It’s October, and in the USA, that means it’s time to get your spook on for Halloween. (And for stores to sell Christmas stuff.)

If you or a GM you love is planning a Halloween one-shot, we’ve got some special monstery lineages and heritages you can try to fill out your party.

Today is the skelling, a living skeletal creature. We are also showing off a heritage and background of a typical skelling.

Let us know what you might do with this in the Kobold Discord server. There’s potential for them to appear in an official capacity in the future!

New Lineage: Skelling

Skellings are living skeletons, creatures of bone from a dead Humanoid (or several Humanoids), given new life through powerful magic or strange supernatural forces. They possess tattered memories of their former lives and are distrusted by the living who mistake them for normal undead skeletons.

Perhaps you had a good life before, or perhaps it was a horror. Perhaps you had friends and family or perhaps every hand turned against you. You can barely remember now . . . you left behind the memories of that life when you emerged into this new one.

You could search for answers or connections, or you could turn your steps toward a new path. Standing at the crossroads, you gaze upon a new life made of only fragments of an old one.

Skelling Lineage Traits

Your skelling character has the following traits.

Age. Skellings emerge as fully grown adults. Most consider their emergence date as the beginning of a new life and track the years accordingly. Skellings don’t age. Their skeletal form heals naturally, and magical healing restores their hit points as if they were living creatures. The power animating a skelling lasts for exactly 150 years; every skelling can know exactly when it will die.

Size. Your size is Medium or Small, depending on the size of the Humanoid remains you were made from. Your weight is on average around 75% of your previous Humanoid existence (roughly 65 pounds for a Small skelling and 120 pounds for a Medium one). 

Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet. 

Detachable Limbs. You can use a bonus action to detach one of your limbs (hands, arms, or legs). A detached limb has AC 10, 1 HP, a STR of 3 (−4), and it can’t attack.

Once on each of your turns as a bonus action, you can mentally command your detached limb to move at a flying speed of 15 feet and interact with an object. The limb can perform simple tasks that a human servant could do, such as fetching, carrying, or opening doors. Once you give the command, the limb performs the task to the best of its ability given its physical form until it completes the task, then waits for your next command.

If the limb drops to 0 HP, or if it gets more than 60 feet away from you, the limb falls to the ground and becomes inert. It can’t move or interact with objects again until you touch it. You can reattach a limb as a bonus action.

Hybrid Humanoid. Though your type is Humanoid, you have traits in common with Undead. You have advantage on saves against effects that would cause you to become exhausted and against being poisoned. In addition, you don’t require air, food, drink, or sleep and you are resistant to poison damage.

Lingering Memories. Though the recollections of your previous life are fleeting, you can sometimes recall old knacks. You can use a bonus action to temporarily gain proficiency in a skill or tool of your choice for 1 hour. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Magical Form. Your skeletal body is animated by powerful magical forces placing you between life and undeath. You are not affected by the Turn Undead feature, you are not affected by areas of antimagic or spells such as dispel magic. If you are reduced to 0 HP, the magic animating your form is disrupted and you fall apart into a pile of bones. Succeeding on three death saves restarts the magic and you begin to function again, reforming into its normal configuration.

New Heritage: Necropolitan

Beneath certain graveyards, battlefields, or in the crypts and catacombs beneath ruined cities, the bones of dead bodies fall through the soil to caverns below. Powerful magic almost always features in a necropolitan origin, but community of skellings, other intelligent undead creatures, and even a few living beings springs up in these natural undercrofts.

Necropolitan communities are rare and often secretive. The type of society is often modeled on whatever aboveground life existed before, often reusing bits of the former aboveground civilization to suit the needs of the new undead populace, but in a dark reflection. This reflection is not necessarily evil, but can result in gruesome or unnatural simulations. A former agricultural society might now traffic in mushrooms. A former trade city might do their trade with residents of underground societies instead, providing different trade goods for residents of the dark below.

The natural distrust shown to those who have returned from death makes it hard for groups of returned to coexist with aboveground societies, so they tend to reorient toward other underground societies, even monstrous or decadent ones. Necropolitans are experts at adapting old things to new purposes; old social mores are gone and in many cases, literally forgotten.

Most creatures living in a necropolitan society fall into two mindsets. Some return to what they know, continuing their professions or predilections from their previous lives. Others revel in the new beginning, turning away from what they were before to explore new avenues and experiences.

New from Old. You have proficiency with construction tools or smithing tools (your choice). In addition, when you spend downtime crafting, the raw materials you need cost only a tenth of the item’s listed value, because of your facility with reusing broken or unsuitable materials.

Undead Affinity. You move and click like an undead thing. Undead creatures you encounter who have an INT less than 10 treat you as if you were also a true Undead creature. Any Undead whose CR is equal to or less than your PB that targets you with an attack must first make a WIS check contested by your CHA (Deception or Performance, your choice). If you succeed, the creature must choose a new target or lose the attack.

Languages. You know Common and one additional language of your choice. Typical creatures of this heritage choose Undercommon.

New Background: Dead Reaper

You, of all people, know the danger of the unliving. You spent time researching the undead, hunting them, and returning them to the embrace of death. You have withstood horrors most could never contemplate, let alone survive.

Perhaps you alone survived a deadly attack by the undead, losing all you held dear in the process. Perhaps you’ve seen too many companions struck down by the undead, and have stood to say no more will fall under your watch. Perhaps you too know the pain of undeath, and seek atonement with each creature you defeat. No matter which path led you here, the forge of your quest has tempered you and made you strong.

Skill Proficiencies: Choose two from Arcana, Nature, Religion, or Survival

Additional Proficiencies: Gain proficiency with one of the following: a martial weapon, a tool, or one type of armor.

Equipment: A backpack, a vial of holy water, a holy symbol, a bag of various herbs, a memento from a slain loved one, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a pouch containing 20 sp.

Talent

The skills you’ve mastered come from dedicated and exhaustive training. Choose a talent from this list to represent your experience: Aware, Critical Training, or Mental Fortitude.

Adventuring Motivation

Dead reapers are familiar with loss and with being outcasts from society while, at the same time, risking their lives to defend it. Ponder how both your tragedies and your social hardships shaped your relationships and reasons to venture into unfamiliar regions. When you begin your adventures, consider why your character chose—or was driven—to face such peril.

Adventuring Motivation

d8	Adventuring Motivation
1	I seek the power behind these foes as a means to extend my own life.
2	Adventuring helps me develop the power to face my greatest foe.
3	I continually fail to connect with people, so defending them is as close as I can get to friendship.
4	Adventuring helps me develop the power to face my greatest foe.
5	I am plagued at night by visions that drive me to confront my foes.
6	Adventuring lets me relish in combat without breaking any of those pesky social barriers.
7	Only by confronting the dead can I atone for failing to save those I loved from falling at their hands.
8	I fill the emptiness inside by destroying those with whom I secretly feel a kinship.

The Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide and Monster Vault are on sale now in PDF and VTT format!