Lictor

A broad-shouldered woman in a long coat stands at a
grave, seeing for the first time the withered flowers
that were lain there for her long ago. Those she was stolen from now lie in graves of their own nearby. Slowly, she shuffles out through the gates. As she passes the caretaker, he starts in shock before mumbling an apology: taken aback by the grisly wound that will never close upon her face.

A translucent gnomish teen drifts between the walls and through the doors of an empty house. Though she is no longer tethered to this place, she is not yet sure where she ought to go. She hides in the rafters as a group of newly assembled adventurers, tasked to investigate the local hauntings, approach the house. Perhaps, instead of playing tricks this time, she could ask them what to do...

Pale even for an elf, a slim man watches the streets of a damp city from the lip of a rooftop. He eyes the setting sun with trepidation. At last, he hears the shout of his prey. Leaping into the alley below, he interrupts the robbery with shocking strength, tossing thugs away from their intended victim. The poor child's screams risk attracting the attention of other things of the night, so the man calms him with an enchanting gaze before sending him off home. He does not linger, lest his sire come sniffing for recompense.

Each of these individuals is a lictor, a being that was once risen to serve another as an undead. But where most such beings remain bound as slaves from death until destruction, a lictor has grasped hold of a rare opportunity to escape their chains and reclaim their soul.

The Emancipated Dead

To be a lictor means more than having become undead. In their remaking by a necromancer or other powerful force, these beings were granted the office of some form of greater horror: possessed of uncanny intellect, strength, or other useful attributes to be enhanced in the service of their new master. But what truly sets a lictor apart is that they have escaped their bondage.

Through some strange circumstance and sheer force of will, a lictor has managed to rediscover and rekindle a spark of their humanity. Their very souls, as real and alive as any other, have returned and reclaimed their cursed bodies. Why exactly this has happened is hard to say: perhaps they had an encounter with a higher celestial, or an artifact of unknown magic. Perhaps a vestige of their old self had always remained, only to be awoken by a mission that clashed with their past. The chance to be unstitched from the bonds of necromantic thraldom is the stuff of miracles. And even when presented with such an opportunity, not every soul can champion their own struggle for liberty from under such tragic circumstances — nor can every will weather all the trials a new life will hold for them after freedom is won.

Every lictor's soul is humanoid: subject to all the same emotions, magics, and variations as any other living being. No longer must they be counted among the vile ranks of undeath. But each lictor still bears with them the marks of their office. They stand out from a crowd ‐ and they are likely to suffer its fear. However, by combining their refound humanity with the dark powers now ingrained in them, they each have a chance

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for redemption and vindication. A lictor refuses to be defined by what was done to them. Their new life is a constant quest to find out who they were before, and, indeed, who they are now and wish to be.

Creating a Lictor

To create a lictor, consult the following subsections, which give you hit points, proficiencies, and starting equipment. Then look at the Lictor table to see which features you get at each level. The descriptions of those features appear in the “Class Features” section.

Quick Build

You can make a lictor quickly by following these suggestions. First, make Strength or Dexterity your highest ability score. Your next highest score should be Constitution. Finally, choose either the Soldier or Urchin background.

Hit Points

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• Hit Dice: 1d8 per lictor level
• Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constitution modifier
• Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or 5 + your Constitution
• modifier per lictor level after 1st

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Unarmed Fighting

Your unarmed strikes can deal bludgeoning damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier on a hit. If you aren’t wielding any weapons or a shield when you make the attack roll, the d6 becomes a d8.

At the start of each of your turns, you can deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage to one creature grappled by you.

Spellcasting

2nd-level lictor feature

You have learned to draw on the necromantic magic that now sustains you to cast spells. See Spells Rules for the general rules of spellcasting and the end of this class description for the lictor spell list.

Spell Slots

The Lictor table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your lictor spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots upon finishing a long rest.

For example, if you know the 1st-level spell false life and have a 1st-level and a 2nd-level spell slot available, you can cast false life using either slot.

Spells Known of 1st Level and Higher

You know two 1st-level spells of your choice from the lictor spell list.

The Spells Known column of the Lictor table shows when you learn more lictor spells of your choice. Each of these spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots. For instance, when you reach 5th level in this class, you can learn one new spell of 1st or 2nd level.

Additionally, when you gain a level in this class, you can choose one of the lictor spells you know and replace it with another spell from the lictor spell list, which also must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

Spellcasting Ability

Constitution is your spellcasting ability for your lictor spells, since they draw power from the very forces that now animate your body. You use your Constitution whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Constitution modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a lictor spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Spell Save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus +

your Constitution modifier

Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus +

your Constitution modifier

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Your restless body no longer feels the effects of decay nor age, and you cannot be aged magically. You begin to feel the

effects of exhaustion only if the number of levels of exhaus-tion you are suffering exceeds your proficiency bonus.

Moreover, when you are reduced to 0 hit points, you can expend a lictor spell slot to sustain your body with a surge of magic. If you do so, you are not knocked unconscious. You still must make death saving throws, and you suffer the nor-mal effects of taking damage while at 0 hit points. However, if you would die due to failing death saving throws, you don’t die until this effect expires, and you die then only if you still have 0 hit points. This effect lasts until the end of your next turn for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1 additional turn for each spell level higher than 1st.

You can move through other creatures as if they were difficult terrain, and creatures gain no benefit from shields or half-cover against your melee attack rolls.

At the start of your turn, you can also choose to concentr-ate as if on a spell in order to move through objects of size Large or smaller, including doors or windows but not solid walls. An object counts as difficult terrain. You can do so a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier, and regain all expended uses upon completing a long rest. You take 1d10 force damage if you end your turn inside an object.

You also possess a mark of office that advertises your undead nature. Choose your mark from the Apparition Marks table or determine it randomly.

The Old Haunt

1st-level Office of the Apparition feature

When you gain this feature, choose a location that you know, which can be inside or outside, with a total area no more than 20 cubes, each cube being 10 feet on each side and arranged as you wish. This location becomes bound to you as your haunting ground. While you are on the same plane of existence as your haunting ground, you can use an action to do one of the following:

• See and hear through an invisible sensor that you place somewhere within it. You are blind to your own senses while doing so. You can stop viewing through the sensor at any time as an action. A creature that can see the sensor (such as a creature benefiting from see invisibility) sees a luminous, intangible illusion of you in its place.
• Speak into the haunting ground at any volume ranging from faint whispers to thunderous shouts, either from one location within it or several simultaneously.

                  Half-elf Apparition

• Create an effect of the thaumaturgy cantrip within it.
• Move objects within it as if by the mage hand cantrip. This version of the hand can carry or move objects that weigh up to your lictor level x 10 in pounds.

You can designate a new haunting ground by spending at least 24 hours roaming between each contiguous area of the intended location while concentrating on it, as if on a spell, at the end of which the new location becomes your haunting ground, and the original location is no longer bound to you.

Wrack Foes: Wrack with Grief

3rd-level Office of the Apparition feature

You unleash an awful wail of raw emotion that washes over your enemies. Creatures of your choice within 20 feet of you must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or take 2d6 psychic damage and fall prone, being unable to stand until the end of your next turn. A creature that fails its save by 5 or more is also incapacitated for the duration.

Painful Presence

7th-level Office of the Apparition feature

Once per turn when you move through a creature, you can cause that creature to take 1d8 force damage.

This damage increases to 2d8 at 11th level, and 3d8 at 15th level.

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Well-acquainted with the sacrificial demands of your station, you have leant into the expendable nature of your own legion. When you or one of your facsimiles takes cold, fire, lightning, or radiant damage, you can use your reaction, or the reaction of one of your facsimiles, to expend a lictor spell slot of 1st-level or higher and send destructive energy chaining between you. When you do so, you and all of your persisiting facsimiles gain the following benefits for 10 minutes:

• Your form changes to reflect the damage that caused the surge: you are set ablaze by fire damage, for example, or are silhouetted starkly against a glow of energy from lightning or radiant damage.
• Melee weapon attacks you make deal an additional 1d6 of the triggering damage's type.
• A creature or object that ends its turn within 5 feet of you takes 1d6 damage of the triggering damage's type. You choose if your facsimiles or yourself take this damage.

When you expend a spell to fuel this feature using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage you deal with melee weapon attacks and to creatures that end their turn within 5 feet of you increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 1st.

Whenever you or one of your facsimiles are incapacitated or reduced to 0 hit points, the energy dissipates harmlessly from that creature. You can also douse the energy on yourself and all of your facsimiles at once as an action.

You can use this feature once, and regain the ability to do so upon completing a short or long rest.

Corrupted Gifts

1st-level Office of the Death Knight feature

When you take damage that exceeds your lictor level from an attack or from failing a saving throw, you can claim the swirl-ing energy of sudden doom for your own and strike back with increased vengeance. The first time you hit a creature with a weapon attack before the end of your next turn, the attack deals an additional 2d8 fire or necrotic damage (your choice). An attack can benefit from this additional damage only once.

Raise Legion

15th-level Office of the Death Knight feature

Calling upon your command of the dead as an action, you raise a force by drawing undead creatures to you through the Shadowfell: perhaps even culling them from the very ranks of armies you once led. The creatures appear in unoccupied spaces you can see within 30 feet of you. Choose one of the following options for what appears:

• Two undead of challenge rating 2 or lower
• Four undead of challenge rating 1 or lower
• Eight undead of challenge rating 1/2 or lower
• Sixteen undead of challenge rating 1/4 or lower

Statistics for the creatures can be found in the Monster Manual. Each undead summoned fades into shadow when it drops to 0 hit points, or after 1 hour has passed.

The summoned creatures are friendly to you and your companions. Roll initiative for the summoned creatures as a group, which has its own turns. They obey any verbal commands that you issue to them (no action required by you). If you don't issue any commands to them, they attack the nearest hostile creatures, but otherwise take no actions.

Once you use this feature, you must complete a long rest before you can do so again.

              Bloated tiefling Shambler

Office of the Shambling Flesh

With meat and muscle still fresh upon your frame, you were raised to join the lumbering frontline of a dread army. Whether as a zombie, ghoul, or something even more gruesome, you served as little more than a meat-shield until the embers of your old life rekindled your autonomy. Unfortunately, the marks of this office are among the more grisly to behold. And dead flesh, even when sustained by necromancy, is a fine carrier of plague and pestilence, making you an unwelcome sight, or smell, to many. The nature of your undeath and your experience of repeated punishment have made you terribly resilient to harm ‐ the tenacity of your flesh matching the hardiness of your will to keep pressing on in this unlife.

Deadened Pain

1st-level Office of the Shambling Flesh feature

Due to burnt-out, missing, or otherwise transformed nerves, you have a high threshold for pain, which is equal to your lictor level. You ignore non-radiant damage you take that is equal to or below your threshold. Your pain threshold is doubled against necrotic or poison damage.

You also possess a mark of office that advertises your undead nature. Choose your mark from the Shambling Flesh Marks table or determine it randomly.

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Whenever you take damage, you can make a Constitution saving throw with a DC of 5 + half the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or from a critical hit. On a success, you halve the damage taken; if this reduces the damage taken to below your pain threshold, you ignore it entirely.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier, and regain all expended uses upon completing a long rest.

Office of the Tomb Guardian

Perhaps you were a servant, a slave... or even a being of influence who was punished or usurped. Whatever the case, you were transformed after your death and bound to guard a place of great importance to your creators: tasked with allowing nothing other than your own unnatural presence to profane it. You've retained the fierce protective powers and urges that once fueled chilling tales for grave-robbers and dungeoneers. Now, however, you guard what is yours by choice.

Lictors originating from this office are most likely to be mummies or similar undead. Very rarely, a being such as a flesh golem might coalesce something of a consciousness enough to become a lictor of this kind, but such personalities are likely to be simplistic or fractured. Despite their new liberty, tomb guardians of any origin are prone to paranoia, as if, despite all they have achieved, part of their original curse still drives them.

Empty Flesh

1st-level Office of the Tomb Guardian feature

Removed or replaced organs have left precious little for a thief's dagger to puncture when you come upon them in the dark. You gain resistance to piercing damage and darkvision out to a range of 60 feet. If you already have darkvision from your race, its range increases by 30 feet.

In addition, you can extend your withering energies as an action to instantly molder or evaporate up to 1 cubic foot of food or water that you touch. Other nonmagical drinks are spoiled — wine turning to vinegar, for instance.

You also possess a mark of office that advertises your undead nature. Choose your mark from the Tomb Guardian Marks table or determine it randomly.

Tomb Guardian Marks

d6	Appearance
1	Loose bandages, inscribed with necromantic  markings, trail from beneath your attire.
2	Your skin is shrunken and yellowing.
3	Your bodily fluids seem to have been largely  substituted for salt or sand.
4	Your jaw hangs unnaturally loose, exposing a dark  and cavernous mouth.
5	You shrink from fire, and do not trust it near you.
6	A number of canopic jars hang about your person.

Forgive No Trespass

1st-level Office of the Tomb Guardian feature

On any creature's turn other than your own, the reach of your melee attacks is increased by 5 feet. If you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, its remaining movement speed is reduced by 10 feet until the end of its next turn.

The amount you reduce the movement speed of your target by increases as you gain levels in this class; up to 15 feet at 11th level, and up to 20 feet at 15th level.

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Underlich Marks

Ritual Offerings

1st-level Office of the Underlich feature

You gain proficiency in the Arcana skill, and learn the detect magic and sacrifice^† spells. You choose two more spells to learn at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level, each of which must be a spell from the sorcerer, warlock, or wizard spell list that has the ritual tag. Each of these spells counts as a lictor spell for

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Wrack Foes: Wrack with Terror

3rd-level Office of the Underlich feature

 You also possess a mark of office that advertises your undead nature. Choose your mark from the Vampiric Marks table or determine it randomly.

Vampiric Marks

d6	Appearance
1	Unusually long and sharp fangs protude over your  bottom lip.
2	Mirrored surfaces fail to capture your reflection.
3	When you rest, you hang upside down like a bat or  lie flat and still as if in a coffin.
4	You are possessed of an ethereal, unnerving beauty.
5	You shrink from sunlight or running water, although  they will not harm you directly anymore.
6	Your heart beats only in the presence of  innocent blood.

  High Elf Vampire Ward

Wrack Foes: Wrack with Doubt

3rd-level Office of the Vampire Ward feature

You extend a twisting glamor of infatuating fatality to those around you. Other creatures within 10 feet of you must succeed on a Charisma saving throw or be charmed by you until the end of your next turn. If a creature fails its save by 5 or more, it is charmed by you for 1 minute. When you hit a creature charmed in this way with a melee attack, the target takes an additional 2d4 damage of that attack's type.

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Wailer Marks

Gnashing of Teeth

1st-level Office of the Wailer feature

Baleful Touch

2nd-level necromancy

• Casting Time: 1 action
• Range: Touch
• Components: S, M (five drops of blood, phlegm, choler, or melancholy)
• Duration: 24 hours
• Spell Lists: Cleric, Druid, Lictor

Your touch inflicts disease. Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach. On a hit, the target is poisoned.

At the end of the poisoned target's next turn, it must make a Constitution saving throw. On a success, it is no longer poi-soned, and the spell ends. On a failure, the target is no longer poisoned, but choose one of the diseases below. The target is subjected to the chosen disease for the spell’s duration. The target can repeat its saving throw at the end of every hour it is afflicted by the disease, ending the spell on a success.

Brain Fog. The creature loses any special vision it has other than truesight, and it subtracts 1d4 from Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma ability checks or saving throws. If this effect causes it to fail a roll, it also takes 1d4 psychic damage.

Dizzying Sickness. At the end of each of the creature's turns, it falls prone. Standing from prone while afflicted by this disease costs an additional 5 feet of movement.

Gripsores. When the creature makes an attack roll that uses Strength or Dexterity, it takes 1d4 necrotic damage and drops whatever it is holding after the attack is resolved.