Sphindar's Blessing

Sphindar, a god in a homebrewed pantheon, is the keeper to the keys of death and knowledge. Sphindar waits at death's gate to collect every soul's signature for their book of life, a compilation of all of that creature's experiences in writing. As part of your service to him, he has blessed you with unique abilities around death and things known. Your innate magic comes from a past encounter past death's door. There, you were blessed with the presence of the benevolent, but inevitable, magic of the afterlife. In exchange for this blessing, you are tasked with being in the service of Sphindar as a... book collector. Generally, Sphindar is apathetic to the mortal world and only seeks to collect what they found during their time. Only on matters of undeath or unnatural immortality does he become less than benevolent.

 

Death's Knowledge

Starting at 1st level, you have been bestowed with the ability to cast spells as rituals. When you choose this subclass, choose two first-level spells with the ritual tag from any class list. When you gain a level in this class, you learn another spell with the ritual tag of a level that you have spell slots for.

You can not cast any of the spells learned through this feature as anything other than a ritual unless you've learned them some other way. Also, these spells do not count against your known sorcerer spells. If you come across a ritual spell in writing or a ritual spell being performed, you can memorize that spell as well. A new spell takes a number of days to memorize equal to the spell's level. Alternatively, a ritual spell can be taught to you by a caster that knows it. This is significantly faster, taking only an hour per spell level.

Lastly, you automatically learn the following spells at the specified level. Unlike other sorcerer spells you learn, these spells can not be exchanged for other spells.

Class Level	Spells
1st	False Life, Protection from Evil and Good
3rd	Misty Step, Darkness
5th	Speak with Dead, Tongues
7th	Blight, Death Ward
9th	Hallow, Legend Lore

 

Death's Vigor

If your life point would be reduced to 0 or less, you can make a Constitution saving throw (DC 5 + damage taken). On success, reduce the damage equal to your spellcaster modifier. You gain hit points equal to the difference if you would reduce the damage to less than 0. 

After you succeed on the saving throw, you can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest. During that long rest, you gain fewer hit points. The reduction in hit points is equal to half your spellcasting modifier rounded up.

Death's Focus

Starting at 6th level, you have learned to make your spells even more punishing. When you successfully cast a spell that targets at least one creature, you may expend sorcery points up to the level you cast the spell at (1 for cantrips) to deal that many d6s worth of necrotic damage to the target from the initial casting. This additional damage ignores resistance and immunities. If you cast a spell that targets more than one creature, you divide the extra dice as you wish.

For example, if you cast Magic Missile cast at second level, up to two targets can be dealt up to 1d6 each or one target can be dealt up to 2d6 of damage. Additionally, the spell doesn't have to deal damage. If you cast Hold Person and the target fails the WIS save, you can still have the target take up to 2d6 necrotic damage by spending 2 sorcery points.

Death's Presence

Starting at level 14, the forces of death and decay no longer affect you. You are immune to necrotic damage.

Furthermore, your knowledge of the bridge between life and death has become greater. You can focus your concentration (as if you were focusing on a spell) to sense the location of all living, undead, and dead intelligent beings within 120 feet of you. You also know what kind of being each one is. That is, if two people are carrying a dead body, you know that there are two living beings and one dead one but nothing more.

Death's Command

You have learned how to force the life force of a creature to vanish. Starting at 18th level, you can cast Power Word Kill once per long rest, but the target must have a number of hit points equal to your CHR modifier times your sorcerer level.