Spirit Warden

Admired and envied by adventures of many stripes, the deadly proficiency and reliable talents of their roguish companions are uniquely suited for tasks wherein the price of failure is unacceptable. Many rogues develop these skills and talents through a combination of natural inclination, and lifelong practice. A Spirit Warden, despite demonstrating the same level of proficiency, draws their unique expertise from very different sources. These rogues often find themselves the victims of traumatic or violent events in their childhood; death seems to linger around them like some sort of curse. Yet unlike those who become trained assassins, Spirit Wardens find that the souls of the departed are held from their rest when the warden is near, lashing ethereal threads to the vacuous abyss that was once the Spirit Warden's soul.

As a Spirit Warden, your roguish abilities are drawn from those haunting visages that seem to linger around you. With focus and training, you have become a vessel for the souls of the recently-deceased, at once the prison for those souls that are held against their will, and the warden of those that still cling to a fragment of their past lives.

Haunt

When you reach 3rd level, you gain the ability to temporarily delay the departing soul of the recently deceased, capitalizing on this moment of distraction to surprise your foes. When you would deal sneak attack damage, you may instead choose to forgo dealing this damage to instead summon a ragged impression of their soul, which lingers about the target, haunting them. The appearance of the spirit may vary at your discretion., but it always occupies the targets space, and moves with it.

Attacks made against a haunted target are made with advantage, and weapon attacks deal bonus force damage equal to the size of your pool of sneak attack dice. The target remains haunted until they or an ally use an action to dismiss the lingering spirit, or until the end of your next turn, whichever comes first.

A creature that has been affected by this ability is immune to its effect for 24 hours.

Soul Bind

Starting at 3rd level, creatures within 10 ft. of you make death saving throws with disadvantage. As a reaction, when a creature dies within 10 ft. of you, you may choose to bind its soul to yours.

You may maintain a number of bound souls equal to your proficiency bonus.

Soulburn

Additionally, as an action, you may choose to burn any number of bound souls, but granting you a number of immediate effects. Souls released in this way disappear, and are no longer available to you, their essence wreathing your body and weapons in flickering ethereal flame.

• You immediately gain a number of temporary hit points equal to five times the number of souls released.
• For the next minute, increase your armor class by +1, as a shroud of ethereal energy surrounds you.
• For the next minute, Dexterity (Stealth) rolls made as part of the Hide action are made at advantage.
• For the next minute, you may add a number of sneak attack dice to qualifying damage rolls equal to the number of souls burned.

Manifest Aspect

Starting at 9th level, as a bonus action on your turn, you may concentrate, channeling an aspect of the spirits that reside within you. For the next hour, while you maintain concentration, you serve as a vessel to the fragment of the creature's soul, and gain proficiencies and abilities associated with the spirit of the fragment.

Choose one of the following effects:

• For the next hour, you make all ability checks with which you have proficiency, with advantage, the aspect bolstering your natural talents.
• For the next hour, you have resistance to a damage type of your choice, the aspect bolstering your natural defenses.
• For the next hour, you may add +1 to your attack and damage rolls, the aspect imbuing your combat prowess.
• For the next hour, attacks you make score a critical hit on a 19, the aspect honing your deadly precision.

Additionally, you gain the following benefits:

• If the aspect regarded you as a friend in life, you may receive answers to three questions as if casting the speak with dead spell.
• If the aspect regarded you as an enemy in life, you may use an action to end the manifestation early, gaining a number of temporary hit points equal to three times your proficiency modifier.
• While you maintain the manifestation, you may take on the appearance of the aspect, as if casting the disguise self. Attempts to perceive the illusion are made with disadvantage.

You may not use this feature again until you finish a short or long rest.

Effigy

At 13th level your mastery of the souls which you carry with you reaches new heights, and you gain the ability to manifest a simulated coil of a spirit of your choice.

Over the course of an hour, you may choose to meditate on one of the humanoid spirits for which you are a vessel, requiring your full concentration for the duration. While focusing on the details of that which sets you apart from one another, as well as the things that bind your souls together, observers see an duplicitous, ethereal image beginning to coalesce before you, as if standing on the other side of the mirror.

At the end of this ritual, an illusory duplicate steps forth from the mirror into the Mundane World, mimicking your words and actions precisely for a few moments before taking on a life of its own. The duplicate is a creature, partially real and formed from ghostly energies, and it can take actions and otherwise be affected as a normal creature. It appears to be the same as the original, but it has half of your hit point maximum and is formed without any equipment beyond whatever simple garments it wore in life. Otherwise, the illusion uses all the statistics of the creature it duplicates, except that it is an undead.

The effigy is friendly to you and creatures you designate. It obeys your spoken commands, moving and acting in accordance with your wishes and acting on your turn in combat. The effigy  lacks the ability to learn or become more powerful, so it never increases its level or other abilities, nor can it regain expended spell slots..

If the effigy is damaged, you can repair it using powdered silver worth 100 gp per hit point it regains. The effigy lasts until it drops to 0 hit points, at which point it reverts to ethereal energy and dissipates.

If you use this ability again, any duplicate you created with this ability is instantly destroyed.

Spirit Veil

At 17th level, you gain the ability to temporarily channel the essence of a creature that you have recently slain.

Immediately after a creature that you can see dies, you may use your reaction to imprint the soul of the recently deceased onto your own. This imprint lasts for 24 hours or until it is called upon.

As an action during this duration, you may choose to imbue yourself with the skills and abilities of the imprinted creature for 1 minute, transforming into an ethereal manifestation of the chosen creature's spirit. While you are transformed, you gain the creature's statistics, including hit points, proficiencies, and abilities, but lost access to your own (the DM will provide you with the necessary statistics). You may end the transformation as a bonus action on your turn.

At the end of the duration, or when you to drop to 0 hit points, you revert back to your normal form with a number of temporary hit points equal to the creature's challenge rating.

You may maintain only a single Spirit Veil at one time; any attempt to capture a second imprint immediately dismisses one that is currently held.