A visit to one of the great cities in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons - Waterdeep, the Free City of Greyhawk, or even uncanny Sigil, the City of Doors - overwhelms the senses. Voices chatter in countless different languages. The smells of cooking in dozens of different cuisines mingle with the odors of crowded street and poor sanitation. buildings in myriad architectural styles display the diverse origins of their inhabitants.
And the people themselves - people of varying size, shape, and color, dressed in a dazzling spectrum of styles and hues - represent many different races, from diminutive halflings and stout dwarves to majestically beautiful elves, mingling among a variety of human ethnicities.
Scattered among the members of these more common races are the true exotics: a hulking dragonborn here, pushing his way through the crowd, and a sly tiefling there, lurking in the shadows with mischief in her eyes. A group of gnomes laughs as one of them activates a clever wooden toy that moves of its own accord. half-elves and half-orcs live and work alongside humans, without fully belonging to the races of either of their parents. And there, well out of the sunlight is a lone drow - a fugitive from the subterranean expanse of the Underdark, trying to make his way in a world that fears his kind.
Within these pages you will find the vast panoply of options for what your character might be.
Several of the Ancestry options with which you might already be familiar, hailing from officially published material like the Player's Handbook, may have undergone certain edits in changes. This is in a effort to bring them all in line with one another as the publication of books such as Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or Monsters of the Multiverse has seen some options undergo changes that have not been officially backported to their older cousins.
Typical character Ancestries in D&D include little or no choice. A Custom Ancestry addresses that lack of versatility by allowing you to come up with your own combination of Ancestry abilities to create a unique Ancestry for your character.
Throughout the multitude of settings that exist when the Multiverse, these Ancestries make up the bulk of the people an adventurer might encounter in the crowds of busy streets or the taverns of remote villages. Humans, with their propensity to spread widely and take up space for themselves are far and away the most populous, but the other Ancestries in this category can, depending on the world in question, be found in nearly any settlement.
Whether by virtue of the rarity of the intermingling with extraplanar entities, or simply because of their far flung places or origin, these Ancestries are far fewer in number in most settings. Within the walls of great cities, teeming with thousands of souls, only a handful of the following might exist, perhaps banding together into small communities or enclaves. Meanwhile, the wider world, a village on the frontier might have only a single such resident, if there are any to be found at all.
In truth, many of these Ancestries instead dwell in their own, isolated settlements among their own kind—such as Firbolgs remaining in their mystical forest homes or Deep Gnomes and Duergar remaining in their fortress homes in the Underdark—rather than venturing out into the wider, unfamiliar and often unfriendly world.
True rarities in the many worlds of the Multiverse, the following Ancestries are sure to catch the attention of the locals wherever they might go. Some of these Ancestries—such as the Aarakocra or the Dragonborn—are rare because they are simply relatively few in number. Others-like the Eladrin, Shadar-Kai, or the people of Gith—are rare because their true homes exist entirely on planes of existence other than the Prime Material.
City folk dwelling in the seats of power of great nations might, if they are lucky, encounter one of these Rare Ancestries with some small amount of frequency, as these exotic beings visit to conduct their business. Villages on the frontier, however, might only see one such example of these Ancestries in a generation, if ever at all.
In many of the existing settings of the Dungeons & Dragons Multiverse, a divide has traditionally been made between the "Civilized" Ancestries of a given world and ones deemed more "Monstrous". For the purpose of this wiki, this distinction exists more for the purpose of categorization and a nod towards the way most settings address these Ancetries, rather than as any particular form of judgment.
Not all Goblinoids—Bugbears, Hobgoblins, and Goblins—are treacherous sneak thieves, dwelling on the fringes of kingdoms with no thoughts in their minds other than waylaying murdering travelers. In fact, this is even more true than ever, with retcons of Monsters of the Multiverse now attributing Fey Ancestry to all of them and opening up new avenues for their culture. Similarly, though they are often depicted as tribal and warlike, Centaurs, Lizardfolk, and Orcs are always free to choose their own paths in the world, independent of that which has come before.
Any fluff text featured on the following Ancestries, like with all the others in the sections above is merely written with a mind towards how these Ancestries are typically utilized and perceived within the context of the fiction of The Forgotten Realms.
Some Ancestries are tied to the game settings from which they hail so deeply that they may require more consideration and justification from both the player and the DM to allow them to be played in other game settings. As such, the following Ancestries are sorted into their specific worlds of origin.
A world of Chivalric Knights, High Sorcery and aggressive competition between divine powers. The High God's Children--Paladine (good), Gilean (Neutral), and Takhisis (Evil)--wage constant battle against one another while simultaneously attempting to stave off the power of Chaos which seeks to destroy Krynn. Dragons are plentiful and knightly orders dedicated to all alignments dot the lands. Clerics derive magical powers from their gods, while wizards derive their power from the three moon gods, Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari.
In a world ravaged by war, the actions of heroes can have world-altering stakes.
Whether aboard an airship or a train car, embark on thrilling adventures shrouded in intrigue! Discover secrets buried by years of devastating war, in which magic-fueled weapons threatened an entire continent.
In a post-war world, magic pervades everyday life, and people of all sorts flock to Sharn, a city of wonders where skyscrapers pierce the clouds. Will you find your fortune on mean city streets or scouring the secrets of haunted battlefields? Will you throw in your lot with the mighty dragonmarked houses, ruthless families who control whole nations? Will you seek truth as a newspaper reporter, a university researcher, or a government spy? Or will you forge a destiny that defies the scars of war?
The world on the Material Plane created by Matthew Mercer and originally shaped by his crew of friends.
In the centuries since the gods sealed themselves away from the Material Plane via the Divine Gate, sentient life has risen up to reclaim the continents and archipelagos shattered and reshaped by the Calamity. In Wildemount, the war between the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty is exacting a heavy toll from their citizens. The bustling city-states of the Menagerie Coast make trade with the countless civilizations of nearby continents, absorbing traditions and currency alike into a prosperous melting pot of culture united by the Clovis Concord. In Tal'Dorei, kingdoms rapidly rebuilt by the League of Miracles now struggle to retain their independence and emotionally recover from the Cinder King's reign. While Issylra and the Shattered Teeth cling tightly to their relative isolation, the sprawling southern continent of Marquet is playing center stage to a conflict between an imprisoned hero, organizations harvesting his power, and Xhorhasian adventurers seeking his redemption.
Plane Shift is a set of free online Dungeons & Dragons supplements accompanying several The Art of Magic: The Gathering releases written by James Wyatt. Each Plane Shift document provides D&D 5th Edition rules to play on one of the following Planes: Amonkhet, Dominaria, Innistrad, Ixalan, Kaladesh, and Zendikar.
In additon, The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica details the plane of Ravnica, an ecumenopolis ruled and regulated by ten guilds that vie for power in conflicts of intrigue and subterfuge, barely held in check by a magical force known as The Guildpact.
Finally, Mythic Odysseys of Theros puts on display a world directly inspired by Greek mythology, where the realm is shaped by deities and the deeds of great heros of myth and legend.
In a far-flung corner of the plane of Shadow drifts a hidden expanse of roiling mist and vague semi-reality. At this eerie edge of the multiverse lie the Domains of Dread, nightmare demiplanes that form the Dungeons & Dragons setting of Ravenloft.
The Mists of Ravenloft are rising. What mysteries will you discover among the Domains of Dread? What nightmares will you shape? And once you enter the Mists, will you ever escape?
Home of the stars and gateway to the heavens, the Astral Plane teems with excitement and possibility. With the help of magic, spelljammers can cross the oceans of Wildspace, ply the silvery void known as the Astral Sea, and hop between worlds of the D&D multiverse.