Awakened Traits
Awakened Variants
Class Options

Awakened

Death comes for all things in a near-infinite variety of ways. So to are there many reasons that the dead might return from the grave. Directly applied necromancy, cursed lands and unfinished business are but a few, and all leave the newly-undead soul with a mere semblance of the life it had before. All undead carry the physical or emotional scars of what ended their mortal lives, though some may be far more subtle than others.

Dead and Reborn

Typically having no lands to call their own, undead with an awakened sense of self are usually perpetual foreigners, wanders in a land and often a time not their own. Compounding matters, most mortal cultures carry within them an instinctual fear of death and the dead, and many associate necromancy specifically with dark tidings. This forms a wall of (often well earned) prejudice and hatred that sentient undead find themselves up against, and many undead choose to hide their necrotic natures behind clothes, masks, and pungent perfumes when journeying into civilization.

Depending on composition, humanoid undead typically range from 20 to 300 pounds, and may possess empty eyes, a colored flame-like magical animus in their sockets, or harrowed, surprisingly mortal eyes burning with an inner fire.

Service and Freedom

Undeath is effectively immortality, a strong reason why many mortal spellcasters of a certain moral bent consider it a viable alternative to actually dying. Still, it is not immortality without a price - senses and emotions dull, food and drink no longer have taste, and often an undead state comes alongside a subservience of will and unthinking toil beneath a master who likely does not have the world’s best intentions at heart.

Some undead are born into freedom, while others earn it or have it thrust upon them. Regardless, all undead that have freedom greatly cherish it, as the reminders of what could easily happen were they not fortunate enough to possess free will abound throughout history. Many consider it their sacred duty to free other mindless undead, or simply to dispatch them wherever they may be found.

The reasoning is straightforward enough: a final rest awarded to all mortals is greatly preferential to eternal slavery to the likes of a short-sighted, megalomaniacal wizard.

Fallen Home, Forgotten Past

For many awakened undead, the past is a distant homeland to which they may never return, holding names and faces now partially-forgotten, and loves and lives as dead as they are. The anguish of this loss is enough to drive many mad, but others use this rage and pain as a source of power and drive, carrying them further on the road to whatever dark destiny awaits.

Frequently, entire countries, customs, and cultures an undead may be familiar with no longer exist, and the sentient dead behaves or - speaks in an antiquated fashion because of this, and making it even more difficult than usual for such undead to relate to more modern mortals.

Undead Names

Many undead that awaken into sentience prefer to keep the names they held in their mortal lives. For others, however, their mortal names are forgotten or have lost meaning. These undead often adopt nicknames given to them by their former masters or present companions, and hold them to be as true as any other creature’s birth name. Examples of names given in this fashion may be seen, below:

Names: Rattlebones, Spore, Rotface, Raven, Bane, Carver, Drudge, Rook, Mort, Pale, Minion, Crumble, Shade

Your awakened character has an assortment of innate abilities.

When dropping to 0 hit points you make death saving throws just as usual. On three failures, instead of dying again, your spirit can’t hold on to the material plane any longer and finally continues to the afterlife, which is your full death. After that you can no longer be resurrected.

Different types of awakened undead are available to you. Choose Bound spirit, Ghoul, Mummy, Revenant, or Skeleton.

Bound spirit

Long after their remains have turned to dust, the spirit of an individual can linger still. There are as many reasons for a ghost to haunt the world as there are folk in it. Ghosts are forcibly tied to the material plane by deep magic and are only able to move on when their unfinished business is concluded. Most ghosts awaken confused, and must discover what it is that holds their attachment to the world of the living, as if discovering a final piece of themselves that they must confront before entering the next phase of their existence.

Adventurous ghosts such as yourself typically either escape the masters that raised them or have something unresolved from their days amongst the living that requires they journey far and wide. If a ghost is charged with unfinished business it can take many forms, from protecting a loved one, to keeping a particular item safe, to simple revenge.

A bound spirit retains its general appearance as it was in life, although those who knew them often have difficulty recognizing them (much to the ghost’s frustration). They are spectral and luminous, but solid to the touch, and can interact with objects as mortals do. All ghosts carry obvious and sometimes twisted marks of what caused their death, which are often quite disturbing to all but the most jaded mortals.

They also retain all of their memories – perhaps all too well, for as the years go by with their business unconcluded, they begin to have difficulty forming new memories, or relating to a world that drifts further from their own time. These ghosts spend more and more time in the endless fog of the Ethereal Plane. They spirits become haunts and specters, appearing only when the world of the living presents a mirror for them to find something familiar in.

These unfortunate souls must rely on others to conclude their unfinished business for them, or they are lost in ethereal fog for all time, which many would rightly consider a fate worse than what death had promised them.

Even though you are a ghost, you still have an ectoplasmic form, which is the matter that makes it possible for you to interact physically with the world, and also tethers your mind, keeping your sanity and your sense of self. The ectoplasmic body can be harmed by the physical world, but without it you would be lost.

Ghoul

Ghouls are undead borne to unlife through envy and greed, and they are consumed with desire for all the things they never have attained in life, usually wealth. While most ghouls lack ambition to rise above mere graverobbing and feasting upon the recently deceased (or even the occasional gravedigger), some recall their unmet ambitions in more detail, and become obsessed with them.

Ghouls that maintain their unlife long enough can become ghasts, re-growing much of their lost skin, rotted-out organs, and regaining much of their former appearance, although their hollow eyes, monstrous teeth, long tongues and fearsome nails will eventually give them away. Ghasts also gain the ability to emit a foul stench, and to rally other undead in the face of clerics and paladins.

Ghouls enjoy the taste of rotting flesh and will horde pieces of individuals they found to be particularly tasty, savoring them as they rot, as if they were so much fine cheese.

Mummy

Mummies become undead not long after their deaths, but most do not awaken until a long slumber has passed. The contingencies that animate them are not always up to them. Most mummies are protectors and guardians, meant to keep something – cursed treasure, powerful artifacts, or unspeakable evils contained. Some are meant only to watch over the remains of a royal family, ensuring their tombs stay undisturbed.

However, once these tasks are gone, a rare few mummies may choose to stray from their ancient dwelling, traveling out of their tombs to inflict themselves on the world above. Depending on the length of their slumber, an awakened mummy might find themselves in a world they scarcely recognize.

The Punished

Once deceased, an individual has no say in whether or not its body is made into a mummy. Some mummies were powerful individuals who displeased a high priest or pharaoh, or who committed crimes of treason, adultery, or murder. As punishment, they were cursed with eternal undeath, embalmed, mummified, and sealed away. Other times, mummies acting as tomb guardians are created from slaves put to death specifically to serve a greater purpose. Once created, a mummy obeys the conditions and parameters laid down by the rituals that created it, driven only to punish transgressors.

Timeless Undeath

Mummies are strong, resilient and nearly unstoppable by conventional means. They speak in a strained and gravelly tone, and those who wish to hide their true nature often take to wearing masks and covering as much of their bodies as possible to disguise themselves.

The long burial rituals that accompany a mummy’s entombment help protect its body from rot. In the embalming process, the newly dead creature’s organs are removed and placed in special jars, and its corpse is treated with preserving oils, herbs, and wrappings. After the body has been prepared, the corpse is typically wrapped in linen bandages.

Mummy Names

Mummies have no memory of their name in life. However, once a mummy becomes free of its master, it often chooses to give itself a real name, or perhaps let a troop of adventurers choose its name for it. Therefore, mummies can have all types of names based on what names they have encountered.

Mummy Traits

As a mummy, you have certain traits that you share with other mummies. As a mummy you gain access to powerful magic through your rotting curse and dreadful glare, though both of these magics have been weakened through the death of your master and your departure from the tomb.

Revenant

Revenants are unique among the undead for their unique ability to raise themselves out of nothing more than an exceptionally strong compulsion for a singular purpose: vengeance at any cost. Most commonly, this vengeance is targeted at the individual who killed them, or the person they deem responsible for their own death, but it also may be sworn on behalf of someone else: a parent, a lover, or a child. Unfortunately little else tends to remain of their former personality.

Born again out of an undying thirst for vengeance, you will not rest until the wrongs surrounding your death have been righted. Superficially you appear similar to a zombie, complete with tattered flesh and scattered decay, or a living being, depending on how long it took before you rose.

Revenants typically have no compunction about killing any and everything that gets in between themselves and the target of their vengeance, but they are not foolhardy. Most look upon their task with a cold, military detachment, planning ahead and ensuring their victories, making them ideal commanders for other undead to follow.

  • Life Drain. When you hit a humanoid with a natural attack, you can use a bonus action to force the target to make a Constitution saving throw DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Constitution modifier. If they fail, they take a number of d6s equal to your proficiency bonus as necrotic damage. If they succeed, they take half the amount. You gain half the amount of necrotic damage dealt as temporary hit points. Once you use this trait, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

  • Mark of Vengeance. As an action, you can target a creature within 30 ft. While the creature is marked in this way, you have advantage on any Perception or Tracking checks you make to find it. Additionally, you know whether or not the creature is alive, even if it is on a different plane of existence.

  • Unnatural Vitality. When you drop to 0 hit points, you may choose to stay conscious instead of falling unconscious. If you do, you gain temporary hit points equal to your total character level. In this state, you may take an action or bonus action on your turn, but not both, and you make death saving throws at the end of your turn. You can remain in this state until you fail your first death saving throw or loose the temporary hit points. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Skeleton

An animated figure made of dry bones devoid of flesh and muscle, you were likely raised by a necromantic caster or dark, supernatural curse as a simple minion, completely without will and self knowledge. Something changed, however; perhaps your master was slain, the land cleansed, or you merely awoke one day to fragmented memories of your previous life. Whatever the case, possessed of a fragmented sense of self and newfound purpose, you struck out into the wider world to find a new destiny.

Without the tiresome requirements of the body’s incessant desire for food, pleasure and excretion, most skeletons that awaken find great pleasure in purpose and activity, measuring their unlife in deeds and accomplishments they never would have had the time or energy to accomplish while still alive. Skeletons make tireless laborers, and despite their lack of a brain, some skeletons are shockingly intelligent, able to recall things about their life and times from an entirely new and detached perspective.

  • Languages. You have a hard time communicating, as you do no longer have the parts necessary for speech. However, by touching a creature you can speak telepathically to it.

  • Bloodless. You are immune to poison damage and the poisoned condition.

  • Bone Pile. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. If you do, you reduce yourself to a pile of bones, render yourself prone, and are considered to be under a similar effect to the feign death spell. While subject to this condition, you are unable to move or take actions other than using an action to end this effect. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

  • Bone to Pick. Whenever both of your hands are free, you may choose to use a free hand and an item action to remove one of your hands or arms. If you remove an arm, it counts as a club. If you remove a hand, it can function as thieves’ tools or a similar set of simple tools while you hold it. In either case, removed hands and arms may be re-attached by using another item action.

  • Brittle Bones. You have resistance to piercing and slashing damage, but vulnerability to bludgeoning damage.

  • Chattering Teeth. Skeletons cannot speak and this is a problem when casting spells with verbal components. However, as any trained wizard would tell you, the words themselves aren’t the source of a spell’s power; rather, the particular combination of specific pitch and resonance, sets the threads of magic in motion. Skeleton spellcasters have solved this by using their body to create those sounds.

  • Drinking Problem. As a skeleton you cannot use potions or any other item that has to be eaten or drunk to have an effect. If you (or a friend) have any alchemical or herbal knowledge, it is possible to use potions by letting them soak into your bones. This requires sponges or bandages, a DC 5 Medicine check and a few minutes.

  • Falling Apart. When you enter your inactive state as described in the slepless trait, you relax the force that holds your bones together, allowing them to fall into a pile. This pile is considered one size smaller than you are normally, and appears inert. You can enter this disassembled state as an action, and can remain in this state until you choose to reassemble. As a ritual, you can reassemble yourself into your normal, humanoid shape.

An awakened approach to some classes is a bit different than that of other races. When you select one of these classes, it is modified as follows:

  • Alchemist

    The biggest problems an awakened Alchemist faces, is that undead and the living have completely different healing mechanisms. It’s not completely unsolvable, but keeping the same potency for potions is not possible.

    Whenever you make a potion that heals, you can either decide if it works only for awakened or only the living, or the potion can heal both, but for half efficiency.

    However, since you are not as affected by poison as the living, you do not have to be so careful. Whenever the Alchemist class description mentions your Intelligence modifier, you may instead use this modifier +4 or your proficiency bonus, whichever is lower.

    Skeletons face a different problem (see the skeleton drinking problem). They have to decide if they are making potions for drinking or “potions” for soaking, only usable on themselves. The positive thing is that the potions made for soaking can be made twice as potent, i.e. healing twice the amount or lasting twice as long.

  • Barbarian

    A raging awakened gives himself completely to the fury of the dead, becoming almost like one of the mindless undead. While raging, you are considered as only undead, i.e. you are immune to all spells and effects that target humanoids. If you are under the effect of such a spell, its duration is only suspended and continues after the rage is over.

    In addition, some of the subraces treat their rage a bit different.

    Bound spirit. When raging you go full poltergeist. Loose items in the area start flying around, striking everyone around you. You no longer deal bonus rage damage when striking an enemy, instead that damage is dealt to all creatures of your choice within 30 ft from you. This damage can be avoided if a creature is prone.

    Ghoul. You become a whirlwind of claws. When you take the Attack action on your turn and make an attack with only your claws, you can use your bonus action to make an additional attack using your claws on the same enemy.

    Mummy. When you start your rage, you can use your Dreadful glare without spending its use. You do this as a bonus action, and can only target a creature which you have, or intend to attack with your first melee attack.

    Revenant. Once during your rage you can use your Life drain feature without spending its use.

  • Bard

    Non-skeleton awakened can draw on their connection to the realms of the dead to power their near-mortal voices.

    You may expend one or more uses of your Bardic Inspiration to create an Unearthly Wail. When you do so, all living creatures within 30 ft must make a Charisma save against your spell save DC or take 1d6 necrotic damage per die spent.

    In addition to damage, the targets become frightened until the end of their next turn. If you spend at least three uses of Bardic Inspiration, the targets become frightened for 1 minute. By spending five uses, targets become stunned until the end of their next turn in addition to becoming frightened for 1 minute. Any creature frightened by this power may repeat the Charisma saving throw at the end of each of its turns to end the condition.

    Skeleton. A skeleton bard can use himself as a spellcasting focus, playing his own ribs as a xylofone.

  • Cavalier

    Instead of selecting a Steed at level 1, you can become a Ghost Rider, gaining the faithful service of a spectral horse.

    You can use your action to create a phantom steed to serve as your faithful mount. You decide the creature’s appearance, but it is equipped with a saddle, bit, and bridle. Any of the equipment created by this feature vanishes in a puff of smoke if it is carried more than 10 ft away from the steed. The steed uses the statistics of a Riding Horse. It disappears when it drops to 0 hit points, it is more than 30 ft away from you, you dismiss it with an action or when sunrise comes. You can have only one steed created this way at any time, and cannot summon a new one until the previous one has expired.

  • Cleric

    An awakened cleric is often in an unique situation. Not many clerics have had the possibility to die and see the afterlife they are destined to. This usually does one of two things; either they find that the place they went to was the right place or they were sent to a place which they would do anything to avoid being sent to again.

    In both cases awakened clerics are often much more devoted to their chosen deity, doing whatever it takes to finally end up where they think they deserve.

    Whenever the Cleric class description mentions your Wisdom modifier, you may instead use your proficiency bonus.

  • Cursed

    Awakened are already cursed with undeath. This does not protect them from being recipients of yet another curse. Life is unfair sometimes…

  • Druid

    The existence of awakened is rejected by nature. An awakened Druid is only possible if he was one before death, (i.e. at character creation).

    On the bright side, a skeleton druid can do things like growing plants or having a bird’s nest in their ribcage.

  • Feyblood

    This cannot happen. A creature can not be both undead and fey.

  • Fighter

    The undead nature of the awakened gives them power and strength far beyond mere mortals.

    As a 1st level Fighter, select Strength or Dexterity. Whenever the Fighter class description mentions your ability modifier for this ability, you may instead use that modifier +3 or your proficiency bonus, whichever is lower. This also applies to attack and damage rolls using this ability.

    In addition, an awakened fighter that selects the Eldritch knight archetype is called a Pale knight. In the archetype description, replace any reference to abjuration spells with necromancy spells.

  • Inquisitor

    Being hunted by an undead Inquisitor, who will not rest until having brought judgement to you, is a frightening thought.

    The divine judgement that has been imbued allows you to be an extension of your deity. Whenever the Inquisitor class description mentions your Wisdom modifier, you may instead use this modifier +3 or your proficiency bonus, whichever is lower. In addition, you may use the same modifier instead of Strength or Dexterity when attacking. Make this choice at level 1 and it cannot be changed later.

  • Paladin

    Awakened are too connected to the negative planes and usually cannot connect to the positive planes of existence. An awakened Paladin changes all class features that deal radiant damage to necrotic damage.

    All awakened also have access to the Oath of the Revenant.

  • Professional

    After your first death you adapted and quickly used your talents to learn repairing yourself. During a rest you can spent time sewing up your bandages, glueing your bones together or seal holes in your dead flesh.

    Roll an appropriate Craft or Profession check (ex. Leatherworking or Mortician). You heal a number of hp equal to your check - 10 at the end of the rest.

  • Ranger

    You have a Soul sense, a dim sense of the souls of living beings who are near. If a living creature comes within 30 ft, you become aware of the creature’s presence and location, even if behind cover. This ability functions as blindsense against these creatures.

    A bound spirit also has access to the Banshee Conclave.

  • Rogue

    There is one thing awakened are better at than any other creature in existence, acting dead. If attacking a target who is examining your “dead” body, you have advantage on the attack, automatically crit on a hit, and may add your sneak attack damage to all attacks that round.

  • Sorcerer

    An awakened Sorcerer usually does not get his power from his bloodline, instead the powers are often a side effect from the process that animated him.

    If you are awakened, whenever the Sorcerer class description mentions your Charisma modifier, you may instead use your proficiency bonus.

  • Swashbuckler

    No changes.

  • Warlock

    The patron might be the main reason that an awakened Warlock is alive. If so, the patron probably has a good reason and grants power even if the Warlock is not perfectly suited for it.

    If you are awakened, whenever the Warlock class description mentions your Charisma modifier, you may instead use your proficiency bonus. In addition, you learn an additional cantrip.

  • Wizard

    The awakened are created by magic of some kind, and a Wizard scooled in the arcane arts can learn how to tap into the magic that keeps them together, in order to cast spells even though out of spell slots.

    As an bonus action you can reduce your Constitution score by the square of the spell slot level you want to cast + the number of times you have already done this today. If you succeed at an Arcana check against a DC of 10 + the Constitution reduction, you can use the spell slot until the end of your next turn.

    In addition, whenever the Wizard class description mentions your Intelligence modifier, you may instead use your proficiency bonus. You may only do this if you are literate.