Giff

Giff are tall, broad-shouldered folk with hippo-like features. Some have smooth skin, while others have short bristles on their faces and the tops of their heads. As beings of impressive size and unforgettable appearance, giff are noticed wherever they go.
Most giff believe they originated on one world, but their home world is now the stuff of legend, because no living giff has seen it or knows where it is. The divine beings who created giff have likewise been forgotten. Their titanic petrified bodies drift on the Astral Sea, isolated and unrecognizable in their current forms.
Although they don’t realize it, giff are drawn to the Astral Plane because, on a deep psychic level, they remain connected to their creator gods, who have just enough divine spark left in them to imbue giff with sparks of their own, which giff have learned to channel through their weapons. Most giff have no idea where this so-called astral spark comes from, but they feel its presence most strongly when they are in Wildspace or the Astral Sea.
Giff are split into two camps concerning how their name is pronounced. Half of them say it with a hard g, half with a soft g. Disagreements over the correct pronunciation often blossom into hard feelings, loud arguments, and head-butting contests, but they rarely escalate beyond that.

Creating Your Character

When you create your D&D character, you decide whether your character is a member of the Human race or one of the game’s fantastical races. If you create a character using a race option presented here, follow these additional rules during character creation.
Ability Score Increases When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one of those scores by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. Follow this rule regardless of the method you use to determine the scores, such as rolling or point buy.
The “Quick Build” section for your character’s class offers suggestions on which scores to increase. You’re free to follow those suggestions or to ignore them. Whichever scores you decide to increase, none of the scores can be raised above 20.
Languages Your character can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. The Player’s Handbook offers a list of widespread languages to choose from. The DM is free to add or remove languages from that list for a particular campaign.
Creature Type Every creature in D&D, including every player character, has a special tag in the rules that identifies the type of creature they are. Most player characters are of the Humanoid type. A race option presented here tells you what your character’s creature type is.
Here’s a list of the game’s creature types in alphabetical order: Aberration, Beast, Celestial, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, Giant, Humanoid, Monstrosity, Ooze, Plant, Undead. These types don’t have rules themselves, but some rules in the game affect creatures of certain types in different ways. For example, the text of the cure wounds spell specifies that the spell doesn’t work on a creature that has the Construct type. (The Autognome is a noteworthy exception because of its Healing Machine trait.)
Life Span The typical life span of a player character in the D&D multiverse is about a century, assuming the character doesn’t meet a violent end on an adventure. Members of some races, such as dwarves and elves, can live for centuries—a fact noted in the description of the race in question.
Height and Weight Player characters, regardless of race, typically fall into the same ranges of height and weight that humans have in our world. If you’d like to determine your character’s height or weight randomly, consult the Random Height and Weight table in the Player’s Handbook, and choose the row in the table that best represents the build you imagine for your character.

Giff Traits

You have the following racial traits. Creature Type You are a Humanoid.
Size You are Medium.
Speed Your walking speed is 30 feet, and you have a swimming speed equal to your walking speed.
Astral Spark Your psychic connection to the Astral Plane enables you to mystically access a spark of divine power, which you can channel through your weapons. When you hit a target with a simple or martial weapon, you can cause the target to take extra force damage equal to your proficiency bonus.
You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, but you can use it no more than once per turn. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Firearms Mastery You have a mystical connection to firearms that traces back to the gods of the giff, who delighted in such weapons. You have proficiency with all firearms and ignore the loading property of any firearm. In addition, attacking at long range with a firearm doesn’t impose disadvantage on your attack roll.
Hippo Build You have advantage on Strength-based ability checks and Strength saving throws. In addition, you count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.