Gripplis are a shy and cautious people who generally seek to avoid being drawn into the complicated and dangerous affairs of others. Despite their outlook and small stature, gripplis often take bold and noble action when the situation demands it.
Reclusive and canny, gripplis are treetop survivalists who harvest their homes' bounty and defend themselves against terrible threats. Their reliance on cunning and simple tools has led to gripplis being mischaracterized as primitive, yet this overlooks their shaping of the land with hidden orchards and camouflaged causeways that allow gripplis to live in prosperous peace. Gripplis are most likely to emerge from their forest homes to trade, explore, and combat threats that would despoil the world.
Physical Description
Gripplis resemble humanoid tree frogs, with oversized eyes, wide mouths, and gangly physiques. Their slight frames and large toes afford excellent grip while climbing, while their colorful skin provides reliable camouflage that varies by their home environment— green and brown for jungle-dwelling groups, blue and orange for riparian communities, and many other colors between. A grippli grows quickly, reaching adult size of about 2 feet in height about 3 years after hatching, though they're only considered adults around age 12. Gripplis rarely live beyond 60 years, though exceptional individuals occasionally live as long as a century.
Society
Gripplis lead a sophisticated hunter-gatherer lifestyle with which they reshape the landscape to suit their needs: building spillways to trap fish, seeding fruit-bearing trees, sowing cover-granting foliage for future hunts, and more techniques that often escape an agriculturist's eye. These strategies rely on community cooperation as well as dispersed populations, so gripplis commonly live in small villages, each part of a complex web of alliances and relationships. Reclusiveness has preserved grippli lives and lifestyles for millennia, yet they increasingly find themselves threatened by ancient evils and new explorers alike.
Religion
Grippli's almost exclusively worship The Hunter, but have a healthy respect for The Dread Wolf.
Adventurers
For the many gripplis who hail from remote regions, wilderness backgrounds like hunter, nomad, or scout are excellent fits. Those more accustomed to urban areas might be animal whisperers, bounty hunters, and herbalists. Hermits are common, and emissaries are critical to maintaining relationships with other peoples. Thanks to their deep cultural connections to nature, gripplis make excellent druids and rangers. Their musical traditions are a great fit for bards. Gripplis' natural agility and perceptiveness also make them capable clerics, monks, and rogues.
Names
Grippli names often include resonant vowels and chirped consonants that remain difficult for non-gripplis to vocalize properly. Gripplis that travel widely often adopt one or more names more easily replicated by their associates.
Sample Names
Grippli Mechanics
Traits
Hit Points
6
Size
Small
Speed
25 feet
Ability Boosts
Dexterity, Wisdom, Free
Ability Flaw(s)
Strength
Languages
Common
Additional languages equal to your Intelligence modifier (if it's positive). Choose from Abyssal, Elemental, Sylvan, and any other languages to which you have access (such as the languages prevalent in your region).
Low-Light Vision
You can see in dim light as though it were bright light, so you ignore the concealed condition due to dim light.
Grippli Heritages
Versatile Heritages
You select a heritage at 1st level to reflect abilities passed down to you from your ancestors or common among those of your ancestry in the environment where you were born or grew up. You have only one heritage and can’t change it later. A heritage is not the same as a culture or ethnicity, though some cultures or ethnicities might have more or fewer members from a particular heritage.
Poisonhide Grippli
You may be small, but the poison glands concealed across your body hide a deadly defense. You gain the Toxic Skin reaction.
Toxic Skin [R]
Trigger A creature touches you, such as by Grappling you, successfully hitting you with an unarmed attack, or using a touch-range spell against you.
You exude a deadly toxin. The triggering creature takes 1d4 poison damage (basic Fortitude save using your class DC or spell DC, whichever is higher). At 3rd level and every 2 levels thereafter, the damage increases by 1d4.
Snaptongue Grippli
Your tongue is especially long, and you can launch it with extraordinary range and precision. You can use your tongue to deliver touch-range spells and perform extremely simple Interact actions, such as opening some types of unlocked doors. Your tongue can't perform actions that require fingers or significant manual dexterity, including any action that would require a check to accomplish, and you can't use it to hold items.
Stickytoe Grippli
Your hands and feet exude a film that helps them adhere to surfaces. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your Fortitude and Reflex DC against attempts to Disarm, Shove, or Trip you. When ascending trees, vines, and other foliage, if you roll a success on the Athletics check to Climb, you get a critical success instead.
Grippli Feats
At 1st level, you gain one ancestry feat.
Grippli Lore (Feat 1)
Grippli |
You are well versed in grippli culture and tactics. You gain the trained proficiency in Nature and Stealth. If you would automatically become trained in one of those skills, you instead become trained in a skill of your choice. You also become trained in Grippli Lore.
Grippli Weapon Familiarity (Feat 1)
Grippli |
You've trained with weapons ideally suited to marshes and dense forests. You are trained with blowguns, hatchets, scythes, shortbows, and composite shortbows. You also gain access to all uncommon grippli weapons. For the purpose of determining your proficiency, martial grippli weapons are simple weapons, and advanced grippli weapons are martial weapons.
Whenever you gain a class feature that grants you expert or greater proficiency in certain weapons, you also gain that proficiency for blowguns, hatchets, scythes, shortbows, composite shortbows, and all grippli weapons in which you are trained.
At 5th level, whenever you critically hit using a blowgun, hatchet, scythe, shortbow, composite shortbow, or a grippli weapon, you apply the weapon's critical specialization effect.
Hunter's Defense [R] (Feat 1)
Grippli |
Your canny understanding of natural and primal creatures helps you predict and dodge their attacks. The triggering attack roll targets your Nature DC instead of your AC. Though this allows you to avoid taking penalties to your AC, it doesn't remove any conditions or other effects causing such penalties. For example, an enemy with sneak attack would still deal extra damage to you for being flat-footed, even though you wouldn't take the –2 circumstance penalty against the attack.
Jungle Strider (Feat 1)
Grippli |
You are adept at dodging roots, foliage, and other jungle obstacles. You ignore difficult terrain in forests and jungles. In addition, when you use the Acrobatics skill to Balance on narrow surfaces or uneven ground made of plant material, you aren't flat-footed, and when you roll a success at one of these Acrobatics checks, you get a critical success instead.
Long Tongue (Feat 1)
Grippli |
Prerequisites snaptongue grippli heritage
You've learned to stretch your exceptionally long tongue beyond its original limits. When you use your tongue to deliver touch range spells or perform very simple Interact actions, you can do so at a distance that is 5 feet beyond your usual reach.
Nocturnal Grippli (Feat 1)
Grippli |
You tend to do most of your hunting and work at night and have adapted to the requirements of nocturnal life. You gain darkvision, allowing you to see in darkness and dim light just as well as you can in bright light. However, in darkness, you see in black and white only.
Special You can take this feat only at 1st level, and you can’t retrain out of this feat or into this feat.
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