Humans Transformed

The people who became yuan-ti were one of the original human civilizations. Their society built great temples of stone and forged metal into armor, tools, and weapons. In their ceremonies they paid homage to the snake as the embodiment of the qualities they most appreciated. They developed a philosophy of separating emotion from intellectual pursuits, allowing them to focus their energy on personal advancement and expanding their territory. They believed themselves to be the most enlightened mortals in the world, and in their hubris they sought to become ever greater.

The people tainted their souls by performing human sacrifices in the name of the gods, debased their flesh by cannibalizing their victims, and then performed a sorcerous ritual while writhing in pools filled with living snakes that enabled them to mix their flesh with that of serpents, becoming like the gods in body, thought, and emotion. Freed from the limitations of their human bodies, the yuan-ti used their new abilities to conquer new lands and expand their borders.

One Race, Many Forms

The bodies of all yuan-ti have a mix of humanlike and snakelike parts, but the proportion varies from individual to individual. After the initial metamorphosis of the humans, their society quickly coalesced into a caste system based on how complete a person's transformation was. The vast majority of yuan-ti fall into three categories—abominations, malisons, and purebloods—while the mutated broodguards and exceedingly rare anathemas have their place in the hierarchy as well. As an abomination, you are among the elite of your people, and have likely spent a large portion of your life practicing dark rituals of transformation that have granted you the form you now bear—as is expected and admired by yuan-ti society. You command the respect and attention of yuan-ti malisons and purebloods, and lord over broodguards and slaves.

Yuan-ti Abomination Traits

Your serpentine nature grants you a number of shared traits.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Strength, Constitution, and Charisma scores each increase by 1.

• Size. Yuan-ti abominations stand about 5 feet tall when upright, but the total length of their bodies, head to tail, ranges from 10 to as much as 20 feet. Your size is Medium.

• Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

• Darkvision. You have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

• Innate Spellcasting. You can cast animal friendship at will, but you can target only snakes with it.

• Natural Weapons. Your constricting serpentine body as well as your fanged maw are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with your bite, you deal piercing damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier. If you hit with your constrict attack, you deal bludgeoning damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, and the target must succeed on a Strength saving throw with a DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier or become grappled. Until this grapple ends, your speed is 0 and you can’t constrict another target. At the start of your turn while you are constricting a target, you can use your bonus action to squeeze, dealing damage equal to your Strength modifier.

• Poison Resistance. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.

• Enchantment Resistance. You have advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws against magic.

• Serpentine. Your serpentine body lets you swiftly right yourself. When you are prone, standing up uses only 5 feet of your movement.

• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common, Abyssal, and Draconic.