Returned from Old Life
Because you are still of the creature race you once were, you retain all ability score upgrades and traits that your race used to have. That shred of yourself within means that you do not gain the immunities of an Undead creature. Instead, you gain a few miscellaneous things.
Ageless
As expected when your body is dead, you never age. This is a rather niche buff, but it gives a little bit of immunity to some curses and effects. Since 5E doesn’t have any aging penalties or bonuses, this doesn’t do much. But it does prevent you from aging to the point where you “naturally” die, so… That’s a plus!
Cling to Life
One of the more impactful effects is that you have a 25% chance to regain 1 hitpoint while making a death saving throw. Rolling a 16 or more is still not an amazing chance to instantly stand, but it’s helpful to have even a mere chance of staving off dying… Again. This isn’t something you want to abuse, since you already got a second chance at life. But if you get knocked out during a fight, then… Let’s just say this comes in handy.
Revenance
You’re both yourself, and not yourself! This is the only real negative effect that the “gift” gives to you. You’re still your creature type, but you show up as undead if anybody tries to check you with Detect Undead or something like that. This can get you, and your party, into trouble if Undead are not appreciated in that area. This doesn’t mean that you take the effects of being undead; spells that only affect undead don’t work on you. This is only for detection. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do, and you might not be considered trustworthy. But at least Clerics won’t be able to use Turn Undead on you.
Unsettling Presence
As an action, you can force a creature to have disadvantage on saving throws for a minute. It’s a Frighten effect, so it only works on living creatures. But, giving a target disadvantage on saving throws is actually really good. This makes a caster build for a Hollow One really potent, since you can almost guarantee that your spells will succeed on a target. Or, you can synergize with your party to let your allies be more effective. Use this action on powerful bosses that really deserve it.
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