Death Touched

Most adventurers have many a brush with death, but you carry its fetid strength within every fiber of your being. For you, the grave is simply a place to rest for a time before you rise again to reap a bounty of life essence from those who oppose you.

Yours is a magic which arises from either an ancient curse by a powerful undead, such as a vampire lord or lich, or from a personal encounter with another foul creature of life within death. Most would consider you doomed to suffer and see your eventual fall to evil and madness as inevitable. You know better.

The necrotic magic that suffuses your very soul deeply influences your physical form. This animating force compels you to linger on the edge between life and true death. At your option, you can pick from or roll on the Death Touched Sorcerer Quirks table to create a quirk for your character.

Death Touched Sorcerer Quirks

D6	QUIRK
1	You constantly carry the stale scent of a graveyard with you.
2	When you bleed, your blood trickles forth as either sand or a thick black sludge.
3	No matter how well fed you are, your flesh clings tightly to your skeleton like a dried out corpse.
4	A ghastly pale glow can be seen within your eyes by those brave or foolish enough to meet your gaze.
5	Your voice echoes with spectral whispers at all times.
6	If you do not constantly pay attention to your expression, it default to a rictus grin that stretches a little too wide for other's comfort.

Deathless Spells

1st-level Death Touched feature

You learn additional spells when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown on the Deathless Spells table. Each of these spells counts as a sorcerer spell for you, but it doesn’t count against the number of sorcerer spells you know.

Whenever you gain a sorcerer level, you can replace one spell you gained from this feature with another spell of the same level. The new spell must be a necromancy spell from the sorcerer, warlock, or wizard spell list.

Deathless Spells

SORCERER LEVEL	SPELLS
1st	bane, inflict wounds
3rd	ray of enfeeblement, spiritual weapon
5th	animate dead, vampiric touch
7th	blight, freedom of movement
9th	dispel evil and good, hallow

Strength of the Grave

Starting at 1st level, your existence in a twilight state between life and death makes you difficult to defeat. When damage reduces you to 0 hit points, you can make a Charisma saving throw (DC 5 + the damage taken). On a success, you instead drop to 1 hit point. You can’t use this feature if you are reduced to 0 hit points by radiant damage or by a critical hit.

After the saving throw succeeds, you can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Unholy Fortitude

Starting at 6th level, your body becomes capable of sustaining itself using only the festering power within you. You don’t need to eat, drink, or breathe. In addition, you have resistance to necrotic damage.

Gravewalker

Starting at 14th level, the dark power that sustains you may leave you resembling one close to death or who has freshly returned from beyond it, but so too does it guard you from the frailties of mortality. You are immune to being magically aged, cannot die from age alone, and suffer no ill effects from old age. You do not require sleep and cannot be forcibly put to sleep against your will, although you still require rest to reduce exhaustion and still benefit from finishing short and long rests.

Additionally, you can reattach a severed body part of yours by spending a bonus action and 1 sorcery point to press it against your body, reconnecting it instantly. If your severed body part is destroyed before you can reattach it, you can spend an action and 3 sorcery points to remove an equivalent body part from a humanoid corpse of your size and attach it to yourself as if it were your own body part.

Command Undead

Starting at 14th level, you can use the necrotic magic within you to bring undead under your control, even those created by other spellcasters. As an action, you can choose one undead that you can see within 60 feet of you. That creature must make a Charisma saving throw against your sorcerer spell save DC. If it succeeds, you can’t use this feature on it again. If it fails, it becomes friendly to you and obeys your commands until you use this feature again.

Intelligent undead are harder to control in this way. If the target has an Intelligence of 8 or higher, it has advantage on the saving throw. If it fails the saving throw and has an Intelligence of 12 or higher, it can repeat the saving throw at the end of every hour until it succeeds and breaks free.