The Nagollur (Base Class) - The Death-caller

[Bauglir]

The Nagollur
"My research has immortalized the names of hundreds, yet the others in the fortress seem ungrateful. I don't understand. I'll have to do more research." – Journal of Zundrek Bonehammer, Dwarven Nagollur

Nagollur, the death-callers, are the archetypical researchers to venture beyond traditional morality and custom in the pursuit of their study. They compile tome after tome of personal truenames, drawn from years of perusing ancient texts and carrying out impenetrable arithmetic to unlock secrets that remain hidden from others. They master the art of using a personal truename to enslave the dead – the most powerful nagollur can bring a spirit back from the beyond and shackle it to the flesh it once inhabited. Members of this class can be found as classical necromancers or mad scientists stitching together strange creatures, but many may also become renowned healers. With proper preservation, such as that provided by a gentle repose spell, a high-level nagollur can even provide an interesting alternative to traditional resurrection, by creating a draugr of an individual and simply refraining from issuing orders.

MAKING A NAGOLLUR
Nagollur are truespeakers who find their truest calling in researching personal truenames. They learn to master their subjects in ways that no other truespeaker can, raising from the dead the creatures whose names they speak. As a nagollur, you command the undead, and manipulate the forces of Life and Thought.

   Abilities: Your Intelligence score is the basis of your Truespeech check, and several of your class features, making it a top priority. You'll need a high Constitution score to withstand the rigors of failure, and a high Charisma score allows you to create more powerful undead and wield the powers of necromancy more effectively.

   Races: Members of any race can be drawn to this class. However, dwarves and elves rarely enter the class, because their cultures often have a tradition of reverence for the dead; on the other hand, many members of this class view their actions as a gesture of respect of its own, bringing new purpose to the deceased.

   Alignment: Nagollur can be of any alignment, but relatively few are good-aligned – while raising the dead is not inherently evil, most cultures and religions treat it as if it were. A good-aligned nagollur has to overcome his own biases, as well as those of those around him, in order to pursue his research. While many of these class features lend themselves to evil ends if used thoughtlessly, a nagollur who is careful can use their powers for good purposes.

    Starting Gold: 3d4x10(75)

    Starting Age: As wizards.

Class Skills
The Class Name's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Truespeech (Int)
Skill Points at 1st Level: (2 + Int Modifier) x 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int Modifier

Hit Dice: d12

Level	BAB	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special	Utterances Known	Mental Void	Spells Prepared	Maximum Spell Level
1st	+0	+0	+0	+2	Grimoire, Mental Void, Unholy Awakening	1	1	-	-
2nd	+1	+0	+0	+3	Necromantic Study, Rebuke Undead	2	1	1	1
3rd	+1	+1	+1	+3	Words	3	2	1	1
4th	+2	+1	+1	+4	Researcher I	4	2	2	1
5th	+2	+1	+1	+4	-	5	3	2	2
6th	+3	+2	+2	+5	Shared Burden	6	3	3	2
7th	+3	+2	+2	+5	-	7	3	3	2
8th	+4	+2	+2	+6	-	8	4	4	3
9th	+4	+3	+3	+6	Ritual Sacrifice	9	4	4	3
10th	+5	+3	+3	+7	Sentences	10	4	4	3
11th	+5	+3	+3	+7	Researcher II	11	5	4	4
12th	+6/+1	+4	+4	+8	-	12	5	5	4
13th	+6/+1	+4	+4	+8	-	13	5	5	5
14th	+7/+2	+4	+4	+9	Deathlord	14	6	5	5
15th	+7/+2	+5	+5	+9	New Dialect	15	6	5	6
16th	+8/+3	+5	+5	+10	Unholy Awakening (Original Spirit)	16	6	6	6
17th	+8/+3	+5	+5	+10	-	18	7	6	7
18th	+9/+4	+6	+6	+11	Researcher III	20	7	6	7
19th	+9/+4	+6	+6	+11	Fleshwielder	22	7	6	7
20th	+10/+5	+6	+6	+12	Ascendance	25	8	7	7

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A nagollur is proficient with all simple weapons and light armor, but not with shields.

Utterances: You learn one utterance of your choice, and gain knowledge of new utterances as you gain levels, as shown in the table. You may choose nagollur utterances from the dialects of the Coursing Blood, the Manifest Ideal, and the Transcendent Mind. If you fail a Truespeech check to speak a nagollur utterance, you take a point of Constitution burn. At first, you can learn only Syllables and Phonema as nagollur utterances.
At 3rd level, your research demonstrates new techniques, allowing you to learn Words as nagollur utterances. At 10th level, you improve your methods further, and can learn Sentences, as well.
At 15th level, you master unfamiliar concepts, and choose an additional dialect from which you may learn utterances.
You also automatically gain knowledge of the Lexicon of Undeath as you advance through the class. These utterances do not count toward your nagollur utterances known. At 1st level, you know the Phonema, Syllables, and Words of the Lexicon of Undeath, even though you cannot normally learn Words as nagollur utterances. At 6th level, you also gain access to the Sentence of Undeath, even though you cannot normally learn Sentences as nagollur utterances.                                                     

Mental Void (Ex): When you enter this class, a tiny gap appears in your soul, a void that hungers for energy – energy that you must supply. If you do not feed it, this emptiness consumes your own spirit. At 1st level, you have 1 point in your Mental Void. You can spend 1 point from this pool in place of each point of Constitution damage you would take for failing the Truespeech check to speak a nagollur utterance, funneling the backlash into the emptiness of your spirit. The gap grows as you gain levels in this class, as indicated in the table above. When you rest for 8 hours, the void snaps back to its original state, returning to its normal maximum number of points and sapping your own energy. You are fatigued for a number of hours after resting equal to the number of points left in your pool when you began rest.

Grimoire: Each nagollur keeps a record of the personal truenames they learn and the histories of the beings associated with them. Within a grimoire, these names are studied, reduced to their fundamental components, and rebuilt into new forms. You require a personal truename to be entered into your grimoire in order to use it in conjunction with many of your class features. Only an undead's or a living creature's truename can be entered into a grimoire in this way; an intelligent item, construct, or similar being possessing a personal truename is fundamentally dissociated from the force of Life, and hence from Death. Scribing a personal truename and the associated notes into a grimoire requires 1 page per hit die the creature possessed, and 10 gp and 10 minutes per page written in this way. A grimoire costs and weighs the same as a wizard's spellbook, and has as many pages. Alternate types of spellbook are easily adapted to function as grimoires.
You also derive the personal truenames of some creatures as you gain levels, without any need for separate research. At 1st level, and each time you gain a nagollur level thereafter, you may add to your grimoire the personal true name of an individual of a kind of mindless undead with hit dice equal to or less than your class level. This is an exception to the normal rules on what sort of creature may have a personal truename; you construct an artificial truename that describes the creature, rather than discovering one. The undead described by this truename is an ordinary representative of its kind. A single template may be applied to the creature in question, but it must change the creature's type to undead and may not be applicable to undead creatures (this template may qualify a creature that is not normally undead or mindless for this class feature, but a similar exemption does not exist for templates that cause the creature to lose its Intelligence score). Any corpse can be used to create a draugr of this kind with your Unholy Awakening ability.

Unholy Awakening (Su): By incanting a personal truename written in his grimoire as part of a 1 minute ritual, a nagollur can return the creature described by it to a shambling semblance of life. This ritual must be performed within arm's reach of the creature's (inanimate) corpse. If you successfully speak the appropriate truename, the creature's corpse animates at the ritual's completion as a draugr. The draugr obeys your spoken commands, regardless of language, and is entirely loyal. Your created draugar don't count toward the number of hit dice of undead you can control at once. Instead, you can have up to one draugr per point of Charisma modifier animated at once, each with a CR (before application of the template) equal to your speaker level, or lower. If you attempt to animate draugar that would put you over this limit, the attempt simply fails. You can even use this ability to bring back a draugr that was destroyed after being animated through another use of this ability, but the draugr gains the Crumbling Draugr template each time you do.
At 16th level, if the creature possessed an intelligence score before its death or destruction, that spirit can be called into the body; it may make a Will save (DC 10 + ½ your class level + your Charisma modifier) at the modifier it possessed at the moment of its death to resist being trapped in this way. It possesses knowledge of you, just as if you were attempting to resurrect it. If it succeeds, the ritual still succeeds at animating the creature, but you do not bind the base creature's original spirit to the draugr, and you may never again try to bind that particular spirit into a draugr. If creating a crumbling draugr, the spirit gets a new save every time the draugr is reanimated, but it uses the Will save it possessed at the moment of its previous draugr incarnation's destruction. If it fails, it is bound into the new form, and forced to serve you. You can't bind the spirit of a mindless creature to a draugr, because it didn't possess one.

Rebuke Undead (Su): At 2nd level, you gain the ability to rebuke undead, channeling your inner connection to undeath, as would an evil cleric of your class level. See the cleric class feature.

Necromantic Study (Ex): The nagollur seek to master death, and through it life. Each augments their power in the realm of truespeech through study of more common necromancy. At 2nd level, by spending uses of rebuke undead or by spending points from your Mental Void, you can produce the equivalent of a necromancy spell as a spell-like ability.
You must keep a spellbook, as a wizard does, in order to use this class feature. You can use the same book as your grimoire. By studying the spellbook for 15 minutes, you can prepare a number of spells determined by your class level, as given in the table above. The maximum level of spell you can prepare is given in the table above.  You can scribe and subsequently prepare only Necromancy spells in this way. Your caster level for this purpose is equal to your nagollur level, and the spell's saving throw DC is equal to 10 + the spell's level + your Intelligence modifier. You must spend one rebuke undead attempt or point from your Mental Void for every level of the emulated spell when you cast it; you need not pay this cost entirely in one form.
Once you have used a prepared spell in this way, you cannot use it again until you prepare it again. You cannot prepare a spell multiple times at once in this way, and you can prepare only one spell of the highest level to which you have access. You must rest for 8 hours in order to prepare spells again. For instance, an 8th level nagollur could cast a 2nd level spell by spending one rebuke undead attempt and one point from his Mental Void. He could cast another 2nd level spell in the same way, if he had prepared it, but not the same one.
You can prepare a spell modified by a metamagic feat, but you must first scribe it separately in its modified form. You choose when preparing spells whether to prepare the modified version or the unmodified version; you can't prepare both. You cannot prepare a spell in this way if it has an XP cost, and must supply other components as normal for that spell when casting it.

Researcher (Ex): As a nagollur, you pursue the personal truenames of creatures with unparalleled zeal. As you gain levels, your study grants you unmatched familiarity with the forms of truenames and the resources at your disposal, allowing you to construct accurate guesswork where standard research might fail and to find what you're looking for faster than anyone else.
At 4th level, research phases begin at 1 hour, rather than 1 day, of length. Furthermore, you need spend one less phase of research on discovering the truename of a creature with a CR lower than your level.
At 11th level, you save an additional phase of research when attempting to discover the truename of a creature with a CR lower than your level, minus 1.
At 18th level, you master the art of research. Your first research phase is only 1 minute long, and you save yet another phase when researching the truename of a creature with a CR lower than your level, minus 2.

Shared Burden (Su): At 6th level, your draugar become so tightly bound to your spirit that you can share the pain of your injuries with them. As an immediate action taken in response to taking damage, you can reduce that damage by half, and cause a draugr you created to take the rest of the damage you would have taken. This ability functions no matter the distance between you and the draugr, but you must be on the same plane.

Ritual Sacrifice (Su): A nagollur of 9th level can sacrifice undead he controls in order to lend extra power to his utterances in case of failure, using the energy released by their destruction to fuel the utterance. If you fail the Truespeech check to speak a nagollur utterance, you can use an immediate action to destroy draugar you control. If you do, you can use the utterance of the length you intended, as if you had not failed the Truespeech check. This immediate action uses the swift action from your next turn, regardless of when it is used, so that you may use it to affect a Phonema or Syllable, as long as you speak it during your turn. In order to force a Phonema or Syllable to be spoken, you need only destroy a single draugr. In order to force a Word to be spoken, you must destroy two draugar, and if you intend to force a Sentence to be spoken, you must destroy three.

Deathlord (Ex): At level 14, you demonstrate a greater degree of control over the undead than lesser necromancers. You can have one more draugr animated at a given time than normal. You can control up to two hit dice per level of undead by commanding them with your rebuke undead ability, rather than one.

Fleshwielder (Ex): At level 19, you master the art of commanding undead. If you would rebuke an undead, but not command it, you may instead command it for 1 minute. This still counts against the total number of undead you can command at once.

Ascendance: At level 20, you unlock the secrets of perpetual life, and can use them to order death to desert you. At any time after reaching level 20, you can grant yourself the Draugr template, with a number of exceptions. Performing this ritual requires that you first craft an object to serve as a repository for your soul, and 24 hours of meditation in a tomb, surrounded by at least 3 draugar you command. When you complete the ritual, the unholy power of these draugar is subsumed into your very being, instantly destroying them and granting you the template. You automatically bind your own spirit to the created draugr, and you do not possess the Resistance quality. You retain all of your special abilities and special qualities, regardless of origin. You are created by yourself for the purposes of determining the effects of the template.
The crafted object must be Diminutive or smaller in size, and regardless of its original characteristics, has Hardness 20 and 40 hp after the ritual's completion. It loses any magical properties it might possess, and cannot be given any permanent enchantments or other magical effects; in short, it cannot become a magic item. While it can be affected by spells, it is considered to have impenetrable spell resistance. It cannot be used as a material component for a spell, regardless of its form.
If you should ever be slain after becoming a draugr, your phylactery allows your soul to tether itself to the material world and grants you the power to produce a new body. 1d4 days after your death, you regenerate in the phylactery's square, wherever it might be. You gain the Crumbling Draugr template each time you regenerate in this fashion. This effect is considered a wish spell for the purposes of interacting with magic or other effects that would prevent you from being resurrected, except that the strength of your bond to the phylactery is such that resonance builds between you and it every moment you remain slain – each year an effect prevents you from being resurrected in this way, there is a cumulative 1% chance that your soul will break its way free of imprisonment and be brought back as normal. If your phylactery is destroyed, you are immediately slain, and you cannot be brought back by any means short of a wish or miracle, followed immediately by a true resurrection spell. In this case, you return to life without the templates granted by this class feature, but you may perform the ritual again, with a new phylactery.