#dmg 5e

Skeleton Racial Traits

Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity Score increases by 2, and your Intelligence and Charisma Scores are reduced by 4.

Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Undead Nature: You are Vulnerable to Bludgeoning Damage, Immune to Poison Damage and Exhaustion, and Immune to the Poisoned Condition.

In addition, you don't require air, food, drink, or sleep.

Languages: You can't speak any languages, but can read, write and understand any languages you knew in life. 

Skeleton PCs and Destroy Undead

A Character’s Overall Character Level is equal to their CR in this case, and so a Level 1 Skeleton PC is equal to a CR 1 Undead Creature. 

A Note on Turn Undead: A Cleric’s Turn Undead specifically rules that “Each Undead that can see or hear you within 30 feet of you must make a Wisdom saving throw.” This Feature, in this case, would also include the Skeleton PC.

My Notes

This Race is almost entirely based on what’s in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Creating Statistics for NPCs, but obviously I needed to tweak it so it wasn’t incredibly overpowered, since Undead are immune to a lot of Spells and effects.

The Skeleton Race as a whole trades the flexibility of other Races for some of the biggest advantages of Undeath, like not needing to sleep or needing air, allowing for Underwater Combat without issue and keeping watch every night without gaining Exhaustion.

These Skeletons aren't resistant to necrotic damage, as it says in the DMG. 

However, they still don't need to eat, drink, or sleep, they still get immunity to the exhausted condition (so have a serious talk with your DM about being a Skeleton Berserker Barbarian...), they still get Poison Immunity, and they have 60 feet of Darkvision. 

This is before we consider drawbacks...

The first big one is that Skeletons can't speak, they can understand Language but can’t speak one unless they gain a Feature or Spell that let’s them communicate through things like Magic, Telepathy and Etc.

The second big thing, they're vulnerable to bludgeoning damage, one of the big three types of non-magical “common” damage including piercing and slashing damage. That means that if your playing this Skeleton Race, whenever you’re hit by a Weapon that deal bludgeoning damage, you’re taking double the amount of damage, which is a pretty massive drawback.

Skeletons are described as very simple-minded, and their Ability Score Increases and Decreases (all available to see in the 5th Edition DMG by the way!) also make the Skeleton Race pretty basic and maybe even under-powered...

Overall, I wouldn’t mind having a Skeleton Character in the Party, so long as they have a reason for being there.

For example, in Eberron, there’s a whole nation that had undead troopers that they used in the Last War.

And in my Campaign Setting specifically, the Land of Carthisia was attacked decades ago by an Army of the Undead. After pushing them back, these now sentient, free-willed undead still linger around the Mountainous Region of the Himmelblas, some of them even being recruited into the massive Mercenary Company known as the Silver Charge.

And so long as they don’t mind offending every Cleric that’s ever lived, I think it’s fine...