Spirit Seeker

The spirit seeker communes with spirits and otherworldly powers to hunt down prey. By using occult magic, spirit seekers can find slippery targets and inflict deadly curses upon their quarry. While many other rangers frown upon this practice, the few who take this path find greater success in hunting magical and unholy threats.
    These rangers can often be found in remote or desolate areas, where otherworldly entities haunt the few communities that survive in those hostile environments. Spirit seekers emerged as a response to practitioners of dark magic, but were later associated with savages who murdered civilized people. In truth, the process of becoming a spirit seeker is difficult, and involves the practice of taboo rituals. Those who fail their training tend to go mad or become seduced by the dark powers they swore to destroy. The ones who succeed become valuable allies in the eternal war against evil.

Consult the Spirits

Starting when you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you can contact helpful spirits which surround you at all times, and who can guide you towards creatures you hunt. After spending 10 minutes in meditation, you gain advantage on Wisdom (Perception and Survival) checks to find or track a creature that you know of for 8 hours. You don’t have to be familiar with the creature, but you do need the following information for the spirits to help you:

• The creature’s type (e.g. humanoid, beast, monstrosity, undead, aberration, etc.)
• The name of the creature’s species (e.g. gnoll, brown bear, bullette, wraith, beholder, etc.)

    If the type of creature you wish to track is a favored enemy, you also know the distance and direction of the creature you are looking for.
    You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and regain your uses after finishing a long rest.

Spirits' Scorn

Also starting at 3rd level, your spirits emerge from the Ethereal Plane to assail a creature you attack, hastening that creature’s death. Whenever you hit a creature within 60 feet of you with a weapon attack and deal damage, you mark the creature for 1 minute, making it a target for harmful spirits. Whenever you hit a marked creature, you can deal an additional 1d4 necrotic damage. This additional damage can be triggered on a single creature only once per turn.
    The mark ends on a creature early if you target a different creature, the creature is 60 feet away from you, or if you are incapacitated.
    The damage from this feature increases to 1d6 at 7th level, and to 1d8 at 15th.

Blood Ritual

At 7th level, you can perform a ritual using the remains of a recently-slain creature. You can begin the ritual on the remains of a creature that died within the past 24 hours, spending 10 minutes to perform it. At the end of the ritual, you produce one of the following effects:

Voice: You cast speak with dead on the creature. When you cast the spell in this way, you can only ask three questions, and they must be related to the creature’s death. Your DM decides what questions may qualify, though a few examples include:

- How the creature died
- The identity of the creature’s killer
- Where/when the creature perished

Bane: You infuse your weapons with negative energy using the creature’s remains. For 8 hours, your weapon attacks are considered magical, and they deal an additional 1d6 weapon damage to creatures of the same type as the one you performed the ritual on.

Soul: You regain a number of expended spell slots whose total level value is equal to the highest spell level you can cast (as a ranger). For example, if you can cast 2nd-level spells, you can regain either two 1st-level spell slots or one 2nd-level spell slot.

Once you perform any of these rituals, you can’t use this feature again until you finish a short or long rest.

Uncanny Awareness

Also starting at 7th level, you develop a supernatural sense to danger. You cannot be surprised while you are conscious, and you have advantage on Dexterity saving throws to avoid traps, spell effects, and other hazards.

Shared Suffering

At 11th level, your spirits can spread the suffering they inflict on your Spirits' Scorn target to nearby creatures. Whenever you deal damage to a creature with your Spirits' Scorn, you can choose any creatures within 10 feet of the original target and make one spell attack against each of them. On a hit, a creature takes damage equal to the damage normally dealt by your Spirits' Scorn.

Visions of Final Moments

Also beginning at 11th level, the spirits you commune with can reveal a creature’s life moments before it died.
    After performing a 10-minute ritual over a creature’s remains, you enter a trance in which you see a creature’s life through its point of view 1 hour before it died. The creature must have died within the past 24 hours. The trance lasts for 1 minute.
    Once you perform this ritual, you cannot do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

Spirits' Salvation

At 15th level, your spirits can save you from certain death.
    Whenever you would die from a failed death saving throw, whether it results from you failing a roll or from taking damage, you can instead bring yourself back to 1 hit point and immediately take a turn. During this turn, you can only spend your movement to stand up from being prone, and can only take the Attack, Dodge, Help, or Use an Object actions, as well as your bonus actions which let you perform any these actions or other abilities.
    Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again until 7 days pass.