Wildspacer 5e
You were raised in the void of Wildspace—home to asteroid miners, moon farmers, and other hardy folk. Perhaps you grew up in a far-flung settlement such as the Rock of Bral, or you spent your early years on the crew of a spelljamming ship, performing helpful chores such as swabbing the deck, loading and offloading cargo, and scraping barnacles off the hull.
Whatever your history, life in Wildspace has toughened you so well that you are as brave as a miniature giant space hamster when it comes to facing the terrors and other challenges of the airless night.
Source: Spelljamer: Adventures in Space - Astral Adventurer's Guide
Tool Proficiencies: Navigator's tools, vehicles (space)
Equipment: A belaying pin (club), a set of traveler's clothes, a grappling hook, 50 feet of hempen rope, and a pouch containing 10gp
Features
Close Encounter: You had a harrowing encounter with one of Wildspace’s many terrors. You escaped with your life, but the encounter left you with a scar or two, or perhaps a recurring nightmare. Roll on the Close Encounter table to determine which creature nearly got the best of you.
Close Encounter
| d10 | Creature |
|---|---|
| 1 | Beholder |
| 2 | Cosmic Horror |
| 3 | Feyr |
| 4 | Lunar Dragon |
| 5 | Mind Flayer |
| 6 | Neh-thalggu |
| 7 | Neogi |
| 8 | Space Clown |
| 9 | Vampirate |
| 10 | Void Scavver |
Wildspace Adaptation: You gain the Tough feat. In addition, you learned how to adapt to zero gravity. Being weightless doesn’t give you disadvantage on any of your melee attack rolls.
Should You Be a Wildspacer?
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Wildspacers, even more so than Astral Drifter, are tied to the Spelljammer setting. Outside of that setting, I think this can be a hard sell. Its features are fine and all, but the juice may not be worth the squeeze to fit “Wildspace” into any world your DM is working up.
Close Encounter and Wildspace Adaptation
Close Encounter is a flavor feature that tells a story of a close encounter you had with some kind of horrific space monster. It references physical or mental scars that may come with the event, which I’m a huge fan of, as it gives you a real reason to add some physical shifts to appearance to your look, or an extra phobia that can shape your personality.
Wildspace Adaptation offers you mechanical benefits to accompany the flavorful feature prior to it. Tough isn’t a feat I’m ever thrilled with, but extra hit points every level add up over a campaign to you staying up a few extra rounds. The big boon I’d want from it, though, is the removal of penalties for weightless fighting. That boon won’t matter basically anywhere but Spelljammer, really hammering home that this feat is designed to play at Spelljammer settings first and foremost.
Skills
Athletics and Survival both are fantastic skills a lot of martial characters want. Fighters, barbarians, paladins, rangers, and even rogues can benefit massively from a high Athletics score. Both of these skills are regularly going to see use every adventure. That’s a huge plus for this background.
It does narrow the scope of classes that want this, though. Low strength characters like Sorcerers and Bards probably want nothing to do with this- given that Wildspace Adaptation also sells itself best to classes intending to get hit, you’re left with a background that is clearly aimed at a small grouping of characters brawling it out in space.
Other Proficiencies
As if the option needed more signs that it doesn’t belong alongside material plane adventuring, the bonus proficiencies offered are Navigator’s Tools, which every game could find uses for, and space vehicles. That is a proficiency you literally will never use outside of Spelljammer, even if you are jumping around the planes in the upper tiers.
Equipment
The grappling hook paired with Wildspace Adaptation tells a story of the kind of character you’re looking to play with this background- a gruff pilot of a space vessel swinging out into space while tethered to their vessel, swinging their axe at incoming space parasites trying to stick to their precious vessel. I love this concept- it’s a narrow archetype, though.
All Together
If you’re going to play in Spelljammer, and want to be a frontline character, this option seems like a slam dunk. Its bonus proficiencies give you a purpose aboard the magical vessel as a potential pilot and navigator. The equipment sets you up to fight in 3-D space while Wildspace Adaptation helps you survive out there while being effective at fighting without gravity. Both skills are excellent, the feature is solid, but not amazing, and the tools gained functionally tell you this option is for Spelljammer only.
Give it a try next time you’re joining the epic space war between Gith and Illithids. If you’re on a noble quest for king and country across the earth, you probably should steer clear of this.
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