Just the facts
Ability Score Increase The Triton race has their Strength, Constitution, and Charisma scores each increase by 1.
Age Tritons reach maturity around age 15 and can live up to 200 years.
Alignment Tritons tend toward lawful good. As guardians of the darkest reaches of the sea, their culture pushes them toward order and benevolence.
Size Tritons are slightly shorter than humans, averaging 5 feet tall. Your size is Medium.
Speed Your base walking speed is 30 feet, and you have a swimming speed of 30 feet.
Amphibious You can breathe air and water.
Control Air and Water A child of the sea, you can call on the magic of elemental air and water. You can cast Fog Cloud with this trait. Starting at 3rd level, you can cast Gust of Wind with it, and starting at 5th level, you can also cast Wall of Water with it. Once you cast a spell with this trait, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
Emissary of the Sea Aquatic beasts have an extraordinary affinity with your people. You can communicate simple ideas with beasts that can breathe water. They can understand the meaning of your words, though you have no special ability to understand them in return.
Guardians of the Depths Adapted to even the most extreme ocean depths, you have resistance to cold damage, and you can ignore any of the drawbacks caused by a deep, underwater environment.
Languages You can speak, read, and write Common and Primordial.
The Details
With the new Dungeons and Dragons book, “The Ghosts of Saltmarsh” out and available to buy at Amazon, I figured now would be a good time to talk about my favorite underwater race.
So, who are the Triton? The Triton are an aquatic militaristic race that, bound by a sense of duty left the plane of water to slay the terrifying beasts of the sea. Back in 2016, Wizard of the Coast made them a playable race in “Volo’s Guide to Monsters”, where they quickly fell into a race… rarely played. Now, however, as water-based adventures are being released in the newest book, Tritons are becoming a topic of conversation for many people as a playable race.
Triton Race Traits: – Great
ASI boost-
The first part I am going to cover on the race is their stats you gain when playing them. Overall, I would say this a solid boost for your ability scores. My reasoning for this is that they are one of the few races that have 3 different stat bumps when playing them. Most races will get you a plus in two categories one being the main stat with a +2 and the other being a secondary stat with a +1. However, a Triton gets +1 in Strength, Constitution, and Charisma. This makes them a perfect Paladin race since Paladins use all these stats to be competitive. Moreover, any charisma based caster will gain a plus to their main stat, second stat, and a nice boost for a weaker stat making them a fun race.
Aquatic
After the stat increases, I looked at what else they have unique to them. For instance, thanks to their underwater living, they can breathe both air and water. As well as having a swimming speed equal to their movement speed. This makes them perfect for underwater campaigns, but also useful for campaigns that are not. Since they can breathe both and move in both. After all, no other race will be more useful when needing to explore a lake or having a room rapidly filling with water then your water-friendly Triton.
Spell Casting
If you think that the list is already useful and impressive then just wait for these next abilities. In addition to being amphibious, Tritons also have innate spellcasting! That’s right as a child of the sea, you can call on the magic of air and water. This means you can cast the spell Fog Cloud. Then, starting at 3rd level, you can cast Gust of Wind with it, and starting at 5th level, you can also cast Wall of Water. The one downside is that once you cast a spell with this trait, you can’t do so again until after a long rest. This means you now gain additional spells to be able to use a day as well as unique options for whenever the need arises.
Guardians of the Depths
Due to being adapted to the most extreme ocean depths, Tritons have resistance to all cold damage. Moreover, thanks to you being acclimated to deep, underwater environments, you ignore any penalties from these kinds of environments. If that is not enough, you can also be Aquaman and talk to aquatic beasts. This means you can communicate simple ideas, so they understand the meaning of your words. Though, you have no special ability to understand them in return. A great bit to make you more defensive in certain fights as well as some roleplay opportunities there.
Triton Race Personality: Elven Pride and Dwarves Militarism
Militaristic
So, I want you to imagine a Dwarf. Dwarves are infamous for being ready to fight and all have military training. Now I want you to imagine an entire race dedicated not to mining but to fight legendary monsters such as Krakens. These are what Tritons are like in Dungeons & Dragons. They all come from military homes as they must be prepared to defend themselves and everyone else at any moment. The result has led to a steadfast ideology to protect others even at the cost of their own life.
Prideful
Why they might be militaristic, they are nothing if not prideful. For centuries they have protected the sea, Slaying Krakens, and Leviathans before they could even reach sailors. As a result, they see themselves as protectors of the sea and expect everyone to know about their exploits. Ironically, why they expect you to know all about them, their isolations have caused both parties to have no idea of either’s history. That is right! A Triton has no clue what social behavior is outside of their cities. After all, it is hard to travel when you’re fighting behemoths every day.
Role-play
This leads to fun role-play for your character as you can act either innocent or naïve on the world around you. Though my favorite way to play them is to be a person fascinated by the world around them, yet constantly brags about how his world is better. Why some people may love this personality, remember this is just what most are like, your character does not have to act this way. Therefore, if you want to be a person who loves the surface world and knows all sorts of tidbits about it, you certainly can.
Triton Race Lore: Basic but cool
Their beginning
As talked about earlier, Tritons lore is that they left the elemental plane of water to come to ours. The reason for them leaving was that for centuries they all lived there fighting the beasts of the sea. They did such a good job that they forced these terrifying creatures of doom into the Darkened Depths where they stayed. Years passed and the Tritons noticed the attacks from Krakens and the like were weakening. So, their top leaders sent out an expeditionary force to explore the Darkened Depths.
Coming to our world
What awaited them was a total shock. Krakens, Leviathans, Behemoths, all had disappeared and escaped to another plane of existence. The plane of humans, elves, and dwarves. Bound by such duty and responsibility, many of them left their cities to come to our world to put a stop to them once more. Now centuries have passed, and Kraken sightings have lessened from their initial release, as many of them have continued the fight here. After all those centuries, many of these foul beasts are restrained in the sea trenches, where new forts of the Tritons lie on the edges to suppress them.
Roleplay the lore
Unfortunately, many details of Tritons wars are unknown as the books are not that detailed. This, however, provides a great opportunity for the player. After all, if nothing is detailed in the history, this gives the DM power to shape the history however they want. Now the player or DM can boast about a great war that the other players in the group definitely have no idea what you are talking about. Which is pretty easy to accomplish when you can make up stories on the fly. Not only that, it means you can create vast moments in history that tie directly into your campaign. This allows for memorable moments in your campaign that your DM can reveal at any moment as they let their imagination run wild.
Triton Race Appearances: Short and Blue
Tritons are known to be around roughly five foot with blue skin and green hair. In previous editions, Tritons had tails attached to them. However, in the most recent edition, they did not include them. I find this to be a welcomed removal as the tail can be exploited and makes it confusing when buying clothes. Besides that, there are not a whole lot of details on their appearances meaning you can describe them in whatever ways you want to! Just make sure your DM is okay with these descriptions since a Triton race with tails instead of legs might be a little hard for the DM.
Suggestions
Considering there are not a lot of detail descriptions, I figured I would offer a few of my own suggestions. My favorite additions to their description are a love for nets, fishing baubles, and other paraphernalia to be strewn about their outfits to remind them of home. This makes for great roleplay as you can have these mean something. For instance, you could point out that the seaweed net wrapped around your body was left to you by your father after he died fighting a Leviathan. Or perhaps, you have gills or scales due to your aquatic life and now seek water at all times to make yourself feel at ease. Finally, if you really want to go all out just make him a human body with a carp head. Guaranteed to have a few laughs and make yourself really distinguishable. The possibilities are as endless as your imagination.
Triton Dice
Now, if you have fallen in love with the triton race, then like me you need a set of dice that really make your character pop and help you stay committed to your character. As such, whenever I play my Triton Storm Sorcerer I prefer to use the Rowena Dice Set.
It is an absolutely gorgeous set that plays off the deep waters with its dark blue base, but then exemplifies the nobility of the triton race by giving it a silver trim that really makes the set shine. You roll with them and I can say with confidence you will feel prideful in being a member of the triton race.
And believe it or not pride in the tritons is what makes my roleplay of them so strong.
Triton Race Summary: Still My Favorite Aquatic Race
Why the race may not be a popular played race, I still love it for all it has. Their innate spellcasting has come in handy numerous times before. Plus, the lore behind them and its vague stories allow for many creative roleplay encounters that allow me to be able to go all out. Also, I just love the idea of a snobby military commander who thinks his way of life is better but will be the first to put his life on the line to protect those who live differently. It is a really duty-bound and noble ideology that not all races tend to have. Anyway, I hope you found this article to be informative and fun, and if you now want to test out your new triton character, but the Ghosts of Saltmarsh now. Or, if you want to see what a different lore article is like then this, click here for details on how to roleplay a Kenku. As always, have a wonderful day and keep on rolling!
- P.S. If you enjoyed this post and you have a specific subclass, spell, or anything else, be sure to check out my Patreon to see the rewards!
