Reborn Race Guide: D&D 5e (2014)

Introduction

The Reborn is Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft's answer to a question most races never ask: what if your character already died once, and this is the sequel? Mechanically, it reads like a quieter cousin of the Warforged's living-construct package: no fixed ability score bonus (Reborn uses the flexible customizing-origin split instead), a trait bundle built around removing death-adjacent weaknesses rather than adding offense, and an open-ended physical form. A Reborn is not a zombie or a skeleton with a character sheet bolted on. The book is explicit that a Reborn is a Humanoid, and its actual described forms range from a person who looks almost exactly as they did before dying, to a patchwork body stitched from more than one set of remains, to a mind housed in something built rather than born. Some Reborn carry visible scars of whatever killed them; others pass for ordinary at a glance.

That flexibility is the real hook of this lineage, and it is also where this guide splits into two distinct tracks. As a mechanical pick, Reborn is a low-commitment, no-weakness race: Deathless Nature closes off death saving throws, poison, disease, and sleep as failure points, and Knowledge from a Past Life adds a flexible skill-check bonus that scales with proficiency bonus. None of it screams "optimal," but none of it actively works against any class either. As a character-origin pick, Reborn is one of the most roleplay-forward races in the 2014 catalog: the Faded Memories mechanic and the book's Reborn Origins prompts hand a player an amnesia-and-identity story hook baked directly into the character sheet, something a purely mechanical race like Half-Orc or Dwarf does not attempt to offer. Which track matters more to your table should shape how you read the rest of this guide.

---

Disclaimer

Ratings use a four-color system reflecting overall power in the context of the 2014 rules:

• ● Red - Poor. Avoid or situational at best.
• ● Orange - Situational. Useful in specific builds or campaigns.
• ● Green - Good. Reliable value in most builds.
• ● Blue - Excellent. Best-in-slot or near it for the right build.

---

Racial Traits

Reborn has no subraces. Every Reborn character gets the same trait package below, and unlike most 2014-era races, Reborn does not come with a fixed ability score bonus at all.

● Ability Score Increases: Fully Customizable

When determining your ability scores, you increase one of those scores by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or you increase three different scores by 1.

Reborn was published using the customizing-origin approach this system later standardized through Customizing Your Origin: rather than a fixed +2/+1 tied to specific stats, you freely choose the split. This means Reborn never fights your build's stat priorities the way a race with a locked secondary bonus can. A Barbarian puts +2 into Strength and +1 into Constitution, a Wizard puts +2 into Intelligence and +1 into Constitution, and neither pairing wastes a single point on a stat the class does not want.

● Ancestral Legacy

If you replace a race with this lineage, you can keep the following elements of that race: any skill proficiencies you gained from it and any climbing, flying, or swimming speed you gained from it. If you don't keep any of those elements or you choose this lineage at character creation, you gain proficiency in two skills of your choice.

This trait exists specifically for the mid-campaign transformation story: a Human Fighter who dies and comes back Reborn, or an Elf who loses their old life to some catastrophic event a DM is willing to run as a character-origin swap. In that scenario, whatever skill proficiencies and special movement speeds the old race granted survive the transformation, while every other racial trait (ability score bonus, Darkvision, damage resistances, and so on) is replaced outright by the Reborn package. Built as Reborn from level 1 instead, the clause is moot and you simply take two free skill proficiencies of your choice, open to any skill on the list. Either path is solid value; the mid-campaign version doubles as a narrative tool, not just a mechanical one.

● Deathless Nature

You have advantage on saving throws against disease and being poisoned, and you have resistance to poison damage. You have advantage on death saving throws. You don't need to eat, drink, or breathe. You don't need to sleep, and magic can't put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in an inactive, motionless state, during which you retain consciousness.

This is five separate benefits bundled into a single trait, and it is the mechanical core of the race. The poison-and-disease clause is comparable to a Dwarf's Dwarven Resilience, one of the most respected defensive traits in the 2014 PHB. Advantage on death saving throws is the standout: it does not prevent damage the way Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance does, but it meaningfully raises the odds of stabilizing once you are already down, which matters for every class, not just melee front-liners. The no-eat/no-drink/no-breathe clause removes an entire logistics category with essentially zero combat relevance: a Reborn does not ration food on a long overland journey and cannot be poisoned through food or drink. Sleep immunity blocks a spell like Sleep outright, and the shortened, conscious long rest is a real scheduling tool: a Reborn finishing a long rest in 4 hours while still able to see and hear frees up the rest of that window for travel, watch duty, or simply getting back into a fight faster than the rest of the party can.

● Knowledge from a Past Life

You temporarily remember glimpses of the past, perhaps faded memories from ages ago or a previous life. When you make an ability check that uses a skill, you can roll a d6 immediately after seeing the number on the d20 and add the number on the d6 to the check. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

The "roll after seeing the result" clause is the detail that makes this trait strong: you never waste a use padding a check you would have passed anyway or salvaging one you were always going to fail by a wide margin. It functions as a self-targeted, always-available version of Bardic Inspiration, applies to any skill check regardless of which ability score it uses, and scales automatically with proficiency bonus, so it never falls behind as you level. Because it works on any skill, it rewards a build that leans into skill checks broadly (Investigation, Persuasion, Perception, Survival) rather than one narrow specialty.

● Size, Speed, and Languages

You are Medium or Small. You choose the size when you gain this lineage. Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Reborn is one of the only 2014-era race options that lets you freely choose size at character creation with no other trait tied to that choice, unlike races such as Halfling or Gnome where Small size comes bundled with other fixed traits. Speed is a flat 30 feet regardless of size, with no penalty for choosing Small the way some earlier-edition rules imposed. Languages follow the standard pattern: Common plus one language of your choice.

---

Playing a Reborn: Origin-Driven Build vs. Mechanical Pick

This is the question that separates Reborn from most other races in the library, and it deserves a direct answer before you commit to the race for either reason.

As a mechanical pick, Reborn sits in the same tier as Warforged: a race built to remove weaknesses rather than add power. There is no offensive trait here, nothing comparable to Half-Orc's Savage Attacks or a race-granted spell. What you get instead is a stat line with no fixed bonus (so it never fights your class), advantage on death saves, immunity to sleep magic, poison and disease resistance, and a flexible skill-check bonus. None of that is flashy, but none of it is dead weight either, and a Reborn never actively works against any class the way a Strength-focused race can work against a Charisma-primary Sorcerer. If your table is optimizing hard for a specific class-race combo, Reborn is a safe, efficient floor rather than a ceiling-raiser.

As a character-origin pick, Reborn does something almost no other race in this system's library attempts: it builds an amnesia-and-identity mystery directly into the character sheet as an optional but supported roleplay mechanic. The book's Faded Memories concept gives a Reborn character periodic, dreamlike flashes of a life they cannot fully piece together, framed as something that surfaces during quiet moments rather than sleep (since Reborn characters do not sleep in the traditional sense). A companion Lost Memories table offers prompts for what those glimpses might reveal, ranging from a physically painful moment tied to a scar on the body, to a bittersweet flash of a person once close to the character, to a sensory memory (a smell, a sound) the player is invited to chase down in play. None of this is a mechanical rules requirement; it is closer to a structured writing prompt a player can pull from whenever a quiet scene calls for one.

The book pairs this with a separate Reborn Origins table, offering broad categories for how a character became Reborn in the first place: a resurrection that went wrong somewhere in the process, a body stitched together from more than one set of remains with memories to match, someone who clawed free of their own grave with nothing left but a single remembered name, a former undead servant whose mind unexpectedly returned to them, someone who woke in an abandoned laboratory surrounded by half-finished designs, a formerly petrified creature whose body and memory both eroded during the process, a host to a possessing spirit that fills in gaps with its own memories, or someone who outwardly passes as ordinary but privately knows their body is not what it appears to be. Every one of those origins supports a different tone: body horror, mystery, tragedy, or quiet unease, and none of them require the character to look monstrous. If you are building a character whose central question is "what happened to me, and do I want to know the answer," Reborn hands you a mechanically supported way to keep asking that question at the table.

If your campaign is set in the Domains of Dread specifically, the book also offers a lighter option: tying a Reborn's origin to one of three specific domains without requiring the full setting to matter for a home-campaign character. A Reborn story can attach to Har'Akir's burial rites and the possibility that a soul other than the body's original owner has taken up residence, to Lamordia's amoral scientist-experimenters, or to Mordent's mysterious Apparatus device. None of that changes any mechanical trait; it is purely a hook for a DM running (or planning to run) a full Ravenloft campaign. For a broader look at building a character inside this setting, including how Reborn sits alongside this book's other new lineages and its subclass and background options, see the Ravenloft guide's character options section.

---

Ability Scores

Two ability score increases, fully customizable: Reborn is not tied to a fixed bonus at all. Split your +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 wherever your class wants it, and no point is ever wasted on a stat your build does not care about. This is the single biggest structural difference between Reborn and most 2014 PHB races, which still use fixed bonuses unless a table separately opts into the customizing-origin rules.

No racial Constitution bump, but Deathless Nature compensates: Races like Dwarf or Half-Orc lean on a flat Constitution +2 to inflate HP and Concentration saves directly. Reborn has no equivalent number, but Deathless Nature's advantage on death saving throws produces a similar practical outcome from a different angle: it does not add HP, but it meaningfully improves the odds of not dying once you are already at 0.

---

How the Resurrection-Adjacent Package Compares to Other Death-Resistant Races

Reborn is not the only race in this library built around surviving death, and the comparison clarifies exactly what it does and does not offer.

Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance prevents a single specific bad outcome once per long rest: dropping to 0 HP becomes dropping to 1 HP instead, guaranteed, no roll required. That is a stronger single moment than Reborn's advantage on death saves, because it is not probabilistic. But it only fires once per long rest, and it does nothing once it has already been used that day. Deathless Nature's advantage on death saves has no per-rest limit at all; it applies to every death save a Reborn character ever makes, for the entire campaign, at the cost of still being probabilistic rather than a guarantee.

Dwarf's Dwarven Resilience covers the same poison advantage-and-resistance ground Deathless Nature covers, near-identically. Where Reborn pulls ahead of a non-Mountain-Dwarf build is everywhere Dwarven Resilience has no answer: sleep immunity, the food/water/breathing logistics removal, and the shortened conscious long rest.

Warforged is the closest structural sibling: no eating or drinking, immunity to magical sleep, and a rest mechanic that keeps you conscious. The meaningful difference is what each race spends its remaining trait budget on. Warforged spends it on a flat +1 AC bonus that stacks with any armor. Reborn spends it on Knowledge from a Past Life, a flexible skill-check bonus, and advantage on death saves instead of a fixed AC number. Neither is strictly better; a Reborn build leans slightly more skill-and-survivability, a Warforged build leans slightly more combat-durability.

The practical takeaway: none of Reborn's traits add damage, spell save DC, or armor class. What they add is resilience against the specific failure states that end a character's story (dying outright, being taken out of a fight by poison or disease, losing time to logistics or sleep vulnerability) plus a flexible bonus to the skill checks that keep a scene moving. That profile rewards a build, and a player, that values consistency and survivability over burst power.

---

Best Classes

● Cleric

A Wisdom-primary Cleric puts the free ability score split straight into Wisdom and Constitution, and Deathless Nature's advantage on death saves is especially valuable for a class that frequently ends up in melee range without a Fighter's raw HP pool. Knowledge from a Past Life stacks well with a Cleric's typically strong Wisdom-based skill checks (Insight, Medicine, Religion), and the conscious 4-hour long rest means a Cleric can stand a full watch shift without losing rest benefits, a real edge for a support caster whose spell list resets on that same rest.

● Fighter

Fighter gets the most Ability Score Improvements of any class, so the fully flexible split compounds fastest here, going straight into Strength or Dexterity plus Constitution with no wasted points. Advantage on death saves matters most on a front-line martial class that is going to hit 0 HP more often than most, and the poison resistance holds up against the wide range of poison-dealing monsters a Fighter is expected to close distance on.

● Rogue

Knowledge from a Past Life is a strong fit for a class built around skill checks: it applies to any skill, not just the ones Expertise doubles, so it patches gaps Expertise does not cover. The flexible ability score split lets a Rogue max Dexterity immediately without waiting on a fixed racial bonus to land somewhere useful, and Small size is available if a player wants that flavor without giving up anything mechanically.

● Ranger

Ranger's split need between Dexterity or Strength and Wisdom is exactly the kind of stat profile Reborn's flexible bonus is built for, since a fixed-bonus race often forces a Ranger to accept a bonus in a stat it does not need. Knowledge from a Past Life supports a Ranger's Survival and Perception-heavy skill list directly, and the logistics removal (no food, water, or breathing needs) is thematically and mechanically strong for a class built around long treks through hostile terrain.

● Warlock

A Warlock's Charisma-primary casting benefits from the fully open ability score split, and a Reborn Warlock pairing especially well with an Undead-patron concept (mechanically unrelated to the race, but a natural roleplay pairing inside a Ravenloft campaign) gets to lean into a coherent origin story alongside Deathless Nature's death-resisting traits. Full Warlock coverage, including patron-by-patron analysis, lives in this system's dedicated class-guide family.

---

Classes That Get Less Value

● Barbarian

Barbarian already gets a strong death-resistance floor from its own class features (high HP die, Rage's damage resistance, and often a race like Half-Orc stacked on top). Reborn's death-save advantage still helps, but it is redundant with what the class already provides more directly, and nothing in the Reborn kit interacts with Rage or Reckless Attack the way a Strength-boosting fixed-bonus race can feel more purpose-built for the class.

● Sorcerer

The flexible ability score split still covers Charisma cleanly, so this is not a bad pairing, but nothing in Reborn's trait list reinforces a Sorcerer's actual identity: burst spellcasting and Metamagic manipulation. A race that adds AC, a defensive spell-like ability, or a Charisma-boosted social trait gets more thematic and mechanical mileage out of the same character concept.

● Wizard

Wizard leans hardest on Intelligence and, secondarily, Constitution for Concentration saves, both of which the flexible ability score split covers fine. The mismatch is thematic rather than mechanical: Knowledge from a Past Life is a skill-check bonus, and a Wizard already has the best skill-check toolkit in the game through spells like Identify and ritual casting, making the trait's value land lower here than on a class without that overlap.

---

Best Feats

● Resilient (Wisdom or Charisma)

Deathless Nature covers poison and death saves; it does nothing for Wisdom or Charisma saves, which are exactly the categories most enemy spellcasters target with charm, fear, and dominate effects. Resilient in either category closes the largest gap the race's own trait list leaves open.

● Tough

Adds 2 HP per level, compounding directly with advantage on death saves: more HP means fewer trips to 0 in the first place, and when a Reborn does hit 0, the death-save advantage still applies on top.

● Alert

A Reborn standing watch during its own 4-hour conscious rest window already covers most of a party's ambush-defense needs; Alert stacks on top by removing surprise entirely for the character taking that watch, turning the shortened rest into a safer choice for the whole group, not just a faster one.

● Lucky

Solid on any character, and it stacks cleanly with Knowledge from a Past Life since the two features solve different problems (Lucky rolls an extra d20 and lets you choose which die to use; Knowledge from a Past Life adds a d6 to the total), giving a skill-focused Reborn two independent tools for the same category of check.

---

Multiclassing Considerations

Cleric + Fighter: Deathless Nature's death-save advantage backs up a front-line divine build that is going to take hits from both sides of the multiclass. The flexible ability score split lets this combination invest in Wisdom, Strength, and Constitution without a fixed racial bonus forcing an awkward fourth priority.

Rogue + Ranger: Both classes want Dexterity and lean on skill checks heavily, and Knowledge from a Past Life applies across the combined skill list from both classes rather than being wasted on a class that does not use it. The flexible ability score split covers both classes' shared Dexterity need cleanly.

Warlock + Any short-rest-light class: Because a Reborn's long rest can complete in 4 hours while conscious, a party built around fewer, longer adventuring days benefits more than a party built around frequent short rests, which slightly favors a Warlock's own short-rest-based resource recovery being paired with classes that do not compete for that same rest window.

---

Example Build: Reborn Cleric (Levels 1-10)

Race: Reborn (+2 WIS, +1 CON, Medium) | Class: Cleric (Life Domain) | Background: Acolyte

Starting Stats (Point Buy): STR 10, DEX 12, CON 14 (+1=15), INT 8, WIS 15 (+2=17), CHA 10

Key Tactics:

• Advantage on death saving throws keeps this Cleric functional even after a bad round of focused enemy fire, without spending a spell slot on self-healing to avoid the risk in the first place.
• Knowledge from a Past Life backs up Wisdom-based skill checks (Insight, Medicine, Religion) that a support Cleric leans on constantly outside combat.
• The 4-hour conscious long rest lets this Cleric take the entire night watch alone, freeing the rest of the party for uninterrupted sleep before a dawn assault.

---

FAQ

Is a Reborn character an Undead creature type?

No. Reborn Traits state the character is a Humanoid, not Undead. Spells and effects that key off the Undead type specifically (Turn Undead and similar) do not interact with a Reborn at all.

Does Reborn make a character immune to being killed permanently, or resurrection-proof?

No. Deathless Nature grants advantage on death saving throws and poison resistance, not immunity to death or resurrection magic. A Reborn can still die and can still be the target of spells like Raise Dead, the same as any other character.

Can I choose to be Small instead of Medium as a Reborn?

Yes, freely, with no other trait tied to that choice. This is unusual among 2014-era races, most of which fix size to the base race.

What happens to my old race's traits if I become Reborn mid-campaign instead of starting as one?

Ancestral Legacy lets you keep any skill proficiencies and any climbing, flying, or swimming speed the old race granted. Everything else, including its ability score bonus and other traits, is replaced by the Reborn package.

Do I have to roll on the Lost Memories or Reborn Origins tables to play a Reborn?

No. Both are optional roleplay prompts for backstory and flashback inspiration, not a mechanical requirement. You can write your own origin and skip either table entirely.

---

Final Notes

Hot Take: Most evaluations of a race like this default to ranking it against Half-Orc and Warforged on pure survivability math, and Reborn holds up fine there: advantage on death saves is a strong trait on its own. But treating Reborn as only a defensive stat package undersells the one thing it does that almost nothing else in this library attempts: it hands a player a mechanically supported amnesia mystery, with an in-fiction reason the character cannot simply "remember their backstory" on demand. Read Reborn for its trait list alone and you are using maybe half of what the race actually offers.

Reborn rewards a build that wants a resilient, no-weakness stat line without fighting a fixed ability score bonus, and it rewards a player who wants their character's central mystery built into the sheet instead of bolted on separately. It pairs cleanly with Cleric and Fighter, holds up well on Rogue and Ranger, and remains playable everywhere else without actively working against a build's stat priorities.

If you want a character defined as much by the question "what happened to me" as by any number on the sheet, Reborn is one of the most flexible options Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft adds to the 2014 catalog. For the full race index, see the D&D 5e (2014) race guides hub.