Owlin in DND 5e: Complete Guide - Alex Maven (2023)

Dungeons & Dragons is a game filled with fantasy racing of all kinds, which means you have a lot more options than just being stuck as a dull, down-to-earth person (unless your Dungeon Master is running the campaign). for humans only). .

While races such as elves, dwarves, and orcs have been the main focus of player choice for decades, each edition of the game has added new races, some of which represent relatively new entries into the world of fantasy game character choices. This article is about a relatively new race of player characters known as the Owls.

What are the origins of Owlin?

Team Owlins was introduced to the world of Dungeons & Dragons by Wizards of the Coast's willingness to jointly promote D&D games on the tablet with a monolithic IP revenue stream, Magic: the Gathering.

Ignoring the general opinions of the various avian humanoid species of the past, collectively known as "avens", the owls entered the fantasy world through the Magic: the Gathering set, known as "Strixhaven: School of Wizards" or "Strixhaven" for short.

Strixhaven hit game store shelves and mass retailers on April 23, 2021.

The flavor of this particular set was actually Magic's version of 'Harry Potter', and Strixhaven School offered five different arcane colleges, each focusing on a different set of magical concepts (passionate Prismari artists, fearsome and confident Silverquill, the historians and antiquarians of Lorehold, the analytical mathematicians of Quandrix, and the botanists and necromancers of Witherbloom).

Owls were one of the new races introduced in this particular expansion to the game, and there are seven creature cards that prominently feature these winged humanoids.

When did the owl become a race in D&D?

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos was released on December 7, 2021, and was intended to allow players across multiple game worlds to experience a magical university experience while introducing Owlin as the only new racial addition to player characters. The fact that a particular breed of owl was associated with this habitat makes more sense when we realize that the name "Strixhaven" actually means "home of the owl."

So what are the races?

In short, owls are owl people; they have arms, legs, and wings that sprout from the back and arms of their feathered bodies.

Although owls are nocturnal creatures, the art of owls in Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons shows that they are as active during the day as they are at night, leaving the question entirely of whether a particular owl character is nocturnal or diurnal. to your player.

When it comes to the history of this race, there are two categories.

1. Magic: Gathering:The Owls regard Archavios, the plane on which Strixhaven is located, as their home realm. Some Owls, once they have learned enough at home, will seek out ways to travel to other planes to further study and understand magic and the multiverse.
2. Dungeons and Dragons:This breed is distantly related to Feywild's great owls, but the relationship is distant enough that there is great variation in the appearance of each owl.

Racial stats and skills

Your race meseveral notable featureslo.

• names.There are very few examples of what an owl's name should look like. I can think of only three examples actually, and they're all from the Strixhaven Magic set: Imbrahim, Mavina Sharpbeak, and Shaile; each of which includes an A and an I at some point. Since this is a fairly basic rule of constructing names, players have as much freedom in creating names for their owls as players enjoy their human characters. Other possible names with this structure may include: Ibava, Alieka, Angiel, Malik, Briera, and Sabein.
• Skill score adjustment.This race gains two increases in their ability scores: one ability score of the player's choice is increased by two points, while the other ability score is increased by one.
• Communication.This race is fluent in Common and one other language that both the player and the DM find appropriate for the character. For example, owls with a penchant for studying religious texts, but lacking levels in a character class related to deities, will still be suitable characters for encounters with a Celestial, Abyssal, or Infernal.
• Creature type.Owls are considered humanoid with no specific subtype.
• Size.As mentioned above, owls are divided into medium-sized, which ranges from 4 to 8 feet tall, and small. Instead of randomly rolling to determine what kind of size a player character is, players are free to decide how big or small their particular owl can be within these two categories.
• Length of life.Owls are similar to other player character humanoid races and can live for roughly a hundred years without resorting to magic to prolong life or haunt the undead.
• Movement.The walking speed of this run is 30 feet, which also affects your owl's flight ability.
• Sensory characteristics.Given that they are descended from owls, it makes sense that owls have better eyesight in the dark. Mechanically, this means that they treat dim lighting as bright light up to 50 meters away, and take into account that areas of darkness within the same range may be treated as just dim light. As with normal night vision, the owl's ability to detect colors in the dark is lost as each color is reduced to shades of grey.
• Lot.One of the two distinctive and most obvious abilities of owls is access to a functional set of feathered wings. Owls can fly at walking speed, provided they are not wearing anything heavier than light armor; Medium or heavy armor creates too much strain to allow flight. It is also worth reiterating that owls have a pair of hands: their anatomy has wings arranged in a position similar to that in typical angel art, so that the creature can easily grasp objects.
• Quiet feathers.This is another distinctive ability of these creatures, and like the ability to fly, it has its source entirelyyour bird inspiration.Mechanically, owls are automatically considered adept at Stealth as their feathers have the same type of fringe and crest shape common owls use to knock down prey, which rarely hears them dive for the kill.

An analysis of Owlin's career as a player character

Let's sit down and analyze what this career allows the player to do. The most obvious point is that you are playing a humanoid owl. This means you can fly with perfect discretion and evenlyturn your head a solid 270°, which will make your DM work harder to surprise your character. Another advantage of this breed is that its body is variable in size; Owls can be medium or small and benefit from all the advantages and disadvantages that size brings, such as heavy weapon nerfs and qualification for Crouch Agility (which increases flight speed).

The fact that owls are the starting character race with the ability to fly is one of their best aspects. Flight is always great fun for players, but this amazing power has a few limitations.

1. Weight restrictions.Owls cannot fly while wearing medium or heavy armor. While it doesn't explicitly mention weights in the run report, most sane Dungeon Masters will probably also find that owls can't fly if laden (they carry a weight equal to 10 times their Strength).) because it doesn't make sense. . to make armor weigh more on a flying creature than carrying a lot of gear.
2. Closed spaces.Areas such as sewers and dungeons offer little room to escape encounters, even if the creature can fly. At best, a character can avoid getting their feet dirty by walking through sewers or other ground hazards.

What are the best activities for Owlins?

Honestly, the fact that this breed has flexible size and skill modifiers gives them a huge boost in versatility. Very few classes can take advantage of the mobility and stealth this race provides. Here are some potential ideas for an owl trip.

• A small rogue that can easily sneak into an overhead position and be in the perfect spot for sneaky sniper attacks. Even in real life, most people don't look up more than 45°. Still, even if some antagonists choose to look up, the owl's natural ability to hide will increase the chance of remaining undetected, especially if the rogue chooses to focus his class abilities elsewhere. The fact that the Rogue also has access to excellent night vision means that raids at night or in dimly lit areas should perform exceptionally well.
• An average ranger best able to track down her favorite foes from the treetops and other areas that most PC rangers can't access without magic and special gear. The presence of hands makes it quite realistic for them to shoot arrows from a bow, hiding through a combination of stealth skills and the ability to cover and hide natural terrain.
• A mage, regardless of his size, can certainly appreciate the mobility of this race and has a better than usual chance of remaining undetected. The more effort a threat has to put in to reach the mage, the more time the mage has to prepare the appropriate magical countermeasures or even summon something suitable for the fight in order to be able to end the fight sooner. Ideally, a mage-owl could defeat a summoned monster with heavy hands and not even notice it.

As you can see, the pure modularity of this race means that players can easily modify their racial ability mods to suit the role of the character they want to play. This versatility means that Wizards of the Coast has given Dungeons & Dragons players a great new option to play a character in a fantasy world.

When it comes to flavor, players should never forget that this breed is an offshoot of the great owls that haunt Feywild. It would be more than appropriate to use a feat like Fey Touched to identify even more with this otherworldly heritage.

Let's say you want to take a look at each of the main character classes in the game and analyze which ones are best suited to the owl character and which are bad choices. Honestly, the only dubious option would be a barbarian. This is because barbarians like melee combat, but the race's flight ability means you'll have to forgo solid body armor and will likely be disappointed in combat unless some enemies like it too.

When you look at all that this breed can offer a player and compare it to its more direct counterpart, the Aaracocra, these owls come out on top.on all fronts except speed.

Sure, the aaracokra has access to claws, but they're pretty mediocre when it comes to dealing damage; Owlin's characters can easily use appropriate weapons, such as the bastard sword or hand crossbow, while flying.