The Grafted
"Forefathers, one and all... bear witness!"
—Godrick the Grafted, Last of the Golden Lineage
History
Altered, ripped apart, and stitched back together into twisted, mismatched flesh, the Grafted are humanoids that have been modified into monstrosities using a long-forgotten arcane surgical technique said to have originated from a land in-between this one and the next. A Grafted almost never remembers who they were before they became a Grafted and often have frequent bouts of unstable personality due to the numerous consciousnesses clashing inside of mismatched brains literally held together with string and prayers. Grafted belong to no people, their freakish appearance scaring off just about any group that would accept them, instead needing to find comfort and solace amongst either their peers or the Warforged, who they share a peculiar kinship with.
Appearance
The Grafted have the most varied appearances of any race, consisting of often discolored and nonuniform skin grafts from any number of different races, patched together like a quilt. As such, they can appear any way you can imagine, though they never look quite right.
Grafted Names
The Grafted have only hazy memories of their former identities, often choosing to name themselves some combination of the various names their components have had. Alternatively, they will name themselves something new related to their most prominent and impressive graft.
Male Names. Timolri, Gutsinro, Draco, Fuzz
Female Names. Candra, Zelaramus, Salmon, Feathers
Grafted Traits
Your Grafted character has the following racial traits.
Ability Score Decrease. Your Charisma score is decreased by 1.
Age. The Grafted live a painfully short time after their creation unless they can consistently find new body parts to graft onto themselves and keep their flesh fresh. Unless they graft on a new body part consistently at least once every week, a Grafted can live for a maximum of 5 years. However, if they consistently graft on new parts and replace ones that appear to be growing too old, they are functionally immortal. Peculiarly, they are immune to magical aging effects.
Alignment. Due to their unstable existence and slapped-together minds, The Grafted are Chaotic in their alignment 99% of the time. Additionally, due to them needing constant fresh meat to survive and replace their rotting flesh and rejecting limbs, they often give up on commonly accepted morality and tend towards either Neutral or Evil alignments.
Size. The size of a Grafted depends on what their components are, varying from Small size Grafted that consists primarily of Goblins, Halflings, and Kobolds to Large size Grafted consisting of the body parts of Ogres, Trolls, and nonhuman creatures like Horses, Bears, or even Dragons. However, more often than not, most Grafted will consist of primarily grafted together Human flesh, placing them at a size of Medium.
Size Modifier: 2d4+2
Height: Your Size Modifier in Feet
Weight in pounds: 200 + (5 ✖ Your Size Modifier)
Speed. Your base walking speed is variable depending on what components your legs are composed of, but generally a Grafted’s base walking speed is 30 feet, due to them most often consisting of primarily human flesh.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write in Common and one other language of your choice. On long rests, you can choose to replace this additional language with a different one a creature you have grafted onto your body within the past month might know.
Stitched Resistance. You have advantage on checks to resist effects that would petrify, paralyze, or stun you.
Woven Skin. Your flesh-mass provides superior defense to normal skin, and though armor cannot normally fit, with some good old-fashioned impromptu surgery you can form it into an effective under armor.
- You gain a +1 bonus to Armor Class.
- You gain proficiency in Medicine checks.
- You can don only armor with which you have proficiency. To don armor, you must first modify it to fit your anatomy over the course of 1 hour, during which you cannot be disturbed. To doff armor, you must spend 1 hour removing it through surgery. You cannot rest while donning or doffing armor in this way and if you are disturbed during the integration or removal process you gain disadvantage on Constitution saving throws until the procedure can be completed.
- While you live, your armor can't be removed from your body against your will.
Grafter. Over the course of a long rest you can graft a fresh body part made of organic tissue removed from a creature within the past two days onto your body. The amount of body parts is determined by your Grafting Slots, representing the amount of space you have on your body to incorporate materials and your Grafting abilities. As you level up, you gain more grafting slots and can therefore graft on more and larger body parts. Starting out at Level 1 you have 2 general grafting slots that attach to any part of your body that you wish in addition to 4 emergency grafting slots representing replacements for one of your arms or legs. For every 5 levels you obtain, you gain an additional general grafting slot, representing your increasing mastery over the art of grafting. When it comes to harvesting parts, the parts of small and medium creatures fill one grafting slot, the parts of large creatures fill 2 grafting slots, and the parts of huge creatures fill 4. Additionally, as a rule, you cannot graft Tiny or Gargantuan body parts due to their size, though depending on the part you wish to include on your body (such as the big toe of a dragon instead of a foot or a pixie’s upper torso in place of your neck) this can change on an individual basis, be sure to discuss the matter with your DM.
- Upon grafting a body part, you gain 1/10th of the grafted creature’s max HP as temporary HP as long as you have that body part, with the body part being destroyed once that temporary HP is fully depleted. However, this temporary HP can be healed using Hit Dice during short rests and is fully healed during long rests.
- When not put under strain this body part functions as it normally would on that creature, like using a gorilla’s hand to hold a cup or move with a deer's lower half’s base walking speed of 50 feet. Once per day, however, you can focus on using this body part in a stressful situation (such as combat or for a specific check) and make it your own temporarily, using it to perform an attack, attempt to evade an effect, or generally make a roll in place of your normal capabilities.
- When doing so, you gain the related stat, move, or feature of whatever creature you have grafted onto yourself for that roll, such as using a gorilla’s arm to make an unarmed strike and adding a strength modifier of +3 to the damage due to an Ape having a strength stat of 16, using a Deer’s lower half to avoid a spell effect by rolling acrobatics using its dexterity score of 16, or using a Dragon’s breath attack via the dragon head you have grafted onto your arm as a replacement to your hand in place of a standard weapon attack.
- Upon using a body part in this method the body part becomes inert for a number of days equal to the donor creature’s CR. If the body part is replacing a limb, that limb becomes inert and is unusable for the duration of the recharge.
- Additionally, it must be noted that you do not gain the proficiency of the Grafted creature when you use their body parts to perform an action, simply the related stats and dice used. For example, the dragon’s breath attack’s save DC would not factor in the Dragon’s Proficiency, and would instead be simply 8 + The dragon’s Constitution Modifier. However, you add your own proficiency modifier to rolls involving grafts you have had for more than a month and have spent at least 1 long rest training with.