Heartless Knight

Created by a grim ritual in which the heart is removed from the "Knight" and burned to ash, these "Knights" often only know the required ritual due to madness or discovery of some ancient secrets. Those who's mind is insane or broken enough to attempt this ritual on themselves are clearly not fit for life however if you must become a Heartless Knight then here are the requirements.

To become a Heartless Knight you require 12 wax candles, a ruby worth at least a 100 gold pieces and brazier worth at least 200 gold pieces and someway to keep your character alive during the process such as the spare the dying cantrip or a similar effect. To begin you must surround the brazier with the 12 wax candles, and while within the circle you must begin to remove your heart (at this point you should probably use spare the dying or something), once the heart is removed you must insert the ruby where the heart used to be and then burn the heart in the brazier. Once the heart is fully consumed the process is complete and you become a Heatless Knight.

 

Heartless usually appear to be normal aside from a few features, these are often things like dull and lifeless eyes or starch white hair. Additionally Heartless move in strange seemingly sluggish movements however they retain the full physical abilities of their old selves.

False Life

After completing the ritual, when you reach 3rd level, your body begins to walk a fine line between life and death. While you retain your creature type you are still affected by spells and abilities that targets or effects undead, additionally you gain resistance to necrotic damage and you are no longer affected by age. If you die your body crumbles to dust and is destroyed.

Cling to Consciousness

At 3rd level, your body becomes used to being close to death, once per long rest as a reaction you can choose to stay conscious when you drop to zero hit-points allowing you to move and take actions as normal. You still make death saves and all death save rules apply as normal.

Lifeless Resilience

Beginning at 7th level, when you take damage you can reduce the damage taken by one 1d10 + your constitution modifier, you can use this feature twice per short rest. Additionally whenever you take a long rest you may reattach any missing limbs.

Body of the Grave

Beginning at 10th level, your body has begun to adapt to its lifeless existence, you no longer require Food or Water or Sleep, to benefit from a long rest you must do light activity such as reading, keeping watch, tinkering or some other form of light activity. Additionally you can hold your breath indefinitely.

Grave Walk

At 15th level, you gain the ability to inhabit the corpse of a creature who's challenge rating is no greater than half your level up to a minute, as an action. Once you use this feature you can't use it again until a long rest.

When you use this action to inhabit a creature your body becomes lifeless and falls to the ground, if your body is destroyed before you return to it you die. Additionally when you inhabit a creature its creature type becomes undead and it gains resistance to necrotic damage and venerability to radiant damage. You can use any action or ability the creature can other than legendary actions and you can use a bonus action to return to your original body.

Soul Transfer

Starting at 18th level, When you die you can choose to transfer your soul to another humanoid body, if the body is inhabited you must make a DC 20 constitution saving throw or the effect fails and you die, if you succeed or the body is uninhabited you inhabit the body and revive with 1 health and 1 level of exhaustion. When you inhabit a body you retain all of your base stats, class and subclass, however your race, age and sex changes to that of the body you currently inhabit. You can only use this ability once per long rest.