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boomwolf
2008-08-19, 06:55 PM
Soulless

Soulless appear in their near-death as they did in life, except that their eyes are completely black, and their hair (if any) turns white.

The soulless are hard to be labeled, as their personality is like what it has been if they were normally alive, except the fact they suffer from heavy depression and are hard to cheer up.

Soulless have a unique affinity for the dead because of their condition, and are often drawn into the realms of undead mastery, and have little problems with undead allies.

Creating A Soulless
"Soulless" is an acquired template, it can be added to any living intelligent creature. (will be mentioned as "base creature" from now on.)

A soulless uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.


Special Attacks
A soulless retains all the special attacks of the base creature and gains those described below.

Soulstrike: a soulless' natural weapons and unarmed attack have no miss chance against incorporeal creatures and gain a +1 enchantment bonus against all creatures who has a soul/is a soul. if these weapons already have an enchantment bonus from another source they stack.


Special Qualities
A soulless retains all the special qualities of the base creature and gains those described below.

Superior Healing (Ex)
A soulless heals at an increased rate and gains three times over the normal rate of rest, also he is effected twice as much from any healing effect. (besides positive energy, see below.) this is due to the fact only the body must be fixed, and not the soul.

Middlepoint (Su)
A soulless is not living nor dead, therefor both positive and negative energy have no effect on him at all. this same attribute also makes him immune to ability and energy drain, as well as immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects. there is nothing that can suppress this ability, not even divine intervention.

Soulsense (Su)
A soulless has the ability to sense the presence of souls within 30 ft. whether these are creature with souls or souls with no body. the soulless can tell how many souls are in range of his senses, but not their location.

Advancement
By character class.

Level Adjustment
Same as the base creature +1.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Soulless Lore

the easiest way to learn about the soulless is through a knowledge (Religion) check.

DC/Result:
{table]DC|Result
10|Identifey a soulless as you see it.
15|Soulless are neither living nor dead. they are between the two worlds and enjoy some benefits of both, but some disadvantages of both.
20|Soulless cannot be effected by positive or negative energy.
30|A soulless might be created when a creature is on the verge of death for a long, long time. it does not happen if the creature received any help.[/table]

Birth of a Soulless:
As mentioned above the soulless are the effect of a creature who was too close to die for too long that the soul has left the body, but the mind stayed alive.
The process takes a week and during that time the creature must be on negative hitpoint constantly. the transformation also requires the creature feeling like he has nothing to live for, because if he have the will to fight death the soul will hang into the body and will recover with it, or kill it with her. a creature who is taken care of by another never suffers from such great indifference to his life that is needed for a soulless' creation.
An alternate way of creating such creatures is by using a spell that destroys the soul but leaves the body intact, the same requirement still apply.

Soulless in the world:
Most people who recognizes a soulless will avoid it, and might even chase it away or try to destroy them. ones who accept undead generally accept the soulless, and also ones who know what they have been through and have a kind heath tend to do their best to help these miserable creatures.
Many soulless get lenses to cover their eyes, and many dye their hairs, hiding the fact they are soulless to avoid the persecution generally set by commoners or religious zealots. good clerics and paladins are usually the worst of it.

Accepting Soullessness:
Most soulless accept what they became sooner or later, and in that point begin to think and behave different. many abandon religion, seen that the gods do not deserve to be worshiped if they allowed what happened to them, others adopt dark gods as "the ones who saved them". they don't share a "God of the soulless" and does not desire to.
Another common behavior of these who accept soullessness is to replace their names with titles, and usually ones to point on superiority to mortals. such as "Divinity of Pride", "Demigod of Revenge", "Deity of Scars" and others. ((These are intentionally the shadowmoor's spirit avatars. I simply thought these titles fits in greatly.)) the unify the soulless of different races as names are gone and titles are universal.

Gathering of the Soulless:
Soulless are often considered to gather, and due to that there are soulless communities of sometimes dozens and even hundreds at extremely rare cases, despite being so few. these communities are a sad place where depression rules, but as none have serious aspirations to rule others no law is even needed, and they generally leave each other to be and use the gathering only for protection from the living, and non-discrimination at trades. the gathering is not a permanent village or town, and its more of a campsite where people come and go, if everyone left the community no longer exist, as they hardly tend to "keep in touch"
A unique feature of such gatherings is that members of races who would normally enslave one another, kill on sight or simply avoid each other can meet, trade ideas, technology, magic and resources. this leads for the ones who often seek such communities having learned many things other members of their race never knew, and make it so that in combat they might turn into spells, tools, and weapons who would normally not be used by members of their original race, causing some deadly surprises.

Soulless on the adventure:
An adventuring soulless is a sad sight to all, because many times even the soulless himself does not know why he is adventuring. while most travel form the same reasons as they did before transformation, many have forgotten the reason and act by pure instinct, others search for power as they consider themselves superior (these who accepted soullessness), while others might seek what nobody ever found, and search for the meaning of life, especially the meaning of life with no soul.

The Secrets of the Soulless: (contains slight crunch.)
Few facts known to soulless, and only to them. its not natural knowledge and must be learned, but this is not shared with anyone outside of the soulless even under the heaviest torture, they simply cannot understand even if they are told.
Soulless have long ago invented a language called "soulspeak", it can only be understood by soulless as it uses no voice, and no movement. only some strange inwards pulse detected by the soulsense ability, and therefor you can only "hear" this language from these inside your range. the language is not true speech and works as an emphatic links created by casters and familiars, except that all with this language can share emotions with all others. the language must be learned as normal, and only another soulless can teach you, self-learning, book-learning and such are impossible due to the unique nature of the language.

The soulless also keep in secret the fact they never age. it takes awhile to notice it, but it contribute to the feeling of superiority. they can live forever if not attacked, giving one the option to forever improve his abilities and emerge many lifetimes of his race later then normal, to a time nobody knows him, and his extreme skill for "his age" stun the world, who is oblivious to the fact he had generations to study and practice.


Soulless Advancement

In some cases a soulless chooses to focus his abilities on the fact he is a soulless, and improve his natural advantages. this people are the further extension of the soulless, caring even less, and are even more hated by others, as the turn more into undead, and at the same time more into the living.

Soulless Paragon HD: d8
{table=head]Level|Base Attack Bonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special|Spells

1st|
+0|
+2|
+0|
+2|Nothing to Fear|-

2nd|
+1|
+3|
+0|
+3|Ability boost|+1 level of spellcasting class

3rd|
+2|
+3|
+1|
+3|Half-Life|+1 level of spellcasting class[/table]


Class Skills
The Soulless paragon's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Diplomacy (Cha), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Sense Motive (Wis), and Survival (Wis)

Skill Points at Each Level
4 + Int modifier.

Class Features
All of the following are class features of the soulless paragon class.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency
Soulless paragons are proficient with no weapons and no armor.

Spells per Day
At 2nd and 3rd level, a Soulless paragon gains new spells per day (and spells known, if applicable) as if he had also gained a level in a spellcasting class he belonged to before adding the level. He does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained (bonus metamagic or item creation feats, bard or assassin abilities, and so on). This essentially means that he adds the level of Soulless paragon to the level in the spellcasting class, then determines spells per day, spells known, and caster level accordingly.

If a character had more than one spellcasting class before he became a Soulless paragon, he must decide to which class he adds each level of human paragon. If a Soulless paragon has no levels in a spellcasting class, this class feature has no effect.

Nothing to Fear (Ex)
A soulless paragon cares even less then natural, and because of that cannot be under any fear effect, natural or magical. he simply does not care enough to be afraid of anything.

Ability Boost (Ex)
At 2nd level, a Soulless paragon increases his Wisdom or Charisma by 2 points. His pure indifference to his own life is inspiring, and allows him to see things in a cool, thoughtful way.

Half-Life (Su)
The 3rd level soulless paragon gets his "middlepoint" supernatural ability replaced by this.

A soulless is not living nor dead but a little of both, therefor both positive and negative energy have a lesser effect on his of 25% of normal, and both heal him. this same attribute also makes him immune to ability and energy drain, as well as immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects. there is nothing that can suppress this ability, not even divine intervention.
The healing cause by positive or negative energy is not doubled by the superior healing ability.

Special: as a soulless is a template and not an actual race, a creature might have the soulless paragon and another as well. this means you can advance your "natural" paragon (or paragons for specials as half-orcs) even after you have begun advancing the soulless paragon, and then level the soulless paragon back again, the multiple paragons are allowed as normal multiclassing.

Racial Feats:
Extended Soulsense
The ability to sense souls is soon understood as the soulless' best power, making it nearly impossible to sneak up on.
Prerequisites Soulsense

Benefit: Your soulsense ability extends by 30 ft.

Special: This feat may be taken multiple times, it's effect stack.

Energy Switch [Racial]
Soulless really does not care if energy is positive or negative, but others around might. and the soulless learn to take advantage of it.
Prerequisites Soulless, an ability to use positive or negative energy as a spell or racial/class ability.

Benefit:Whenever you channel a positive or negative energy from a spell or ability you may choose to channel the other type instead.

Improved Soulstrike [Racial]
Some soulless tent to focus on harming souls, their own way of taking revenge on the ones who still have them.
Prerequisites Soulless, BAB +6

Benefit: The enchantment bonus to the soulstrike ability improves by +1

Special: May be taken multiple times, it's effect stacks. but you cannot have this feat a number of time greater then the number of bonus attacks you gain from high BAB. (second time is 11, third is 16 and so forth.)

Inspiring Courage [Racial]
Some soulless inspire other to courage by their sheer ignorance to the value of their lives.
Prerequisites Soulless, Nothing to Fear

Benefit: You gain the paladin's aura of courage ability.

Special: If you have the Aura of Courage class ability from paladin levels then the range is doubled, but the effect does not stack.

Further Advancement
Due to their inborn abilities, and their improvement paths many soulless might take up the way of a cleric, paladin or necromancer. they also make good leaders for the ones who are willing to follow and might take on the bard path, or maybe the ranger. a monk is also not a rare sight, as the soulstrike ability and the superior healing complements it well.
The Soulless shines mostly in classes who lets him heal himself without positive/negative energy, as these energies have little effect if any.

SilentNight
2008-08-19, 07:14 PM
I like these a lot. Nice job. Good initial flavor although they could use some more fluff.

thevorpalbunny
2008-08-19, 10:32 PM
Possible other change: alignment becomes True Neutral. If you have no soul it's hard to care.

boomwolf
2008-08-20, 03:19 PM
Intelligent undead have no soul but they care alot. mainly for evil. your ideals are the same, you are jest more depressed doing them. they are like the marvin of DnD.

More flavor will be added soon to request.

And thoughts about balance?

Also working on racial feats and paragon class to be added to him. (I know its not a race, but I feel like there should be an option for someone to take these abilities and this path further.)

thevorpalbunny
2008-08-20, 06:17 PM
Intelligent Undead have a soul, it's just corrupted. That's what makes them different from unintelligent undead.

Faithdreamer
2008-08-21, 01:02 AM
If you can trust me at my word - soulless people DO care. Sometimes a lot more than everyone else. If anything they can feel the pains of others more keenly because they know some of the deepest pains.

Unlike in D&D being an undead does NOT corrupt an individual. You can be dead and not corrupted. Just because you did an awful thing you aren't slaved to the chains of fate and MADE to be evil. Free will is a fundamental right.

Ignore me if you like, Boomwolf might know what I'm talking about. Soulless probably have really long stories about how many times hearts have been broken.

Maybe they're just afraid to show their feelings?

It makes me wonder whether you can really lack a soul. Can a soul be fragmented and still remain a part of you?

Always more learning, isn't there?

P.S - Rationality. Fear is a hard concept to understand, even if you can feel it. It might take something very poignant to stir the heart. But you feel it so much, the sensations drive you to either extremes of great good, or extremes of great evil in the name of good. You'll find you do both, either or neither on a daily basis.

What lives inside your heart, and who can ever really take your heart from you? The heart and soul are practically known as the same thing in many languages.

My heart is a muscle, but I am always me, even when you don't hear the lub dub in my chest.

Cleric - Six is a Number, not a Sign. Choice is not 'the Signs you see'. Dance on the edge of a knife and make your choice with a heart full of Heaven.

boomwolf
2008-08-21, 04:28 AM
Not to mention most undead never chose to be such...so there is no reason from them to go "auto evil"

Although my soulless template is for people who truly have no soul. they exist only on body and mind.

There is a simple reason for all soulless being highly depressed individuals. in order to BECOME one you need to be at a state of near-death, and have no desire whatsoever to help yourself live, yet no desire to help yourself die.
You must not even CARE anymore.

In any way, I didn't understand you PS thingy. a bit confusing.

The further creation of soulless is nigh-complete, and will be posted soon.