Selkies for 5e

Artist: Annachronism (follow tumblr link for high-res version)

Necessary Prelude About Sexual Violence

I've seen other attempts at a selkie player race, but they tend to avoid the folklore trope of humans coercing them into relationships by stealing their pelts.

To be absolutely clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with just wanting to play a humanoid who can shapechange into a seal. Especially in a game where druids can do so without any strings attached. Just as there's nothing wrong with wanting to play in a setting where LGBT characters are fully accepted by society, sexism only exists in evil antagonist societies if at all, and all that Blue Rose kind of stuff.

But it's not what I want. Folklore, spec-fic and tabletop gaming provide valuable spaces for metaphorically exploring different experiences. Just as Eberron changelings are fantastic for interrogating what gender might mean for a creature whose sexual characteristics are mutable at will, just as tieflings are very popular right now for exploring what it's like to be marginalised on appearance alone, I think selkies who have to treat literally every human as a potential threat to their liberty and autonomy can be really interesting.

But obviously, GMs and players should establish common boundaries on this. A non-exhaustive list of questions:

1. Should the sealskin be a thing?
2. Should there be an actual in-game possibility of NPCs stealing your pelt? Or should you just agree to roleplay as though that risk exists?
3. Is PvP pelt-stealing OK?
4. If a pelt is stolen, should any consequences be kept "fade to black", be confined to exploiting the PC for menial/slave labour of a non-sexual nature, or be otherwise "PG-rated"?

(my personal answers as either player or GM are "yes, yes, no, fade-to-black")

And if you want to use this homebrew in your game but omit the Sealskin trait, I'll still be flattered.

Likewise, if you use the Sealskin guidelines for swan maidens or another similar myth, let me know how it goes.

(5e mechanics and notes about a possible selkie culture after the cut)

Selkie Traits

Selkies have the following racial traits.
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1, and your Charisma score increases by 2.
Age. Selkies age at the same rate humans do.
Alignment. Selkies tend to be Chaotic. They have little formal structure in their own societies, preferring to establish hierarchy through tests of dominance. In folklore, a selkie that regains their freedom almost always returns to the sea, abandoning not only their captor, but any children they may have had together.
Size. Your size is Medium. In seal form, you are still Medium size.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Endurance. You have more bodily reserves to draw upon before hazards such as freezing temperatures and starvation begin to affect you. You have 7 levels of exhaustion instead of the usual 6. You suffer no effect from level 1 exhaustion. Level 2 exhaustion imposes disadvantage on ability checks, level 3 exhaustion halves your speed, and so on, until death at level 7 exhaustion.
Natural Athlete. You have proficiency in the Athletics skill.
Sealskin. You begin play with a sealskin. If another creature gains possession of it, you are automatically become charmed by them (no saving throw). This effect lasts until you regain possession of the sealskin, i.e. the charmer can hide it somewhere other than on their person, and you will remain charmed.
Shapechanger. As an action, you can wrap your seal pelt around you and polymorph into a seal. You can only do this if you have your sealskin, which merges into your new form. Polymorphing back from seal to humanoid is also an action, and causes the seal pelt to reappear. Other equipment you carry doesn’t merge into you, and continues to be worn or falls to the ground at the GM’s discretion. You can remain in seal form indefinitely. If you die, you revert back to humanoid form.

As a seal, your statistics (including current Hit Points) remain the same, apart from the following traits:

• Speed. Your base walking speed becomes 10 ft, but you gain a 40 ft swim speed.
• Bite. You have a bite attack with which you are proficient, which deals 1d6 piercing damage.
• Hold Breath. You can hold your breath for 1 hour.
• Minor Telepathy. You can send mental messages to another creature within 30 feet. Doing so does not require an action, but it requires eye contact. You send the message in a language you know. The link is too weak to allow a non-telepathic recipient to mentally reply.
• Seal Body. You can’t speak, or perform tasks that require hands. You can carry weapons and other objects in your mouth, but you can’t wield them.
• Spellcasting. You can’t cast spells. You are able to maintain concentration on a spell you’ve already cast, or take actions that are part of a spell, such as call lightning, that you’ve already cast. You retain the benefit of other class features, feats, or other abilities, and can use them in seal form at the GM’s discretion.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.

Telltale Signs

Almost every selkie can pass for human, even to the trained eye. To determine how or if selkies' humanoid forms physically differ from humans in your game world, choose or roll on the following table any number of times. Most of the table entries don't constitute ironclad proof that any individual character is a selkie -- this is deliberate.

1. Taller and plumper than the average human.
2. Very small, folded ears.
3. Short digestive tract. Even in humanoid form, selkies are obligate carnivores.
4. 20% chance of piebald skin coloration, matching their seal form.
5. Slight webbing of fingers and toes.
6. Prolonged contact with iron will raise welts and blisters.
7. Round, puppy dog eyes.
8. Hair cannot grow longer than an inch, except for moustaches.

How Strong is the Charm Effect?

As a reminder, these are the 5e rules for the charmed condition:
"A charmed creature can’t attack the charmer or target the charmer with harmful abilities or magical effects. The charmer has advantage on any ability check to interact socially with the creature."

The design intent behind the Sealskin trait is that a selkie PC whose pelt is stolen should not have all player control relinquished to the GM. The charmed condition limits player actions, but within those limits players still have agency in how/whether they roleplay any effort to subtly resist their character's captor.

However, certain game effects can prevent a creature from being charmed, or remove/suspend the condition. To avoid trivialising the Sealskin trait, the GM might decide that some or all of these simply don't work. For example, they may decide the binding magic runs too deep to be disrupted by a simple calm emotions spell, but that a wish spell could certainly rewrite reality (perhaps by transforming the selkie into another race). The party paladin can't free a selkie simply by standing next to them, but perhaps a selkie barbarian could temporarily break their ensorcellment if their captor does something truly heinous.

To aid the GM in any ruling, a list of relevant effects in the SRD is provided below:

Class Features

Mindless Rage -- 6th-level Barbarian (Path of the Berserker)
Stillness of Mind -- 7th-level Monk
Aura of Devotion -- 7th-level Paladin (Oath of Devotion)
Nature's Ward* -- 10th-level Druid (Circle of the Land)

Spells

Protection from Evil and Good* -- 1st-level
Calm Emotions -- 2nd-level
Magic Circle* -- 3rd-level
Dispel Evil and Good* -- 5th-level
Greater Restoration -- 5th-level
Hallow* -- 5th-level
Mind Blank -- 8th-level
Wish -- 9th-level

* only protects against certain creature types

Selkie Names

Selkies have a given name, and a toponymic surname indicating where they were calved. Most selkies are named in honour of family or clan elders. These traditional names are ultimately human in origin, as despite the risk, selkies historically trade and intermingle with humans more than other races. Due to their migratory nature, even a single family will have an eclectic collection of traditional names.

When a pod establishes a new colony site, they avoid naming it after the most obvious environmental features or after any well-known historical events, and certainly don't name it after what the locals call it.

The Nature of the Sealskin

Possessing a selkie's pelt will bind them to your will. Most creatures who are aware of selkies' existence know this fact. In practice, this isn’t a total domination of the selkie’s will, but it suppresses enough of the selkie’s free-spirited nature to make them highly suggestible, easy to coax or threaten.

Selkies vary in how they psychologically respond to captivity. Some enter a fugue state once their pelt is stolen, forgetting they are anything other than human, and retaining only an unnameable longing for the sea. Other selkies who later recovered their pelt report that they remained fully aware of what they were, and that they were forced into unwilling servitude.

Selkie Society

Due to the difficulty of transporting and manipulating building material in their seal forms, selkies like to occupy shipwrecks, or the settlements abandoned by other aquatic races. Occasionally selkies will add to these settlements, typically by acquiring a no-longer-seaworthy ship, sailing it to a secret settlement, and beaching it or lashing it to other ships.

Any stationary selkie settlement runs into the problem of having a large population of apparent-seals breaching the surface to breathe. Such settlements are therefore more likely to avoid human trade routes and be situated in more dangerous waters, closer to hostile monsters. These settlements thus have to be more organised and militaristic than the norm.

The more common solution is for selkies to follow the migration patterns of true seals, moving from settlement to settlement as the seasons change. Even then, this approach is not without danger. Seal hunters also know these migration patterns, and a killed selkie reverts to humanoid form. If one of their kind is discovered this way, a selkie community knows that their only choices are to immediately relocate — difficult during birthing season — or run down the hunters’ ship and ensure no-one survives.

Selkie Religion

Selkies are not true fey, but like them the majority of selkies do not follow a deity. They either directly venerate nature or are apathetic on spiritual matters.

As selkies are typically migratory, religious selkies prefer to venerate deities that are worshipped over a wide geographical area, under the logic that if a deity were truly powerful and worth paying homage to, they would already have many other followers. The exception to this of course, are local storm and ocean deities. Even monotheistic selkies will perform the appropriate rites to ward off the evil storm goddess du jour, even if they believe her to be a mere fiend and no true deity.

Selkies and Literacy

Most selkies live secluded, nomadic lives in the ocean, and have little opportunity to learn to read, even in a game world where literacy is commonplace. Modelling this with a racial trait is unnecessary — PCs are often the exception to many social norms — but roleplaying a selkie PC or NPC as illiterate is worth consideration.