Master of Life and Death [PrC]

[dyslexicfaser]

Master of Life and Death
"Good, evil, life, death... they all have their good points."

For those who walk the path of the Master of Life and Death, petty distinctions like good and evil are meaningless before the desire to know and understand all that life has to offer. And as death is an intrinsic part of life - an equal and opposite force - one must also know death intimately. Masters of Life and Death believe that death is not inherently evil, and that there can be no crime that committed whilst in the pursuit of knowledge. Some who follow this discipline seek knowledge of the primeval forces of life and death for the power it offers, but many pursue it for the sake of learning itself.

Because of the stigma that necromancy carries, many good men and women, both commoner and cleric, revile Masters of Life and Death as one short step from utter corruption, whereas evil forces tend to view Masters of Life and Death as dabblers in powers they cannot comprehend.


Prerequisites:
Skills: Knowledge (planes) 10 ranks, Knowledge (Religion) 10 ranks, Knowledge (History) 3 ranks, Spellcraft 5 ranks
Alignment: Any neutral
Special: Able to turn/rebuke undead as a fifth level cleric
Feat: Extra Turning


Hit Die: d6
Skills: 4 + Int modifier

Master of Life and Death
{table=head]Level|Base AttackBonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special

1st|

+0

|

+1

|

+0

|

+1

|Turn/Rebuke Undead, Spellcasting level +1

2nd|

+1

|

+1

|

+1

|

+1

| Versatile Turning, Spellcasting level +1

3rd|

+1

|

+2

|

+1

|

+2

|Neither Good Nor Evil, Spellcasting level +1

4th|

+2

|

+2

|

+1

|

+2

|Hurt and Healing in Each Hand, Spellcasting level +1

5th|

+2

|

+3

|

+2

|

+3

|Mysteries of Life and Death, Spellcasting level +1[/table]



Turn/Rebuke Undead (Su): If the Master of Life and Death already has turning or rebuking, she may add her levels of Master of Life and Death to her level for the purposes of turning or rebuking.

Spellcasting: Every level, the Master of Life and Death casts spells (including gaining any new spell slots and spell knowledge) as if he had also gained a level in a spellcasting class he had previous to gaining that level.

Versatile Turning: A Master of Life and Death may choose whether to turn or rebuke undead (that is, an evil cleric will gain the ability to turn undead, and a good cleric to rebuke).

Neither Good Nor Evil: A Master of Life and Death is not restricted by alignment in the same way a cleric is: a Master of Life and Death may cast spells with both the [Good] and [Evil] tag.

Hurt and Healing in Each Hand: A Master of Life and Death may convert stored spells into either Cure or Inflict spells.

Mysteries of Life and Death: A true Master of Life and Death can become a conduit to both the Positive Energy Plane and the Negative Energy Plane. As such, she is healed by both positive energy (such as Cure spells) and negative energy (such as Inflict spells). In addition, she may add the spell Clone to her spell list as a ninth level spell.



I couldn't find a PrC for exactly what I was looking for in my cleric necromancer, so I thought, why not try creating one myself?

Overpowered? Underpowered? Just plain weird? I've never tried creating a class before, so suggestions are more than welcome.

[Katasi]

Hmm, very interesting. And that last ability is really power. I like it... but it could be abused. This is a very powerful PrC though, you need to up those Prerequisites. Alot.

[AKA_Bait]

I agree with the poster above, you need to dramatically up the prereq's for this. A character could get into this PRC at 3rd level and lose NOTHING. I'd up the skill requirements to at minimum 10's and probably throw a feat (spell focus: necromancy, Extra Turning) or class requirement (turn or rebuke undead as a 5th level cleric?) in there for good measure.

As it stands, this is brokenly good.

Also, you might want to use the code for tables and Prc's Fax Celestus was nice enough to provide us all on this thread.

[Katasi]

I agree with the poster above, you need to dramatically up the prereq's for this. A character could get into this PRC at 3rd level and lose NOTHING. I'd up the skill requirements to at minimum 10's and probably throw a feat (spell focus: necromancy, Extra Turning) or class requirement (turn or rebuke undead as a 5th level cleric?) in there for good measure.

As it stands, this is brokenly good.

Also, you might want to use the code for tables and Prc's Fax Celestus was nice enough to provide us all on this thread.

Yes, this inclusions seem like they'd fix it up pretty well. Personally I'd require both the spell focus and a turning feat of some kind, but that's just me.

[AKA_Bait]

Yes, this inclusions seem like they'd fix it up pretty well. Personally I'd require both the spell focus and a turning feat of some kind, but that's just me.

Yeah, I would too. This is a really really good PRC and should be really really tough to get into.

[puppyavenger]

personaly i'd jeep it from being cleiric only.
And the last ability can be replicated by a binder with the demilich vestige.

[AmberVael]

I really like the idea of this class. I've always liked the idea of power based on balance of two opposites.
Anywho, my 2 cents is this:

Neither Good Nor Evil: A Master of Life and Death is not restricted by alignment in the same way a cleric is: a Master of Life and Death may cast all spells from the cleric list, including Chaos, Good, Evil, or Law.

With the flavor of the class, and the title of the ability even, I'd say they should be restricted to either good or evil spells. Chaos and Law should still be affected depending on their alignment.
However, if you'd like to keep that clause, I might suggest that you rework the alignment requirement. Maybe put it at True Neutral?
As it is, I don't think a neutral evil or neutral good person would fit well in this class anyways... idk, maybe they would. But it seems more like the CN, N, or LN type class.
That's just me though.


Also flavorwise, the truth and language abilities really don't seem to fit. Perhaps you could take those out and/or replace them to help with the power level a wee bit? I know it wouldn't be much... those are hardly the most powerful...


As for the last ability, might I propose an interesting fix that keeps it the same way, but also hurts it a little and makes it less uber awesome? (though it still really really rocks. It's above immunity to negative energy).

Perhaps negative and positive energy spells not only both heal the person, but they both only half affect them too. Reduce all negative/positive energy by half.

[dyslexicfaser]

Vael: You caught me, those were added after I thought up the original idea, because I wanted a PrC with more than 4 abilities.

So, I nixed the truth abilities and shrunk it down to a 5-level PrC, and I upped the Knowledge requirements. Clerics only get 2 skill points a level, they wouldn't be able to get into the thing until level 10 or so. Is it really that overpowered?

EDIT: Huh, forgot about Cloistered Cleric variant. Guess it will need some feat or something to gain entry after all.

[AKA_Bait]

Looks good to me now. Congrats. It's a pretty awesome PrC.

[Dante & Vergil]

Nice stuff yo got here. Really like both negative and possitive energy healing the guy and being able to cast them spontaneously is the icing on the cake.

[DracoDei]

I don't know if you subconsciously inspired me (like if I saw the name of your post and didn't read it, but the back of my brain remembered it) or what... but we seem to have some parallel development here... although mine spreads it out over 10 levels and has some commenserately better abilities.