Changeling (Uncommon Heritage)

Your mother was a hag. Your heterochromatic eyes are the most obvious signifier of this parentage, but you likely also have a slighter build, paler skin, and darker hair than most members of your other parent’s ancestry.

You gain the changeling trait. You also gain low-light vision, or you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has low-light vision. You can select from changeling feats and feats from your other parent’s ancestry whenever you gain an ancestry feat.

Tales of children stolen away and replaced by monsters exist across countless cultures— but the true monsters are the hag mothers of these strange children. After the hag seduces, uses, and disposes of their father, the changeling child is usually abandoned in their father’s community to be raised among them. Such a child faces no end of challenges, often beginning life as an orphaned outsider.

Though a changeling generally resembles a member of their father’s ancestry, their distinctive eyes—each a different color—set them apart. One of their eyes matches that of their father’s lineage, while the other matches the color of their hag mother’s, often in an unnatural shade such as violet or a vivid green. Not everyone with differently colored eyes is a changeling, but this manifestation of changeling heritage makes it difficult for them to hide their nature and can lead to banishment from their community. As they come of age, they manifest other characteristics from their mother, including supernatural abilities.

Darkvision, claw-like fingernails, and innate magic are the most common, but stranger abilities specific to the hag mother can also arise.

Changelings can be any gender, but women in particular are vulnerable to the Call, a psychic influence that urges them to abandon their mortal life, join the hag’s coven, and eventually become a hag. Changelings who understand their heritage often fear the Call and work to resist its pull. Those who remain ignorant of their origin may find themselves subject to a terrible compulsion without knowing why.

You might…

• Cherish and protect those friends and family who accept you as you are.
• Seek to better understand your hag mother and the gifts she gave you, for good or ill, or distance yourself from your heritage.
• Fear the day you hear the Call and worry you might not be able to resist—or perhaps you already fight to resist it every day.

Others Probably…

• Assume you practice occult or primal magic, or that you participate in a coven.
• Worry that you might secretly be a monster, or become one, and turn on them.
• Notice and speculate about your distinctive eyes.

Changeling Feats

The following feats are available to changeling characters.

1st Level

Brine May Feat 1

Changeling Lineage

Your mother was a sea hag, granting you one sea-green or blue eye. You find comfort both in the sea and on the shore. Whenever you roll a success on an Athletics check to Swim, you get a critical success instead. If you end your turn in water without having succeeded at a Swim action that round, you don’t sink (but you might still be moved by the current).

Callow May Feat 1

Changeling Lineage

You are among the most common of changelings—those born to green hags—and a vibrant green eye signifies that parentage.

Your mother’s manipulative nature and versatile voice gives you an edge when deceiving others. You gain the Charming Liar skill feat. If you roll Deception for initiative, foes in that combat encounter that haven’t acted yet are flat-footed against you.

Changeling Lore Feat 1

Changeling

All too aware of your true nature, you’ve studied hags and their powers. You gain the trained proficiency rank in Deception and Occultism. If you would automatically become trained in one of those skills (from your background or class, for example), you instead become trained in a skill of your choice. You also become trained in Hag Lore.

Dream May Feat 1

Changeling Lineage

You are the child of a night hag, making one of your eyes violet or even black. Your mother’s powers over sleep and dreams have given you a degree of resistance to those effects, granting you a +2 circumstance bonus to all saving throws against sleep effects and effects that cause or alter dreams.

In addition, sleep is more restorative for you. You regain HP equal to your Constitution modifier times double your level instead of just times your level, and you reduce any drained and doomed conditions you have by 2 instead of by 1.

Hag Claws Feat 1

Changeling When you came of age, your fingernails grew long and sharp.

You gain a claw unarmed attack that deals 1d4 slashing damage. Your claws are in the brawling group and have the agile, finesse, and unarmed traits.

Special Hag claws can develop at any point in a changeling’s life, allowing you to select this feat anytime you would gain an ancestry feat, but once you’ve selected it, you can’t retrain out of it.

Hag’s Sight Feat 1

Changeling

You’ve nurtured the supernatural abilities gifted by your hag mother, particularly your sight. You gain darkvision.

Slag May Feat 1

Changeling Lineage

Your mother was an annis hag, known for physical prowess, and you have one violet or steel-gray eye. You have thick, sturdy claws made of cold iron that grow naturally from your body. You gain a claw unarmed attack that deals 1d6 slashing damage. Your claws are in the brawling group, have the unarmed and grapple traits, and are cold iron.

5th Level

Called Feat 5

Changeling

You have heard the Call, and in constantly resisting that persistent demand, you’ve developed a mental bulwark against effects that would target your mind. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Will saving throws against mental effects. If you roll a success on your saving throw against a mental effect that would make you controlled, you get a critical success instead.

Mist Child Feat 5

Changeling

You blend in with unnatural subtlety. When you are concealed or hidden, increase the DC of the flat check to target you to 6 if you’re concealed or 12 if you’re hidden.

9th Level

Accursed Claws Feat 9

Changeling

Prerequisite(s) claw unarmed attack

Your claws carry your mother’s hag magic. When you critically hit with a claw Strike, the target takes an additional 1d4 persistent mental damage.

Occult Resistance Feat 9

Changeling

Prerequisite(s) expert in Occultism

Your study of occult practices has shown you how to best defend against them. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to all saving throws against occult effects.

13th Level

Hag Magic Feat 13

Changeling

Through your heritage, you can replicate some of a hag’s magic.

Choose one common spell of 4th level or lower from those available to a coven, including the spells contributed to a coven by a hag of your mother’s type. You can cast this spell once per day as a 4th-level occult innate spell.

Spells available to all covens are augury, charm, clairaudience, clairvoyance, dream message, and illusory disguise. The eligible spells granted by the most prominent types of hag are:

• Sea Hag acid arrow, water walk;
• Green Hag entangle, outcast’s curse, wall of thorns;
• Annis Hag earthbind;
• Night Hag nightmare