Base Class: Wizard
In these tolerant days, even in cities where spellcraft is outlawed, it is scarcely more than a misdemeanor. Mages, once hounded and feared across all lands, are now welcome across the realms. The exception is held for the blightsower, brewers of rot and necrosis. For them, the old punishments remain; burning, hanging and the rack.
Blightsower’s are universally despised. Common knowledge tells us how they fester like tumors, gathering sickly power and creeping like poison through the blood of a community. To the blightsower, plague and necrosis are allies; they willingly offer their body as sanctuary to microscopic killers that diminish and destroy life, in exchange for toxic power.
To the blightsower, there is no resource that can’t be held gambit for greater strength. Such wizard’s magic ravages their own body and mind to grow. Captured blightsowers are often found gormless and rabid, having strayed too far in pursuit of necrotic power, their own mind plundered to nothingness.
Although it may be possible for someone to wield these powers for good, it is unheard of. To be a blightsower is to commit to secrecy, necrosis, and rot. The reward is magical, microbiological allies with the power to topple nations and keel gods, but the price is one’s own humanity, body, and mind.
Level 2: Shared Sentience
Your body harbors a festering, necrotic disease or curse. You may have crafted this force yourself or contracted it naturally, but in either case, it is a source of power and an ally. You can grant the power within you a measure of sentience, empowering the necrotic force within you at the cost of your mind.
At the end of a Long Rest, you can choose a number of boons from the Shared Sentience Boons table, up to your Intelligence modifier +1. Each boon is granted by the ally within your body, the living disease imbued and magnified by a fragment of your mind. For each boon you choose, you receive a -1 penalty to your Intelligence checks and saving throws. These boons last until you finish a Long Rest, at which time your mind returns to you, and the penalty to your Intelligence checks and saving throws ends.
Shared Sentience boons
. Blindsight: You have blind sight with a range of 10 feet. Within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn't behind total cover, even if you're blinded or in darkness. Moreover, you can see an invisible creature within that range, unless the creature successfully hides from you. Your eyes turn jet black.
. Curse of Strength: You gain a bonus to Strength-based attack rolls and Strength checks equal to your Intelligence modifier. The veins running through your body glow an eerie blood red, visible through your flesh.
. Spell- Storing Virus: Once, you can cast a spell you have prepared of a level up to half your Intelligence modifier (rounded up) without expending a spell slot. Your body occasionally shakes and spasms uncontrollably.
. Viral Armour: While you aren’t wearing armour, you can calculate your AC as 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Intelligence modifier. You can wield a shield and still gain this benefit. Your skin grows a waxy sheen and is painfully coarse to the touch.
. Viral Conduit: Once per turn, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon or spell attack, it must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be Poisoned for the next minute. A creature can repeat this save at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on a success. You emit a strong, sickly odour.
. Viral Genius: You gain expertise in one skill of your choice. Your body creaks and cracks with every movement.
. Viral Mind: You gain proficiency in two skills of your choice. You have no sense of smell or taste.
.Viral Touch: As an action, you can make a melee spell attack against a creature within 5 feet of you. Hit or miss, the target cannot take reactions until the start of your next turn. On a hit, the target also takes 1d12 necrotic damage. This damage increases by 1d12 when you reach 5th level (2d12), 11th level (3d12) and 17th level (4d12). Your finger and toenails grow long, jagged, and shift in hue to a poisonous green.
Level 2: Rot Caster
When you cast a spell that forces a creature Poisoned by you to make a saving throw, you can impose disadvantage on that save. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier, regaining all expended uses upon finishing a Long Rest.
Level 6: Sickly Swarm
As an action, you summon a swarm of fey spirits in the form of rats, bats, or spiders that flit around you in a 15-foot emanation for the next minute, or until you fall unconscious. While the swarm persists, you gain a +3 bonus to your AC, you have advantage on Charisma (Intimidation) checks, and creatures of your choice that enter the emanation for the first time on a turn or start their turn there must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or take 2d4 Necrotic damage be Poisoned for the next minute. A creature poisoned in this way can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of their turns, ending the effect on a success.
Once you use this feature, you cannot do so again until you finish a Long Rest, unless you expend a spell slot of 3rd level or higher to regain a use of it (no action required).
Level 10: Viral Curse
Your grim powers carry a magical curse, able to strike and infect the soul as well as the body. Your blightsower features and spells you cast that inflict the Poisoned condition can affect creatures of your choice typically immune to the Poisoned condition.
Level 10: Viral Ally
The microscopic, magical allies within your bloodstream fortify you against other necrotic forces, and can warn you against incoming harm. You gain the following benefits:
Evasion. When you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, and only half damage if you fail.
Immunity. You resist Necrotic damage, and you are immune to Poison damage and the Poisoned condition.
Uncanny Dodge. When an attacker that you can see hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to halve the attack’s damage against you.
Level 14: Spiraling Necrosis
The necrotic power of your spells spreads like an airborne, noxious cloud of decay. When you cast a spell with a spell slot that targets only one creature and doesn’t have a range of self, you can target a number of additional creatures within 30 feet of the initial target up to half the level of the spell slot expended (rounded down).
Once you use this feature, you cannot do so again until you finish a Short or Long Rest.
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