Soul Bound (3.5 PrC)

[Cielingcat]

I was bored and surfing /tg/, and someone brought up the idea of a group of people who bind their souls to angels to gain power to fight evil. Naturally, angels are in fact emotionless harbingers of vengeance, so this pact comes at a price-the angel slowly burns away the person's soul, turning them, eventually, into a soulless possessed husk that does nothing but fight, not even knowing to eat or sleep, until the body withers away and the bound angel is freed back to the heavens.

Soul Bound
“Heaven demands your death.”

Long ago, a group of warriors pledged their souls to the heavens to receive power with which to fight evil. This was not enough, though-evil prevailed, and they were killed nearly to a man, until only seven of the order remained. In their desperation, they took their pledge one step further; they ritually bound the souls of angels to their own bodies, sacrificing their humanity for greater power.

This power came at a great cost, however. The forces of heaven are not good in any way humans can imagine, but rather emotionless, merciless arbiters of vengeance and their own form of justice. The presence of an angel within a human body gradually burns away the host's humanity, destroying his judgment, his emotions, and his very soul until at last he remains nothing but a possessed shell, a vessel by which the angel can fight evil until the body withers away from lack of proper care.

Hit Die: d10
Requirements
To become Soul Bound, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.
Skills: Knowledge (the Planes) 8 ranks
Special: Must have undergone a Soul Binding ritual. This requires a casting of the Planar Binding spell to bind an Angel (usually an Astral Deva), and it binds the soul of the angel to the Soul Bound character. The details of the ritual may be found in various ancient texts.

The Soul Bound character need not be able to cast the spell himself; he may enlist the help of scrolls or other characters to do so.

Skills/Level: 4+Intelligence modifier
BAB: Good, Saves: Fort: Good, Reflex: Good, Will: Good

Class Skills

Level, Benefits
1, Aura of Good, Smite, Soul Bound, Spellcasting
2, Hands of the Holy
3, Vengeful Blow
4, Dispel Evil
5, Stunning Blow
6, Hallowed Ground
7, Banishment
8, Holy Aura
9, Deathblow
10, Celestial Exaltation

All the following are class features of the Soul Bound prestige class.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Soul Bound are proficient in light, medium, and heavy armor, shields, and in simple and martial weapons.

Aura of Good (Su): A Soul Bound radiates an Overwhelming aura of good.

Smite (Ex): A Soul Bound may channel the bound angel's hatred to strike a particularly powerful blow. One per 1d4 rounds, he may add an additional 1d6 damage per level of the Soul Bound prestige class to the damage of one attack.

Soul Bound: A Soul Bound character has a wrathful angel bound to his soul. At first, the angel's voice is an unbearable torrent of demands; upon taking this prestige class, the character becomes unconcious and completely unresponsive for 1d5 hours. After that, the voice gets gradually more bearable; there are no further in game effects, but the character is constantly assailed with commands from the angel, which he gradually learns to block out; after about a year, the voice becomes completely silent as the angel loses its own identity.

As time passes, the character's soul is gradually worn away by the burning essence of the angel; he becomes angry more easily, he becomes increasingly unwilling to let slights go unpunished, and his world view becomes more and more black and white. As his end approaches, he also starts forget to eat and sleep as the last bits of his mortality cease to be.

The character's lifespan is also drastically shortened-no matter what his original lifespan, he has only 10 years plus one year per point of Charisma he possesses before his soul is burned away and the remnants of the angel control his body completely.

In game terms, a Soul Bound becomes an Outsider with the (native) subtype. He gains Darkvision out to 60 feet and low-light vision, resistance 10 to acid, cold, electricity, and fire, a +4 racial bonus against poison, and is under a constant effect as per the Tongues spell.

Spellcasting: Each level, a Soul Bound character gains +1 to whatever spellcasting class he had before taking this prestige class, if any. If he did not have any spellcasting classes beforehand, he begins gaining spells as a Cleric of his Soul Bound level.

Hands of the Holy (Su): A Soul Bound's hands radiate holy energy. He may use Lay on Hands once per hour as a Paladin of his character level, and any weapon he wields counts as having the Holy quality.

Vengeful Blow (Ex): In place of a Smite, a 3rd level Soul Bound may make a Vengeful Blow. This only functions on a creature that has done damage to him during the current combat, and the extra damage from his Smite bypasses all regeneration and damage reduction, and can only be healed after the Soul Bound character is dead.

Dispel Evil (Sp): A 4th level Soul Bound may cast Dispel Evil as a spell-like ability at will, with a caster level equal to his character level. The save DC is Charisma based.

Stunning Blow (Ex): In place of a Smite, a 5th level Soul Bound may make a Stunning Blow. This attack does not do extra damage, but instead Stuns the target for 1d4 rounds unless they make a successful Fortitude save (DC 10+Soul Bound level+Strength bonus).

Hallowed Ground (Su): A Soul Bound of 6th level radiates a constant Consecrate effect, with a caster level equal to his character level.

Banishment (Sp): A 7th level Soul Bound may cast Banishment as a spell-like ability at will. The save DC is Charisma based. He may only use this ability once per 1d4 rounds.

Holy Aura (Sp): An 8th level Soul Bound radiates a constant Holy Aura, with a caster level equal to his character level. The save DC is Charisma based.

Deathblow (Ex): In place of a smite, a 9th level Soul Bound may make a Deathblow. This attack does no extra damage, but forces the target to make a Fortitude save (DC 10+Soul Bound level+Charisma bonus) or die. Furthermore, when he uses Stunning Blow, he gains the extra damage from his Smite ability.

Celestial Exaltation: A 10th level Soul Bound has mastered the angel bound to him, and regains full control over his mind and body. He no longer ages or suffers the personality effects from the Soul Binding, and his soul will no longer be burned out by it. He gains Regeneration equal to his character level, which is bypassed only by Evil weapons or damage from spells and effects with the Evil descriptor. He does not need to eat, sleep, or breathe, and is immune to ability damage but not drain, confusion, daze effects, energy drain, exhaustion and fatigue, fear, paralysis, poison, disease, and stunning effects. Furthermore, if he is killed, his body reforms the next morning. If he is killed on Desecrated ground this ability does not function, but he can still be returned to life via a True Ressurection spell.

He also gains the Change Shape ability of the various angels.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Looks very nice from what I've seen skimming through. Feels like a balanced Tome Cleric PrC, and I like the flavor. Also, I always like classes with multiple interesting options that aren't also hard to play/keep track of all the abilities for.

I'm going to strongly consider dropping one or more of these into the module I'm working on. If I attach it to a warrior, the power level should be just about perfect for the level of challenge I'm aiming for after a few levels.

[ubernoob]

Not a huge big deal, but a wizard can enter this to pick up proficiencies, 10 levels of full bab, the outsider type, and full casting.

[Cielingcat]

As you said, it's not a huge deal, since there's very little synergy between Wizard casting and full BAB.

[ubernoob]

As you said, it's not a huge deal, since there's very little synergy between Wizard casting and full BAB.

Well, there *is* a lot of synergy (especially with Tome scaling feats). It's just that this class doesn't create more of a problem than already existed with quite a few other classes.

[Cielingcat]

The synergy between full BAB and spellcasting is the ability to buff yourself to high heaven. In the SRD, at least, very little buff spells exist on the arcane list that aren't grossly overshadowed by the ones on the divine list. There may be enough out there that you can dumpster dive for them, but I don't pretend to actually know or care what is in books I don't own.

I also don't like the Tome scaling feats. 5 abilities per feat goes into crazy town way too fast for me; by level 11, you're gonna have 4/feat and at least 5 feats. That's 20 separate abilities, and no one's going to remember all of that.

Better, I think, to rewrite feats as giving scaling abilities, like Power Attack. Things that get better as you get better, rather than constantly giving you better things.