, Tempera, Zucchi

Karsite Traits

The descendants of Karsus with innate antimagic.
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2 and your Charisma score increases by 1.
Age. Karsites reach adulthood in their late teens and live less than a century.
Alignment. Karsites tend towards the neutral evil alignment.
Size. Karsites vary widely in height and build, from barely 5 feet to well over 6 feet tall. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Antimagical Alacrity. You gain advantage on an initiative roll if at least one hostile creature within 60ft of you has either the Innate Spellcasting or Spellcasting traits.
Dispelling Strikes. When you deal damage to a creature under the effects of a spell, you can attempt to dispel the magic. The creature must make a Charisma saving throw with a DC of 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Constitution modifier. On a failure, one spell affecting the creature ends. The DM decides which spell is dispelled if multiple are affecting the creature. You regain missing hit points equal to the dispelled spell’s level. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Disruptor. When you damage a creature that is concentrating on a spell, that creature has disadvantage on the saving throw it makes to maintain its concentration.
Hex Ward. Reduce all magical damage or healing you receive by your Constitution modifier, to a minimum of 1. This includes damage and healing from potions. This trait does not affect damage that only counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage or healing from your racial traits. If you are revived from death with a spell, the caster gains 1 level of Exhaustion.
Magus Ancestry. You have resistance to Force damage and you take no damage from magic missile.
Spell Siphon. You have advantage on saving throws against spells. After you succeed on a saving throw against a spell, you regain missing hit points equal to the spell’s level.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common, Loross, and one other language of your choice.

Random Height and Weight

Base Height	Height Modifier*	Base Weight	Weight Modifier**
5′ 0''	+2d8	125 lb.	× (1d6) lb.
*Height = base height + height modifier **Weight = base weight + (height modifier × weight modifier)

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