Soul Reaver

When killing or seriously harming another creature, a thief of life steals fragments of that creature’s soul. You gain the ability to use stolen essence and a stolen essence pool.

Each time you gain a level of soul reaver, you also increase your veilweaver level as if you had gained a level in the veilweaving class to which you belonged prior to gaining the soul reaver level. You do not, however, gain any other abilities of that class, such as additional veils, increased essence, or new tiers of chakra binds.

When you embark on the path of the soul reaver, you weave akashic essence throughout your body, forever merging that energy with yourself. The flesh of your body becomes an essence receptacle, allowing you to invest essence into into it.

Unlike other essence receptacles, you can only invest stolen essence into this ability.

Flush with stolen life energy, your flesh becomes resistant to extreme damage. For each point of essence invested in this ability, you gain a stacking 5% chance to negate critical hits and sneak attacks and Damage Reduction 1/–.

Whenever you reduce a living creature to -1 or fewer hit points with a sneak attack, you gain 1 point of stolen essence, which you can immediately invest in any essence receptacle as a free action.

By aligning yourself with akashic energy, you are able to draw more from your enemies. For every 2 points of essence invested in your akashic flesh, this ability grants 1 additional point of stolen essence.

A thief of life can sense the ebb and flow of life energy around her. You gain lifesense, allowing you to see the very life essence of living creatures.

In addition, you instantly know the condition of creatures near death within 30 feet as though you were using the deathwatch spell.

This is exactly like the rogue ability of the same name and stacks with other sources of sneak attack damage. The extra damage dealt increases by +1d6 at 2nd-, 5th-, and 8th-level.

Your repeated exposure to death fortifies you against the horrors of life. You become immune to fear at 3rd level.

When delivering a sneak attack to a living creature, you can bypass the flesh to rend the target’s very soul. When you use this ability, you may sacrifice sneak attack damage to deal Charisma damage to the target creature. For each die of sneak attack you choose to forfeit, you deal 1 Charisma damage.

You gain 1 point of stolen essence for every point of Charisma damage that you deal to the target.

If the creature has an essence pool, you may choose to deal essence damage instead of Charisma damage. If you deal more damage than the creature has essence, the excess damage is dealt as Charisma damage. You gain stolen essence equal to the combined essence and Charisma damage dealt with this attack.

At 3rd level, you may use this ability once per day. The daily uses of this ability increase by 1 at 6th level and again at 9th level.

As a full-round action, you may completely consume a fragment of stolen soul energy to gain a temporary boost to yourself. To use this ability, you willingly deal 1 or more damage to your stolen essence, which cannot be reduced or prevented.

For each point of stolen essence willingly sacrificed, you immediately heal 5 hit points per class level and heal either 1 point of ability damage or essence damage to your personal essence pool. Any healing above your maximum becomes temporary hit points that last for one hour per class level or until used.

Additionally, you gain a profane bonus on attack rolls, saves, and skill checks equal to the number of stolen essence consumed that lasts for 1 round per class level.

At 4th level, your body begins to thrive on soul energy, becoming able to easily endure hardship. While you have at least 1 stolen essence invested in your akashic flesh, you become immune to fatigue, exhaustion, and sleep effects. If you were already fatigued or exhausted when you invest the stolen essence, you are cured of those conditions.

In addition, you gain a profane bonus equal to half the essence invested in your akashic flesh on saves against disease, poison, paralysis, and stunning.

You become immune to energy drain and to ability damage and drain at 6th level.

At 9th-level, you also become immune to death effects.

Beginning at 10th level, you may use the power of stolen essence to avoid an otherwise certain death, sending another soul in your place while you remain behind. Whenever your hit points would are reduced low enough to kill you, you automatically consume all stolen essence you possess as per your consume soul fragment ability, restoring your hit points to prevent your death. This happens automatically and requires no action on your part.

If this ability prevents you from dying, you enter a state of false death. You appear to be to dead to casual observation, and effects such as status and deathwatch register you as being dead; however, a successful Heal check (DC 15 + 1/2 your Hit Dice + your Constitution modifier) reveals that you still live. This state of false death lasts until you take any action other than delaying.

This ability can be used only once per week.

For example, a soul reaver currently possess 6 stolen essence, has 14 current hit points, and dies at -16 hit points. If he takes 50 points of damage, he wold normally be reduced to -36 hit points and die. However, this ability immediately consumes all 6 points of stolen essence, healing him for 30 hit points. He find himself at -6 hit points, but the magic healing means that he is conscious and stabilized. He is in a precarious position, but the false death prevents his attackers from realizing he still lives. If the soul reaver had not possessed enough stolen essence to bring his hit points above -16, he would have still died.

Upon reaching 10th level, you learn to claim the souls of those you slay, using them to temporarily cheat death. Whenever you kill a creature with a successful sneak attack, you may immediately trap that creature’s soul as though you had cast soul bind, except that a soul gem is formed of raw of chthonic essence as part of using this ability at no additional cost to you.

You cannot claim more than one soul at a time using this ability. If you claim the soul of a second creature, the last soul gem shatters, freeing the soul from its imprisonment.

Upon claiming a soul, you gain several benefits.

False Immortality

Your body feeds off of the essence trapped in the gem. By permanently draining one Hit Die from the trapped soul, you gain a limited form of immortality. When you use this ability, your body does not age (which delays gaining penalties from age) and cannot be magically aged. You need not eat, drink, or sleep, and even the need to breathe is greatly reduced such that you can go without breathing for ten times the normal time before suffering the effects of suffocation. You also become immune to bleed damage and to poison, disease, paralysis, and stunning effects.

This ability remains active for a number of months equal to the total Hit Dice of the soul when drained. So, draining a soul with 10 Hit Dice would grant you 10 months of false immortality. However, the soul would only have 9 HD after being drained, granting you only 9 months of false immortality the next time you used this ability on that soul.

If the trapped soul’s Hit Dice are reduced to zero, the soul is destroyed and the gem shatters.

Siphon Essence

You may drain a trapped soul for its raw essence, granting you additional stolen essence. Each point of essence stolen permanently drains one Hit Die from the trapped soul. This process takes 10 minutes per point of essence drained.

If the trapped soul’s Hit Dice are reduced to zero, the soul is destroyed and the gem shatters.

Alternate Payment

If you do not possess enough stolen essence to survive using your Pay the Reaper ability when it activates, your Siphon Essence ability automatically activates, completely draining a soul gem in your possession and converting it into stolen essence. This stolen essence is immediately spent on Pay the Reaper to heal you.

This process repeats for any additional soul gems you might possess until you have been healed enough to survive.

You may use these abilities on any soul gem you possess, even if you gained that gem through means other than your Soul Theft ability.