D&D Race Guide: How to Play an Aasimar
Radiant, powerful, healers, and promising with almost any class pick, there’s a thousand reasons to make your next character an Aasimar.
Descended from both humans and the divine realm, Aasimar have a lot of angelic imagery and descriptions, from radiant energy, to healing, to light-bearing. Unsurprisingly, they are usually follow and champion lawful good gods and act as protectors in battle. Though it’s hard to say that they’re D&D angels, exactly.
“Aasimar bear within their souls the light of the heavens. They are descended from humans with a touch of the power of Mount Celestia, the divine realm of many lawful good deities. Aasimar are born to serve as champions of the gods, their births hailed as blessed events. They are a people of otherworldly visages, with luminous features that reveal their celestial heritage.”
Aasimar Traits
Aasimar turn up twice in the various D&D books as a playable character. The first time is in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Here, they start out with a +1 to Wisdom and a +2 to Charisma, a very human-like medium build, and a base walking speed of 30 feet. They also have good vision in dim light up to 60 feet and decently in darkness.
What sets Aasimars apart is their Celestial Resistance, giving them resistance to necrotic and radiant damage, as well as Celestial legacy, giving them access to a few more spells including Light, Lesser Restoration, and Daylight.
The next time we see Aasimar appear as a player character is in Volo’s Guide to Monsters. And while they are by and large the same, there are a few key changes and updates between the books. Now only their Charisma score increases by +2. Darkvision, resistance, and the Light cantrip are all still intact. But the other spells are no longer a given. Instead, now Aasimar use their Charisma as their spellcasting score.
But what is added is Healing Hands. This lets them use an action to touch a creature and heal it for a number of hit points equal to the Aasimar’s level.
Variants
Volo’s Guide also has three distinct sub-variants of Aasimar for players to choose from during character creation.
Protector Aasimar have a +1 Wisdom and Radiant Soul, which allows them to grow wings and have a once-per-long-rest flying speed of 30 feet.
Scourge Aasimar have a +1 Constitution increase and Radiant Consumption, which makes a powerful, searing light of radiant energy pour out of the character to deal extra damage to anything within 10 feet.
Finally, Fallen Aasimar have a +1 to Strength and Necrotic Shroud, which causes them to transform temporarily into terrifying version of themselves and frighten anyone around them as well as dealing extra necrotic damage.
Best Classes
Especially with Volo’s variants allowing you to make your character a little more custom, there are many solid picks for your Aasimar character’s class. Anything that will utilize a high charisma score is a good pick–like Bard or Sorcerer for example. But Paladin is also a strong choice with a very obvious ‘Blessed Warrior’ backstory. Hexblade Warlock could also be a surprisingly good build, mixing caster and melee fighting with a touch of healing.
Tips & Tricks
Aasimar are a very fun and somewhat underutilized player-race pick with a ton of customization and options to choose from. I think the biggest pitfall to avoid with this one is not making your character too high-and-mighty, too good, or too stuffy. You have an opportunity to make an interesting, multifaceted character who probably also tries a bit too hard. Have fun with it.
Have you ever played an Aasimar character? Has one ever joined your party? Which variant have you or would you pick for your own character? Let us know in the comments!
Happy adventuring!
