Verdan 5E Race Guide | Tips and Builds for the Verdan Race

The workers at Acquisitions Incorporated toiled a long time to produce this race! The Verdan are vaguely Goblinoid creatures that were almost designed to be chaotic oddities. Many have no idea where Verdan came from, including the little tykes themselves. However, any universe that has the Verdan inside finds them to be incredibly charismatic, kind, friendly, and naive in most situations. Your Verdan is worth protecting! That’s why our Verdan 5E guide will help it stay alive.

Verdan 5E Lore

Verdan were created out of chaos. They were once goblins that were mutated by a being only known as That-Which-Endures, which mutated them slightly and gave them amnesia. They now wander, only guided by their pointed ears and limited telepathy. Thankfully, they seem to be some weird combination of Half-Elf and Half-Orc, and thus aren’t questioned all that often.

Verdan change as they grow up, suggesting that That-Which-Endures is continuing to pull and stretch reality around them. They go from Goblin to Hobgoblin size over a few days. Their skin and eye color changes many times over the course of a season, and they can even get size changes with their ears that cause them to need ropes to tie them down. They even change gender, which is seen as a good way to explore the possibilities of the world around them. None have discovered a pattern to the mutation, and they honestly don’t really search for it.

Verdan adapt to whatever culture they run into, allowing them to quickly and effectively become useful in any given city. They’re fairly hard workers, but often are quick to revolt against tyranny or unfair oppression. This can lead to Verdan martyrs being sadly common, but their spirit never really falters; they live lives that change too much to be pinned down by physical experience.

Verdan are hungry for knowledge, considering they lost out on their history. They are somewhat naive and innocent due to how young their race is, and travel the world searching for secrets and often running into danger. Their innate chaos allows them to understand when they’re getting duped, but this can often come a little too late. No Verdan has ever died due to old age, suggesting that they often disappear due to unfortunate circumstances.

Verdan Names are based on whatever culture they happen to adapt to at the time. A Verdan who has had a dwarf-like name for most of their life might change to Billy when entering a human settlement, and Elissa when entering an Elven one.

Verdan Attributes

The Verdan race only has one real statblock, despite being all about mutations and adapting! Thankfully, they are really unique, and quite powerful for particular builds.

• +2 Charisma, +1 Constitution. Interesting! +2 Charisma is not super flexible in my opinion. Charisma is an okay stat that boosts your Talking skills and your Charisma saving throws, which is good for deflecting specific spells like Banishment. Not the most flexible mental stat, but none of them are! The flexible statistic is Constitution, which raises your health and influences (arguably) the most important saving throw in the game. Great for if you want to go whole-hog into Charisma, which is worth considering.

• Size. Verdans start out small, and then get a sudden growth spurt. Why this is based on level instead of age… Who knows! Small tends to be better than being medium, because it’s more useful for hiding and taking cover. But it’s not a significant benefit, especially for allowing your DM to give you advantage on Intimidate checks.

• 30 ft Speed. Standard for any race. Lucky that you don’t need to wait for your Size Increase for your movement speed to match all other races! 6 squares is just nice to have.

• Black Blood Healing. It’s like the Great Weapon fighting style, but for hit dice. If you are a d8 class, then this will heal you for a bit more when you get your reroll. Realistically, you should expect this ability to heal about 2 more health per poorly rolled hit dice… But you’re not taking average, so this can backfire! With any luck, that will not be a problem.

• Limited Telepathy. A really strong racial telepathy! You can overcome racial boundaries, but only can convey simple thoughts. This is enough to let you plan with your allies 30 feet away and come up with basic plans. It can’t communicate back, either, so you’ll either need to find a way to get responses or convey ideas that don’t need responses. Great for if you need to give signals or make last-minute plan changes.

• Persuasive. You have good Charisma, even if you keep your base Charisma at 8. Persuasion will be at least a passable skill. Being able to make people trust you is an important part of most campaigns, and you’re just going to be naturally trustworthy. Great!

• Telepathic Insight. All of them. This makes you extremely effective in Mage duels, and extremely annoying for DMs! You’ll be next to impossible to control or banish, which lets you be a very consistent threat on the battlefield, even without becoming proficient in Wisdom saves.

• Language. Goblin is a fairly useful language early on, but you tend to outgrow goblin legions pretty quickly. You’ll get some good use out of that in most campaigns. The bonus language should be based on your background, but if you don’t have a good idea for that… You might want to consider Draconic, Elven, Sylvan, Giant, or another generally useful language for the mid to late game.

Class Options

That +2 Charisma is just too juicy to ignore. The Verdan can contest the Half-Elf in terms of usefulness as a Charisma caster (and specifically only for Charisma casters). However, this does give it a limited list of classes that it can do well as.

Good Classes for Verdans

• Bard. Bard is probably the most prevalent class to consider when you first start playing a Verdan. If your party doesn’t have a support caster or off-healer, it’s quite the option for you. You’re good at short rests, you got Persuasion for free, you can cross language barriers fairly easily, and you’re basically immune to Charisma saves. This is all not mentioning that +2 Charisma, +1 Constitution is the literal perfect statline for any Bard. The only thing you can argue is missing is Darkvision, and that’s probably worth all of the other fantastic boons.

• Paladin. This one’s a bit of a stretch, but is probably your best bet for a hardcore frontline Verdan. You get your Charisma, which allows you to get huge saving throws and strong spells. You have Constitution to beef up. You’re going to be hard to banish or mind-control in the mid-game, you’re gonna heal for a bunch, and you can be a consistent face despite the Paladin’s lack of skills.

• Sorcerer. Perhaps you’re not quite as perfect as you would have been for Bard, but this is your choice for a pure blaster Verdan. Your Charisma is massive, you’ve got good utility outside of your pure statline – healing, defense against magic, and more – which makes a Verdan Sorcerer unique. You’ll be a stable face with a lot of magical power.

• Warlock. The consistent mage is a rather strong option for the Verdan. You can be an effective frontliner with your Constitution boosts, which is great for Hexblades. You’ll be rather convincing, which can help you fit into towns that find your patrons evil. Heck, you’ll even be good at magical duels! This is a good middle ground between Bard and Sorcerer to strike if you want that extra staying power, but don’t want to be “hardcore Bardcore.”

Bad Classes for Verdans

• Artificer. It’s nice to have that Constitution, and some of the utility isn’t bad… But the Bard does a lot of what the Artificer does and is built off of your good Charisma. Alternatively, your Sorcerer could do better damage or use summoning to tank up. There’s just no reason to do Artificer over something else.

• Barbarian. Strength is gonna be low, and Barbarians don’t exactly solve problems with social skills. It’s just not worth it.

• Cleric. The cleric has a similar problem to Artificer, in that your Charisma is so high that Bard does your job better. Cleric has some advantages over Bard, of course, but none of that is worth having spells that are 1 DC lower and less consistent class skills.

• Druid. Even moreso than Cleric, the lack of a Wisdom increase hurts Druid builds a lot. You’d be better off building towards a Transmutation sorcerer. Druids are really cool, but there are better races if you’re looking to build optimally. Admittedly, the limited telepathy might be useful during Wild Shape…

• Fighter. Not having a single increase to Strength or Dexterity feels pretty bad for a Fighter. You’ll be less accurate and fail to pump out a lot of damage. That’s not really worth the social skills that the Verdan offers, since being the party’s main face isn’t the Fighter’s main concern.

• Monk. Verdan Monks don’t really make much sense, since the Verdan are pretty chaotic at heart. Mix that with no Dexterity or Wisdom increase, utility skills that don’t improve durability that much, and a lack of Monk Face Ability, and you’ve got yourself a really hard sell.

• Ranger. Rangers are a bit too reliant on Dexterity for your Verdan to make much sense here. You might have fun using your limited telepathy with Speak with Animals, or trying to convince a Roc to leave your party alone, but you’ll be less useful in most other combat situations. Considering how much help a Ranger needs for damage dealing, it’s just not worth it.

• Rogue. The rogue is really close to being fine. Rogue just likes Dexterity too much. If you don’t care about being optimal, then this is a really fun combo! You can use your Telepathy to distract guards with “gut feelings”,  you get Persuasion for free, you are hard to paralyze or keep still with magic… It’d be fun to try out, especially in a low combat campaign.

• Wizard. Sorcerer or Bard will do the job better. Wizards are super reliant on Intelligence, and you have two class options that do the Wizard’s job but better. The Wizard has pros and cons compared to the Charisma casters, but… goodness me, you are such a good Charisma caster!

Conclusion

Verdan are cute and charming, but that doesn’t lend itself to the most flexible of class options. Verdan are extremely interesting, though, especially if you’re bored of playing Half-Elves as Charisma casters. Try them out the next time you become the Party Face!