Death Engineer (prototype)

"Do you need an army or a strike team?" As a Death Engineer, you specialize in employing the dead to solve the problems of the living. 

Tool Proficiency

You gain proficiency with Weaver's Tools. If you already have this proficiency, you gain proficiency with one other type of artisan’s tools of your choice.

Death Engineer Spells

 The following spells are added to your spell list:

Necromechanical Core

As a Death Engineer, you gain the knowledge to create a magically infused power supply that can reanimate the dead to be commanded at will called a Necromechanical Core. The Necromechanical Core is the controller for an undead animated by Necromechanical Heart.

Necromechanical Core

A contained source of engineered undeath, designed and perfected to allow the user to command the corpse upon which they infuse a Necromechanical Heart.

• This item siphons off a portion of necrotic energy directed at the attuned user, granting them a resistance to necrotic damage.
• This item serves as a spellcasting focus for any spellcaster with an affinity for necromancy.
• This item grants the attuned user the knowledge and ability to create a Necromechanical Heart, requiring an accumulated 24 hours of work to complete.

Note: anyone may attune to your core and learn its secrets, but only someone of your unique skills can bring out its ture potenial. 

These Necromechanical Heart can be constructed with a component and GP cost determined by your DM, over a period of a short rest, with a maximum of 8 per long rest. This increased to 10 Hearts at 7th level, and 12 hearts at 15th level. To keep the Necromechanical hearts powered, you must tether them with the resource of an infusion. The amount of Hearts you may power per one infusion slot is equal to your artificer level. If the infusion ends, any corpse affected by this will no longer be suitable for reanimation.

A Necromechanical Heart requires that the body used must be at least the CR of the undead you intend to animate. Installing a Necromechanical Heart into a corpse requires 10 min of work by someone proficient in Weaver's Tools. Once installed a core cannot be easily removed, you spend 10 minutes trying to recover the heart, pass a DC 19 medicine check required to do so, otherwise the heart is destroyed in the attempt. Any Undead created by this feature that is reduced to 0 Hp is no longer suitable for reanimation by any mean short of a wish.

As a bonus action or a reaction, you verbally command your undead created by this feature if the creature is within 60 feet of you (if you control multiple creatures, you can command any or all of them at the same time, issuing the same command to each one). You decide what action the creature will take and where it will move during its next turn, or you can issue a general command, such as to guard a particular chamber or corridor. If you issue no commands, the creature only defends itself against hostile creatures. Once given an order, the creature continues to follow it until its task is complete. You may use this reaction a number of times equal to your proficiency number per long rest.

Heart link
As an action, you may also link the cores together via the consumption of a spell slot to greater output their ability. For each core linked in this way, you must spend an equal number of spell slot levels. e.i. linking three cores, you can spend 3 1st level spell slots or one 3rd level spell slot.

As you gain more artificer levels the base power of a Necromechanical Heart increases as indicated in the table below:

Necromechanical Heart
Artificer level	Necromechanical Heart power
3rd	1/4 CR
7th	1/2 CR
13th	1 CR
17th	2 CR

 

Lost Necromechanical Core

Any undead tied to a Necromechanical Core no longer in your possession will attempt to complete the last orders they received until someone else attunes. if they have completed their orders the undead will do as they please, but regard you and your known allies as friendly while you remain attuned.

Destroyed Necromechanical Core

Without the core to provide power and assert control, any undead tied to the Necromechanical Core are no longer under your control, only intelligent undead may choose how to regard you all others will be hostile to you based on their nature. Each undead will remain for a number of minutes equal to its CR, after which they will no longer be animated. Any corpse affected by this will no longer be suitable for reanimation. 

Replacing your Necromechanical Core

If lost or destroyed, a Necromechanical Core requires four times the GP and components of a heart and 8 hours to recreate. You gain one level of exhaustion after completing this process. If this rebuild time is part of a long rest you may not infuse any items as part of that long rest.

Body Splicer

Starting At 5th level, you develop a technique for merging corpses to enhance the potential strength of the undead that may be raised. You may increase the potential of the corpse up to twice its original CR but may only add up to your proficiency bonus of corpses to the original. The spliced corpse's potential CR will be the sum of the corpses used in its creation. 

Splice work time = 4 hours + (Base creature CR * 3)hours + (extra creature CR * 2)hours per addition corpse 

Enheartening Launcher

Starting at 9th level, you develop the ability to launch Necromechanical Hearts. As a bonus action, you may choose a corpse within range to install a  Necromechanical Heart. Any heart used in this way will become unstable, and only last for 10 minutes. You may use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + Wisdom modifier (minimum 1)

Heart Filled with Magic

Starting at 15th level, at the end of a long rest, you can upgrade one Necromechanical Heart that is already installed in an undead. When a Heart upgraded in this way, during the same long rest, you must apply one infusion to the undead. If you have any questions as to how this infusion will manifest work with your DM the determine the effect.