Anemic Wounds
Foes find the wounds you inflict hard to heal.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Bleeding Wounds (ghost strike)).
Benefit: Magical healing does not stop your bleed effects unless their caster succeeds at a magical skill check against you. Healing from class features (such as lay on hands) use their class level as their MSB for this purpose. In addition, the DC needed to remove your bleed effects with the Heal skill increases by an amount equal to your caster level.
Animating Possession (Dual Sphere)
You can project your soul into an object to give it a semblance of life.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Master’s Presence), Enhancement sphere (Animate Object (enhance)).
Benefit: When you use Animate Object, you may automatically possess the object as the Possession advanced talent. Your animated object always willingly fails its saving throw against this effect. You do not have to share a space with them, and you may possess the object despite it being a construct. In addition, you can shift concentration of a single Enhancement sphere ability or effect to an undead you control as a free action. If its concentration is broken (using your concentration modifier), the enhancement is ended as normal.
Baleful Storm (Dual Sphere)
When thunder rolls and lightning cracks, your minions rise.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Mass Death Magic), Weather sphere (Rain Lord).
Benefit: When you use control weather to create or control Precipitation of severity 4 or more, you may choose to spend 2 additional spell points. If you do, you may reanimate any number of corpses within the area of controlled weather each round as a move action without paying the base ability spell point cost. Your Hit Dice limits apply to the total number you may reanimate with this ability, and the reanimated undead only last as long as your control weather is creating or controlling Precipitation of at least severity level 4.
Blessed Necromancy (Dual Sphere)
Your power over the dead extends to influence over their destiny.
Prerequisites: Death sphere, Fate sphere.
Benefit: You may use your word abilities as ghost strikes (using your Death sphere caster level to determine range and number of targets but your Fate sphere caster level for any other effects). Additionally, when you reanimate one or more targets, you may target them with a single word ability as a free action. If the undead creatures are maintained through concentration (such as through the Sustained Reanimation talent), you may concentrate on this word and the reanimation as part of the same action.
Channel Resistance
You and undead you create are resistant to channeled energies.
Prerequisite: Death sphere.
Benefit: You and all undead you reanimate gain channel resistance +2. This stacks with other sources of channel resistance.
Channeled Detonation (Channeling)
You can overcharge your connection with your undead using your channel energy ability.
Prerequisites: Death sphere, ability to channel negative energy, caster level 5th.
Benefit: You can spend a use of your channel energy ability as a standard action to detonate a mindless undead you control within 30 feet (or your dominion range, whichever is greater), destroying it, but causing your channel energy to burst outwards from its location; your channel deals (or heals, as appropriate) 1 additional point of damage per Hit Die of the undead sacrificed.
You can activate this ability as an immediate action whenever a mindless undead you control is reduced to 0 hit points by spending a spell point (and a use of channel energy, as normal).
Cooperative Reanimate (Teamwork)
Undead you and your allies create resonate with each of your souls.
Prerequisite: Death sphere.
Benefit: You may give simple commands to undead under the control of an ally who also possesses this feat; if they receive conflicting orders, they act under their controller’s orders. In addition, if at any time you would fall unconscious or be dropped to 0 hit points or less, you may choose to transfer any undead you have control over to another ally with this teamwork feat for 1 minute (or their normal maximum duration, whichever is shorter). Transferred undead may be returned to their owner during this time period as a move action, but can never be transferred to a third ally. After the duration expires, they are considered under your ally’s control and count towards your ally’s maximum Hit Dice total of undead they can have reanimated at once.
Corpse Explosion (Dual Sphere)
You can cause a corpse to explode like a literal bomb.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Corpse Bomb), Destruction sphere.
Benefit: You may use a destructive blast to activate your Corpse Bomb talent instead of a ghost strike. Affected targets are allowed a Reflex save for half damage.
Crimson Theurgy (Dual Sphere)
Prerequisites: Blood sphere, Death sphere.
Benefit: When determining the range of your ghost strike and Blood sphere effects, you may use the longer of your blood control and ghost strike ranges. This does not increase the size of the cone from the Mass Death Magic talent.
When you deal damage to a creature with the Bleeding Wounds ghost strike, you may spend a spell point as a move action to target that creature with blood control. If you possess both Mass Blood Magic and Mass Death Magic talents, you may target a number of creatures affected by the ghost strike up to the maximum allowed by Mass Control.
Deadcaller
The otherworldly are called like the departed, for little distinguishes the transient soul.
Prerequisites: Conjuration sphere (Undead Creature (type) x2), Death sphere.
Benefit: A companion that possesses the Undead Creature (type) talent taken twice counts as an undead you reanimated and control for the purpose of Death sphere talents, such as Empowered Reanimate, Reanimated Warriors, and Tomb Of Flesh. A Conjuration companion cannot be destroyed or sacrificed by your effects (such as the Dark Sacrifice talent) or the target of effects which would alter or merge corpses (such as the Death sphere Corpse Manipulation talent or Corpse Forge advanced talent).
If you possess the Conjuration sphere Call The Departed talent, you may reduce the spell point cost to use call the departed by 1 (minimum 0) by using a recently slain corpse within your Conjuration sphere summon range as an additional material component. A corpse used this way must be one that was recently slain (usually within one hour) and has a CR greater than or equal to 1/2 your Conjuration sphere caster level. When a corpse is used as a material component with this feat, the corpse becomes a drained husk that cannot be reanimated or used as a material component to re-summon your companion again with this feat.
Dispatch The Weak
Weakened bodies make for easy targets for your death effects.
Prerequisites: Death sphere, caster level 3rd.
Benefit: Creatures that are fatigued or exhausted take a -2 penalty on saving throws against death effects originating from you.
Extradimensional Gullet (Combat)
Prerequisites: Swallow whole, Alteration sphere (Serpentine Transformation (transformation)), or Death sphere (Tomb Of Flesh); Warp sphere (Extradimensional Room (space)).
Benefit: When you swallow a creature whole or entrap them using Tomb Of Flesh, you may shunt it into your extradimensional room or into a seemingly endless maze of entrails rather than your stomach. You may choose whether or not a creature in your extradimensional room takes damage as if swallowed whole, but either way a creature may attempt to cut their way out of your extradimensional room as if you had swallowed the creature whole. If a swallowed creature successfully cuts its way out of you, it must attempt an Intelligence check (DC 10 + 1/2 your Warp or Alteration sphere caster level) as it crawls out of the hole. If the victim is successful, it escapes you, but on a failure, the victim merely crawls from one extradimensional intestine to another and must endure another round of being swallowed whole. You still take damage from being cut regardless of the creature’s success. You may have four times the number of creatures swallowed with this ability that you normally could, although this does not allow you to swallow larger creatures.
You can continue to use swallow whole even after a creature cuts its way out. When under the effects of an ability which would impede extradimensional travel, you lose this ability but your swallow whole or Tomb Of Flesh ability functions normally.
If you die, the extradimensional space contracts, disgorging any swallowed creature into your corpse’s space.
Flesh Absorption Master
Your body reaches peak conditioning for digesting prey and holding corpses for fodder.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Tomb Of Flesh).
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to your CMD and AC against creatures absorbed by your Tomb Of Flesh, and you may carry up to 2 additional creatures inside your Tomb Of Flesh at a time. You may choose whether or not to deal negative energy damage to your absorbed creatures or not, but must make the same choice for all absorbed creatures.
If you possess Necrotic Feeding, when a creature within your Tomb Of Flesh dies you may target it with a Necrotic Feeding ghost strike as an immediate action, spending a spell point as usual. If the target fails its saving throw against this ghost strike, you may absorb its entire corpse into you, increasing the duration of your Necrotic Feeding bonus to hours per Hit Die rather than 10 minutes per Hit Die. Absorbing a corpse in this fashion does not absorb its equipment, which is expulsed harmlessly from your body.
Flexible Ghost Strike (Dual Sphere)
You can make ghost strikes in a variety of configurations.
Prerequisites: Death sphere, Destruction sphere (one (blast shape) talent).
Benefit: You can apply (blast shape) talents to your ghost strikes as if they were destructive blasts. They still count as a ghost strike for all purposes, and they use your caster level for the Death sphere to determine all parameters (range, area, etc.). If the ghost strike does not allow a saving throw, your target is allowed a Will save to negate its effects.
Lifebound Auspician
You bend the forces of the cosmos to the heartbeat of mortality.
Prerequisites: Fate sphere; Death sphere or Life sphere; caster level 3rd.
Benefits: Whenever a Fate sphere effect you create would use an alignment, you may instead choose living or undead. Living and undead are considered opposite alignments that are 3 steps away from each other and do not have an alignment aura (such as determining additional penalties to the saving throw associated with the Enmity (word) talent or the Reveal Alignment (consecration) revealing whether the creatures inside are living or dead).
You must possess the Death sphere to choose living or the Life sphere to choose undead. You may treat yourself as either living or undead when creating a consecration to exclude yourself from its effects (as you would normally be your own alignment and unaffected).
In addition, whenever you use the Serendipity consecration, you may modify it with one of the following:
- Living Bastion (requires Life sphere): Instead of its regular effects, your Serendipity consecration bonus changes to sacred and only grants bonuses to living creatures (or penalizes undead creatures if you possess the Greater Serendipity talent), increasing by +1 for every 10 caster levels you possess. Any living creature healed by a magical effect inside this consecration heals up to an additional +1 hit point per Hit Dice they possess (to a maximum of the original amount healed).
- Unliving Bastion (requires Death sphere): Instead of its regular effects, your Serendipity consecration bonus changes to profane and only grants bonuses to undead (or penalizes living creatures if you possess the Greater Serendipity talent), increasing by +1 for every 10 caster levels you possess. Any undead created inside this consecration gains an additional +1 hit points per Hit Dice they possess.
Sphere effects modified with this feat are still treated as the original talent for all purposes, and as such, do not stack with those same talents unmodified by this feat. This prevents a character from benefiting from both the Hallow (word) against evil and the Hallow (word) against undead, as modified by this feat, against the same target or effect. Likewise, a regular Serendipity consecration and the Living Bastion-modified Serendipity consecration’s effects would not stack, despite granting different bonus types.
Note: For the purposes of this feat, a living creature is any creature with a Constitution score.
Example: A Fate sphere caster uses the Divine Force (consecration) talent. Instead of using the Fate sphere caster’s alignment, the caster chooses living and affects any undead, regardless of their alignment, and does not affect living creatures. That same caster uses the Enmity (word) talent, choosing undead and targeting a living creature. The living creature must succeed at a Will saving throw or be blinded as though their alignment were 3 steps away from the caster’s.
Might Of The Grave (Dual Sphere)
When you reanimate a body, you can grant it magical enhancements for a short time.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (reanimate ability), Enhancement sphere (any (enhance) ability).
Benefit: When you reanimate a corpse or corpses, you can apply an enhancement to them as part of the same action. Enhancements that require additional spell points must have that cost paid as well. This enhancement remains in effect as long as the undead is not destroyed, and cannot be dispelled separately, though neither Permanent Undead nor Sustained Necromancy can extend the duration of these enhancements past the base duration of reanimate.
Parts And Pieces (Dual Sphere)
“Arms and legs make perfectly acceptable furniture, minions, and anything in between.” – Kul’thiran, Master Necrotaxidermist
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Piecemeal Reanimation (dominion)), Enhancement sphere (Animate Object (enhance)).
Benefit: You may choose to have any piecemeal undead under your control count as animated objects for the purposes of your Enhancement sphere talents, feats, and other abilities, but count them against both the total number of Hit Dice you can have reanimated and as animated objects. You must decide to treat a piecemeal undead as an animated object when it is first created.
A piecemeal undead under your control that you treat as an animated object gains additional construction point abilities as normal for an animated object, chosen when it is reanimated.
Piecemeal Animation (Dual Sphere)
Prerequisites: Death sphere, Telekinesis sphere (Divided Mind).
Benefit: When you reanimate a dead body, it does not need to be intact. So long as at least half the body remains you can animate it as if it was intact, stitching its broken form together with telekinetic forces that keep it upright and stable. You may even work with worse material than this, merging smaller pieces of different bodies and animating them as single whole so long as you have enough material and all pieces come from the same kind of creature.
Plague Lord
Diseases you inflict fester at an alarming rate.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Inflict Disease (ghost strike)).
Benefit: When a creature fails its save against Inflict Disease, it must attempt another saving throw against every disease it currently suffers from - successful saves do not count towards a disease’s cure, and failed saves immediately inflict the disease’s effect.
Poltergeist’s Malice (Dual Sphere)
Every mistake your foes make brings them closer to your service.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Poltergeist (ghost strike)), Telekinesis sphere (Telekinetic Maneuver).
Benefit: You gain a bonus on CMB checks equal to your Poltergeist penalty when making Telekinetic Maneuver attempts against creatures suffering from your Poltergeist effect.
Rage Of The Grave (Combat)
Your revenant-like anger fuels you even in death, granting you one last chance to take down your killers.
Prerequisites: Death sphere, rage class feature; caster level 6th or base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: Whenever you are dealt hit point damage that would kill you, you can spend all your remaining rounds of rage as an immediate action. If you do, you are immediately reanimated as a fast zombie as if you had reanimated yourself, except you possess Hit Dice equal to your racial Hit Dice plus your class level, and your duration is equal to the number of rounds of rage you spent to use this ability. You gain all passive benefits and detriments of your rage despite being undead, and may still use rage powers. Each round, you must attempt to kill the creatures that killed you to the best of your ability, (as determined by the GM), or the duration immediately expires.
When the duration expires (assuming you were not destroyed while a fast zombie), you are returned to life with -1 hit points (stable), gaining 2 temporary negative levels that last 24 hours.
You must have at least one round of rage remaining to use this ability, and you can only use this ability once per day.
Soul Seer
Prerequisites: Death sphere, caster level 5th.
Benefits: Your sight allows you to see the life force a creature possesses. As a swift action, you can instantly identify whether each creature within your line of sight is healthy, injured (has more than 4 hit points missing), near death (has less than 4 hit points remaining), dying (has less than 0 hit points remaining), dead, undead, or neither alive or dead.
If you possess the Gravetongue talent, you gain the benefits of Gravetongue as a constant supernatural effect.
If you possess the Summon Spirit talent, you no longer suffer negative energy levels when a spirit succeeds against your summoning. Additionally, if you have access to a creature’s corpse, you no longer need to summon their spirit in order to ask questions of them, although you must still spend 3 spell points and an hour communicating with their spirit.
Strange Corpsecraft
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Expanded Necromancy), caster level 3rd.
Benefit: You gain the ability to reanimate unique variant undead by supplying other spheres as part of reanimating them. Variant undead created with this feat are reanimated with the Expanded Necromancy talent. Each variant undead has an associated sphere. If you do not possess the associated sphere, you must spend an additional spell point when reanimating that variant. If you possess the Corpse Forge advanced talent, variant undead with a fixed number of Hit Dice, such as the beheaded or isitoq, may be reanimated with a number of Hit Dice equal to the corpse used (such as using a 5 Hit Dice corpse to create a 5 Hit Dice isitoq, instead of the default 1 Hit Die isitoq).
You may reanimate the following variant undead:
- Beheaded: You may reanimate beheaded (Pathfinder Bestiary 4) using an intact head. Associated Sphere: Telekinesis.
- Exoskeleton: You may reanimate exoskeletons (Pathfinder Bestiary 6) using a mostly intact vermin corpse that has an exoskeleton, such as arachnids, crustaceans, insects, and mollusks, but not soft-bodied vermin such as jellyfish and leeches. Associated Sphere: Creation.
- Frostfallen: You may reanimate frostfallen (Pathfinder #51: The Hungry Storm) using an intact corpse and a source of water, snow, or ice sufficient for Nature sphere (water) package sphere effects. Associated Sphere: Nature ((water) package).
- Isitoq: You may reanimate isitoqs (Pathfinder Bestiary 4) using the head of a Small or Medium corpse that has at least one intact eye. Associated Sphere: Divination.
- Sunbaked: You may reanimate sunbaked zombies (Pathfinder #80: Empty Graves) using an intact corpse. Associated Sphere: Light.
At GM discretion, other variants of skeletons or zombies and other similar undead may be appropriate to reanimate with this feat.
Special: If you possess the Undead Animal Companion feat, you may grant your animal companion one of the undead templates available from this feat (exoskeleton, frostfallen, sunbaked) in addition to the options added by Expanded Necromancy.
Note: The options presented by this feat were curated from the miscellaneous unintelligent undead variants which required rituals, specific components, or other special circumstances to be reanimated, such as the preparation rites required to reanimate a sunbaked zombie. As such, they were not considered a “normal” variant akin to a bloody skeleton or fast zombie.
Without the Strange Corpsecraft feat, these undead are normally only accessible through the Greater Undead advanced talent. GMs are encouraged to allow this feat to raise unintelligent undead variants in their settings which ordinarily require these special circumstances, or similarly bar variants which do not fit their setting (such as raising frostfallen in an Arabian Nights desert setting). Likewise GMs may allow this feat to be accessible to characters that meet this feat’s perquisites (without requiring the character allocate a feat to unlock this) in settings this feat may be considered a “tax” to access these types of undead. Doing so should be by GM permission (similar to allowing an advanced talent).
Beyond worldbuilding implications, some undead templates are stronger than others. Specifically, the frostfallen template is potentially stronger than even undead available through the Greater Undead advanced talent. GMs should review the templates presented here and consider restricting them if they offer too much power in your games.
Superior Reanimation
Undead you create are even stronger than usual.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Empowered Reanimate).
Benefit: All creatures you reanimate gain a +6 enhancement bonus to their Strength and Dexterity, or a +8 enhancement bonus to either Strength or Dexterity. These bonuses supercede those of Empowered Reanimate.
Swift Demise (Dual Sphere)
Your chronomantic power extends to blurring the moment between life and death.
Prerequisites: Death sphere, Time sphere.
Benefit: You may use your Slow and Haste abilities as ghost strikes. Additionally, when you reanimate a body or bodies, you may augment them with your Haste ability as a free action. If the undead creatures are maintained through concentration (such as through the Sustained Reanimation talent), you may concentrate on Haste and the reanimation as part of the same action.
Sylvan Necromancy (Dual Sphere)
Plant and animal matter are equally suitable focuses for your magic.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Expanded Necromancy), Nature sphere.
Benefit: You can use your (plant) geomancing abilities on corpses instead of plants. In addition, you can reanimate dead plant life as zombies (or skeletons, if they are made of wood) with the grab special ability. These animated plants are treated as animated objects when determining their statistics, although they do not gain construction points. If you possess Hazardous Terrain, undead plant life and plant creatures you create add damage on a successful grapple attempt as if it were an entangle effect.
Twisted Reanimation (Dual Sphere)
When you reanimate a corpse, its remains shift to suit your purposes.
Prerequisites: Alteration sphere (Undead Body), Death sphere; or Alteration sphere, Death sphere (Corpse Manipulation).
Benefit: When you reanimate a dead body, you may apply a single trait you have access to through the Alteration sphere to the new skeleton or zombie as a polymorph effect; this effect remains as long as the undead stays reanimated. When reanimating multiple bodies at once, you must grant each body the same trait. As a standard action, you can touch an undead you control benefiting from this effect to change the trait granted.
Undead Animal Companion
Your animal companions serve you beyond the grave.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Undead Whisperer); animal companion or mount class feature.
Benefit: You can gain the services of an undead animal companion with the skeleton or zombie template, either by performing a ceremony requiring 24 uninterrupted hours of prayer in an environment where the new companion typically is buried, or to replace (or reanimate) an animal companion that has perished. It keeps its Intelligence and Wisdom scores, and you may use the higher of its Constitution and Charisma for its new Charisma score. It retains the same feats, tricks, and skills of a living animal companion, and you can continue to use the Handle Animal skill to direct it. It keeps all special abilities gained as a part of being an animal companion (i.e. evasion) and as a member of their species. For the purposes of effects targeting creatures by type (such as a ranger’s favored enemy and bane weapons), it counts as both animal and undead.
If you possess Expanded Necromancy, you may make your animal companion one of the options available through that talent at no extra cost.
Versatile Feeding
You have learned the art of funneling necromantic power between yourself and your minions.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Necrotic Feeding (ghost strike)).
Benefit: Whenever you use your Necrotic Feeding ghost strike, you may make either or both of the following choices:
- You may use Necrotic Feeding to consume a mindless undead you reanimated and control (regardless of its actual hit points); if you do, it automatically fails its saving throw.
- You may grant the bonuses gained from your Necrotic Feeding to an undead you control within your dominion range.
Only one creature can benefit from your Necrotic Feeding bonuses at a time, and additional uses of Necrotic Feeding overlap (do not stack).
Vudu (Dual Sphere)
Prerequisites: Death sphere, Illusion sphere (Illusionary Touch (sensory, touch) x2, Illusionary Disguise ability).
Benefit: Anyone struck by your ghost strike takes damage from your Illusionary Touch in addition to any other effects.
Special: Your reanimated undead gain the benefits of the Illusionary Disguise glamer appearing as they did when they were alive. You do not need to know what the creature looked like when it was alive to gain this benefit.
Warded Bones (Dual Sphere)
Undead that you create are even harder to destroy than normal.
Prerequisites: Death sphere, Protection sphere.
Benefit: When you reanimate a corpse, you can also apply an aegis to the undead. The spell point cost of the aegis must be paid as well. This aegis remains in effect as long as the undead is not destroyed, and cannot be dispelled separately. If combined with Mass Death Magic, each aegis must be paid for separately.
Neither Permanent Undead nor Sustained Necromancy can extend the duration of these aegises past the base duration of reanimate.
Warlord Of The Damned (Dual Sphere)
You can rally the hearts of your people - even after they have stopped beating.
Prerequisites: Death sphere (Master’s Presence), War sphere; or Death sphere, War sphere (Hallowed/Unhallowed Totem (totem)).
Benefit: As a free action, you can shift concentration of a single active totem to an undead you control (using your concentration modifier); if its concentration is broken, the totem is ended as normal. In addition, undead you control can benefit from morale bonuses granted by your totems and rallies.