Chapter 1: Character Options
Source: Astral Adventurer’s Guide, p. 7
When you create a character for a campaign or an adventure set in Wildspace or the Astral Sea, you can choose from any of the options that the D&D game provides, including those described in this chapter. As always, you should check with your DM before creating a character to make sure the options you prefer are available.
Backgrounds
The following backgrounds are good choices for 1st-level characters who have strong ties to the Astral Plane. These backgrounds each give a feat. If a character takes a background from elsewhere and doesn’t get a feat from that background, the character gains one of the following feats of the player’s choice: Magic Initiate, Skilled, or Tough.
Races
This chapter describes six race options available to players with the DM’s consent:
Astral elf, an elf denizen of the Astral Plane who is possibly hundreds of years old
Autognome, a mechanical gnome who has free will
Giff, a hippo-headed being of impressive size
Hadozee, a simian being who adapts well to the hazards of Wildspace
Plasmoid, an amoeba-like person
Thri-kreen, a telepathic, insectile being
Githyanki are natives of the Astral Plane. If you want to play one, the githyanki race option is presented in “Monsters of the Multiverse”.
Creating Your Character
When you create your D&D character, you decide whether your character is a member of the human race or one of the game’s fantastical races, which include the races presented in this chapter. If you create a character using a race option presented here, follow these additional rules during character creation.
Ability Score Increases
When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one of those scores by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. Follow this rule regardless of the method you use to determine the scores, such as rolling or point buy.
The “Quick Build” section for your character’s class offers suggestions on which scores to increase. You’re free to follow those suggestions or to ignore them. Whichever scores you decide to increase, none of the scores can be raised above 20.
Languages
Your character can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. The “Player’s Handbook” offers a list of widespread languages to choose from. The DM is free to add or remove languages from that list for a particular campaign.
Creature Type
Every creature in D&D, including every player character, has a special tag in the rules that identifies the type of creature they are. Most player characters are of the Humanoid type. A race option presented here tells you what your character’s creature type is.
Here’s a list of the game’s creature types in alphabetical order: Aberration, Beast, Celestial, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, Giant, Humanoid, Monstrosity, Ooze, Plant, Undead. These types don’t have rules themselves, but some rules in the game affect creatures of certain types in different ways. For example, the text of the cure wounds spell specifies that the spell doesn’t work on a creature that has the Construct type. (The “autognome”, described later in this chapter, is a noteworthy exception because of its Healing Machine trait.)
Life Span
The typical life span of a player character in the D&D multiverse is about a century, assuming the character doesn’t meet a violent end on an adventure. Members of some races, such as dwarves and elves, can live for centuries—a fact noted in the description of the race in question.
Height and Weight
Player characters, regardless of race, typically fall into the same ranges of height and weight that humans have in our world. If you’d like to determine your character’s height or weight randomly, consult the Random Height and Weight table in the “Player’s Handbook”, and choose the row in the table that best represents the build you imagine for your character.